BUDDHISM : THE IMPORTANCE CULTURALLY TODAY
The Exponential RepetitionsIts the speed of the repetitions which is so exponential at present, ... and this includes exploiting our environment to population explosion ... that the prime truths of Buddhism are significant today, and more essential to understand correctly, than they ever were.
Broadband sensing seems to me to be the BASIC cure for what's happening culturally in the world today. Chapter 2 discusses the basic ideas.
You will need to read Chapter 2 and the previous Buddhist pages - before you understand the following ... so,
Please go back to Chapter 2
Please go back to The Prime Truths of Buddhism
The following section is a development of the previous essays - it is in note form - written as ideas occur - it is not in a finished form - it may be hard to read -
From Buddhism and Wheels "The origin of Dukkha is the ever increasing complexity, and conflicting directions between all the different types of repetition."
The cultural and an individual persons time line are obviously very different. For the first years of a healthy innocent child's life, the repetitions increase the Sukkha, the wheel gets broken in and life is fun. Over time, people and wheels (and cultures) meet bumps on the road, develop tensions, weaknesses, have traumas. This can happen at any time in life, and is only very loosely related to actual age, but generally as the wheels get older and used, tensions and weaknesses show, and they get Dukkha. ... And it's as though our culture reached adulthood, but not maturity, around the 1600s - 1900s. - by which i mean all the conflicting repetitious wants. (The tensions and intentions.)
So, individuals have to contain themselves, repress feelings, and just get on with work and children, but it seems our cuture is unable to contain all the different things it wants, ... unable to be a responsible adult.
This life form - 'our culture' - in it's confusion, it is desperate for answers, ways to go, things to believe in, needing strong solid focus points ... leading to the polarised attitudes of extreme right and left opinions ... the conspiracy theories and lies which it seems some people are happy to identify with ... feel confirmed by ... because it expresses their feelings of being unfairly treated or ignored ... an exaggerated mental image, to compensate for the inner feeling of unfulfillment ...
This new life form needs the skills and talents of a group to track it and tame it. And like any precious life form - we don't want to kill it, or hurt it, it needs coaxing with fascinating tricks and all our cunning.
This life form - 'our culture' - ironically tries to find answers without ever going on the lookout. Just always focusing.
Broadbanding neutralises the active fosussing energy. - it balances it - and consequently the repetitions devolve -, and also the fragmentation - the separating, dividing effects which focusing has - (focusing is always selective and this always limits awareness of all the other things which are happening.) .. broadbanding neutralises the fragmentation.
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The "social media lies" are always exaggerated ideals which 'secure' our desire - things we can devote ourselves to - believe in - know we can entrust ourselves to - (know we can love?). I notice this immediately from my own sexual fantasy - exaggerated ideas make ideal focal points - they satisfy our need for direction and sense of purpose.
And as an individual, to break an obsessive thought - a repetitive want - i have to go broadband for a minute.
Going broadband is not like just doing something else, in order to take my mind off it -, that also works, and it's a clever use of the focusing system. It's a diversion technique. But it's still reinforcing the subject focusing on an object system. It's still reinforcing the repetitions.
Broadband sensing is another way of relating with and being aware of the world and me. It has nothing to do with the otherwise basic necessity of having focal points to relate to, in order to know why we exist.
Another Idea
Self-reproduction may be part of a broader meaning in the idea of rebith which is relevant to present population increase ... let me be clear : our desire to produce an image of ourselves in our children - is a form of self-perpetuating repetition.... added to a million years of child deaths, repressed in our cultural memory - this was sure to become an explosive situation! ...
I often hear parents, saying their children are all they are really going to leave behind - theyre the only real things we've really got - thats the magic of children - they've got us in them ... what does this all mean?
Money and Popuation
For some readers the connection between population and big money might not be clear, (and better explanations will follow). Let's imagine there was suddenly half as many people in the world. There would be half as many farmers, small traders, and eaters, so they all wouldn't be affected much. But the big corporations, the supermarkets and car dealers and internet traders, would make half as much money, so rich people and merchants have a vested interest in increased population, but that's not so spectacular.
But with so many empty houses, the housing market would collapse. In 1970 every month i paid 15 pounds for food and 8 for rent. Now i pay 150 for food and 500 for rent. The cost of buildings is a driving force in inflation. Landlords would lose enormously and exponentially.
The increased population was previously desired by rulers for power and wars etc.- when was the change? ... Was it to do with when 'interest on money lent' became the central cause of inflation? When shares and modern banking started .. in the 1800s?
Inflation is a product of greed - possessing (things which are) focal points ...
It must all hang together somehow, since the time when leaders were the ones who gave the most to their tribe ... till now, when it seems to me that the people with the big money are the actual rulers (financing their political agenda etc) ...
And the cunning use of media experts to manipulate voters can be equated with the cunning needed by Native American tribes, whose initiation rites these days no longer involve killing animals (they're too precious) but stalking them and pulling hairs or feathers from their tails ... and i wish i was more cunning - but i feel i need the skills and talents of a tribe, to track this modern human animal ... and find out exactly where it is now, where it's going, and then how to win it's trust and tame it.
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