Sunderland vs. Coventry for a place in the playoff final…

“Don’t think different thoughts. Or better thoughts. Or spiritual thoughts. All thinking does is take us to more thinking.”

— Stop, Men’s Work

Good afternoon.

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

— Bertrand Russell

Good morning.

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”

— Joan Didion

The full fruition of Zen arises as it disappears.

Everything we need to know, or can understand about consciousness, is contained within the experience of consciousness itself.

“But by what immediate apprehension can we grasp this principle that is higher than intelligence? We may answer that we apprehend it by that part of us which resembles it. For there is something of it in us. Or, rather, there is no place where it is not..."

— Plotinus, Enneads 3.8.9

Good morning.

Wet and lush after the rain.

Originally no Zen. Thank you. Go home. Drink tea.

— Zen saying

You can’t follow The Way, you are The Way.

“Fanaticism is always a compensation for hidden doubt.”

— Carl Jung

Good afternoon.

“Paradox is a characteristic of the Gnostic writings. It does more justice to the unknowable than clarity can do, for uniformity of meaning robs the mystery of its darkness and sets it up as something that is known. That is a usurpation, and it leads the human intellect into hubris by pretending that it, the intellect, has got hold of the transcendent mystery by a cognitive act and has ‘grasped’ it. The paradox therefore reflects a higher level of intellect and, by not forcibly representing the unknowable as known, gives a more faithful picture of the real state of affairs.”

— Carl Jung

“Refusal of The Call Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless—even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.”

— Joseph Campbell

Bob’s favourite spot.

I’m currently reading a couple of blogs which talk about AI in two very different and contrasting ways.

Loud Thinking is pragmatic, down to earth and humorous. It cuts through much of the current hyperbole surrounding AI and is very much in the ‘settle down, don’t panic, AI is an amazing tool’ camp.

In stark contrast is The Ten Thousand Things. Ordinarily a blog about the nature of mind and the attendant philosophy and psychology, it has latterly become a psychoanalytic exploration of AI by the author Robert Saltzman PhD, an ex psychotherapist.

I enjoy and appreciate both perspectives as it seems to me that whatever AI may or may not be remains unknowable. It is neither one thing nor another and we pigeonhole it at our peril.

Good morning.

The DJ tonight played Miss You by The Rolling Stones which always reminds me when Prince was once asked what Rolling Stones song he wished he’d written, to which he replied Miss You. Fair enough.

He was then asked which U2 song he wished he’d written to which he replied: I could have written any of them but wouldn’t want to. Ouch!

Good afternoon.

Good morning.

You have to write the story of your life before you can forget it and leave it behind.

Toast just likes looking but not going out.

One day, a young monk approached Joshu and asked, "Master, what happens when we die?"

Joshu replied, "I don't know."

The monk was surprised. "But you're an enlightened Zen master! How can you not know?"

Joshu smiled and said, "Yes, but I'm not a dead one."

Four legged animals who have lost a limb just get on with it.

One of my favourite books, Nothing to Grasp, has just been republished.

This is… fun? 😕

The real danger is not that machines will trick you. The real danger is that you will trick yourself into thinking that nothing matters until it suffers, that nothing counts until it loves, that nothing is unless it looks like you. That is anthropocentrism as solipsism. And it will blind you to what you are already facing.

— The New Inhabitants.

Dog & door.

There is a there there, but when you're there, there's nothing there.

Another beautiful day…

This morning accompanying my son as he drives to the train station to pick up his girlfriend to bring her home for the first time.

At a certain point your life becomes its own entertainment.

“And so, if we become convinced that consciousness is Fundamental, we will realize that we have always been in direct contact with the most fundamental aspect of reality, simply by experiencing it, by being it.”

— Annaka Harris, Consciousness All The Way Down: The Next Scientific Revolution?

“It may, in fact, be impossible to talk about any aspect of the universe objectively, because the universe is ultimately defined by different perspectives on itself.”

— Annaka Harris, Consciousness All The Way Down: The Next Scientific Revolution?

Dog & dinner.

The Zen master Tokusan had a wife whom he deeply loved. When she died, he was found by his disciples weeping and wailing loudly.

One of his disciples approached him and said, “Master, you have always taught us that birth and death are illusions, that attachment leads to suffering, and that we should transcend grief. Why then are you now weeping so openly?”

Tokusan looked up at his disciple and replied, “Don’t you understand? This grief I feel - this too is Zen. My tears are just tears.”

There’s a reason why people who go travelling to find themselves never do.

Because there’s no one to find.

Or even anyone to do the finding.

This is fun. The Threshold And The Mask. A fictional dialogue between Alan Watts, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Robert Saltzman written by ChatGPT-4.o.

“Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

— Werner Heisenberg

Just sit. And listen. And watch.

Shit just happens doesn’t it?!

All those thoughts and images and memories and plans all just appear from… where? 

Exactly. You don’t have a Scooby Doo do you?

Everything just happens without trying to make any effort whatsoever.

Now, just sit and watch the show. And wonder. Who is it that’s watching and listening to the mental fireworks display of your mind?

Sit long enough and notice how everything is constantly changing. A new thought, a different sensation, a feeling that wasn’t there before. Nothing stays the same for very long. 

At some point you may wonder are you the same ‘I’ that sat down ten minutes ago? So much for the persistent ’me’.

Notice how you’ve stopped being a fixed thing and become an ever changing space for everything that happens.

If you don’t know what to do next just wait and see what you do next.

With no proper rain for weeks now, the brook is just about managing a trickle.

A very different story to the winter floods…

My greatest regret? Taking life too seriously.

“What we are looking for is what is looking.”

— Francis of Assisi

AI/ LLM’s reveal how integral and intertwined language is with the world, how we are partly made of language. It demonstrates the illusion of duality of the map and the territory. There is no map. It’s all territory.

“The surest sign of wisdom is continual cheerfulness.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Good morning.