DAILY PHOTO: Zambezi River Afternoon
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PROMPT: Any Philosopher
Daily writing prompt
If you could have dinner with any philosopher, who would it be?
Diogenes the Cynic would be a hoot. Alternatively, Zhuangzi (莊子.) Obviously, my tastes run toward a philosopher that could teach me about how to be free, rather than to teach me some sort of rigorous approach to thinking. I’m stocked up on the latter, but in deficit of the former.
(I’m assuming this to be a “living or dead” question scenario. Usually, I prefer to talk to the living, but I don’t think modern academia has been good to the crazy sage philosopher. I might be able to find a Daoist hermit in a cave somewhere or maybe a Tibetan Nyönpa, but I couldn’t say what his or her name would be.)
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Radio Fan Limerick
A radio fan from Vienna
got no reception with his antenna --
except when wired
to the church spire.
Piety left him on the horns of dilemma.
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Windsurfer Limerick
Some hardcore fanatic windsurfers
found sunny days couldn't match their fervor.
They got it on the brain
to ride a hurricane,
and rode the wind from Jamaica to Port Arthur.
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Safari Guide Limerick
There was a cocky safari guide
who - of lions - was often quite snide.
He frequently stated
they were overrated,
but his view was different from inside.
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DAILY PHOTO: Angry Adolescent Tusker
PROMPT: Fear and Self-Doubt
Feel it but don’t feed it. I feel whatever emotional sensation it brings with my whole attention, but don’t ruminate — i.e. don’t let the mind go into worst-case scenario building or pity partying or self-criticism. Use the sensation as an anchor for one’s awareness. This honors the source of consternation while recognizing that one’s mental (/ emotional) experience of an event is not the event, itself — i.e. that one has influence over one’s experience even when one has zero influence over the event. Gain confidence with the small emotional experiences and work toward the big ones.
This was the great gift I received in being taught sakshi bhava, the yogic practice of dispassionate witnessing.
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Felonious Fig [Free Verse]
I thought I caught a fig tree,
escaping over a stone wall,
but when I turned my attention
upon it, it stayed so very still.
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DAILY PHOTO: Baphuon Ruins at Angkor
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PROMPT: Question Reality
I have them all the time. When I was actively working on lucid dreaming / dream yoga, I was particularly attuned to them (as the practice necessitates.) The most common instance is when one sees something in one’s environs that one has never noticed before. It would happen all the time when I was living in Bangalore because it was such a visually chaotic and rapidly changing place that I could walk down a street ten times and not notice an unusual sign or building facade, and then — POW! — the moment I saw it I was in utter disbelief that it could have been their all the time.
I haven’t discounted (nor accepted) the simulation hypothesis, and I suspect whatever the world is, it’s not precisely any of the things we’ve thought it to be.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 