Stupid Questions, Sage Advice

[Iron Sulfide]

okay, this is where i take all the useless information i have
and put it to some form of use.

*DISCLAIMER*
1. if you ask me for advice, my response will probably be
dependant on what reality construct i happen to be using at the time.

2. if you follow my advice, and nothing changes, then oh-fucking-well.

3. if you follow my advice, and something bad happens (like Cthulhu
eats you for being a pud) then it's at your own risk.

4. if you DONT follow my advice, after asking for it, then you wasted my
time, and yours. i'll still have given you advice, and it'll still be there
for the taking, but if you don't follow it and no good comes, then the
one rule with exceeds all others is : DON"T BITCH TO ME ABOUT IT.

5. as the sage at hand (for the time being, and here in this thread),
i reserve the right to ignore any stupid questions, or reply with
something simple like the question ...erm...like "Figure It Out"


unless, i missed something, let's start with my first bit.

[Iron Sulfide]

And here is my new quandry:

I like to read.  I rather like to read, alot.  But, while reading books lately, I look at them and wonder "why?"  This is not a simple question.  Why aquire more knowledge?  It came to me the other day while reading that "Doctrines are for pointing to the mind, once one sees the mind, what good are doctrines?"  And, instead of saying, "Ohh, what a nice bit of wisdom!" I actually applied it to my situation.  I'm at the point, where I want to turn back, it would be so much easier, so much less work to just retreat back to nice mantra's and join the sheep again, even though I know I can't.  I'd like to fool my self and say that I'm at the darkest hour before dawn, but when you can't see a damn thing, it's rather too hard to believe that.

I'm having an existational problem, kinda like in I <3 Huckabees, I suppose.

*big sigh*

it becomes a problem of participation. mind is only what you want it to
be. when you use a doctrine, or a dogma, or a catma, or any other kind
of socio-intellectual construct (read: reality grid), you see the mind
differently, and therefore alter it. through altering the mind, you then
see reality in a new way.

observation is participation, if you buy that copenhagen stuff. ;)

for example: if you dress a wolf in sheep skin, the sheep will bahh
and bahh and bahh like they always do, not noticing a wolf.
this allows many interesting oppertunities, even if a wolf isn't hungry.

doubt not. nay! doubt all the more! this be thy great doubt of the
buddha mind. buddha mind is like the ultimate base OS.
like, say you grow up on windows (bleech!)...the buddha mind is like
wiping the drive, and putting a good, but minimalistic OS on the box,
like say Unix. this is fine and dandy in itself. in fact, it's not even required
truth be told. but other OS's have equal use.

to use the computer metaphor, i wiped my hard drive long ago, partitioned
the drive, and started putting multiple OS's on there. let's say Zen and
Daoism and the like are a Unix. minimal, but with unimaginable potential.
then we'll say that Gnosticism, and and Rosecrucianism, et al, are Linuxes.
i've even got a "Lindows" OS to blend in with Windows people. my Sheep Skin,
if you will.

if Observation is participation, then the manner in which you observe has bearing on
how you participate.

that is all.