Dependent Co-Arising
@asitisnow.bsky.social
Meditation, philosophy, lucid dreaming
You are prior to the idea 'I am'. Camp yourself there, prior to the words 'I am'.
—Nisargadatta
You are prior to the idea 'I am'. Camp yourself there, prior to the words 'I am'.
—Nisargadatta
Most of Western culture (including science) is based on an idea that's little more than a hunch:
November 7, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Most of Western culture (including science) is based on an idea that's little more than a hunch:
Shade-grown potatoes.
October 8, 2025 at 10:41 PM
Shade-grown potatoes.
A well-articulated plea that contemplative practice (done with care, purpose, and compassion) is a moral imperative, lest we find ourselves in a world like the one we're finding ourselves at this moment:
![The inner way, the way of meditation is dangerous. Any practice which brings us into contact with forces from the spiritual world … puts us into the middle of a mighty struggle. To enter this arena for curiosity or diversion can be disastrous. Indeed there is only one thing more dangerous than entering upon this way, and that is not entering it …, for you then allow the destructive forces [of the subconscious] free play. If you do not go into the battle with yourself and try to stay in touch with the forces of the light, you become a blind target. You allow the forces of destructiveness to enter and eat away at your own soul, or else project them upon other colors or classes of persons, other races or nations. Whomever the darkness seizes in this way becomes an instrument of destruction and cruelty, sometimes even sucking a whole nation into cruel and bloody acts.
― Morton T. Kelsey (in The Other Side of Silence)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tqlqtnaocssoxvmsxethedjn/bafkreibaqiso6wx6wfmrk6yxizo7dt6jwwq2omoyfv6n3wrab4ktrhy7li@jpeg)
September 2, 2025 at 6:41 PM
A well-articulated plea that contemplative practice (done with care, purpose, and compassion) is a moral imperative, lest we find ourselves in a world like the one we're finding ourselves at this moment:
It's difficult to know where to even begin when one is confronted with carelessness such as this, casually lumping morally credible political movements together with a known endpoint of unspeakable barbarity and tragedy. A book I won't be reading any time soon.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
August 25, 2025 at 7:32 PM
It's difficult to know where to even begin when one is confronted with carelessness such as this, casually lumping morally credible political movements together with a known endpoint of unspeakable barbarity and tragedy. A book I won't be reading any time soon.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Just as dream images can be transformed in dream, so emotional states and conceptual limitations can be transformed in waking life.
— Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (in: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep)
— Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (in: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep)
August 20, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Just as dream images can be transformed in dream, so emotional states and conceptual limitations can be transformed in waking life.
— Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (in: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep)
— Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (in: The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep)
Yes, it's a merger of social Darwinism w/ deluded neoliberal ideas of "free markets" and "rational consumers" and the outdated (especially today) belief in the exceptionalism of a single country. It's created nothing but hurt both locally and globally (as some have predicted some time ago):
August 4, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Yes, it's a merger of social Darwinism w/ deluded neoliberal ideas of "free markets" and "rational consumers" and the outdated (especially today) belief in the exceptionalism of a single country. It's created nothing but hurt both locally and globally (as some have predicted some time ago):
Immorality often arises from unexamined and deeply flawed assumptions that are held up as "conventional knowledge" (or, worse, as "wisdom"):
![There are moral dangers here. To take what might seem an “objective” economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities―as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations [in economics] so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice that of what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. . . . In fact, history makes it quite clear that this is not the case. Any number of civilizations have probably been in a position to wreak havoc on the scale that the European powers did in the 16th and 17th centuries, . . . but almost none actually did so.
― David Graeber (in Debt: The First 5,000 Years)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tqlqtnaocssoxvmsxethedjn/bafkreictu2kpcugq6g3tnc6lzy7bqdeg7moq7ynrqtdizracf2u5wv3kbu@jpeg)
August 4, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Immorality often arises from unexamined and deeply flawed assumptions that are held up as "conventional knowledge" (or, worse, as "wisdom"):
I've been tempted to get one of these watches:
July 9, 2025 at 7:49 PM
I've been tempted to get one of these watches:
Boundaries between nations (and among peoples) are convenient fictions, but by making them appear very real, we end up fooling ourselves:
July 1, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Boundaries between nations (and among peoples) are convenient fictions, but by making them appear very real, we end up fooling ourselves:
100% whole grain, 100% sourdough, 100% hydration, and 100% pop. Chuffed with the result.
June 29, 2025 at 2:54 PM
100% whole grain, 100% sourdough, 100% hydration, and 100% pop. Chuffed with the result.
Further down, he also notes this:
![[O]ne thing is inescapable: such work arrangements foster a political landscape rife with hatred and resentment. Those struggling and without work resent the employed. The employed are encouraged to resent the poor and unemployed, who they are constantly told are scroungers and freeloaders. Those trapped in bullshit jobs [jobs that those who hold them consider pointless] resent workers who get to do real productive and beneficial labor, and those who do real productive and beneficial labor, underpaid, degraded, and unappreciated, increasingly resent those who they see as monopolizing those few jobs where one can live well . . . who they refer to as “the liberal elite.” All are united in their loathing of the political class, who they see (correctly) as corrupt, but the political class, in turn, finds these other forms of vacuous hatred as extremely convenient, since they distract attention from themselves.
― David Graeber (in Bullshit Jobs: A Theory)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tqlqtnaocssoxvmsxethedjn/bafkreih4435ghtggg6v2qeljoakh3uewxszki2v434fqnl37hjejxrwtxe@jpeg)
June 25, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Further down, he also notes this:
Missing the late and great David Graeber, who was singularly skilled at thoroughly questioning some of our most strongly held assumptions about who we and what our values are. A modern-day bodhisattva imo.
June 25, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Missing the late and great David Graeber, who was singularly skilled at thoroughly questioning some of our most strongly held assumptions about who we and what our values are. A modern-day bodhisattva imo.
After Chile's democratic government was toppled (with help from the U.S.) in 1973, the country (along with several others) embarked on a political and economic trajectory that's now engulfing (and wreaking havoc in) most other nations:
June 3, 2025 at 3:50 PM
After Chile's democratic government was toppled (with help from the U.S.) in 1973, the country (along with several others) embarked on a political and economic trajectory that's now engulfing (and wreaking havoc in) most other nations:
Rubin Naiman's "Healing Night" is a great introduction to sleep patterns (and how to improve them when needed).
May 26, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Rubin Naiman's "Healing Night" is a great introduction to sleep patterns (and how to improve them when needed).
Humans (and other animals) are not brains in a vat (or "meat machines").
![If perception [of the world] is ... our best guess about the hidden causes of [the brain’s] sensory inputs, then this must apply equally to our perception of the brain. The physical brain, which was supposed to be objective and outside the model [of how we perceive the world], ... now turns out to be the content inside [this] model.... The root of [many] intractable problems [in the study of consciousness] is thinking that we are our brains and that perceiving takes place inside them.... We’re not reducible to our brains.
— Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson (in The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tqlqtnaocssoxvmsxethedjn/bafkreieoast7qgxo3ge44mvx7bcjfohf42dsg6l2ti6w6h2x4stx6dwl2m@jpeg)
May 2, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Humans (and other animals) are not brains in a vat (or "meat machines").
Most of Western culture (including science) is based on an idea that's little more than a (self-serving) hunch:
April 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Most of Western culture (including science) is based on an idea that's little more than a (self-serving) hunch:
![Nagarjuna argues that grasping at the independent existence of things leads to affliction, [giving] rise to a chain of destructive actions, reactions and suffering. [F]or Nagarjuna, the theory of emptiness is not a question of the mere conceptual understanding of reality. It has profound psychological and ethical implications.
— The Dalai Lama (in The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tqlqtnaocssoxvmsxethedjn/bafkreiemppxcpkkstmp5yya2rpneg5uz5rtmqb5m2jvmomylyg27zxdqo4@jpeg)
Yes, wonderful book (and one I've been meaning to re-read for a while now). Goes well with this one:
April 9, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Yes, wonderful book (and one I've been meaning to re-read for a while now). Goes well with this one:
Spiritual materialism raises its ugly head again, but I'm going in.
March 27, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Spiritual materialism raises its ugly head again, but I'm going in.
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 20
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 20
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
December 31, 2024 at 2:29 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 20
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 20
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 19
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 19
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
December 30, 2024 at 2:54 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 19
#booksky
#20bookchallenge
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day 19
#booksky
#20bookchallenge