When you eliminate all thoughts about life and death, you will be able to totally disregard your earthly life.
(Continued in "Comments".)
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About Me
- Catherine Moody
- Maemi (200, 8, 145), South Continent
- I am a fictional character in Second Life. I was born into this world on December 24, 2006, on a little hill on Orientation Island. I had been wandering in search of a home and the rest of the Moody family. By good fortune I met artist and music lover Tyrol Rimbaud and her friend Pat, who took me in and helped me begin a career as a live musician. Now I'm also good friends with FD Spark of the Brotherhood of Twisted Prim, Mykyl Nordwind of Faeria Village, and many others. Life is sweet!
10 comments:
This will also enable you to concentrate your attention on eradicating the enemy with unwavering determination, meanwhile reinforcing your excellence in flight skills.
(A paragraph from the kamikaze pilots' manual.) - Wikipedia
When I read the post, I immediately thought of my poem "Shedding the Robes", but then I read the comment and realized that it's an oxymoron - if you eliminate all thoughts of life and death, how can you concentrate on eradicating the enemy?
And then I saw it, the difference between this thought and mine is that I simply think that we should only think of life - death does not exist, only a change of form.
Oh?
This post was meant to deliver a shock, revealed upon reading the comment. I was trying to show that the first sentence, which sounds like calm, spiritual, transcendental, Eastern philosophy, was actually part of wartime rhetoric.
Mykyl, eliminating all thoughts of life and death DOES help you to concentrate on eradicating the enemy.
Our ability to show mercy, by withholding a killing blow, comes from the realization that we would be taking a life. When you eliminate thoughts of life and death you reduce living things to objects that can be deleted with no remorse. I think military commanders (and often politicians) think in those terms, of strategy, of tactics, of playing with pawns---it is necessary for them to do so, in order to carry out their task effectively. It simply becomes a "giant game of Risk".
You're right - I'm looking at this from a pesonal perspective and interpretation (or lack therof), and I see exactly what you are saying - I also see now that "Shedding the Robes of Self" could be interpreted very wrong and lead to much harm. The same basic thought in the original post can be interpreted to very good or very bad effect depending on what those words are followed by.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
You hear that quoted often as if it were a statement of humility, an admission of fault.
But, in fact, the full quote is:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
In fact, it's about refusing to accept submission. Not orthogonal to the usual interpretation, but with a very different emphasis and thrust.
Your one/two reminded me of that.
-Rob Knop (aka Prospero Frobozz)
I like Mykyl's "Shedding the Robes". I agree very much with its message; "ego" and "self" are the reason for many of the worlds' woes.
It's good to have discussions like this to try and bring our subconscious thoughts to the surface. Now I realize I get an uneasy feeling from the philosophy that "reality is an illusion". One one hand, I agree with that statement---it even seems to be scientifically sound to me. On the other hand, it could be used an excuse to go around breaking laws and killing people, because "it's all just an illusion". And about dropping the notion of "self": does relinquishing control exempt ourselves from responsibility for our actions? ([rl] Say I have dedicated my life to charity work and I am driving around one day doing that, and I cause a fatal accident. The blame still lies on my self.)
I suppose the lesson is that all philosophies and religions can be dangerous in the hands of uninformed, or sinister, interpreters. Heeheehee, that reminds me of my "Twisted Sister" title!
I haven't commented because I come from a Buddhist tradition that the key lay organization members were having major issues with the Japanese system of war especially the Kamazi pilots that destroy thousands of lives and was cause of Hiroshemea and the use of Nuclear war. All I can say there been many times suffering has lead me to dark place of ignorance, arrogance, with fixation on things like death. I have struggled hard to understand value of death and life. In my studies it comes back to understand the value of life, we must understand death and how rare, precious life is. Life all life, even the live of those we see as enemies has value. Often there are stories within sutras of very evil beings changing there ways and become enlighten and work for good. In my tradition all can achieve enlightenment and become Buddhas including those who are evil and are women by simply chanting "NAM MYHO RENGE KYO" If you want I have beautiful sutra in english that is so beautiful and poetic that says how valueable life is. Death is valueable too because if we didn't have it we wouldn't ever experience loss and learn value of appreciating those we do have in our here and now moments in lives. The teaching based on the Kamazi was used as way to control and remove the value of indivual life to surrender and justify war and killing and dehumanizing human beings. Catherine do you want to support those believes? I hope not
FD, of course not. This post was intended to be ironical---comments 3 and 4 explain it.
Oops I am sorry Catherine you know I missed that. Having also major reading lag too:)
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