Complexity in nature.

[IJesusChrist]

The complexity in nature is too great to understand. I don't see the ability to ever outline human interactions or relations in language. The possibilities for the human mind's adaptations, conversations, and regurgetations of the interwoven web of man kind's superficial goals and affluences has dominated science for our existance.

'We', the speakers, the laughers, the thinkers, the guilty are no less complex than the biological entity that houses us. Just as a pill will never cure cancer or depression, a law will never cure a crime. We think organically, but speak objectively. All symbols are solid to one perfect figure; a strain to reach such a dream drives us all.

My father once said "When I die, I will never say 'I wish I worked more.'" His thought has echoed in me not because of it's opaque disobedience, but that it is a fundamental freedom to work in our lives, yet that freedom is drawn with lines, infinitely contrasting and seperating.

Life itself is a game of balance, always balanced, but never zero. We shift our weights from one idea to the next, attempting to find a plane of relaxtion, but always end up searching - the path... not the destination. Attempts to understand bring fear and doubt, attempts to blank bring love and acceptance.

We are all one, but so foolish have we grown. Intelligent to survival, but not for happiness nor fairness. Omnipotent eye's are aware, but uncognisant of our faulter - may we rest in peace.

 

[itsscience]

My father once said "When I die, I will never say 'I wish I worked more.'" His thought has echoed in me not because of it's opaque disobedience, but that it is a fundamental freedom to work in our lives, yet that freedom is drawn with lines, infinitely contrasting and seperating.

I've said for a long time that I work to live not live to work. However, the older I get the more I realise that I am trapped in the dream of the planet not my dream. The mortgage, school fees, insurance, car repayments etc trap me more securely in someone else's dream than I could ever hope to trap myself.

I've come to the conclusion that I can only be free if I'm true to my nature. I will do my best to ensure that I use my words, especially against others, impeccably. I will not take anything that others do or say personally because I cannot know their mind. I will do my best at whatever I set my mind to and I will do my best not to make assumptions. This is the only way I know to be true to my nature and the only way I know to try and escape the dream of the planet.

Deconstructing the agreements I have made with myself, examining them and determining whether they have any basis in reality or are they merely social constructs enshrined in my mind from the moment of birth. We all carry a lot of emotional baggage and most of it is as a result of words used carelessly towards us.

Break old agreements and make new, valid agreements with yourself.

 

[dirk.bruere]

Old Zen saying:

Before Enlightenment - chop wood, carry water
After Enlightenment - chop wood, carry water

 

[Schwanke668]

Old Zen saying:

Before Enlightenment - chop wood, carry water
After Enlightenment - chop wood, carry water

Now the question is:

How does one achieve enlightenment by chopping wood and carrying water?

The true nature of escaping the trap is to learn to exist inside the inescapable trap with true and perfect peace as to your surroundings.

You dont take a frog out of a pond and put them in another pond and say "Here! Here is your brand new pond! Its perfect! Its better then your old pond! Waaay better!" At which point the frog will say "You idiot, its still a pond."

The trick is to be the frog that is content in any pond and has peace even when someone changes the pond on them.

Its about flowing with the ripples in the pond and allowing the lily pad your stuck on at the moment to go where it will and keep in a state of peace about the movement of everything around you.

In a practical sense when you 'work' find ways to make your work enjoyable. If your chopping wood and carrying water, count the number of times you swing your axe and say to yourself. "Is this swing of my axe just like the last one? Or is it different? Am I moving forward? Or am I moving back? What will the next axe swing be like?"

If your carrying water make sure its not someone elses piss.

 

[dirk.bruere]

Well, the chop wood carry water thing just means that before Enlightenment you still need to earn a living, eat, be warm and have somewhere to live. Same afterward.

 

[Schwanke668]

And my point is it isnt the same afterwards. The act of becoming enlightened changes the very nature of the definition of 'work'.

You may find enlightenment and realize your in the completely wrong field of expertise or living in the wrong environment or whatever.

My point was the fact that even after enlightenment, there is enlightenment. Enlightenment is an every changing forward movement of existance to greater and greater, on average, heights.

Probably no better way to say it in a pithy saying except the way it was said, but to minimize the experience of determining your future during the process of enlightening can be dangerous.

So can over thinking it, but hey, im bored.

 

[ophiuchus]

both ways fit the saying quite well