Discourse 21:
Time
OR
The Sound of Inevitability
Look around you, do you see it? Everything around you is in decay. Death inexorably wearing away at bodies, rocks, societies, institutions, constitutions, even the very atoms and photons of energy themselves are worn away as every second osiris extracts his fee from the entire world. The human racial memory is perishingly small, even as I write I can see three cranes building on empty lots that were, just ten years ago bustling and busy sites. The picnic table at which I sit was, just 2 generations ago an abandoned rail yard, and 2 generations before that it was Newcastle's major port facility. The replacement site, which sits across the river from me is now gone also, Australia's largest steel mill is now an empty lot, only the ship loading facility remains. For how long?
Just 60 years afer it's last major eruption, in which a viscous lava flow devastated Pompei, Mt. Vesuvius still smokes & many residents of the area know nothing of the last eruption. In another 50 years we may lose venice to the recurring spring tides. Mt. Ranier is already overdue for a major eruption which could wipe out much of seattle. The last eruption devastated the local native population, yet still no memory of the event survived to the present day How long before your house becomes an empty lot, then a casino, then a parking lot, then a museum, then a house again? I sit on a site that was once a convictcamp, then a production center, then a town settlement, then a loading dock, then an empty lot & now a park, just 200 years...
In 40 years time I may be sitting on the 50 yard line of a football stadium.
Nothing is permanent, the society that exists now is not the society of 100 years ago or even 100 seconds ago. In human history 200 years is an era, the longest measurement of geological time, which to the universe is still the blink of an eye.
It took just a century (probably much sooner) after the arrival of Buddhism in japan for it to become (largely) a tool of political advancement, Even zen has been used in this way, and still is in some parts of the world. It didn't take long before chistianity was co-opted by the romans and then turned into an instrument of repression.
Even we are not immune, as far as the buddhists fell from buddha in the 40 years after his death, as far as the muslims fell from mohammed in the 40 years after his death, so have we fallen from eris. Every step we take is a profanity against the inception and the spirit of the discordian movement.
Remember that; you are always learning the way of the chao. That's why Thomas Aquinas said, "If faith, then faith." It's why Dogen said that zen is a way of life, and it is why I say to you, "In the face of what we will be tomorrow, today we are still children."
There's no such thing as adulthood, it is a myth of the grey. We only mature, our bodies and our souls do not forget how to play. Just the other day I was chastised for letting down my sister's new gym ball and blowing it back up again. I smiled at my mother, politely told her to get fucked, and said, "it's nothing you weren't thinking of." (Letting the ball down that is)
Those of us that forget how to play use zen as a means to an end, use discordianism as a means to an end, use discordianism as a means to an end, use gods and goddesses as a means to an end...
You can start a cabal, form a monastery and even redefine the very words of the principia... but within two generations everything you have gbuilt will once again be meaningless, hodge turns into podge and podge turns into hodge, everything bad will be good again. Just wait for it. What can you leave? Bhudda transferred his blessing on to Mahakshapya because he smiled when he gave a talk by holding up a flower. What was it that made him smile? The entire village and all the outlying farms had come to listen to the buddha give a talk, yet all he did was hold up a flower, What an anti-climax! Mahakshapya knew. Buddha had not forgotten how to play, and that is what he was doing. People expected the heavens to open and light to shine, birds would flock, but nothing happened. He showed them everything they were looking for, a gigantic tantric explosion in a single flower... go figure.
There will by more Tylers, more Hitlers, more Bushes, and more dictators... They are everywhere, it is not in the opportunities they are handed, but the people that they choose to be, behold the destroyer cometh bearing good tidings and promising peace and fair trade... Buckminster fuller said he was a verb, he was right, for soon we will be gone, what will we leave? Edifices that Osiris will suck dry or playfull hearts that will infect other hearts...
Transmitting dharma...
