Autumn Storm

overhead
withered leaves
rustling

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Really Real Reality

Disclaimer: This is not a rant, nor is it an attack. It is a statement of my own, very personal, views of religions and gods in general. I've shared some of these ideas before, but never fully fleshed out as they are here. I'm a bit hesitant about posting it, but it may help people understand why I react the way I do to some things. I will honestly be surprised if a single reader agrees with me, here, which is why I hesitate to post it, but at the same time I can't think of a good reason not to post it, so here goes:

Neither theist nor not...

There. That's a properly Zen subtitle. It refers to an idea common to atheists, that people are all atheists to every religion but their own, and that atheists just take it one god further. Maybe this is true for a majority of religious adherents; I don't know. It's not true for me. I consider every god ever conceived of by humans to be equally real. This does not mean that I "believe in them" any more than I believe in the couch I'm sitting on, or the wind outside. Asking whether I believe in a god is sort of like asking whether the moon commutes with happiness. It's irrelevant and very nearly meaningless.

Profound Triviality

So what do I mean when I say that all the gods are equally real? They are facets of human experience, personifications of human ideas and ideals, and fears. They are as real to each person as that person allows. They are as meaningful to each person as each person allows, or needs. Criticizing a person's choice of god (or lack thereof) is rather like criticizing the color of someone's living room. Getting upset about it is even sillier. Insisting that all people with unpainted living rooms are damned to hell, uh, sure THAT makes sense. It's even more bizarre to insist that all people who haven't painted their living room exactly the right shade of institutional green are damned to hell.

Truth and Fiction

I don't think that any one god is either right for everyone or the overarching reality behind the universe. I do think that we can learn things from the stories people tell about their gods. Taking those stories too literally, though, robs them of meaning. So does paying attention to only one particular set of stories. And so does ignoring the stories altogether, or belittling them for not being literally true. All stories are true, for a given value of 'true.' The truth one person finds in them may not be the truth found by another.

This is what makes stories, and gods, different from science and scientific fact. Facts do not change depending on the observer. Gods do. Experiments run by different scientists yield the same results under the same conditions. Stories do not. The same story can have many different endings and many different interpretations. In science, those interpretations are meaningless unless there is a way to test them against one another. In a story, there is no way to test for which interpretation is "correct," and even contradictory ones may be correct at the same time.

This, I suppose, is why so many latch onto quantum mechanics to try and validate their spiritual stories. Observer dependent! Wave-particle duality is true and contradictory! But these are still testable ideas. How do you test a story? A story relevant to one time, culture or person may be meaningless to another. The test of a story is not whether it "really happened" or whether it's "literally true." The test of a story is whether it has meaning for you, whether it tells you how to live in this moment, and the next, whether it has an impact on your view of the world. As soon as you start analyzing the story in terms of "fact" and "science," you kill its meaning. If it's a story about a god, you kill the god, too.

Gods?

What I call the Divine is the sum total of all that is. Every god. Every person. Every story. Every molecule, atom and quark. Every death. Every life. Everything. To set up one part against another is a sickness. To say "this is divine; that is not" is a contradiction. If it exists, it is part of the Divine, even if it exists only in the human mind. Not one thing is separate from the Divine, nor can it be made separate. A savior is a useful image for those who feel entirely lost, but it becomes a liability after a certain point. It encourages feelings of isolation and separation. But how can you be separate when the Divine is everywhere? It is not only out there; it is also in here. The very idea of worship becomes heretical when you feel this. What are you worshiping? Yourself? The table in front of you? An ant hill in the yard? A bone buried in the earth for a thousand years? All are equally divine and worthy of worship.

Ending at the Beginning

The thing that I liked about paganism was the idea that there was a single Deity. Because we are male and female, we perceive it as God and Goddess, and God and Goddess each have thousands upon thousands of faces. But I found it rather silly to pick one, or several, of those faces and devote rituals to them. Why bother? There's a deeper reality. My sense is that those faces are stepping stones, somewhat familiar and humanlike. The trick is to move beyond them. Getting hung up on the faces is like getting hung up on the color of paint in the living room. It's missing the point entirely. So, yes, all the gods are equally real. But they're not the "really real reality."

Since as a human, I like to have a name for things, I reluctantly name the really real reality...Tao.

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Yang Long Form (Week 5)

Yes, I forgot to post a week 4, but we didn't get to anything new last week; we just consolidated the first "third" that we did know. And this week I was the only one up there, and I swear that Don would have tried to get me through the entire NEXT third if I hadn't stopped him. I don't guarantee that I can remember everything he DID get through, at least not in the proper style. Up to the place I stopped him, it was still following the same sequence as the Cheng Manch'ing form, but then it was going to go into another series of step-ups and brush-knees.

So from apparent closure, the move is described as grabbing a tiger's head and throwing it. I can't remember the long-form name, but it's a bit milder in the CMC form, and called "Embrace Tiger Return to Mountain" or, sometimes, "Carry Tiger to the Mountain." This seems to be "Carry Tiger's Head to the Mountain." It actually has a waist turn that the CMC form lacks, which is unusual; it's more often the other way around. After that, it's a sequence of grasp sparrow's tail to the corners. "Great Roc Spreads Wings" is different. The arms start facing the same way and spread during the foot placement. I'm not sure how exactly the arms are supposed to get to "Lotus Under Leaf" aka "Fist Under Elbow" in this form, but Don didn't seem interested in fixing that today.

"Step Back to Repel Monkey" is very similar to CMC, except that you step back with the feet at forty-five degrees, instead of parallel, cock the pushing wrist, and pull the down hand up to the waist. Diagonal Flying is, frankly, insane. If you've ever seen a yoga balance posture called "Proud Warrior", well, this thing is only slightly more stable. You come into it mostly the same way as in the CMC form, but it's to the front of the room rather than the corner, and you float and stand up as you shift the weight, lifting the back foot like a ruddy ballerina. Seriously, to use this in any sort of combat situation would be very nearly insane. Timed just right, it could be effective, but you're so off-balance and vulnerable that you may as well have a target painted on you. More than one opponent? Forget about long-form-slant-flying. On the other hand, the name actually makes sense in this form, which it never really did in the CMC form.

And after that, there's another raise-hands-step-up, and probably the whole brush-knee sequence repeats, but I had enough stuff filling my head right then and asked Don to stop.

On the bright side, Don actually complimented me on the Chauncer Chin today (sp? No clue; it's transliterated from Chinese, anyway, and that's roughly how Don pronounces it). It's a qigong where you trace the shape of a yin-yang by a series of weight-shifts and waist-turns. Naturally since he was finally happy with it, he added a new wrinkle: both hands at once. Maybe in another seven years I'll have THAT down.

I also surprised Don a few times in push-hands, meaning that I pushed him out without him deliberately setting up for me to push him out. There were a couple of awesome ones there. My favorite was one where I had my hand up and suddenly knew that there was a vulnerability. Normally Don is solid there (my hand was up near his shoulder), but I just knew there was a vulnerability, turned my waist, and there he went. He said that he'd been shifting his feet at that moment, adjusting his stance, and what I had felt was that he was slightly off-balance. Keep in mind that my eyes were closed, and that Don's body did not move while he was adjusting his stance. I could just feel that he was vulnerable. Don's favorite was at the very end of our practice. What I felt was one attempt to push, a realization that I didn't have his center, and a shift down to where his center was. Don said that I had readjusted several times, without tensing up, and that he'd found it impressive. Oh, and there were many MANY more instances where I tensed something up and Don pushed me out with no effort whatsoever, but those are pretty commonplace. ^/^

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Moonlight

If it hasn't become obvious already, I've been shopping around for a new show to get into. And I think I just hit the jackpot, assuming the show lasts. According to IMDB, six TWELVE* episodes have been shot so far. By comparison, 14 have been shot for Bionic Woman. The show is about a vampire detective, and, yes, that's been done many times before, but I really like the feel so far.

Partial list of predecessors: Angel, Forever Knight, P.N. Elrod's Vampire Files, and I feel like I'm missing an obvious one... Anita Blake almost counts. I've been into vampire stories since I was pretty little and saw "Love At First Bite." I was too little to realize it was a comedy, btw. Not kidding. When I saw it again years later I was a bit, um, shocked. On the other hand, it gave me a direct comparison between the way I saw things as a kid (probably 6 or so) and as an adult.

But this series held its own. One of the IMDB comments is that it's a Forever Knight rip-off, but I don't see it. Nick was a cop, and he was looking for a cure for his vampirism. That was established right off the bat in the pilot. This vampire, while not exactly happy about what he is, has shown no desire for a cure. His 'partner' is a reporter, not a doctor. The biggest similarity is that the pilot involves a wanna-be vampire murdering people, and, of course, leaving obvious fang marks in the neck. That was also the plot of the FK pilot, insofar as the murders, but the killer and the motive are entirely different. And it feels nothing like the Buffyverse. Honestly, it reminded me more of P.N. Elrod's books than of any of the similarly themed tv shows, but her books are set in 1930's Chicago. Moonlight is clearly set in modern times.

Okay, there was one similarity to Forever Knight that I thought was a bit glaringly obvious: the contacts used when Mick vamps out. Someone explain to me WHY, other than entertainment convention, the eyes would change appearance? They did it in Lost Boys, in most horror vamp movies I've seen... P.N. Elrod does a version of it, but in her case it's after feeding: the eyes turn blood red. No clue if there's any real physiological basis for that, but it makes more sense than "fangs come out; eyes go all glowy". But that's a minor nitpick. I really want this show to make it. I'd call myself a vampire junkie, but that has really bad connotations in the Anitaverse... Let's just say that I've been feeling deprived since Buffy and Angel went off the air.

So this one's a keeper. If it lasts.

*Just read further at IMDB and 12 episodes have been produced. Strangely, apparently only 6 of them star the main character. That or something didn't get updated properly `/^ So, worst case scenario, the show is cancelled tonight and in six months or so, all the eps are released on DVD. Sorry if I sound pessismistic; the shows I like the best nearly always wind up under the axe, so I tend to expect the worst.

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Philosophy Class (Week 5)

We've spent most of this week talking about the Bhagavad Gita. Interestingly, the subject of caste didn't come up at all, so I may mention it on Monday (we've been instructed to prepare questions/topics for discussion).

The over-riding theme is the "Yoga of Action." Mostly in the west we think of exercise, and maybe meditation in connection with yoga, but it has the same root as "yoke" and is often translated as "union." As an exercise, it's often described as the union of body and breath, or body and mind, or mind and breath... It can also be translated as "Discipline" or "Art." The Gita proclaims that the way to happiness and fulfillment is not to give up action itself, but to renounce its 'fruit.'

The idea is to commit all acts to heaven/Krishna/god, and have no particular attachment to the outcome. As one of the more vocal students pointed out (I think there are five of us who speak up regularly; yes, I'm one of them), this could be taken as justification for being a sociopath, or an instruction to be autistic. My own sense is that this is trying to get at the same idea as the Tao te Ching, of letting go, but from a different angle. I much prefer that description.

The problem with describing it as 'detachment' may be one of translation. In the West, we have some very bad associations with 'detachment.' Mass murderers are described as detached. Fascist dictators are described as 'detached.' Scientists are also described as 'detached,' with various connotations depending on who's doing the labeling. As described in the Gita, it's not intended as a negative label, nor an indifferent one. The final stanza of Chapter 11 reads:

He who acts for my sake,
loving me, free of attachment,
with benevolence toward all beings,
will come to me in the end

Note the implicit irony. The right kind of detachment involves an attachment to Krishna. It also involves benevolence, but that is less problematic. The natural state of humans is towards generosity and benevolence, in my experience. It takes outside pressures to make us otherwise. To be hostile towards someone requires an attachment to that hostility, to something to be gained from that hostility. I know that many would argue the same for benevolence, but benevolence doesn't require effort. Hostility has to be maintained; it's like a tension in the mind. Relax the mind, and the hostility vanishes. At least, it does for me, and I suspect it's similar for most people. This is why I prefer the description of "letting go." There's less room for misinterpretation.

On a tangent discussion, a few biblical issues came up. I found Dr. Levenson's take on the Old Testament to be rather interesting. At the highest level of awareness, God is perfect, etc, but at lower levels he comes across as 'having some problems.' This would imply that the Old Testament was mostly written by people at the lower levels of awareness, who possibly had glimpses of the higher levels. So why not take Jefferson's approach and cut out all the problematic bits, hmmm? Works for me.

Dr. Levenson also made a very thought-provoking comment about Christianity. He pointed out that the Christ figure is one of the most positive religious images, powerfully positive, almost entirely a force for good, and that Christianity also had the most vivid, negative and nasty depictions of hell of any of the world religions. In other words, there always has to be a balance. The stronger the positive images in a religion, the stronger the negative images. It all goes back to yin and yang. It also goes back to the essential neutrality of the world itself. People realize this on some level. So if there's some all-powerful force for good saving people, there also has to be an equally powerful nasty enemy to save them from. A world of superheroes is automatically a world of supervillains.

Note also that the more liberal forms of Christianity, where hellfire and brimstone aren't part of the weekly poison, also tend to come across as rather insipid. Tepid. Bland. They have to. Getting rid of the horrible villain weakens the hero, too. So why not go for a philosophy of balance? Seems to me that it saves a lot of trouble and cuts out a lot of the nonsense.

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Inchoate Thursday

Inchoate: "only partly in existence; imperfectly formed." Meaning that I'm going to ramble, or possibly maunder, a bit tonight. Long day. Every Thursday is a long day, but this one was a bit longer. Annik has laryngitis, so I wound up giving the lecture for her 11:00 Math108 section. She could talk enough to help people one-on-one, but couldn't project. So I had one extra lecture to give in an already full day. *sighs I once had to give a lecture with a voice like hers sounded today... I used the ELMO and wrote out a bunch of stuff so that I could mostly point to things and avoid talking very much.

Anyway, I found a few things to share and carefully placed them below the fold. Make that inchoately placed them below the fold, as I don't feel that I am currently in complete existence. Incomplete existence? Uh... Never mind.


I found a poem excerpt over at Daylight Atheism, and decided to track down the whole thing. It's called "Sunday Morning" and was written by Wallace Stevens. I'll put one stanza here for your edification:

She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

Very nice poem. Read the whole thing. There are 8 stanzas, all about the same length as this one.

Also, one of the commenters at Debunking Christianity mentioned John Shelby Spong as his vision of how Christianity should be seen. I'd never heard of him, hence the Wikipedia linkage. His 12 points are rather...interesting. Completely heretical to 99% of Christianity, but interesting. As reported at Wikipedia, here they are (my comments in red):

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found. (If there is a god, how is any belief in god not theist? Me confused. Best guess: his alternative is a mystical god, rather than a personal one.)

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. (Still presuming some form of mysticism.)

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. (Uh, obvious much?)

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible. (No clue what this means.)

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. (Uh, obvious much^2?)

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. (Uh, obvious much^3?)

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history. (No clue what this means.)

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age. (Presumably he means that ascending into the Christian Heaven by going up into the sky is nonsense, since beyond the sky is empty space, etc.)

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time. (Uh, obvious much^4?)

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. (Cannot be? Maybe should not be. So a redefinition, here.)

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior. (Uh, obvious much^5?)

12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. (Very nice, overall. Without a definition of God's image, I can't say much more than that.)

I'm curious to know how much of this is his own wording. I'd also be curious to read some expansions on these ideas. Some of this reads like inchoate babbling to me, while other parts are beautifully lucid. Anyway, before my own lucidity runs out, I'll stop writing.

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Bionic Woman

Well, I didn't hate it. That's about the best I can say about it. It could have been better, but it could also have been a lot worse. They're going for a dark, my-god-what-have-you-done-to-me feel, at least in the pilot. It looks like they plan to keep it dark, but pilots are notoriously useless at predicting future trends.

Biggest problem: wooden acting. I think the "other" bionic woman was supposed to come across as less than human, but in some ways she seemed more human, since she could actually act. Also, the fight scenes bored me. It was the "blare-loud-music-and-do-funky-things-with-the-camera" style of fight scene, which generally means that they don't have a decent fight choreographer.

I recognized one of the actors from the Witchblade TV series, and there's a similar flavor to Bionic Woman, but Witchblade was interesting and well-acted. I was rather annoyed when it didn't get renewed for a third season. Similarities? Consistently dark venues, loud music vignettes, and a sense of resisting her "fate." But, really, this felt like a pale imitation. Witchblade was engaging right from the get-go. Also, the music had understandable lyrics that generally enhanced or went with the storyline. The ones in Bionic Woman just seemed random, like, "Hey! No dialogue! Toss me a CD!"

Yikes. The more I think about it, the more it feels like a bad Witchblade rip-off. You've got a random event choosing the woman who is to become the 'savior,' a manipulative group/corporation trying to control her afterward, a false 'savior' trying to muscle in on the action... All that in addition to the imitative shooting style. *sighs* I really wish they'd kept making Witchblade. Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll watch this again or not. But I can't honestly recommend it.

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It never helps...

Brief dream snippet from last night. It was a sort of...game, I think. Where people took turns in various roles. A guy who teaches in the math department with me, Russ, had wound up with the role of evil, demonic villain for that, er, round. The amusing thing is that Russ is one of the most soft-spoken and polite people I've ever met, so casting him in that role is a trifle...disconcerting. Anyway, buildings were blowing up all over the place, monsters were attacking, and at some point Russ turned into a giant cobra, which was sort of a relief since THAT was an obvious menace. There was a slightly smaller giant cobra with it; I have no clue where it came from.

Anyway, all through this, I'm trying to find a functioning restroom. It's rather irritating when the buildings that I know have restrooms in them keep blowing up. When I do finally find an intact restroom, I wake up. I think that this would have been a nightmare, except that I was too focused on finding a restroom to be overly concerned with the scary stuff going on. Also, there was that sense it was a game...

My title comes from the evil overlord list, btw. As best I remember, one of the bits of advice was "Don't turn into a giant snake. It never helps."

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Aragorn

Putting your appointed path ahead of any inner conflicts, you make your own rules for the benefit of all.

If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.

I have no idea why I so often wind up with leader-types on these things. Really don't. I'm not a leader. I am someone who would take charge if no one else did, but that's about it.

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Reluctantly Impressed

Not to mention shocked that I managed to hit a night of Season Premieres. The last new show I liked was My Name Is Earl, which I won't get to see this semester due to teaching on Thursday nights. But tonight I found two that I liked.

Chuck: computer geek absorbs top-secret info and gets sucked into the world of espionage. Bizarre, but nicely done. This was the pilot episode, so there's no telling if the quality will hold up, but it looks promising.

Also, I'm finally trying to watch Heroes, about which I've heard so many good things. I tried once before, but it was the middle of an extant season and I felt lost. I still feel slightly lost, but coming in at the beginning of the episode and the season ought to help. So we'll see if it holds my interest. It seems to be nicely done.

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Catch All

Fair warning: this is going to be a random compilation with no common thread running through it except that it's stuff I keep meaning to mention and haven't gotten around to.

Item the first: My mom's Camry is quite nice. So far, I've been impressed with all the Toyotas I've ridden in. Admittedly, there are only two: My Echo and my mom's new Camry. But they have a lot of cubby-holes for storage and a very nice overall design. The Camry is quite a bit nicer than the Echo in many respects but Jean Luc fits into smaller parking spaces and gets better gas mileage! For me, those are more important.

Item the second: I seem to be getting better on the Halloween front. Today Winco's Halloween display actually interested me somewhat, though overall I felt mostly indifference. This is a marked improvement over extreme rage.

Item the third: Today I happened upon a rather interesting Buddhist response to Christianity. It's interesting to read another tradition's take on the matter. Naturally, the site presents Buddhism as a superior alternative, and I don't agree with all their stances there, but there are some good thoughts. I take issue with one part. They are examining the more liberal Christian idea that "Buddhism is just a different expression of man's understanding of God," and interpret it as another expression of Christian arrogance. And, yes, it can be said that way. But I'm pretty sure that the expression, "All roads lead to the same place in the end" originated in Buddhism. It's the idea that there is a single "thing" called the Divine and that it's at the heart of every religion. An honest expression of this idea would not involve trying to convert someone from their chosen path unless there were some specific reason, like it was a path that made said person unhappy.

Hmmm... now I'm wondering where atheists fall in that scheme of things. First thought: science and rationality are their vision of the Divine. As far as I'm concerned, any honest attempt to understand the universe is a pursuit of the Divine. This puts science at or on the pinnacle of the sacred. The problem with that conception is that, taken too far, it will restrict scientific inquiry. Taken in context, all discoveries become sacred, whether they uphold or overturn prior ideas. Heresy is overriding those discoveries with outdated dogma.

Item the Fourth: Chapter 5 is up. Otherwise, I think I'm done for the night. Sleep well.

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Mugging

Sometime this week, I bought a new mug. One with a lid that would fit in the cup-holders in my car. I'm somewhat picky about these things. I will not buy travel mugs with plastic-lined interiors, for instance. So when I found a good deal on a mug like I prefer, I snatched it up. But there was a somewhat odd sticker on it...

Keeps beverages hot or cold
Non-slip base
Can be used for travel or in home/office
18 ounce capacity

The first one is a trifle redundant, but pretty standard for such cups. The second one is also reasonable, while the fourth one is nice to know. The third one strikes me as...weird. I mean, any mug or cup "can be used for travel or in home/office." Now, this one is particularly suited to travel, as it has a lid and is of a size that will fit in most car cup-holders. The lid, however, also makes it a good choice in any situation where you want to minimize the risk of spilling things. If they'd worded it differently, say "Perfect for travel! Great for home use, too!" it wouldn't be so odd. It's the "can be," I think, that bugs me. I mean, a book can be used for kindling, and a television set can be used to start a fire. That doesn't mean that those are particularly good uses of those things, however.

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Pay No Attention to the Gal behind the Keyboard...

Sorry. I'm playing around with the appearance of my other blog, and just need to upload some images to see if they'll work. Oh, and this one's public domain according to Wikipedia. So you can click below the fold to see what deviltry I'm wreaking over there, or you can completely ignore this.

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Weird Me Interactions

In years past, I've always been happy to see the Halloween displays. Halloween is one of the few major holidays to be openly pagan. This year, though, I noticed that I was avoiding the Halloween displays. If possible, I'd avoid going anywhere near them. If I had to walk by them, I did my best to ignore them. I just might have figured out why tonight. Or part of why.

Normally, I practice ten minutes of empty-mind meditation as part of my daily routine. Since the Halloween thing was bothering me, I used that as a specific focus instead. I cast my mind back to last year and didn't find much, except that maybe my holiday depression started right around Halloween. I also remember looking at the displays and seeing things that Grandma would have liked, and feeling the loss all over again. That wasn't really it, though.

I cast my mind back to the year before. Grandma's birthday is in October, not too long before Halloween. Worse, it was in October that she first went into the hospital. I think seeing the Halloween displays is just too strong a reminder of that. I seem to react most negatively to Halloween style faces, so rows full of masks are...problematic. And pretty much any representation of "Death" results in an immediate, "Bastard!" from somewhere deep inside my mind. Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Black cats I'm okay with; faceless pumpkins are fine; autumn leaves, etc, don't bother me at all; coffins I want to smash; costumes result in anger (maybe because they represent hiding of a sort and I'm sick of hiding); animatronic anything makes me feel ill; the whole orange-black-purple color scheme has me seeing red.

I haven't decided if this means I should avoid Halloween displays altogether or keep pushing myself to look at them in an effort to get over the whole thing. The last part sounds eminently sensible, but with my track record over the past year, I doubt I'll go that route. I started confronting emotions head-on after I got sick of hiding from them. Unfortunately, it was often like standing on the railroad tracks and daring the train to hit me. Things aren't as sharp this year, so maybe it won't be so bad, but I'd rather head this off at the pass. I do not want another case of holiday blues.

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Weird Drug Interactions

I made an odd discovery after my brush with ibuprofen backlash. For a while, I'd been noticing that when I got sick there would be an acrid, metallic scent to my sweat. I thought it was rather annoying, but as it only occurred when I got sick, I didn't think much of it. Then this summer the acrid metallic scent was constant. Whenever I sweated very much, I would smell like I'd been working in a metal-shop. I had no idea why. At least, not until I quit the ibuprofen cold turkey. The smell went away within the next couple of days. However, there was a complication, because I'd also stopped using a decongestant at about the same time, and for the same reason. Decongestants also cause backlash sometimes.

So I had no clue which of the two had been causing the scent, but I was reasonably certain that it was not a good thing. Some time after the withdrawal symptoms went away, I took ibuprofen again, with no metallic side effect. Then the next day I needed some decongestant, and the smell came back. I stopped both for a while again, but eventually took some decongestant. No metallic scent. So, as far as I can tell, it's some sort of freak interaction between the two. I haven't been able to find any remotely useful information about it. The closest I've come is that some schizophrenics give off a metallic scent. Pleasant thought, that. Just what I need: another risk factor.

Incidentally, the fact that it took a combo of the two explains why, prior to this summer, it would only happen when I was sick. That was the time I was most likely to take both ibuprofen (for fever) and decongestant (for sinus problems). This summer, due to my knee injury, I was taking ibuprofen every day for a while, and taking decongestants for allergy problems. And it all added up. For now, I'm trying a switchover to aspirin, and hoping that aspirin won't interact with decongestant in the same way for me. I don't know as of yet, as I only bought the aspirin today.

Incidentally, weird reactions run in my family. One time my mom got a rare side effect of a rare side effect of one of her medications. It took her doctor forever to figure out what was going on.

PS: Chapter 4 is up.

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Philosophy Class, Week 4

No class on Friday this week. Dr. Levenson didn't specify why, merely that he would not be there, though we could, if we wished, still come. We haven't gotten to the Bhagavad Gita yet. Instead, Dr. Levenson gave us a copy of his favorite passage out of the Upanishads. This is a different translation of the same selection. I like the translation we were given in class better, but I don't really want to type the whole thing in.

One note before I put the rest below the fold: Chapter 3 is up.

The refrain that runs through this Upanishad is "That Art Thou." 'That' refers to Brahman, to the Ultimate Source of Reality, to All That Is. Some might call it God, but, for me, that label is a step down, part of the illusion of separation. Maybe part of the effort to recapture the unity.

Interestingly, there are strong parallels with the Tao te Ching here. Milder ones, perhaps, with Genesis, but with an incredibly different emphasis. From the in-class translation: "In the beginning, there was Existence alone--One only, without a second. He, the One, thought to himself: Let me be many, let me grow forth. Thus out of himself he projected the universe; and having projected out of himself the universe, he entered into every being." Compare to Chapter 42 of the Tao te Ching (Pine): The Tao gives birth to one one gives birth to two two gives birth to three three gives birth to ten thousand things.

The primary difference is that "the One" is thought of as a Being, while the Tao is more a process, or a path. Tam Gibbs' translation is interesting: Tao gives birth to unity, unity gives birth to duality, duality gives birth to trinity, and trinity gives birth to all things. Tao starts off as one, but with the idea of oneness, of unity, comes the idea of two-ness, or duality. But then you can combine duality with unity and wind up with three-ness, or trinity. And ultimately generate the entire universe that way.

There's also a difference in language used to describe mystical experiences and goals. In the Upanishads, everyone is a manifestation of the One, the Self, and just needs to learn to "remember" that. In the Tao, one can fall away from the path and must be taught how to find it again, but there's a sense that... you have to work to keep from the path, hold yourself off, and that once you realize that, you find that you have always been on the path. Well, that's my understanding of it.

We also compared the creation account of Genesis. In it, there is a strong sense of separation between God and his creation. There's no sense of unity in that account whatsoever. Especially not in the Christian version, which uses the story to infer an artificial gap between Creator and Created and then must build a bridge between the two. Dr. Levenson's take seems to be that the Garden of Eden story is symbolic of losing the initial unity with the Divine...except that I don't see any implied unity in the creation account there. *shrugs*

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ARRRRR!

It be talk like a pirate day, Mateys! Show off yer pirate spirit, ahoy!



Arrr. Not piratey enough? Then feast yer eyes on this beauty:


It do be from an odd comic that all ye landlubbers be needin' t'read.

Note: Pirates be hijackin' thee original link, mateys, but here be a back way in.

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One Down...

Stats tests are graded. I don't think anyone got below a 70% on this one. I usually have at least one total bomb. Yup, low score was 70%, median 89% average 87%, std. dev 8%. One person even got a perfect score, even though I forgot to put a bonus question on. I don't think this was any easier than previous tests I've given, but maybe it was. *shrugs*

I've still got Math015 tests to grade, but those won't take as long, and not just because there are fewer students in that class. Oh, the Math108 center wasn't slammed while I was there, but it was a bit busier. I actually answered quite a few math questions, rather than the two or three of the two prior weeks. Deadline this Friday, too, so it may be similar.

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Leaf

maple leaf: fallen,
forlorn there on the path,
autumn gift

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RIP

Robert Jordan has been called back into the Pattern. The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills. Perhaps his thread will be spun out again... but probably not in my lifetime. He managed to survive much longer than the doctors expected. I'd never heard of amyloidosis before running across his blog.

I can't think of a single author who has influenced me more. Both the books themselves and the directions in which they sent me. Wheel of Time was also the first fantasy series to truly engage my attention. And, no, he hadn't finished the final WoT book. There's a hint that, perhaps, someone else will finish it using his notes, and the telling that he gave to some close friends and family. But the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. Goodbye, Robert Jordan. You are already missed.

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