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I'm going to use this thread to store short Zen and Zenarchist written pieces. Feel free to contribute or comment.

If your mind is fixed on a certain spot,
it will be seized by that spot, and
no activities can be performed efficiently.
Not to fix your mind anywhere is essential.
Not fixed anywhere, the mind is everywhere.
The Original Mind is like water which flows freely,
whereas the deluded mind is like ice.
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says:
"The mind should operate without abiding anywhere."

- Takuan (1573-1645)

I have experienced the reality of this while swordfighting. If I focus on one thing (arc of opponents blade, or his center-of-gravity-wieght-shifting, or my stance) the mind starts to get hyperfixated on that 'point' and starts editing out sense data (my peripherial vision dims, my hearing edits out ambient sound, etc). this has a serious negative effect when you're trying to stop someone from cutting off a limb or killing you.

This is also the concept that makes television so insidiously addictive.

Excellent LMNO. Whenever I read this material, it reminds me of the "5 Windows" graphic (can someone tell me what that was from?..oop, found it, it's part of the "Random Stuff" portion of DrJon's Apocrypha). You may think of including it:

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081202-body-swapping.html

Scientists now have manipulated people's perceptions to make them think they have swapped bodies with another human or even a "humanoid body," experiencing the sensations that the other would feel and giving the illusion of being inside the other's body.
...
In real life, the cognitive neuroscientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet succeeded in making subjects perceive the bodies of mannequins and other people as their own. The illusion also worked even when the two people differed in appearance or were of different sexes. It also worked whether the subject was immobile or was making voluntary movements. However, it was not possible to fool the subjects into identifying with a non-humanoid object, such as a chair or a large block.

A year ago, scientists achieved the illusion of an out-of-body experience in subjects, using virtual reality. The new research manipulates the brain even further — out of itself and into another body.

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081202-body-swapping.html

Can I steal this for the upcoming Intermittens #2 ?

Sure thing, if you think it fits. Its more aligned with Buddhism or Taoism than Discordia though, so I'm not sure how well it would work in such a publication.

Kerry and Greg injected a pretty good amount of Taoism and crazy-wisdom-Buddhism into the roots of Discordia. I say this fits in quite well.

Dang, I better ramp up the time I'm spending on formatting/layout... will do.

Ok, I've been poking around with layout, etc. This would be a good point to ask if we want any continuity between issues (table of contents, headers/footers, etc, etc). Also, do we have any art resources that we can use across multiple issues? Do we want to run with the 'Mittens' theme?

I dunno. I do know that they stole some tanks recently. You gonna go over and ask them? 

JohnnyBrainwash usually has very good coverage of the pirate situations, Somali and elsewhere, over @ http://www.dysnomia.us.

...
Mix tapes aside, there's not much to tie piracy and terrorism. Sure, terrorists could turn pirate and seize tankers full of liquefied natural gas. But they could also plant dirty bombs, poison water supplies, gas subways, whatever. We can imagine an endless stream of potential terrorist tactics, but just imagining it doesn't make it a real threat.

The other angle people play up is that Somali pirates could be supporting Islamist militants who are on the verge of re-taking power in Somalia. The militants themselves are said to provide shelter for Al Qaeda, and maybe they do- I'd consider Somalia a good place to hole up if I were an AQ operative on the run. The militants themselves don't practice terrorism for the most part, being more concerned with traditional military objectives like seizing territory. But in American policy debate, they all tend to get lumped in together.

There's not much to indicate that the pirates support the Islamic militants with their booty. In fact, most of the stories we see about the pirate's life make it look like they're sinking their money into houses, cars, GPS units and cell phones. What's more, evidence on the ground indicates otherwise as well.

I've talked about this before, and the Danger Room hits the topic again: when those Islamist militants were in power, they were the only force to effectively suppress piracy in the region. The brief period of law and order imposed by Somalia's short-lived Islamic government was the only time that the Somali coast came under the rule of law. As soon as Ethiopian troops drove that government from Mogadishu (with US backing, of course), piracy didn't just return- it redoubled.

For what it's worth, Somali pirates don't have their roots in madrassas or terror camps- they come from fishing communities that were swamped by foreign ships as soon as there was no authority to defend Somalia's economic sphere. With overfishing allegedly came illegal dumping as well. The excellent video embedded in the Danger Room post above and this article in the Christian Science Monitor lay it all out.

I started posting stories about pirates because it was a fun little thing that played into my theme of lawlessness, but I quickly realized that it fit into my particular niche of nerdom very nicely. It carries a deeper level of lawlessness that reflects the breakdown of the international order and the failure of the nation-state.

Somalia has had no effective government since 1991 or so, except for a brief period of rule by the Islamic Courts. During that period, Somalis had some semblance of peace. Piracy was largely halted. The price, of course, was to live under strict Sharia law.

If you've ever smugly quoted Ben Franklin to the effect that those who give up essential liberty to achieve temporary security deserve neither, I hope you'll give some thought to Somalia. I intend to post on this question at greater length in the future, but it represents perfectly the conflict embedded in that famous quote. Somalis stare into the darkest aspect of this question every day, and if the international system wants to end piracy and restore order in Somalia, it's going to have to face the same tough conflict as well.
...

And here's an article detailing the use of direct-targeted sonic weapons to repulse Somali pirates:
http://www.physorg.com/news146486516.html

Signs of Weather Seen on Dwarf Planet

Strange weather on the icy dwarf planet Eris could be causing changes that scientists are now seeing at the methane-ice surface of this distant object in our solar system.

Eris is the largest known solar-system object beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is larger than Pluto, with a diameter of ranging somewhere between about 1,490 miles and 1,860 miles (2,400 km and 3,000 km).

A team of researchers examined data on Eris collected from the MMT Observatory in Arizona. They specifically looked at concentrations of methane ice based on light-reflection and absorption information.

Their results show possibly nitrogen ice mixed in with the methane ice covering Eris' surface. And the relative amount of nitrogen ice increases with depth into the ice, they found.

...[Continued at the Article]...

"Naigama Naya: (Nagima means "end product" or "result") This refers to the general purpose or the common description of an activity that is present in the activity throughout. Tattvartha-sara' gives an illustration of a person who carries water, rice and fuel and who, when asked what he was doing, says he is cooking. This reply is given in view of the result which he intends to achieve though at the exact time when the question is put to him he is not actually cooking. His reply is correct from the point of view of Naigama Naya, though technically it is not exactly correct, because he is not actually cooking at the time when he replies. The general purpose for which we work controls the total series of our activities. If some one passes his judgment on basis of that general purpose, he asserts Naigama Naya, i.e., the teleological view-point..."

So, the imposition of a boundary to contain any particular concept, such as "cooking," is imposed arbitrarily, for the sake of convenience – equally, the man might reply "cooking" when getting up in the morning, or whilst urinating the previous week; the contribution of each of these processes, which we encapsulate as concepts – useful and convenient general patterns – in serving an eventual goal is equal; material boundaries are necessary fabrications, and conceptual boundaries are artefacts of our relationship to Time and to effort... Is that kinda how it works?

Pretty much. The important thing to keep in mind with Sri Syadasti and the whole 'Naya' business is that Naya means 'view-point', and that dogmatically sticking to just one viewpoint and not considering others is committing a fallacy (in the Jainist's eyes). The Naigama Naya, as you mentioned, comes from arbitrarily drawing a boundary around all of the activities that you did/are doing/will do, and Naming the set of activities after the "End Result - Nagama". Then again, I think that you may be throwing the net a bit too wide with the peeing or waking actions, unless the person's goal is still 'cooking' and they are just taking a break to take a wizz or a nap while the food cooks. The Nagama Naya means you have a Result in mind, a Goal, and that what you are doing or what you are asking about moves you closer to that goal.

As a contrast, consider the "carrying water/rice/fuel" example from Naya #1, and look at it from the viewpoint of Naya #2 and #3.

A person who's mind is 'in' #2, or Samgraha Naya, would reply to the "what are you doing?" question with something like "Carrying these things home." The 'things' don't matter in this viewpoint (and the destination doesn't either, really)... only the classification of 'carrying them'.

While a person who's mind is 'in' #3, or Vyavahara Naya, would answer "Can't you see I'm carrying water, rice, and wood?"

The first 3 Naya are 'abstractions of the moment', while number 4 (Rjusutra Naya) introduces Change and Time as concepts to the viewpoint.

Now, say you're considering a bookshelf and ask yourself "what are these things?"

A Naya 1 answer would be "Knowledge", a Naya 2 Answer would be "Books or Written Texts", a Naya 3 Answer would be naming each individual Title, while a Naya 4 Answer would be "Books sitting here on my shelf".

A Naya 5, Sabda Naya, answer would be along the lines of "These are novels, textbook, comics, and magazines, and those distinctions can be important."

A Naya 6, Samabhirudha Naya, answer would be along the lines of "This is a Library when on the shelf, but not a Library when scattered and loaned to my friends. This is because 'library' comes from the French 'librarie', meaning a 'collection of books'."

A Naya 7, Evambhuta Naya, answer would be along the lines of "When I read one, it is a narrative. When it sits on the shelf, it is a book."


Hope that (somewhat) clears things up

just to clarify: my post was directed at dipshit there, not at the OP.

I caught that ECH. 

[POPE]

  Oh, wow, srsly.

Who am _I_ to take Discordia seriously enough to try some scholarly research and try to figure out where the fuck Mal and Omar got some of their ideas and what they might have meant by encoding them into a new mythology?

And who the fuck am I to format said expository text so that it takes PAYING ATTENTION and DISCIPLINE to get through it and actually learn something?

I'M THE FUCKING POPE, THAT'S WHO. 

-=or maybe I should just accept the unvarnished TRUTH of the Principia and sit in empty forums mindlessly chanting "OOOOOOOOOOOOMMyGoddessLawlO5sFnordPINEALGLAND23!!11!" while looking for the center of the Universe in my Navel, and not even consider that there might be something worth finding beneath the surface text of Teh Holyeeee Book=-*

Wow im impressed.
The longest boringest post ever.Im filled with joyfull joyfilled joy

Do better then, fucko.

What teh Hoops said.







*Wow. I now understand where TGGR's coming from with alot of his rants. Thanks Rog.

Hit me up for art/doodles and layout.

good point, 000. replication probably shouldn't be a requirement for the definition of 'meme'.

Now, a bit tangentially, I've recently been considering the Genesis accounts as an attempt by that tribe to narrativise the events that lead up to acquiring the whole 'abstract communicable thought' function. This makes Adam not 'the first dude', but the first dude who could go, "DUDE!". This also makes Lilith a crafty girl who jacked the skill of Naming and the social power that came with it, and got booted from the tribe as a result. A lot of the other language idiosyncrasies there seem to make a bit more sense with this grid on.

[/tangent]