Ghost Blog · 31 October 2008
This blog is possessed. No, YOU’RE possessed!!!
Check it out. Now I see where Shepard Fairey and the Wachowski Bros got their ideas. I like possessed-by-consumerism stories, obviously.
Owloween has a painful eerie history for my loved ones, but we’ve reclaimed it in recent years. Tonight, a little gathering with neighbors (I’ve gotten half of the grad students in my department to move into my excellent building—we are the sociology ghetto) and a late trip the airport. Tempted to swing through the West Hollywood drag parade later, to see the throng of flaming Sarah Palins (flaming in the good, not the effigious, sense). Scarier tonight would be to attend as the ghost of Katherine Harris. Fuck! Or as the good fairy: Brooksley Born.
So tonight begins my high holidays. Hallows’ Eve, then my birthday (Scorp/Aries: self fulfilling prophecy in the worst way), then election day (four years ago the two fell in reverse order; and thus, thanks to W, the latter was not celebrated at all), my brother’s birthday, then the best day ever, Thanskgiving.
This morning was different from usual. I put in my favorite, really bad, Arcade Fire organ rock opera in the car stereo and drove in a warm dark rain to a place I used to frequent. My first ashtanga teacher is in town—we haven’t even acknowledged each other in years. She came in the room in my UHP and I fell over sideways like I used to do. Took a long Savasana and processed through those early beginnings with her murmur in the background. And unexpected venture on my part—and unexpectedly good. More than I will say.
Happy November Eve.
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haha. Palins are gonna be out in force tonight, you betcha!
Boo!
Posted by: jlafitte · Oct 31, 02:03 PM · #
That’s a true story.
I got my glasses on right now, how about you?
Happy Owloween!
Posted by: Susan · Nov 1, 11:56 AM · #
OK call me sadistic but this is a great moment in US electoral history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU7Mo8UJm-Y
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/comment-on-dit-prank-call/
Posted by: jlafitte · Nov 1, 02:17 PM · #
Well, seraph o’ sass, balancing parampara and deconstruction is easy compared to the dreaded uhp. Trying to do both at once is bound to send one back to the wobblers’ club.
Welcome home.
Posted by: meniscusmerangue · Nov 1, 02:20 PM · #
Hi (0v0)
artists have a way to say things through art that would be get you rocks thrown at you if you say it verbally.
hugs, Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Nov 1, 05:01 PM · #
I got my glasses on.
It is I suppose cliche, around here, to say that the body does not lie. But memory lies, which can be interesting and meaningful but also a pain in the ass.
I wonder how much of ashtanga politics would go poof if people would practice together. Esp on Fridays when the body is relatively quiet and receptive. (Reminds me about Machiavelli and the dynamics of a living breathing body politic.... on which more later if there’s time.)
P.S. This is worth reading.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 1, 06:53 PM · #
Glad it was a good one, Owl. Did you dress up for your little get-together in the soc ghetto?
Posted by: joy · Nov 1, 10:53 PM · #
Great link, that Thanissaro Bhikkhu essay! Thanks for that.
Posted by: karen · Nov 2, 06:52 AM · #
I did not dress up. Bad owl. However, I’m realizing that my blog is still dressed up with an image of some guy with a mullet at the top. Kind of awful.
Karen, pretty good, yes? Page four esp., and the overall view of self-hatred and narcissisum as two sides of the same coin. My two main responses are
Is the teaching that happiness is always instantly available (and also not a zero sum game) much more radical for westerners than the four noble truths?
Is the way that the first noble truth—that life is suffering—is received in the west hopelessly tied up in the self-hating, damaged egoes of those who were the first generation of westerners to fly east?
You know that I don’t really buy the four noble truths because it’s too heavy a construction of my own experience. It doesn’t work for a supposedly empiricist religion to tell me my own existence is suffering until and unless I attain the holy grail it offers—especially when genuine happiness has been available to me without either the diagnosis or the cure. But maybe if I’d been exposed to teaching like this earlier on—to an understanding of a self-regulated happiness that has a little depth to it—the four noble truths would have rung a little truer.
However, to contradict all that, apparently I have to go watch The Seventh Seal on DVD right now. Great…
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 2, 08:19 PM · #
The noble truth of suffering isn’t “life is suffering,” but: “birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”
The Theravadans say suffering arises when one identifies with or clings to an aggregate. So suffering is extinguished by relinquishing attachments to aggregates. Mahayana thought says that freedom is realized by penetrating the intrinsically empty nature of all aggregates (skandhas).
Anyhow, I definitely think Westerners see the 4 Noble Truths through a self-hating, (forgive me if this seems un-PC) Christian lens that overvalues rational constructs. (LOL!)
Switch over from rational hard body mode to we’re-all-one-field energetic body mode and then consider: The business about dukkha isn’t a “life sucks, and then you die” dealio, but more a “the field is always shifting, and any part of the field that resists will generate static, or knots. Remember the shifting is always happening, and then you’ll have no problem.”
In other words, none of this is personal :-)
Theravadan thought can easily (and mistakenly) be viewed through a flagellant Christian lens. (Why are we so eager to take things personally and be reprimanded by our religion?) It may be easier to go in through the door of the Mahayana perspective.
Oh, and one last thing: I listened to some of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s podcasts yesterday. Have you? He’s got a great speaking style!
Posted by: karen · Nov 3, 04:40 AM · #
Serendipitous Search says: The bhikkhu says it better!
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/lifeisnt.html
Posted by: karen · Nov 3, 04:45 AM · #
i’m singing :)
(can you hear me?)
xxxx
Posted by: chitta vritti · Nov 3, 05:37 AM · #
When Christianity and I parted ways, the first thing to go (and I had to ask it many times, and still do now and then) was the whole flagellant aspect (as Karen nicely puts it).
I can BARELY even say “Christianity” without wanting to spit, and so obviously I’m still attached, but yes, I think once one gets far, far from that worldview, the 4 noble truths come into some nice relief (and I mean that in the sense of visibility, not ease).
Posted by: patrick · Nov 3, 09:21 AM · #
Birthday songs from Sweden and bhikkhu podcasts. I love the internet. Thanks you two.
The Bhikkhu seems to be repairing some of the overwrought interpretations of the anti-Christian-therefore-hyperChristian first wave. Interesting…
Making peace with the Crusader religion is HARD! But, I don’t think I can garner insight from “The East” until I do that. Not to be a radical about it, but the root teachings of Jesus are kind of great in context. Subversively worth ressurecting.
It’s beautiful here. Rain this morning, and when I got home from practice there were SIX cement mixer trucks driving around, bellies rotating, in the street. Like an orgy of giant, blue-bellied, very loud ants just off my balcony. It’s extremely exciting, but time for lunch at the beach now. I like my birthday very much.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 3, 11:27 AM · #
Happy Happy birthday!!!!
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Nov 3, 12:03 PM · #
Hi (0v0)
huh? Happy Birthday. nov 3?
hugs
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Nov 3, 12:45 PM · #
Happy birthday from Africa Owl! We’re all rooting for your Obama here!!
May your vote make Africa dance tonight!!
Fatou
Posted by: Fatou · Nov 4, 10:38 AM · #
(emoticons),
(0v0)
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 4, 01:38 PM · #