2019

There were 163 posts published in 2019 (this is page 1 of 17).

Mindfulness and daydreaming

The Guardian has a tag for Mindfulness.  It’s https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/mindfulness. There are already 161 results.  I just read an article, No tricks. No mantras. I just want to learn how to do nothing: my quest to stay still.

Doing nothing, without resort to spiritual distractions is something that I’ve become interested in. But this article isn’t very good, or doesn’t give an answer that I’m looking for. The author comes to the conclusion that daydreaming is the best he can do. It’s a form of distraction, transcending the exterior annoyances and adopting an interior distraction. At least, it’s not something that is of interest to me.

He describes a long, unpleasant train ride: “my carriage is packed, my seat is uncomfortable, I am engulfed by a cacophony of other people’s chat, and the air is filled with the smell of fast food and lager. I leave my laptop in my bag, switch off my phone, close my eyes and try to disappear to my happier place.” He launches into an involved childhood fantasy about an imaginary football tournament.

I actually have a similar problem in my father’s house, where there is a constant din of radio or TV noise. I feel sorry for people who need the distraction of the radio. It’s very difficult for me to imagine such a reality. But it’s not so difficult to understand why people seek distractions, mundane or spiritual.

My father was talking about the pleasures of ironing, the other day. He says that it’s something that permits daydreaming. I occasionally daydream. We all do. And we all sometimes need to deal with very unpleasant exterior situations that simultaneously make it difficult to focus on other things. But the majority of my time, I do not need to escape my reality. I feel quite at home with myself and my world. My ideal is to be in a state where there is not a lot to do, but in which I do need to remain alert and perform occasional tasks. One of my earliest jobs was of this kind; as operator at a mainframe computer. There wasn’t much to do except respond to sporadic requests. It was rather boring at the time. But now I welcome those kind of days; if, in the comfort of my own surroundings.

Fighting systems from the inside

There’s always a disagreement between those who think it’s better to fight the system from the inside and those who say it’s better to oppose it totally. Some are total conscientious objectors and others, in the Israeli context for example, say that it’s better for humane soldiers to control the checkpoints than racist bastards with no respect for Palestinian lives. The usual contra-argument is that the system corrupts; that it isn’t really possible to maintain humane values within a framework that is toxic.

I was thinking of this with my recent compromises around computers and phones.  I didn’t manage, till now, to buy a phone that runs on free software.  So, instead, when I purchased a new Samsung A10, I refrained from logging into Google (which means I can’t use the Google Play app store directly), or registering the phone and logging into Samsung’s systems for that matter.  Instead, all my apps are from F-Droid, and that’s fine with me.

Then, on my Kobo e-reader, I found some free open-source software that allows me to read without Kobo’s annoying home screen, interface and all the ads butting in.  The machine works a lot better like this.  All my books are pirated (the older ones de-DRMed), but, in the case of living authors, I buy printed versions of their books so that they get paid. That way, I can also share their books with friends.

Now, on my desktop, I have MS Windows installed – that’s because of an arrangement that I made with my son – I may end up giving him the computer back at some point.  But I don’t use any non-free programs other than XN-View sometimes, which is free but not Libre, and Google Drive, which I need for the office.  Everything else is free open-source.  I don’t like MS Windows, but I’ve managed to neutralize most of its annoyances.  I might get rid of it soon and install MX or Debian with Gnome.  I just need to see if Gnome manages Google Drive successfully – on my previous computer that was painfully slow.

Anyway, with all these options, I feel like I’m fighting the system from the inside.  Despite everything, I should probably be using a Fairphone with the Google-free option, an Onyx reader (perhaps) and a System76 computer running under Debian.  But even if I could afford all these options, I would probably fall down in other ways, because it is the toxic framework of our money-based capitalism that is the real operating system.

It may be hackable, but only to a certain degree.

US says Israeli settlements no longer considered illegal in dramatic shift | World news | The Guardian

 

Declaration marks rejection of 2016 UN resolution that settlements on the West Bank are a ‘flagrant violation’ of international law

Source:  The Guardian

This is why they say Trump is dangerous.

Unless the US is able to change something, Israeli settlement under occupation is and will remain illegal under international law expressed in past UN resolutions. And that’s the way it should be, for as long as their full individual and collective rights remain unrecognized.  If they would be, they could vote to change the nature of the state that governs them into something new. No Israeli government would allow that. So we have a situation of apartheid, which the UN cannot accept.

By embracing the Israeli occupation, the US puts itself in the position of a rogue state. When superpowers do this, the whole panoply of international governance comes tumbling down, and that puts us all at risk. Precisely in an era when collective governance is necessary to overcome the huge challenges of climate change, horrendous weapons, vast movements of refugees, and all the rest, governments feel they can behave irresponsibly and do whatever they like.  Fine.  Let them. We will sink together.

Reality versus our vision of it

So I was thinking that spiritual teachers so often see a version of reality that corresponds with their natures. Describing reality in one manner inevitably leads to the disparagement of alternative ways of describing it, which seem to have a different or opposite vision. It is not so different from the flaw in our everyday vision, according to which we define objects by their function or usefulness to us. In many languages gold or silver have come to mean “money”, while our word “salary” indicates a measure of salt.

In Islam, God has 99 names or attributes. But it would be an error to define God by any single one of them. In order to be able to see reality, we must discard all limiting notions and theories about it. Understanding can come only through a spirit of openness.

They always say in Hinduism that if we want to describe a faint star in the sky to a friend, we point instead to a brighter star and say that the star we mean is just to the left of that one. But in reality the attributes we use are not very helpful and bring us no nearer to understanding. To say that God is peace, or harmony or love inevitably conjures up notions that have little to do with what is actually meant. These are simply impositions from our egoistic human experience.

False views

The universe was never created.
Matter, energy and consciousness are one.
There is no center, no periphery, no end to time and space.
Seeing is interpretation.
All statements about ultimate truth, including this one, are a lie.
There are multiple ways to apprehend reality
But not taking into account the error of our seeing,
and not glimpsing the unity in the diversity,
Leads us astray.

The problem is that almost everything that is written, fiction or non-fiction, philosophical or scientific is based on fallacy. It either assumes a reality that is incomplete and prejudiced, or it tries to speculate absurdities. It isn’t necessary to understand everything, or grasp the whole truth, but only to be deeply humble; with a reserve that permeates our consciousness and the way we express. I find it painful to read books that are based on wrong assumptions, or presume to express truth. Gurus and writers of “spiritual” books are usually the worst offenders, because they cast aside all humility.  Without humility, we will never understand anything.  There is absolutely no guarantee that we ever will, in any case, but a full guarantee that  false understanding closes the door to new learning.

Computer fixed

The Lenovo Thinkpad was fixed and it is working wonderfully. The repairman came and replaced the motherboard, sitting at our kitchen table; a guy about my age, who didn’t want to drink coffee because then he would have to pee en route between destinations. It was a pleasure to watch him work at the computer, with his practiced hands. He had been working for IBM for 20 years. Asked whether IBM is a good company to work for, he said it used to be better, before the 2008 crash.

Thoughts on Brexit

The UK has not been my home since childhood. I will probably never go back to live there. Yet my only passport is British, and I might wish to live one day in a European country.  Here’s what I think about Brexit.

Any major change in the status of a country should require a referendum with a two-thirds majority. That would take care of situations where the majority is slim, as was the case in this one. Joining the EU should have required such a referendum; leaving it too.

The referendum on leaving the EU should have been built from the outset on the principle of holding a second referendum, once the conditions agreed between Parliament and the EU would be known.

Since joining the EU made every British citizen a citizen of the EU, any automatic abrogation of that citizenship should be illegal. Although the gaining of EU citizenship is dependent upon national citizenship in an EU member country, losing of such citizenship should be conditioned upon the acceptance by the individual. It is not for a country to take away citizenship, even of a dual citizen, without due cause (i.e. individuals themselves have done something that would be a cause of revoking citizenship) – otherwise, this only causes anguish to the individual. The case should be adjudicated by the European Court of Justice.

Whatever I think about Brexit, it seems to me that at this moment, Johnson’s deal is the only one on the table. Parliament should decide on that deal and stop quibbling. Labour should support the deal on condition that there will be a second referendum; that’s what they said they would do. They might still have illusions of passing their own deal, but that’s not going to happen. Even if, as I suspect, a second referendum would come out in support of Brexit, the step is still necessary as a means to national healing.  All this literal demonization of the other side, whichever side, should stop.