How can my lifetime Xanga expire? Are they trying to guess the date of my death? Do they already know, and they're giving me a heads up? Should I prepare a will? Not that I have anything anyone would want. At least no one with half a brain. Most of the people I've met in life had two brains. One was lost and the other was out looking for it. All that I have, that anyone with any sense at all should want, couldn't be transferred via a last will and testament. Not that a last will and testament matters much anymore. They're nearly always contested these days by people who feel they should have been given whatever they weren't given in the will. What madness! No one contests old tea pots or bibles. They contest money, land, houses, property. Anything that can be turned into cash. They think that is value. Well, perhaps think is too strong a word. It's certainly not the right word for the reaction.

Consider for a moment what a gift it would be if Xanga really was telling me that I was going to expire August 17, 2025. If you knew the exact date of your departure from this realm of the five senses you could pack. Since you couldn't take anything from the realm of the five sense with you, for obvious reasons, you would have to consider how to prepare. There's the lazy man's way. "There is nothing except what is shown to us by the five senses, therefore there is no life beyond the five senses." Some really believe that. Others think they believe something else but live as if they really believed it. The thing is, you can believe something that isn't true. The recalcitrant, would-be-philosophers might wish to know what is true. What's so is what's true. Our problem is that living in the realm of the five senses, and believing we can only know what the five senses tell us or suggest, we can't know anything else, so there must not be anything else. It's laughable really. Like saying there was no microscopic world before the invention of the microscope.

What is so? For me, Xanga expired years ago. It may be gasping now, like a beached fish, but for me it died when they lost their focus and desire to serve. Therefore, it won't be possible for me to expire prior to Xanga's termination. If I should depart the realm of the five sense prior to August 17, 2025 or after will not matter. This may be my final hour. I'm doing all that I need to be doing right now to make sure that if this is my final hour I'm packed and ready.

Oops

I was going to write something but changed my mind so I made it go away. Now all I have to say is something Buddha said. It's called the Metta Sutta. Sutta means discourse and Metta means lovingkindness. Put them together and you have Buddha's discourse on lovingkindness. I love it. I've memorized it and repeat it every day after my meditation time. It's a good reminder of what I want my life to be about, what I try to make it about. Here it is:

 

To reach the state of peace

One skilled in the good

Should be capable and upright

Straightforward, easy to speak to, gentle and not proud

Contented and easily supported

Living lightly with few duties

Wise and with senses calmed

Not arrogant and without greed for supporters

And should not do the least thing the wise would criticize

One should reflect

May all be happy and secure

May all beings be happy at heart

All living beings whether weak or strong

Tall, large, medium or short

Tiny or big, seen or unseen, near or distant, born or to be born

May they all be happy

Let no one deceive another or despise anyone anywhere

Let no one through anger or aversion wish for others to suffer

As a mother would risk her own life to protect her child, her only child

So toward all beings should one cultivate the boundless heart

With lovingkindness for the whole world should one cultivate a boundless heart

Above, below and all around

Without obstruction, without hate and without ill will

Standing or walking, sitting or lying down

Whenever one is awake may one stay with this recollection

This is called the sublime abiding, here and now

One who is virtuous, endowed with vision

Not taken by abuse and having overcome all greed for sensual pleasure

Will not be reborn again.

 

Worms

Winston Churchill said, I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. I wonder how Mr. Churchill felt about people? Thoughts are different from feelings. Most folks are more comfortable with thinking than they are with feeling, so they bring thoughts to the tops of their heads and stuff their uncomfortable feelings way down deep in dark places inside themselves. This can be problematic. What we can't see, don't know and are unwilling to acknowledge, has power over us. The reason we stuff uncomfortable feelings is so we don't have to acknowledge, see or know about them. Sometimes that's like trying to get those springy worm things back in the can after we open it and they all come, well, springing out. The difference is the feelings with which we are most uncomfortable are usually venomous while those springy worm things that come in a can are nearly harmless. I mean a Red Ryder BB Gun might put an eye out, but I've never heard of a movie about springy worm things that come in a can putting anyone's eye out. If you have I'd like to hear about it. Even the famous (or infamous if you're on the gun control band wagon) Red Ryder BB Gun couldn't put an eye out without some help from a human, unlike those horrible guns that go around killing people everywhere these days. I have this movie in my head where psychotic guns roam the streets, malls and schools of America indiscriminately shooting people. They drag behind them some poor schmuck who they use as their patsy (a person who is easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something). When the psychotic gun's barrel is heated up and it's low on ammunition it turns on the patsy it's been dragging behind it and finally kills him. Please don't take offense when I define words. It's not that I think you don't know what the word means. It's that I think the meaning of words is being hijacked for propaganda purposes. Since people so often get pissed off and like to attach their rage to words, I'd like them to know exactly what I'm talking about when they decide I'm the anti-Christ. Personally I've never thought that much of myself and the flattery is wasted on me because I don't much care what other's think of me either. Fatal flaw? It's one I can die with.

Winston Churchill was a politician. I like the idea of Winston Churchill, but I don't know if I'd like Winston Churchill himself. It's kind of like marriage. People like the idea of marriage, but the divorce rate nationwide is over fifty percent. I'm thinking the idea was easier to have than the marriage. Back to Sir Winston. I'd like to overlook the fact that he was a politician, because I think politicians and pigs have far too much in common. The idea of Winston Churchill that I entertain is that he was a statesman, not a politician. What's the difference? I'm so glad you asked. According to my desktop dictionary a politician is a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of or a candidate for an elected office. Interesting thought. Not very interesting, but there it is. Government was much more honest before politicians were professionals. They used to do it as a duty and service to the country. Once money entered into the equation the people who became politicians did it for the money and not duty and service. That's when they had to add the second definition to the dictionary. This second definition feels more accurate to me. A person who acts in a manipulative and devious way, typically to gain advancement within an organization. A statesman is defined as a skilled, experienced, and respected political leader or figure. Not many of those around are there? Come on, respected? Really? Do you, can you really respect a politician? I suppose it's like stuffing feelings. The less we know of them the easier it is to pretend the feelings we have are harmless, like those springy worm things that come in a can.

What do you think? Do you suppose Winston Churchill was indirectly saying that pigs treat us as equals because we are equals, or because pigs think we are? Surely people, as a rule, don't think they are equal with pigs. Most of the people I've met would be terribly insulted. That would lead to a feeling of outrage and righteous indignation. Two very dangerous feelings when they're stuffed way down in the can of our internal world. When we were kids and we opened one of those cans of springy worm things it was a surprise. Adults today don't like surprises. They like to be pissed off. This is the only conclusion an objective observer with a somewhat rational mind could conclude. I suppose that means it's what a pig might conclude after examining the behavior of our species. If you've read this far I can only beg your pardon for what I'm about to do. Yeah, I'm going to add one more definition. What I didn't tell you about the statesman definition. At the bottom of the definition they added Stateswoman. No, seriously, they really did. A skilled, experienced, and respected female political leader. Why? To quell public outrage no doubt. I like pigs.

Timing

Timing, I'm told, can be very important. To some extent I'm sure it's true. If you think about driving a car, piloting a boat or airplane you will understand the statement, A miss is as good as a mile. What makes a miss? More often than not, it's timing. If you play a musical instrument, compose music or have studied music theory you have an understanding of the importance of timing. Change the time signature on a familiar piece of music enough and what was once familiar can quickly become unfamiliar and sometimes very unpleasant. The difference between being understood and confusion, when we speak, can have a great deal to do with the timing of our speech. Some people can tell a joke and have a room full of people doubled over in laughter. Others can tell the same joke and leave the same people scratching their heads. Timing the punchline can make or break a joke. Okay, I think I've said quiet enough about timing. You get the idea, right?

What's all this about timing? Why is James going on about timing? Announcements can be well or ill timed. Since a month ago today I've been out of the country. Way out of the country! Right now I'm sitting in my room in Prilep, Macedonia. In the event you don't know where that is, think about Greece. Though most Greeks would be loath to admit it or acknowledge it, Macedonia shares a border with Greece to the latter's north. If you know your world geography you're probably not an American. If you are an American and you know your world geography, congratulations! You win the prize! Macedonia is also known to much of the world as the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Yes, that's right! The country that gave us that little car many years ago, the Yugo. They are still here in great number. Still running after more than thirty or more years. The big players in the world will not acknowledge Macedonia as a nation. The European Union will not permit them to be a part of the Union because it would upset the politics due to the claim, by Greeks, that Macedonia is Greek. Many, otherwise lovely Greek people, can be very adamant and closed minded about it so there's no sense in trying to tell them otherwise or to use the famous Greek logic to help them get past the prejudice. Don't even talk about Alexander the Great being a Macedonian because that could get you in a very unpleasant situation in Greece. I know. I spent a week in a little seaside town in Greece last month. Wonderful people if you don't mention this sore subject of Macedonia and Alexander the Great. The interesting thing about history is how it can be, and is, rewritten by whomever is in power at the time. I think it's called revisionism, which according to the dictionary is a policy of revision or modification, especially of Marxism on evolutionary socialist (rather than revolutionary) or pluralist principles. Don't asks me what that means. I don't understand it well enough to put it simply and remain politically correct. If you prefer there's a second choice of definition for revisionism. It's the theory or practice of revising one's attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view. This one doesn't fit so well because so few people ever do that in practice in the real world. When I say the real world I mean this unreal world in which we live. 

As usual, I've gotten carried away and not made the point of all this. For those of you who have had the sand to stick it out this far, well, what's wrong with you anyway? Don't you have anything better to do? Is there nothing of interest on tv? Okay, that's a rhetorical question. If you've made it this far you can read, and many people with that skill don't see a great deal of tv or think much of the choices afforded us on the tube. All this to announce a new site we've been working on the past couple of weeks. It's a big job, but we're nearly finished so I'm hoping that the timing on this is not premature. The site is called Esoteric Talks and if you click on those two words you should be spirited directly to it where I hope you will find time to listen, read and share. It wouldn't hurt my feelings if you shared the link with others on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other places since I think there's a lot of useful information there for our world during this tumultuous time. Thanks for your patience. I hope you got something from all these words. I meant to convey useful ideas to enrich your mind. If I have failed please accept my apology and go visit the site anyway.

Bushido

Back in the day a friend, jerajdai, made me a  banner for this site. I don't know what happened to the banner but we are still friends, I think.  It was a surprise, as she simply sent it to me one day, and I appreciated it as soon as I saw it. I emailed her and asked if she knew what the kanji that she used in the banner was, and she did. She'd read a post I'd written some time ago on Bushido and thought it was fitting. The post has become very popular with someone in the Netherlands, who has become obsessed with, well, his bushido, which is very different from mine. Since the post has become so popular I've decided to update it a little with some further observations. The passage of time doesn't necessarily bring us more wisdom or light unless we're doing the things that make room for more wisdom and light internally.

The word is Japanese and means, the traditional code of the Japanese samurai, stressing honor, self-discipline, bravery, and simple living. Its roots are in Chinese. Bushi, warrior (from Chinese wu shì, knight, warrior wu, military + shì, brave warrior) + do, way (from Chinese dào). The Western equivalent might be likened to King Arthur’s Court and the Knights of the Round Table. Everyone has a code by which they live. Some know what it is because they chose it carefully, consciously or accepted it from another and modified it according to their personal strengths and weaknesses. As no one can have another’s experience, no one can have another’s code or bushido. No matter how disorganized the code may appear to us in another’s life, it is there. It is not what we say it is, but what we do. A person may say they don’t steal. They may then rationalize taking time at work to do personal things in order to hide from themselves the broken code. Their Wa will be disturbed because of the contradiction. What is this Wa about which I write and speak? Imagine, if you will, a pool of clear, clean, fresh water with smooth, round stones on the bottom. The stones may be observed if the water is troubled or calm. How they appear to one when observed will be determined by how much the water is stirred. The calmer the water the more clearly the objects in it may be observed. Bushido and Wa work together like that. Drop a pebble in the pond and the ripples will change the appearance of everything we may see in the pond and also the reflections that we may see on the surface of the water. The water in the pond represents your mind, your internal state.

What makes all this work is the Tao. The Way, the Is-ness of Life, the Immutable Principles of the Universe. The Tao is not Bushido. Bushido flows out of the Tao the way plants spring forth from the earth. From the earth grow both weeds and plants, which each bear fruit after their kind. Bushido can be like that. It all works together. The murderer has his Bushido and the saint his. The difference in Bushido will determine the quality of Wa. If one's Bushido is in harmony with the Tao their Wa will be strong and harmonious. The quality of Wa will also determine the Bushido chosen and followed. My Bushido is based on my experience of the Tao. The test of the accuracy of my perception is the quality of my Wa. If my Wa is disturbed my Bushido has not been followed. If I am conscious of the change I have the opportunity to find and correct the error I've made. If it's important to me I will work to bring myself back into harmony with my Bushido, and thereby the Tao, which will restore my Wa. These are my words and my experience. I learned it from the Universe, the Way, the Tao. I believe all beings live in the Tao. Some accept it, some fight it, but no one gets out of it. Because the Tao is benevolent all things that flow from it are connected by a Will. We misunderstand what Real Love is because we misunderstand Real Will. You must will to be in harmony with the Tao, and if you do, you will will to love all. Your Wa will be harmonious. If you hate, you oppose the Tao by opposing what is in the Tao, and your Wa will be War because you resist the Is-ness of Creation. It's up to you and no one else. What you do matters. Your thoughts, attitudes and feelings are where what you do in the world comes from. They are your Tao. They are your Bushido.

Credit

No, not Visa, Master Card, American Express, Discover, etc. This is the other kind of credit. This credit is public acknowledgment or praise, typically that given or received when a person's responsibility for an action or idea becomes or is made apparent. It's only fair if you consider we're pretty quick on the trigger to bash Xanga when they don't deliver. Seems like a good idea to be just as quick on the trigger when they deserve credit. Remember how I said that Xanga couldn't keep the dogs out? Well, they still can't keep them from coming around leaving nasty little deposits on your lawn, sidewalk, yes sometimes even your porch or living room if you leave the door open. When it's hot like this in the summer we like to leave doors open for our friends to come by and have some iced tea or lemonade and some conversation. Sadly, other things come in those open doors too. Mosquitos, bees, hornets, dogs, and yes, even pigs wander in sometimes while we're out. They never wipe their feet until they get inside though. Then they wipe their feet on your oriental rugs, sofas curtains. They just don't care. Why should they? Their brute beasts, like a bull in a china cabinet or a pig in a poke. One of them got into my Xanga home and ripped around snorting, pawing, rooting and leaving a load of stink in nearly every room. Not wanting my friends to have to step in that crap I cleaned it out. Well, it didn't take long before that herd ran back through depositing their filth everywhere again and again. So, I did what anyone who cares about what his friends step in would do. I closed all the doors and windows to keep the beasts out. That meant my friends had to knock or ring the bell or wonder what had become of me.

Not having just fallen off the turnip truck, I had enough presence of mind to go have a look at the Xanga Terms of Use. You know, the ones we all agreed to when we started our sites? It's updated from time to time, but it hardly matters anyway because most of us didn't read them when we signed up. We were too anxious to start blogging. Anyway, lo and behold, there was this part in their where we agreed not to be nasty, smelly brute beasts who crapped all over other people and their homes. So, I reported the offender and his/her three sites started within hours of each other with no posts, just comments and only in once place. At my house. Comments is a misnomer. It was pure hate spam. To make a long story longer, Xanga took a couple of days after I reported the sites but they shut them down and thanked me for letting them know. Not what I expected, not what I'd come to expect from Xanga so I was surprised. It was like I actually had someone on the home team who cared and was willing to check it out and enforce the Terms of Use.

In a perfect world there wouldn't be a need for such things as Terms of Use agreements. Sadly, though this world may be perfect, what populates it often has wires crossed or in one way or another is wrongly connected. Or as my friend, Wil Carter would say, They were not properly socialized to humans when they were young hedgehogs. Whatever the reason may be, they are full of unpleasant manifestations, lack social graces, feel entitled and fail to understand a certain sense of decorum that the more civilized amongst us try to develop and display. Yes, they have many justifications for their rude, crude and socially unacceptable behavior. What do you suppose tops the list? Right, they don't like someone. Someone didn't treat them the way they think they should be treated. Or, that old stand by, my dog ate their homework. Xanga may not be able to keep the dogs out, but they have proved to me that they are willing to take out the trash and for that I am grateful. Thank you, Xanga! I'm actually going to open the doors and air the place out now that I know you've got my back.

Protected

It kind of sucks that I'm not gay, African American, or one of the other groups that are protected by law. Seems the only people worthy of protection from harassment, hate, slander and death threats are minority groups. Sorry I've had to lock down the site but xanga left me no choice. They still can't keep the dogs out. After all these years you'd think they'd get it.

Bitchin'

There are sites dedicated to bitchin', and by bitchin' I mean, express displeasure; grumble. Some of the sites are free. You can just sign up and bitch. Any bitchin' session has to be governed by rules though, so the sites are categorized. Let's be real about this. Who wants to read someone's bitchin' on something about which we do not want to bitch? That's just annoying. Bitchin' is only annoying when people are bitchin' about something we don't want to bitch about. There's just no interest and no interest makes things boring, tedious or downright annoying. What to do? Start bitchin' about it. There's a certain finesse that goes along with bitch sites. You have to have a bitchin' moderator to make sure the bitchin' stays on track, the flame wars stay directed at the bitchin' target and no one comes in who has thought about it too much. Thinking ruins bitchin'. Oh, I don't mean the kind of thinking bitches do. I'm talking about real thinking. The kind that takes effort and weighs pros and cons. The kind of thinking that looks at something from every possible angle. What? You've never heard of such a thing? Sure you have. You've just not seen much of it in our world today. There was a time when people did that kind of thinking, at least some people did. I'll bet there are still people who do that kind of thinking. The problem is they're not welcome on bitchin' sites. Those people are truly annoying. The bastards! They take apart our flimsy, negative bitchin' line by line and ask embarrassing questions about it. Questions that make us look like the foolish bitches we are when we go around foolishly bitchin' about something because we didn't understand it or it didn't make us look good or feel good.

Bitchin' used to be done in people's homes more often than not. When I was a child I remember my mother going over to a neighbor's house for coffee with a number of other women. They'd all get together and bitch about their husbands or some other woman in the neighborhood that wasn't there. She was out doing something the others could bitch about. They didn't really know the woman but they knew all about how she should behave and live and talk and think and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Written out, that string of blah, blah, blahs doesn't look like much, but I sing it in my head while I'm writing it and it's quite melodic and pleasing. Bitchin' is discordant and grating because it lacks harmony. Life is better with harmony but we don't really understand harmony so much. We think it's something they used to have in music before all there was in music was big bitchin' bass and bitchin' beat. Sure, it's about music, but it's about so much more than music. Harmony is the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole. There's not a lot of harmony in our world today, but there's a lot of bitchin'. We've become bitches bitchin' about everything from the President and his bitch to the guy next door and his bitch that keeps us up all night with her barking. We bitch about the government, the economy, the world, people, animals, the rain forest, global warming. You name it! We'll bitch about it. We've become a bitchin' culture.

Blame it on the internet! That's the bitchin' thing to do. People can bitch on the internet with impunity. Impunity means exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action. Now that's bitchin'. The internet is anonymous. Anonymous means not identified by name; of unknown name. It's cool. You can bitch every which way but loose and never have to think about injurious consequences. There are no internet police or courts. It's like the Wild West without the Earps, Bat Masterson or Marshall Dillon. There doesn't have to be a shred of truth in your bitchin'. It just has to be interesting. Remember what makes something interesting? Someone has to be interested in it. That's all. With the negative social mood on the planet today it's easy peasy lemon squeezy to find someone interested in bitchin' about some thing, some one or some cause. You may have figured out by now that today's bitchin' is about the same thing as yesterday's gossip. The rules are still pretty much the same. It's as effective as it's ever been because we're as ignorant as we've always been. Ouch. Sorry. We only think we're getting smarter. We're really getting dumber. There's a difference between being informed and being intelligent. Intelligence is the ability to adapt. Being informed is the ability to collect information. You don't have to understand the information you collect. You do have to be intelligent to adapt new information into new knowledge that can be used in a productive way. I don't blame the internet or the bitch sites. I take responsibility for it. How I do that is I don't read it, listen to it or believe it. Okay, my bitches, class dismissed.

Goodness

 

There's much badness in the world. It's hard for some people to admit it because they don't know what to do about it, how to deal with it, which really means how to change it. People steal from each other. That's my list of badness. Stealing. We steal each others' stuff, reputations, health, happiness and lives. When you kill someone you have stolen their life, their right to live to the best of their ability, the life they've been given. When we look at each other we see differences because we feel so separate from one another in these bodies. We find it nearly impossible to think of ourselves apart from the body. It's so overpowering and we're so identified with it. Through its senses we interact with the world outside until we can no longer easily distinguish the outside from the inside. Our thoughts are all connected to what's outside of us. There is little or no separation between the world outside and the inner world, where we might be able to find something more real, more lasting. Something that could help us deal with the upset, uncertainty and general insanity of the outer world. To many, the distinction between inner and out is simply an idea and nothing more. They have no experience of any insulation from the world outside. They have to do what it makes them do. If someone offends them they have to feel offended inside and then do something to protect themselves or protect others from ever being offended again. They can't see that they were offended inside, not outside. They are lost. We are lost in this forest of this outer world where, after a while, all the trees look the same.

There's much goodness in the world. It's hard for some people to admit it because they can't see it. All the badness has affected their eyes the same way sitting in a dark room until you can begin to see in it, makes light painful to the eyes when it suddenly shines. The light hurts our eyes when we're not accustomed to it. Sometimes the pain is so intense we want to put out the light to ease our pain because closing our eyes isn't enough. Love is frightening. It can make us feel so weak and vulnerable. I don't mean the kind of love we sell on Valentine's Day. I mean the kind of love that the crazies lived and taught. The kind of love that made them surrender their lives happily, peacefully, even in the midst of the most horrific hatred, violence and injustice. The kind of love that could say from a place of unbelievable pain, "Forgive them because they don't know what they're doing." It's hard to see that kind of goodness because we think they did know what they were doing. We think we know all kind of things. Those things we think we know, the things about which I'm talking, they don't make us more loving. They make us more guarded, judgmental, suspicious, fearful, angry and finally, sadly--hateful.

There's much we don't understand in the world. It's hard to live with people who have both goodness and badness inside of them. It's hard to see we have both goodness and badness inside of ourselves. Because we don't know how to deal with our badness, how to rid ourselves of it, we look at the badness in others and feel superior to them because our badness isn't that bad. It helps to forget our own badness when we focus on the badness of others. We can always find someone better and someone worse than ourselves. We find more people worse, not because there are more worse people but because it's really hard to see our own badness. It's hard to live with it without justifying it. We don't really want to be bad. It's just that people, the world, all that stuff makes us do things that we don't really want to do, at first. Then later, when we do it, we see that it gives us a more secure feeling, like we've been right and we do need to defend ourselves against all the badness. We forget that no matter how horribly we're treated, we don't have to respond in the same way. We might have a little choice once in a while. We have every right to be offended, hurt, angry and even violent when people do bad things to us or those we love. What we forget, what the world has forgotten and can't seem to remember when it needs to be remembered, is that we also have the right not to be offended, hurt, angry and violent. It's a right that has to be protected, nourished and exercised every day or it, like many rights, gets lost in the toy box of life. My name is James Parkinson and I wrote this from my heart because I believe it with all my heart and try every day to live it. I fail often, but not as often as once I did. This isn't written to chastise anyone or make anyone do anything differently. If something inside of you sings a little when you read it then try to touch that something and let it have its voice in your life. If not then you probably haven't made it this far in your reading anyway.