Source: instagram.com
[““Everything has mind in the lead, has mind in the forefront, is made by the mind.” Thus opens the Dhammapada, the Buddha’s timeless collection of sayings. Put another way, the world we believe in becomes the world we live in.
If I see the world as a hostile place where only winners thrive, I may well become aggressive, selfish, and grandiose to survive in such a milieu. Later in life I will gravitate to competitive environments and endeavors that can only confirm that view and reinforce its validity. Our beliefs are not only self-fulfilling; they are world-building.
Here’s what the Buddha left out, if I may be so bold: before the mind can create the world, the world creates our minds. Trauma, especially severe trauma, imposes a worldview tinged with pain, fear, and suspicion: a lens that both distorts and determines our view of how things are. Or it may, through the sheer force of denial, engender a naively rosy perspective that blinds us to real and present dangers—a veneer concealing fears we dare not acknowledge. One may also come to dismiss painful realities by habitually lying to oneself and others.”]
gabor maté, from the myth of normal: trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture, 2022
In the remote Buddhist monastery of Haeinsa is preserved the Tripitaka Koreana, the most complete corpus of Buddhist doctrinal texts in the world, dating from 1251.
Source: shi-saa
how to meld all ur identities into one n not be afraid to exist as a contradiction
everyone always asks wheres ganondorf, and how to defeat ganondorf, but no one ever asks hows ganondorf :(
"Asking 'Who is the villain?' is the prologue to asking who should be punished. But asking 'What are the conditions that led to this?' leads us to consider how to change those conditions so that the situation is less likely to happen again.
Reframing things in this way is a type of analysis known as dependent origination. Though this term has far-reaching and often abstract implications in Buddhist thought, it simply means that everything arises on the basis of multiple factors, and if we want to discourage something from happening again we have to address the factors underlying it. If our goal is to judge and punish, we will need to determine guilt, which becomes more difficult as we consider more causes. But if our goal is to gain a better understanding, then the fact that there are many factors is not a problem."
- Matthew Gindin, from "The Red Hat Rorschach Test." Tricycle, 30 January 2019.
"The processes of nature can… be properly described as sequences of mere events, but those of history cannot. They are not processes of mere events but processes of actions, which have an inner side, consisting of processes of thought; and what the historian is looking for is these processes of thought. All history is the history of thought."
- R.G. Collingwood, from The Idea of History, 1994.
Last night I had dinner and talked and signed books for a room filled with children's librarians from all of the schools in this New York county. I was thrilled to be there, because I knew how important these people were, that for the kids in their schools they are the people who open the gates to knowledge, to adventure, to escape, and into other minds and worlds. And they do it, as most librarians have to do it, on a shoestring budget.
New York City has a proud, an iconic history of libraries, librarians, and of caring for the minds of the people in the largest city in the world. An investment in a library is an investment in the future. Cutting libraries, cutting librarians, leads to the same place that those who would ban books and ideas would like to take us: to a wasteland of AI book summaries, to a place where knowledge is not valued, where truth is a casualty, where the imagination is stifled and crushed.
I hope the NYCMayor and the NYCCouncil can be persuaded to invest in the future and to protect and build on and invest in our libraries. They matter. #NoCutsToLibraries.
You can find more about this and more images to share at https://investinlibraries.org/dayofaction)
Today (6/15) is a virtual day of action against the proposed budget cuts! The libraries are asking everyone to post online with the hashtag #nocutstolibraries and to tag the mayor (@NYCMayor) and city council (@NYCCouncil). Sample graphics and posts can be found at the invest in libraries link above.
(Thanks for the support, Neil!)
To add further details, the proposed budget cuts $36.2 million from the public library budget in NYC. This would mean having to cut back on operating hours (including ending weekend service in many cases), cutting programs, cancelling planned (and much-needed) renovations to buildings, and potential staff layoffs. As it stands, NYC public libraries are already woefully underfunded—to make further cuts is not only harmful, it’s entirely unnecessary.
elusiveblogueuse
this video does more in 10 seconds than your fave’s entire filmography
For everyone who’s confused
I feel like im watching a wedding ceremony from a country i didnt know existed. Like, I have no idea how all this stuff is important but good for you?????
This is hella interesting.
btw she gave him a single which can be made in a matter of minute depending on pattern and size but he gave her a giant cuff which can take hours or even more than a day to complete based on just how complex the design and materials are. she wanted to trade something small and simple and he gave her a massive token of his love and respect for her as a fellow raver (and possibly his junior in the scene)
"There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity -- the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, 'Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.' When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, 'You're a man now.' So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it. Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can't be a man unless he'd gone to war. But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)
"you're not man enough, not feminine enough"
so gender is something we can fail?
that means gender is not genetic and absolute and unchangeable
but something we can build and perform, and fail at (the standards they set) but also redefine?
if i can fail at being a woman, does that mean i'm not a woman? so does that make me another gender?
i agonized for 15 minutes about the wording of my post and you manage to simplify it with a perfect mean girls reference
we forgot to teach your boyfriend media literacy and he completely misunderstood all the themes and narratives. yeah the underlying message too. he got tricked into believing in-universe propaganda and is writing a longpost about it now sorry
“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
