26 Mar

Posted at 01:21h in Observations

Progressives are clowns, the funniest people when they are not scary. Funny when they take their crazy thoughts seriously. Scary when enough others take them seriously and make them their leaders. Progressives are idealists who aim to change the social/political order so they may better people's lives. They are intellectuals who think they are smarter than the less educated and therefore they should decide what's best for all. Alternatively, businesspeople take an empirical and practical approach to providing goods and services to people to choose for themselves how to better their lives. They provide what the market demands, without judgement of the desires of their customers. Progressives view the social order vertically, an autocracy. Businesspeople view the world horizontally, a democracy where people vote with their cash. Progressives are risk-averse and want to control everything. Businesspeople are risk-takers and succeed by managing risks. Progressives promote their agenda with propaganda while businesspeople advertise. Progressives need individuals to think as a group. Businesses thrive on independent thinkers choosing what's best for themselves based on product quality and price. Progressives are inflexible and face extinction as the world changes and they can't. Businesspeople who survive are those most able to adapt to change. Progressives hate the lower classes which they view as a necessary evil they need to accommodate. Businesspeople view their customers as the gods they serve. Progressives envision building a house from the roof to the ground which inevitably crushes those building it. Businesspeople built a house from the ground up for all who can afford it to live....

25 Mar

Posted at 00:13h in Observations

Consciousness is binary, the present and the now. The present and the now seem synonymous but are mutually exclusive, complementary and interdependent as one cannot exist without the other. The present is the pre-sent, the time before the universe is sent out as expressions of itself. The now is when our senses initially experience the universe expressing itself. Time doesn't exist in the pre-sent. In the pre-sent eternity lies. The now is the beginning of time. All other time, past and future, are illusions created by our mind. The present is the beginningless and endless time before a gong is struck, shattering silence and awaking us to the now. In the now we hear its sound, initially powerful and then slowly drifting away until only silence remains, the present. The present is the space between exhale and inhale. Inhaling and exhaling is the now....

23 Mar

Posted at 12:29h in Observations

Since the beginning of time I can remember, everything seemed new and unique, especially the causal or coincidental relationship between things, why things are as they are. As well, I've been always amazed how people view the same thing so differently and hold no doubts about their respective perspectives. Curiosity has driven me down many roads to understand things. But after travelling countless miles, I realize the road was a treadmill as I still don't know much about anything. But, I keep at it, probably because it's not frustrating but fun, as the means and the ends are the same. Some would say that after a lifetime of fruitless effort, I'm a fool trying to understand things; but better that than undoubtedly being a fool thinking I do....

23 Mar

Posted at 01:35h in Observations

Our mind defines us and the world around us. We adamantly hold our mind's view as reality and fear to think differently for if we let go our mind we'd lose it and be lost. That's how our mind controls us. If lost, what would replace it, who would we then be? The undifferentiated mind, the mind of God....

18 Mar

Posted at 07:31h in Observations

The Shawshank Redemption is a story of men serving life sentences in a brutal penitentiary. The penitentiary is a metaphor for living in society. Most of us live our entire lives in a penitentiary. But in The Shawshank Redemption, as in society generally, a few have a chance at redemption, freedom: Brooks Hatlen, an old man who managed the prison library; Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his wife and her lover; and Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding, a prison contraband smuggler. After 50 years of “good behavior” (a model prisoner serving others as a librarian; a kind man who cares for an injured bird) Brooks is free to leave. However, a sentence well-served, like a life well-served, doesn’t guarantee redemption. For Brooks there is no redemption. Redemption requires letting go of our past where we are imprisoned by our mind. While excited at the prospect of freedom, Brooks can't part with his identity as a prison librarian and embrace the freedom that awaits him. He becomes depressed and hangs himself soon upon his release. Andy is like everyman, not deserving punishment but punished nonetheless, forced to serve a role in life that's not to his liking. He makes the most of his life in prison but for years devotes his time and energy on digging a tunnel from his cell to freedom outside the prison walls. On the day of his escape, he emerges from a hole in the earth, essentially reborn. Once free, like all free men he leaves the roles society has slotted him to live carefree in a beachfront village, presumably without risk of extradition. Andy finds redemption.  His efforts are like years of meditation that culminate in escaping the prison of the role-plying self and past identities to be one with the world at large. Ellis is long-imprisoned for a crime he committed in his youth. Periodically he comes up for parole which he’s denied. Again and again he tells the parole board that he is sorry about his criminal past, completely rehabilitated and would never do it again. Again and again, the board rejects his petition for parole. Then, finally, he tells the board that he often imagines a boy who he doesn't know. He sees the boy about to commit a horrible crime and he only wishes he could grab that boy before the crime is committed. The board then grants him parole. Essentially, Ellis is saying that he no longer is the person who committed the crime for which he went to prison; the person he is now could never have committed such a crime and he would try to stop its commission if he saw it happening. Keeping Ellis incarcerated longer would be punishing someone for a crime they didn’t commit. His redemption comes from completely disavowing his past which allows him to smuggle himself out of prison. Likewise, we are only free when we leave the karmic prison of our mind. Redemption, freedom, is ultimately the purpose of life. It comes not simply by living a good life, treating others well and satisfying our responsibilities. It comes from long and hard work to realize our personal and societal identities are temporary roles in the play of life. Then, we know the name of the play, "Terrific."...

15 Mar

Posted at 22:15h in Observations

There is one God. The God before the Big Bang. The God beyond our comprehension. The God that birthed billions of sons. God's sons too are gods. They are the stars. God's son closest to us is our sun....

14 Mar

Posted at 14:53h in Observations

When we open our eyes we see what we sense, which a fool's mind makes into nonsense. We appreciate a beautiful artwork when we see it. That makes sense. A collector paying millions for such an artwork when an indistinguishable facsimile can be had for a pittance, that's foolish nonsense. Beyond beautiful artworks, there is beauty everywhere for those who have the sense to open their eyes; but not for fools who prefer nonsense. Of course, "collectible" paintings are not purchased for the visual experience they provide but for their speculative value (that there will be a greater fool to pay more for them in the future), or as objects of prestige (identifying those who foolishly need to impress others or themselves) or as a pass to enter certain high-society social circles inhabited by other fools....

14 Mar

Posted at 00:46h in Observations

When facing the sun, shrouded in its warmth and the gazing at the beauty of everything, we're often oblivious to the shadows we cast. In the post, Being In The Present, I talked about my "insider trading" criminal case. Ultimately, as a result of losing at trial, I spent 1994 in a Federal prison in Fairton, NJ. I looked forward to going to prison. Thought I’d have a good time meeting guys outside my social/business/special interests circles. Maybe get to do things I hadn’t previously been exposed to: garden maintenance, car repair, preparing institutional foods; maybe read some books. After having snapped some lawnmower blades on rock outcroppings and making a car's problems worse, I was fired from those jobs. I didn't get a chance to work in the kitchen because I casually mentioned to an inmate that I must have gotten genital herpes years back at a group sex party; as word got around, some were concerned herpes was transmittable through food, so I was nixed from that job. Didn’t get a chance to read much beyond periodicals. Most of the time spent was pondering the nature of things and interviewing the prisoners about their circumstances and how they viewed the world. I joked around a lot, seemed to entertain the mates and the guards. Paid someone $1 to make my bed daily, someone else to make me hand-cut potato fries and broiled New Zealand calves' liver and another mate to clean the shower before I went in to jerk off. I thought I was well liked, until my last night there. Last night there, the prisoners typically threw a party for the one who was departing. As my time neared, I was getting the feeling they weren’t having a party for me. So I ordered 80 ice cream sandwiches from the commissary (from which you could privately buy foods and other stuffs) to ensure a party was to be. Everyone loved it; best party of the season. However, at some point during the party I said to a crowd of mates “you guys will probably miss me.” To which one replied: “We won’t miss you. We hate you.” Incredulous, I said, “really, why’s that?” To which he replied: “because you had too good a time here.” Now, 27 years later, I sometimes think maybe some people in my current life feel the same way about me. But, like in prison, I can’t imagine that to be so. Gazing at the sun I'm oblivious of the shadows I cast....

12 Mar

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

However dark, foreboding or uncertain the future appears, it doesn't affect us when we are in the true-present, the timeless space before now and all that follows. In late 1985 I was married with one child, unemployed, had little money saved and started a hedge fund managing the funds of a small group of investors. Soon after, in the Spring of 1986, I became embroiled in an "insider trading" scandal. The related investigation made the newspapers and shadowed me everywhere. I was at risk of losing overwhelming sums for legal fees, fines and penalties as well as the prospect of going to prison and being permanently barred from running a hedge fund which was my only viable means of earning a living. The investigation lasted for three and a half years by which time I had two more children. Then I was indicted. The trial concluded in late spring of 1990. I was found guilty. After two years spent on appealing the verdict, I was sentenced to 18 months in prison, fined $1.8M and had the prospect, pending appeals, of losing my license to continue managing money. I had also up until then paid roughly $2M for legal representation. I went to prison in January 1994. In January, 2000 I lost the appeals and was permanently barred from managing other people's money. With the attention I needed to give the investigation and trial and the dire consequences hanging over my head for eight years, investors and friends were astonished that I was able to continue running my hedge fund successfully without a care. My view was that beyond managing the hedge fund I had nothing to worry about one day to the next. The circumstances were what they were and I would deal with them as they unfolded. I wasn't dying of cancer; things could have always been worse.  In fact, I was grateful for my circumstances. I was happy. Simply, I was in the present and focused on whatever next was going to be in the now....