When do we get to enjoy life, we think as we watch the clock and count the days until the

weekend?

I'd like to see a world where we are less relentlessly driven by the pursuit of job growth,
impressive stock portfolios, the "bottom line" and material acquisition--and more
motivated by active mindful learning, joyful work, and creating a web of relationships
that will sustain us in our more meager times. I'm holding out for a new way of thinking,
one in which we recognize that leisure is essential to our mental health rather than cause
for guilt, and that we don't have to spend our lives struggling, striving to make ends meet
through working at a job.

The conformist is never free--not because he [sic] happens to be doing the same thing as
others, but because he is doing it for reasons which have no relation to his inner
being.

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of
slavery. The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the
holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for
their own.

We put quotes around all these labels because, upon talking with each other, we came to
realize that they only serve to close us off, to isolate us from each other and even to
manipulate us into fighting each other; that despite our particular social roles we are all
subject to the same history, to the same oppression, and animated by much the same
needs, desires and questionings.

For us, real wealth has nothing to do with money or commodities. We are discovering
this richness in our encounters, in our collective schemes, and in our dreams and glimpses
of another, truly human society—a society we invite you to join us in envisaging and
creating.

It's up to us to take back the material resources that the political, financial and media
powers have stolen from us.

refuse to sacrifice our lives for their stock market, their government, their rigid politics.

Capitalism has become so suicidal that each new step in the direction of "Progress" is
another step toward catastrophe. The scale and range of disasters and the threat of their
worsening make it a life-and-death matter to call in question the very nature of a society
dominated by commodity relations. Merely to survive, we are ALL forced to undertake a
radical transformation of this society. . . .

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we
live."

The more he attempts to clutch the world, the more he feels it as a

process in motion. (If we watch the shore while we are sailing in a
boat, we feel that the shore is moving. But if we look nearer to the
boat itself, we know then that it is the boat which moves. When we
regard the universe in confusion of body and mind, we often get
the mistaken belief that our mind is constant. But if we actually
practice (Zen) and come back to ourselves, we see that this was
wrong.)
when we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we
look for mind there is nothing but things. For a moment we are
paralyzed, because it seems that we have no basis for action, no
ground under foot from which to take a jump. But this is the way it
always was, and in the next moment we find ourselves as free to
act, speak, and think as ever, yet in a strange and miraculous new
world from which “self” and “other,” “mind” and “things” have
vanished.
It is the discovery of freedom in the most ordinary tasks, for when
the sense of subjective isolation vanishes, the world is no longer
felt as an intractable object.

Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with
the sanction and blessing of the all-highest? - cia operative george white

optimal thc vaporization temperature: 220

What do you lack in the way you are functioning right now? What
will you add to where you are?
One seeks and seeks, but cannot find. One then gives up, and the
answer comes by itself.
if one wants to feel exhilaratingly light-footed, it is always
possible to go around for some time with lead in one’s shoes–and
then take them off. The sense of relief will certainly be
proportional to the length of time such shoes have been worn, and
to the weight of the lead. This is equivalent to the old trick of
religious revivalists who give their followers a tremendous
emotional uplift by first implanting an acute sense of sin, and then
relieving it through faith in Jesus. But such “uplifts” do not last,
and it was of such a satori that Yün-feng said, “That monk who has
any satori goes right into hell like a flying arrow.” So long as one
thinks about listening, one cannot hear clearly, and so long as one
thinks about trying or not trying to let go of oneself, one cannot let
go. Yet whether one thinks about listening or not, the ears are
hearing just the same, and nothing can stop the sound from
reaching them.
Meaning exists, it just doesn't have any essential ground state, it's self-empty. We can
listen to a piece of music and feel waves of shifting and transforming meanings slide over
us. Meaning exists without being bound or restricted by any one essential ground state
and it is this dynamic nature of meaning that gives it it's vibrancy and it's life. Meaning
can emerge from the interplay of perception, cognition culture and the physical world,
but it needn't. There are no essential ground conditions. It may arise from a totally
different set of conditions, or not at all. It is empty of any set-grounding and so it is full
with near infinite potential in terms of how it is expressed and how it comes about in the
first place.

The ground beneath your feet is fluid and dynamic as am I.

How can I help but love you? You might be wrong, you might be hurt, you might be
hateful, but if I had lived your life I would be too. I wouldn't hate myself. I can't hate you.
I can only help you, because you are me.

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of
gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as
tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest
lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the
illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden
brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing
in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of
daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a
dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons. - Buddha

Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the
viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.
One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers
began to fall about him.

"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.

"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.

"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods.
"This is the true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuti as rain.
http://deoxy.org/koan/36

A person may appear a fool and yet not be one. He may only be guarding his wisdom
carefully.

(the quantity of economically necessary work declines, yet politicians and economists tell
us that the only way to end unemployment is with more useless work. Why couldn't more
people do much less?
Wage labor perpetuates the archaic system whereby armies and courts consume the
profits of overproduction.
The culture of productivism employes work for social discipline and control - in a word,
domination. Look around you in the subway - you share the world with masses of
domestic slaves on the way to, or recovering from, their latest paroxysm of work

Every prison is built with work.

Workers and consumers are the miserable servants of machines and their endless
demands.
The system is bent on economizing time, but it's afraid to give free time to people.
"The Crisis of overproduction worsens as unemployment
grow to staggering proportions (1/5th of the global
population). If more people produced much less, the
ecology of the planet would prosper." L.B.
len bracken)

Every hour, moreover, countless billions are spent on propaganda,

advertising and other mystifications to sustain the delusion that the crisis-
strewn society we live in today is the best and only one possible.
Children too learn to work, or at least how to suffer boredom. From the earliest age they
are taught to obey orders. School and church teach them the necessity of going to and
staying at a particular place for a prolonged period, even when they would rather be
anywhere else. All the classic parental admonitions—"Sit still!", "Do what I tell you!",
"Don't talk back!", "Stop behaving like a bunch of wild Indians!"—are part of the
education of the well-behaved, uncomplaining wage-slave...]
as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time,
and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques.
The reinvention of daily life means marching off the edge of our maps.

paternalism (authorities supply need and thus are able to dictate conduct), provincialism
(a narrowness of outlook, a single code of ethics)

The world's most powerful instrument of governance is not a government. Nor is it a

global corporation. Rather it is a global financial system that is running dangerously out
of control. In a deregulated global market economy global corporations are accountable
to only one master, a rogue global financial system with one incessant demand—keep
your stock price as high as possible by maximizing short-term returns.

Once upon a time local communities looked to corporations not only as sources of jobs,
but as well of tax revenues to help cover the costs of essential local infrastructure and
public services. For example, in 1957, corporations in the United States provided 45
percent of local property tax revenues. By 1987 their share had dropped to about 16
percent. This is what global competition is really about—local communities and workers
competing against one another to absorb ever more of the production costs of the world's
most powerful and profitable corporations.

The world's 500 largest industrial corporations, which employ only five hundredths of 1
percent of the world's population, control 25 percent of the world's economic output. The
top 300 transnationals, excluding financial institutions, own some 25 percent of the
world's productive assets. Of the world's 100 largest economies, 50 are now corporations
—not including banking and financial institutions. The combined assets of the world's 50
largest commercial banks and diversified financial companies amount to nearly 60
percent of The Economist's estimate of a $20 trillion global stock of productive capital.

The Economist recently reported that in the consumer durables, automotive, airline,
aerospace, electronic components, electrical and electronics, and steel industries the top
five firms control more than 50 percent of the global market, placing them clearly in the
category of monopolistic industries. In the oil, personal computers and media industries
the top five firms control more than 40 percent of sales, which indicates strong
monopolistic tendencies.

the popular Nike athletic shoes that sell for US$73 to $135 around the world are
produced by 75,000 workers employed by independent contractors in low income
countries. A substantial portion of these workers are in Indonesia—mostly women and
girls housed in company barracks, paid as little as 15 cents an hour, and required to work
mandatory overtime. Unions are forbidden and strikes are broken up by the military. In
1992, Michael Jordan reportedly received $20 million from the Nike corporation to
promote the sale of its shoes, more than the total compensation paid to the Indonesian
women who made them.
An unregulated global market is shifting the financial rewards away from those who do
productive work to those who control money and are successful at convincing people to
buy what they do not need and often cannot afford. This goes to the heart of growing
income disparities around the world.

The secular American state is clearly comfortable with purely symbolic, Christian non-
religion, but feels rightly threatened by ecstatic religion grounded in individual religious
experiences, which lead people to examine their own assumptions and motivations, and
those of their churches, and those of their governments - the difference is between blind
obedience and eternal, skeptical questioning and distrust of authority.

The social logic for the prohibition of drugs is not a public-health logic, but a truly
religious logic, a logic of hatred towards the pleasure and experiences they bring or are
said to bring. Drugs are really reproached with opening doors leading to artificial
paradises. One of the best specialists of the topic, Timothy Leary, a fervent advocate of
psychedelic drugs, uses an apt, interesting metaphor (which may be apocryphal—I could
not find the exact quote). He is said to have explained, after one of his meetings with
Tibetan lamas, that the mystic and psychedelic experiences are essentially one and the
same, that LSD users are travellers reaching in a helicopter the very mountaintop that
mystics have always climbed as mountaineers. This is a rich metaphor, which can explain
the outlawing of chemical hallucinogens when drawn out: The lawmaker, who hates the
very idea of trips in mountain regions, who even goes as far as denying the existence of
the mountain, as it is situated on a territory which is beyond his control, has used a series
of accidents involving helicopters poorly maintained by bad mechanics as a pretext for
forbidding this transportation means, in order to keep his citizens in the plain, where he
can manage them. Since he denies the existence of the mountain, he cannot forbid
mountaineering, but from the plain, he can demonise Icarus, close the heliports, and take
control of the market for spare parts, which he has just driven underground, in order to
make a personal profit.

Drugs (plural) are the technologies for stimulating that imagination, which remains
largely under-exploited—technologies based either on language (literature, RPG,
hypnosis, [1] etc.), on chemistry (traditional or synthetic hallucinogens) or on electronics
(video games, VR, cybersex, etc.). And indeed the stimulation of imagination is what
most annoys the opponents of chemical drugs, as well as those who oppose VR,
cybersex, RPGs, or even some literary genres. [2] One should therefore not be surprised
at seeing all these people use remarkably similar arguments.

Using technical solutions to get rid of political barriers—this is the Internet way of doing
things. This is the way of doing things which angers the so-called "responsible" persons
who begin to measure up the stakes, which causes ill-informed students to turn pale and
which incidentally nourishes my cynicism and generally bad attitude.
http://deoxy.org/pc.htm

we need a critique of the totality of daily existence from the perspective of the totality of
our desires. http://deoxy.org/rst.htm

Apparently too weak to break the chains of control on their own, they are doomed to
remain pawns in an alternating game of eternal conformity or endlessly betrayed revolt.
And this will remain the case until the cuneal paradigm is completely subverted and
exploded.

Once intellectually emancipated from the political obsession with domination and order,
fresh vistas and unexpected perspectives are immediately disclosed.

Control figures arise when anarchic communities, immersed in beatific dreams, visions
and vocations, inadvertently delegate too much authority to an individual who is
temporarily assigned the task of maintaining the (to them) subsidiary and trivial apparatus
which sustains material life. The distracted community does not realize until too late that
the strong individual gradually accumulates power through continuously performing the
disparaged maintenance duties. The individual constructs a hierarchy to facilitate his
responsibilities, and this hierarchical institution is eventually employed to enslave the
free community. As the institution expands and becomes more impersonal, it gains a
momentum of its own and becomes unmanageable, even by its ostensible rulers. Hence,
its deistic, absolute powers, which are then projected or displaced onto the cosmos itself.

Regaining the experiences of life's instantaneousness constitutes its essence.

The mob within the heart

Police cannot suppress
The riot given at the first
Is authorized as peace

Uncertified of scene
Or signified of sound
But growing like a hurricane
In a congenial ground. - Emily Dickens

Those who organize the world organize both suffering and the anaesthetics for dealing
with it. - raoul vaneigem

We succumb to objectification and let a web of culture

control us and tell us how to live, as if this were a
natural development. It is anything but that, and we
should be clear about what culture/civilization has in
fact given us, and what it has taken away.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to
man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, 'till he sees all
things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
http://deoxy.org/cea.htm

Anarchism is not
Chaos within a bloody battle for survival.Thats what we have at the moment.

The pursuit of your selfish interest over the needs of others.Thats what we have
at the moment.

A state of total disorganisationThats what we have at the moment.

The triumph of the strong over the weak.Thats what we have at the moment.
Take away armies, governments, police, judiciary, prisons, managers, bosses,
bureaucracy, advertising, insurance, junk food, dream consumerism and life-stylism, and
you are left with a lot less non-productive work. If everyone had the necessities and the
free choice, work could be about play, beauty and creativity. Expressing our humanity.

Humans are caught in a machine with our actions controlled, our thoughts channelled and
our impulses drugged. And all the time, we're watched, monitored, surveyed, measured,
counted and bio-tagged. All the time we are being 'done to' rather than doing. If we had
control over our own lives we would never need to be counted again.

Nothing is as selfish and destructive as a government convinced of its moral superiority

and its mission in history.

'Criminal' is not a measure of how much harm you do people, but how near you are to the
bottom of our oppressive social hierarchy.

Nobody ever found a space without a solid, and nobody ever found a solid without a
space. But we've been trained to fix our attention on the solid and disregard the space.
Well then obviously you haven't been given the news, you haven't been let in on what the
secret of life is. It is that the space is as important as the solid. And if you see that, then
you have the clue.

The funny thing is, though, that when you realize this, and you suddenly see for the first
time that you and your point of view, and everything that you stand for and believe in--
and you think 'Boy, I'm going to stand for that and I'm going to fight for that!'--that it
depends on its opposite. When you get that, it starts giving you the giggles, and you begin
to laugh at yourself, and this is one of the most amazing forces in life, the creative force
is human. Because when you are in a state of anxiety, and you are afraid that black may
win over white, that darkness may conquer light, that non-being may conquer being, you
haven't seen this point. When it strikes you that the two go together, the trembling
emotional feeling which we call anxiety is given another value, and it's called laughter.

a person who goes out for power, who wants to feel that he's in control of all the things
that are happening around him is simply somebody who is in a state of terror.

Your skin doesn't separate you from the world; it's a bridge through which the external
world flows into you, and you flow into it.

Causes are not outside you. The basic cause is within you - but you always look outside,
you always ask:

Who is making me miserable?Who is the cause of my anger?Who is the cause of my

anguish?And if you look outside you will miss.Just close the eyes and always look
within.The source of all misery, anger, anguish, is hidden in you, your ego.

Try to see your own ego.

Just watch it.

Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you
will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by
itself, only then does it drop.

Whatsoever you do, stand out of it, and look and watch.

A mind that has no problems of its own can see through itself; that's why it becomes
capable of seeing through others.

welcome to the neopaleolithic where we poor monkeys get back to the unfinished
business of rrecreating ourselves aas angesl and going to the stars

"In the old days, evil things spead rapidly, but now good things spread rapidly. If you
understand...everything begins to appear wonderful and beautiful, and it naturally makes
people stop wasting or stop desiring unnecessary things. This awakening is contagious
and it will be transmitted to everybody soon." Tamo-san

http://deoxy.org/meme/Social_Insects

no spectators, only actors

The superior person,

Even in poverty,
Maintains his integrity;
The petty person stops at Nothing to strike it rich.

We are no longer alert. We continuously lie to our children and teach

them to be liars. Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, denying what their senses
tell them, these are all lies. If you're well educated you'll work to hurt
people, you'll do the work of big institutions. You'll work to make
alcohol, drugs, TV, schools, religion, things to put people's minds to
sleep.
Grace Spotted Eagle Inuit Native American (1985)

When I look, I find that there is no more dreadful a disease than fear. What else is there
in life to be feared more that fear itself? Fear paralyzes the very being of a person. Fear
destroys the whole capacity for rebellion. Fear makes any change impossible. Fear binds
one to the known, and the journey to the unknown is completely stopped - although
whatever is worth knowing and achieving in life is all unknown.     God is unknown.
Truth is unknown. Beauty is unknown. Love is unknown. But the fearful mind always
clings to the known. It does not go beyond the drawn line. It walks on the beaten track.
The fearful person becomes mechanical, and he is no different than the drudge. Religions
teach fear: fear of hell, fear of sins and fear of punishment. Society teaches fear - fear of
dishonor. Education teaches fear - fear of failure.     Simultaneously there is greed
attached - greed for heaven, greed for the fruits of virtue; greed for respect, position,
reputation, success and rewards. All greed is the other side of the coin of fear. This way
the consciousness of a person becomes full of fear and greed. The fire of jealousy and
competition is aroused. The fever of ambition is created. There is no wonder if, in all
these circular patterns, life is wasted.     Such education is dangerous. Such religions are
dangerous. Education is that which teaches fearlessness, stabilizes one in non-greed,
gives energy to rebel, gives courage to accept the challenge of the unknown. Education
should not teach jealousy and competition, but love; it should not encourage the insane
speed of ambition, but natural and self-inspired growth. But this can happen only if we
accept the uniqueness of everyone's individuality. Osho(1966)

Do you intend to remain in your seat, oblivious to the impending destruction? Have you
got your face pressed up against the window, watching the grim reapings of progress? Or
are you engaged in throwing out anchors, sacrificing the materialistic pleasures of
civilization and risking your all, that your planet and your children may live?

We have perhaps 1 in 4 mammals now on the threatened list.

We have 1/3 of all amphibians on the threatened list.

We have lost 1/2 of the world's forests...

Half of the world's wetlands.

Half of the world's grasslands.

We are systematically eradicating many of the habitats that make up the world's
ecosystems.

—James Leape, Director General WWF International

What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries, and in the presence of dissolved

boundaries, one cannot continue to close one's eyes to the ruination of the earth, the
poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged
dominator culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female, and
so forth and so on.

What they deliver is the periphery of the psychedelic experience: accelerated thought
processes, a kind of depth and richness to cognition that is unfamiliar, an ability to
analyze situations from unusual perspectives, or to reach unexpected conclusions.

They cannot face the world without culture because they are in fact defined by culture.

Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of the feeling of
immediate experience - and nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you,
so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience,
but that's what holds the community together. And as we break out of the silly myths of
science, and the infantile obsessions of the marketplace what we discover through the
psychedelic experience is that in the body, IN THE BODY, there are Niagras of beauty,
alien beauty, alien dimensions that are part of the self, the richest part of life. I think of
going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave
without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The
mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. It means that you
never figured out what it is all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body
works itself into nature. What the Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy,
orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three
enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony! And if you get them on
the run you have the dominators sweating folks, because that means your getting it all
reconnected, and getting it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness
and self-definition through thing-fetish.

many people confine themselves in the private world of their own reflection because
social pressure and, indeed, social legislation make it very touchy to talk about these
things. But I say to you, this is part of the human birthright. This is as much a part of the
game as birth, sex and dying.

"To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude
that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell."
Marquis de Sade

The car and car culture are integral to nearly every

destructive pathology in modern capitalism. The more
miles of road are built, the more all the interrelated,
exponentially expanding ecological and social crises are
manifest, from the mass extinction of species to
atmospheric collapse. Not only oil wars and massive oil
and chemical spills, but every ongoing, undramatic disaster
can be linked to them. Five of the twelve largest corporations in the United
States are oil monopolies.

The U.S. and its imperialist allies have won a temporary victory in the Middle East. But
their policy of military domination to stop the natural progression of history - for people
to liberate themselves from the yoke of colonialism - cannot succeed.

If the people would change their minds and really be spiritual, there
would be no need for arms and fighting. Everything could be settled by
speaking the truth. But now, people wouldn't know the truth if you
spoke it. It only upsets them. It hurts their ego. And then you are their
enemy.
Grandfather Semu Huarte (1983)

The Logos can be unleashed, and the voice that spoke to Plato and Parmenides and
Heraclitus can speak again in the minds of modern people. When it does, the alienation
will be ended because we will have become the alien. This is the promise that is held out;
it may seem to some a nightmare vision, but all historical changes of immense magnitude
have a charged emotional quality. They propel people into a completely new world.

They eat dead food with false teeth. Their buildings have false fronts, their radio
and television stations broadcast dead air. They kill time as spectators of false
images. Their corporations are guilty of false advertising, and their employment
'opportunities' offer only murderous mistreatment, lethal boredom, and fatal
submission; they demand that you meet deadlines, that you pitch tent in the
death camps. Does the dead end justify the means? They inhabit dead cities and
make false moves, really going nowhere at all, treading day after day the same
path of despair. Even their air is conditioned. They ask you to give your lives for
their countries, for their religions, for their economies, leaving you with only. . . .
Their system is organized by artificial intelligence and provides only virtual reality.
Their culture will pin you down and bore you to death, their lifestyle is lifeless,
their existench is a permanent deadlock. Everything about them is dead and
false. The only thing that is unbearable is that nothing is unbearable. When will
we demand more?

Employees dump toxic waste into rivers and oceans.

Employees slaughter cows and perform experiments on monkeys.
Employees throw away truckloads of food.
Employees are destroying the ozone layer.
They watch your every move through security cameras.
They evict you when you don’t pay your rent.
They imprison you when you don’t pay your taxes.
They humiliate you when you don’t do your homework or show up
to work on time.
They enter information about your private life into credit reports
and FBI files.
They give you speeding tickets and tow your car.
They administer standardized exams, juvenile detention centers,
and lethal injections.
The soldiers who herded people into gas chambers were
employees,
Just like the soldiers occupying Iraq and Afghanistan,
Just like the suicide bombers who target them—they are
employees of God, hoping to be paid in paradise.
Obeying teachers, bosses, the demands of the market—not to mention laws, parents’
expectations, religious scriptures, social norms—we’re conditioned from infancy to put
our desires on hold. Following orders becomes an unconscious reflex, whether or not
they are in our best interest; deferring to experts becomes second nature.

Selling our time rather than doing things for their own sake, we come to evaluate our
lives on the basis of how much we can get in exchange for them, not what we get out of
them. Our lives disappear, spent like the money for which we trade them.

The shadow of the past holds the future hostage.

The man who insists that justice can only be maintained by the rule of law is the
same one who appears on the witness stand at the war crime tribunal swearing he
was only following orders.

you are not alone. There are millions of us waiting for you to make yourself
known, ready to love you and laugh with you and fight at your side for a better
world. Follow your heart to the places we will meet. Please don’t be too late.

RiGHT PRACTiCE

When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless.

without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves, we try
to order things out- side us. But it is impossible to organize things if you yourself
are not in order. When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything
else will be organized. You are the "boss." When the boss is sleeping, everyone is
sleeping. When the boss does something right, everyone will do everything right,
and at the right time. That is the secret of Buddhism.

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in
your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm.

If your mind is related to something outside itself, that mind is a small mind, a
limited mind. If your mind is not related to anything else, then there is no dualistic
understand- ing in the activity of your mind. You understand activity asjust waves
of your mind. Big mind experiences everything within itself. Do you understand
the difference between the two minds: the mind which includes everything, and
the mind which is related to something? Actually they are the same thing, but the
understanding is different, and your attitude towards your life will be different
according to which understanding you have.

Although sentient beings are innumerable, we vow to save them. Although our
evil desires are limitless, we vow to be rid of them. Although the teaching is
limitless, we vow to learn it all. Although Buddhism is unattainable, we vow to
attain it." If it is unattainable, how can we attain it? But we should! That is
Buddhism.

The most impor- tant thing is to express your true nature in the simplest, most
adequate way and to appreciate it in the smallest existence.

RiGHT ATTiTUDE
To appreciate your human life is as rare as soil on your fingernail.

Our way is not to sit to acquire some- thing; it is to express our true nature.

xxIf you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are
involved in impure prac- tice. It is all right to say there is practice, and there is
enlightenment, but we should not be caught by the state- ment. You should not be
tainted by it. When you practice zazen, just practice zazen. If enlightenment
comes, it just comes. We should not attach to the attainment. The true quality of
zazen is always there, even if you are not aware of it, so forget all about what you
think you may have gained from it. Just do it. The quality of zazen will express
itself; then you will have it.

We should not seek for something good. The truth is always near at hand, within
your reach.

It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become dis- couraged with it.

Whether or not you are aware of it, you have your own true enlightenment within
your practice.

1. This way is just to do it, for- getting your physical and mental feeling, forgetting
all about yourself in your practice. - fundament

2. physical joy-vibes

Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should
continue it. This is the secret of practice.

The cause of conflict is some fixed idea or one-sided idea. When everyone knows
the value of pure practice, we will have little conflict in our world. This is the
secret of our prac- tice and Dogen-zenji's way.

"This is enlightenment! This is perfect practice. This is our way. The rest of the
ways are not perfect. This is the best way." This is a big mistake. There is no
particular way in true practice. You should find your own way, and you should
know what kind of practice you have right now.

So as long as you have some particular goal in your practice, that practice will not
help you completely.

You may think that if there is no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not
know what to do. But there is a way. The way to practice without having any goal
is to limit your activity, or to be concentrated on what you are doing in this
moment. Instead of having some particular object in mind, you should limit your
activity. When your mind is wandering about elsewhere you have no chance to
express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this
moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal
Buddha nature. This is our way.

So in- stead of having some object of worship, we just concentrate on the activity
which we do in each moment. When you bow, you should just bow; when you sit,
you should just sit; when you eat, you should iust eat.

study yourself - through the teaching we may understand our human nature. The
purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves.

perfect way - If we think of ourselves as our bodies, the teaching then may be our
clothing. Sometimes we talk about our clothing; sometimes we talk about our
body. But neither body nor clothing is actually we ourselves. We ourselves are the
big activity. We are just expressing the smallest particle of the big activity, that is
all. So it is all right to talk about ourselves, but actually there is no need to do so.
Before we open our mouths, we are already express- ing the big existence,
including ourselves.

to polish a tile - If we are like a frog, we are always ourselves. But even a frog sometimes
loses himself, and he makes a sour face. And if something comes along, he will snap at it
and eat it. So I think a frog is always addressing himself. I think you should do that also.
Even in zazen you will lose yourself. When you become sleepy, or when your mind starts
to wander about, you lose yourself. When your legs become painful—'*Why are my legs
so painful?"—you lose yourself. Because you lose yourself, your problem will be a
problem for you. If you do not lose yourself, then even though you have diffi-
culty, there is actually no problem whatsoever. You just sit in the midst of the
problem; when you are a part of the problem, or when the problem is a part of you,
there is no problem, because you are the problem itself. The problem is you
yourself. If this is so, there is no problem.

If you yourself are deluded, then your surroundings are also a misty, foggy
delusion. Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion. You
will be involved in deluded ideas one after another. Most people live in delusion,
involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem. But just to live is actually
to live in problems. And to solve the problem is to be a part ofit, to be one with it.

We should always live in the dark empty sky. The sky is always the sky. Even though
clouds and lightning come, the sky is not disturbed. Even if the flashing of enlightenraent
comes, our practice forgets all about it. Then it is ready for another enlightenment. It is
necessary for us to have enlightenments one after another, if possible, moment after
moment. This is what is called enlightenment before you attain it and after you attain it.

You will find the true meaning of life, and even though you have difficulty falling
upright from the top of the waterfall to the bottom of the mountain, you will enjoy
your life.

After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the
waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have
difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without
knowing just how this kind of feel- ing is created. When you do not realize that
you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is
separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing.
When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no
actual difficulty in our life.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path.

Already you are the monarch of your own skin.
Your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs.
A politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky. —Hakim Bey

The suppression of the natural human fascination with altered states of consciousness and
the present perilous situation of all life on earth are intimately and causally connected.
When we suppress access to shamanic ecstasy, we close off the refreshing waters of
emotion that flow from having a deeply bonded, almost symbiotic relationship to the
earth. As a consequence, the maladaptive social styles that encourage overpopulation,
resource mismanagement, and environmental toxification develop and maintain
themselves.

The "primitive" ritual of offering goods to an angry or potentially angry God in order to
appease it into a state of neutrality continues to replay itself in complex capitalist
economy. All things must be subordinated to neutrality—to uselessness. One major
difference between the age of the virtual and more primitive times is that the
contemporary idols have no metaphysical referent. The ones that have been constructed
are not the mediating points between person and spirit, or life and afterlife; rather, they
are end-points, empty signs. To this paper master, sacrifice has no limit....

Who could feel more betrayed in the desert of late capitalist nothingness than those most
immersed in its recent worsening, and more desperately in need of diversion from its
horrors?
We recognize tyranny in foreign countries, but in our own, we refer to it as "law and
order." How many broken homes, welfare payments, divorces, fines, jail terms and
shattered lives must there be in the name of law and order, merely for the benefit of the
law enforcement growth industry? Just like insurance salesmen sell insurance by using
fear of death to motivate the prospective customer, the law enforcement growth industry
uses fear of crime.

Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer
belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience. I continued to look at the flowers, and
in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing—but of a
breathing without returns to a starting point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated
flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning. Words like
"grace" and "transfiguration" came to my mind, and this, of course, was what, among
other things, they stood for. My eyes traveled from the rose to the carnation, and from
that feathery incandescence to the smooth scrolls of sentient amethyst which were the
iris. The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Awareness-Bliss-for the first time I
understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely
and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then I remembered a
passage I had read in one of Suzuki's essays. "What is the Dharma-Body of the Buddha?"
('"the Dharma-Body of the Buddha" is another way of saying Mind, Suchness, the Void,
the Godhead.) The question is asked in a Zen monastery by an earnest and bewildered
novice. And with the prompt irrelevance of one of the Marx Brothers, the Master
answers, "The hedge at the bottom of the garden." "And the man who realizes this truth,"
the novice dubiously inquires, '"what, may I ask, is he?" Groucho gives him a whack over
the shoulders with his staff and answers, "A golden-haired lion."

Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him
and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function
of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused
by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we
should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small
and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." According to such a theory,
each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business
is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be
funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at
the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay
alive on the surface of this Particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this
reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and
implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the
beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born—
the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of
other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that
reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so
that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That
which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced
awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various "other worlds,"
with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of
the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only
what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local
language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that
circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either
spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate "spiritual exercises," or through hypnosis, or
by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not
indeed the perception "of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe" (for
the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of
Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the
carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a
complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.

The suppression of the natural human fascination with altered states of

consciousness and the present perilous situation of all life on earth are intimately
and causally connected. When we suppress access to shamanic ecstasy, we close
off the refreshing waters of emotion that flow from having a deeply bonded,
almost symbiotic relationship to the earth. As a consequence, the maladaptive
social styles that encourage overpopulation, resource mismanagement, and
environmental toxification develop and maintain themselves. No culture on earth
is as heavily narcotized as the industrial West in terms of being inured to the
consequences of maladaptive behavior. We pursue a business-as-usual attitude in a
surreal atmosphere of mounting crises and irreconcilable contradictions.

Everybody knows what they're against; nobody knows what they're for. Because nobody
is thinking in terms anymore of what would be a great style of life. The reason we have
poverty is that we have no imagination. There's no earthly reason; there's no physical,
technical reason for there being any poverty at all anywhere. But you see, there are a
great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money. They
don't know how to use it, they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no
imagination.

we are from infancy told who we are, what is our identity, what our expectations should
be, what we ought to get out of life, what class we belong to. And we believe the whole
thing. And having believed it, we come to sense it, as we sense the hard wood of the
corner of the table, and we think it's real, and it's a bunch of hogwash. It's an amusing
game, if you know that that's all it is, and can be played with eloquence. But the more
you know it's ONLY an illusion, the better you can play it.

What I think an awakening really involves is a re-examination of our common sense.

We've got all sorts of ideas built into us which seem unquestioned, obvious. And our
speech reflects them; its commonest phrases. 'Face the facts.' As if they were outside you.
As if life were something they simply encountered as a foreigner. 'Face the facts.' Our
common sense has been rigged, you see? So that we feel strangers and aliens in this
world, and this is terribly plausible, simply because this is what we are used to. That's the
only reason. But when you really start questioning this, say 'Is that the way I have to
assume life is? I know everybody does, but does that make it true?' It doesn't necessarily.
It ain't necessarily so. So then as you question this basic assumption that underlies our
culture, you find you get a new kind of common sense. It becomes absolutely obvious to
you that you are continuous with the universe.

this was a very nice neighborhood until the monkeys got out of control.

eschatology, epistemology, noetic

The wind drops, but the petals keep falling. The bird calls, and the mountain becomes
more mysterious.

I pray that death will not come and find me still unannihilated.

We feel that behind the stream of our thoughts, of our feelings, of our experiences, there
is something which is the thinker, the feeler, and the experiencer. Not recognizing that
that is itself a thought, feeling, or experiece, and it belongs within and not outside the
changing panorama of experience.

Advocates of the free market commonly argue that the market is the most democratic of
institutions, because businesses prosper by responding to consumer choice. It is a
disingenuous argument. Democracy is based on the principle of one person, one vote.
The market functions on the principle of one dollar, one vote. Consequently, under
conditions of unequal economic power, a society ruled by the market is a society ruled by
those who have the most money—the antithesis of democracy. Further distortions result
when huge global corporations acquire the power to manipulate cultural symbols and
consumer demand through advertising and control of mass media. When tobacco
companies set about to sell cigarettes to children they are not simply responding to an
established demand, they are creating it.

It is our consciousness—our ways of thinking and our sense of membership in a larger

community—not our economies—that should be global.

Deep-seated cultural biases explain why the Western mind turns suddenly anxious
and repressive on contemplating drugs. Substance induced changes in
consciousness dramatically reveal that our mental life has physical foundations.
Psychoactive drugs thus challenge the Christian assumption of the inviolability
and special ontological status of the soul. Similarly, they challenge the modern
idea of the ego and its inviolability and control structures. In short, encounters
with psychedelic plants throw into question the entire world view of the dominator
culture. Dominator cultures are hierarchical, paternalistic, materialistic, and male-
dominated.

America was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow
food, and entertain one another. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing
what they are told b/c they don't know how to tell themselves what to do. Now we have
been rendered permanent children and it's the architects of forced schooling who are
responsible. The real lessons of school teaching are: confusion, class position,
indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, and
surveillance. People are taught the need to be told what they are worth. The lesson of
report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves to their parents
but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. Self-evaluation, the staple
of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered
a factor.

Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many

more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in
childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.

1. establish fixed habits of reaction to authority.

2. integration, make children as alike as possible.

3. determine each student's proper social role

4. sort by role and trained only so far as the social machine merits

5. tag the unfit-with poor grades, remedial placement, clearly enough that their peers will
accept them as inferior

6. create an elite group of caretakers

Wake up! If things were really as you've been conditioned to be- lieve, how could
slum urchin Lula govern a complex modern nation? How could lower-middle-
class semi-urchin Adolf Hider have risen to command the best-schooled nation in
history? How could Thomas Edison have dropped out ofelementary school, gone
west alone with no money or contacts, and by age 15 be enjoying multiple streams
of revenue and be earning four times the wages ofa skilled workman?

How could penniless elementary school dropout Edison grow up on his own in a
working-class environment, invent the electric light, the phonograph, win 1,003
patents, and build General Electric? Edi- son had contempt for college graduates
and discriminated against them in hiring all his life.

If school were the life-and-death matter you've always been told, none of this
could have happened. How could George Bernard Shaw drop out of school at 14
and teach himself to be the greatest drama- tist ofthe 20th century? Why has no
school, no college, no politician, no foundation, no social thinker ever connected
the dots for you as I

just did?

Highly centralized mass production economies cant function' well without

colonizing individual minds and converting them into a mass mind. The
conversion works best if started early, in the lower grades of elementary school, in
kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. The function ofthese collective rituals we call
school has very little to do with intellectual development - consider only the
familiar mad- ness ofteachingthe colors and days ofthe week or months ofthe year
to little people who come to school already knowing those things. The collective
rituals oflower grades are about habit training, about prac- ticing attention and
fealty to authority. In this way, independent con- sciousness can be undermined in
its formative stages.
Be the change you want to see in the world,

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come,
ifever. And how to sub- mit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of
strangers, even if they are wrong; even ifyour enthusiasm is phony.
the official economy we have constructed demans constantly renewed supplkes of
leveled, spiritless, passive, anxious, friendless, family less people who can be scrapped
and replaced endlessly, and who will perform at max efficiency until their own time
comes tot be scra[; people who think the difference between coke and pepsi, or round
hamburgers vs square ones, are subjects worthy of argument

Climbing up Cold Mountain path, Cold

Mountain path goes on and on, long gorge
choked with scree and boulders, wide creek
and mist-blurred grass, moss is slippery
though there's been no rain, pine sings but
there's no wind, who can leap t he world's ties
and sit with me among white clouds?
Cold Mountain is a house, without beams or
walls, the six doors left and right are open, the
hall is the blue sky, the rooms are vacant and
empty, the east wall strikes the west wall, at
the center not one thing. Borrowers don't
trouble me, in the cold I build a little fire, when
I'm hungry I boil up some greens, I've got no
use for the kulak with his big barn and pasture
... he just sets up a prison for himself, once in,
he can't get out, think it over, it might happen
to you.

Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If

you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it’s like the empty
sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
Don't let the blues make you bad
I packed up and decided to hit the road and get out of that city of
ignorance which is the modern city. I said goodbye.
"Compassion is the guide star," said Buddha. "Don't dispute with
the authorities or with women. Beg. Be humble."

To be sparing with clothing

increases life.
To be sparing with food increases
blessings.
When we realize that every- thing we see is a part of emptiness, we can have no
attachment to any existence; we realize that everything is just a tentative form and
color. Thus we realize the true meaning of each tentative existence. When we first
hear that everything is a tentative existence, most of us are disappointed; but this
disappointment comes from a wrong view of man and nature. It is because our
way of observing things is deeply rooted in our self-centered ideas that we are
disappointed when we find everything has only a tentative existence. But when we
actually realize this truth, we will have no suffering.

It is not after we understand the truth that we attain enlightenment. To realize the
truth is to live—to exist here and now. It is the readiness of the mind that is
wisdom. Teaching is in each moment, in every existence.

Now it is raining, but we don't know what will happen in the next moment. By the
time we go out it may be a beautiful day, or a stormy day. Since we don't know,
let's appreciate the sound of the rain now." This kind of attitude is the right
attitude. If you understand yourself as a temporal embodiment of the truth, you
will have no difficulty whatsoever. You will appreciate your surroundings, and
you will appreciate yourself as a wonderful part of Buddha's great activity, even in
the midst of difficulties. This is our way of life.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not
love it. We should accept things just as they are. Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is
happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. This is how we
understand everything, and how we live in this world. This kind of experience is
something beyond our thinking. In the thinking realm there is a difference between
oneness and variety; but in actual experience, variety and unity are the same.
Because you create some idea of unity or variety, you are caught by the idea. And
you have to continue the endless thinking, although actually there is no need to
think. With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes an art.

be practice, be enlightenment

If we be- come too serious we will lose our way. If we are playing games we will lose our
way. Little by little with patience and endurance we must find the way for ourselves, find
out how to live with ourselves and with each other.

You must put confidence in the big mind which is always with you. You should be able
to appreciate things as an expression of big mind. This is more than faith. This is ultimate
truth which you cannot reject. Whether it is difficult or easy to practice, difficult or easy
to understand, you can only practice it.

even in one moment you can do it! It is possible this moment! It is this moment! That you
can do it in this moment means you can always do it. So if you have this con- fidence,
this is your enlightenment experience. If you have this strong confidence in your big
mind, you are already a Buddhist in the true sense, even though you do not attain
enlightenment.

We must have beginner's mind, free from pos- sessing anything, a mind that
knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its
present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped.
Before the rain stops we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow we see
snowdrops and some new growth. In the East I saw rhubarb already. In
Japan in the spring we eat cucumbers.