Tuesday, August 3, 2010

How Do You Know?

HOW DO YOU KNOW?

How do you know
that this is not
the paradise
foretold us
by Mohammed?
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

6 comments:

kcb said...

Oh dunno try this maybe..
http://tinyurl.com/24l4rae

August 6, 2010 at 9:54 AM
nick herbert said...

My Slovak forebears worked in the coalfields of SE Ohio, my paternal grandfather killed in a mine explosion st Black Diamond, OH. But these are other people, not you. What fare has the Great Goddess served out personally to you, kcb?

August 6, 2010 at 2:28 PM
kcb said...

I am questioning your Panglossian claim that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds".

As you have, I to have immigrant forebears that learned the joys and sorrows of Anthracite in the mines of western Pennsylvania.
But you are correct they are not me[ or you].

As to your question "What has the Great Goddess served me personally?". To quote Dickens "It was the best of times it was the worst of times".I temper my personal accomplishment and satisfaction with the knowledge learned, from such sources as traveling the world, personal molecular exploration and reading yours and others excellent books,
that we are all "non-local".

Therefore asserting that things are great for me and ignoring others seems incomplete.

One could take the position that it is due to my narrow conditioned awareness that I don't experience the sheer joy of existence.
Or that I am just stuck on the First Noble Truth.

But these seem rather Solipsistic .

I take the "entangled" view that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did to me"

Or perhaps I am just jealous, no longer living in NoCal and not being able to pop down down to Esalen anymore.

August 9, 2010 at 3:49 AM
nick herbert said...

Panglossian for sure, good critic. Thanks for your sobering thoughts. So perhaps this is only the "best possible world" consistent with the initial constraints. And to your solipsism critique, perhaps we reincarnate not serially but live every life possible, so (in timelessness) I will be you as well as the rat my cat is noisily killing.

Consider this, O sultan kcb: You possess 100 trillion servants (your cells) that do your bidding. For your sake billions of beautiful species have perished; To produce you, your chain of ancestors has survived wars, starvings, purposeful annihilations. And more recently, against odds of billions to one, you won the crucial sperm/egg lottery that doomed a trillion other possible yous to utter nothingness. In light of this Incredible Good Fortune most humans no matter what their circumstances seem most ungrateful.

I know the prey's side too: "While we live we feed on food and when we die, food feeds on us." A good way to run a world, maybe the best.

Not forgetting that rat in my cat's grip, I'm ready to take my turn. When my powers falter I hope to flee as Joyful Prey before the great Eater of All.

Salaam, my friend.

August 9, 2010 at 10:52 AM
Nano said...

Damn the "ism!"

August 13, 2010 at 1:00 PM
nick herbert said...

Responding to the picture, a fan sent me Brandais scholar Mary Campbell's poem "The Loneliness of Men Bathing" which I have posted at http://tiny.cc/MANBATH

August 16, 2010 at 12:49 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)