Laughing Giants

Once upon a time, when I was young, (around 1977) Stephen R. Donalson wrote a fantasy series called the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.  It's a fairly traditional sword-and-sorcery person-from-here-gets-snatched-into-another-world-to-be-refined-in-the-cauldron-of-its-need-and-become-its-savior.  Thomas was a crotchety old fuck and the first anti-hero I had ever read about.

Lord Foul was the bad guy.

After long and convoluted runnings here and there, Thomas faces him with his new friends, the Giants at his back.  These Giants are pretty much Ents made of rock. Old, wise, loving, Yoda-esque.  And, rather than wait for Thomas to become a new person and all of a sudden have insights he hasn't had before, the Giants save teh day.

And they defeat Foul by laughing at him.  They see the absurdity of his plotting ans scheming and striving for world domination and they belly laugh.  One of them has died chasing around in this dumbass quest, but they still see through to laughter.

There is nothing else in all those books (and Donalson wrote two 5-book series about Thomas, if I recall correctly.) that is worth remembering.  But THAT was perfect.

As if we could choose.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
  - Kurt Vonnegut

Presbyterian

Advaita kinda takes the idea of "predestination" to a whole other level, doesn't it?

LMFAO!

Neverwhere

p. 206, The Abbot of the Black Friars.   "So, the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding."

I think that if I was going to believe in sin, I'd believe this.

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p. 277, Richard Mayhew:  "He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him."

Meat!!

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

Sacred Cows

Chop wood. Carry water.

I keep thinking of Jed playing that Laura Croft game. It's all just entertainment. Pick your flavor.

At the end of the book, Sandman Slim and his friend are standing outside a strip mall, having a smoke, and a pizza delivery guy comes out to load up and head out. The story comments that the pizza guy is clueless that he has everything he needs, a car and all the pizza he can eat.

Exactly!

Thought on silence

Inspired by this post.

I was raised Episcopalian and for a while was Quaker.  (There's no telling where your feet will take you.)  Learning to sit in silence in Quaker Meeting was an adventure.  Finding a place inside my head what wasn't afraid of the silence and where that silence was/is restful was an amazing thing.

I think that silence is a learned skill. We are taught from childhood that "reticence/quiet/self-sufficiency" is antisocial and that isn't acceptable.  This is a thing that has to be unlearned.  (Well, it doesn't HAVE To be, but if you want comfort with silence it's gonna have to happen.)

When we are born, we have no idea of "other" and then there that which makes our body happy.  Fed, dry, warm, whatever.  And in order to live in that place of Other, we learn the ways of "the world", turning away from what is innate and toward what is learned.

Wearing the body means we have to learn to tend to it and that gets very, very complicated.  And is a VERY strong habit.

Ground Hog Day Buddhism

Thanks to Linda Martinez, yogini.

Groundhog Day Buddhism