The grumpy monk

inflation deflation no relation to information

2006-03-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

Now and then one might consider how much there is to know and feebly consider if any omniscient is allow to be invited into our acceptable grasping threshold. Often we can then safely conceptualise agreement, disagreement and tuck it away where we can avoid it for a while. I was chanting something beyond what I accept as determined to be at my disposal to count on as known.

Then all of a sudden there was no boundary that could be rationaly accepted as the line that hasn't been crossed between what is known and unknown by such a feeble person as I. So much has yet to be inferred or intuited that how can one see any limit to what they know any more than they can predict the exact shape of a wave. There are plenty of waves we can imagine and so what if we only feel as though we were familiar enough with that category of plunging water curls to be a wave expert. A child without question could be more appreciative of the full potential of shapes and drifts.

Inflation of what we can draw upon to come awake and aware of doesn't develop from anxiety
deflation into a smaller realm of possibilities certainly makes a human life less effective
just like the waves hold back the static land and give us a boundary of fluidity
may my mind not be limited to what is onshore and offshore, inside or outside understanding
I pray that the right motivation and method come together to clarify what inference is true or false
not being fooled by the false the truth can shine unimpeded and all might be revealed in an eternal instant

seeking

2006-03-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

Lost in a visualisation, almost sleeping, wondering and rationalising this life. I wonder if this is worth blogging and just do it anyway before it slips away into the past forgotton.

The more you say you know me, the less you get it right
I changed before you noticed that I had changed and corrected you memories
You think you bring me closer when you talk about me and my past
Mistaking familiarity for impressions of intensity nobody controlled

Now I explain it is wrong and you don't hear me - preferring your memory
Now I changed everything and you don't see me - waiting for me to revert
I love you but that isn't going to make you happy today unless
the past and present meet and promise the unchanging future

How was I supposed to give the impossible but why do I think you expected it
It was only a hope that turned sour an expectation that went unchecked
Oh no - we never meant to do all the wrong things
It is true we weren't really going to do the right things either

Those right things they just take too much effort
Forgetting what was wrong about how we thought our loved ones were
It just doesn't seem like attachment to that couldn't be love
Perhaps the other was just another part of the world that is ourself

There were others touching our world but they are gone now
we won't see them again, they are past and we wouldn't recognise them now
So even when they are right with us we can't communicate
So even when we open up to them we can't enclose or capture them

Then I left it there feeling freed by the unknowing and relaxed in the uncertainty. Comforted that it all makes perfect sense .... until I wake up tomorrow or read this again one day.

Calloo Callay

In grumpy dreams

2006-02-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

I meet my subconcious with some little more awareness than I had when I was young. I gives me a story, or another part of a series of mind which I don't really follow because I forgot most of the other episodes.

Dreaming about being in a recording studio
and the music was honest, but it was kind of ugly
the music was truth but that made it very sad
Everyone was at least happy because they got to say it
in that less conceptual, but still conceptual language of music

At some point on a bus we showed it to someone important
he said - I can use this, but I think it was mostly because
we had captain beefheart in the band, even though I never saw him
I started off on an artistic statement. Which is half of what being an artist is about

I used to care what people thought
and explain how I ended up choosing this scale or that
now I just don't care and tell them
figure it out for yourself - since this kind of music is ...

... I think I just left my character in the dream to rave on after that because what he said was just going through the motions. The important person seemed impressed with the fact that I didn't care.

I just blogged this because I suppose people seem to enjoy the kind of crazy unchecked mad raving. This is the first blog I wrote first thing in the morning. Just written so that mind will shut up - subconcious mind seems to be the other conversation running more quietly in the background which gets all excited during sleep because there is someone who might care what it has to say.

Snore

Grumpy about Macbook Pro reviews

2006-02-06T17:39:00.000-08:00

Well - this will be somthing of a departure from some of my previous blog entries. The fact is that technomonking relies on a lot of waiting for what I call "The blue bar of boredome".

A couple of years ago I was asking to get a new computer and I wanted some PC laptop with a Dothan - which is the Pentium M that was just released then. Someone I work with had asked me 2 times already - "why don't you get a mac". He asked again and almost immediately I said "ok". I suppose I had gotten as bored with PCs as with Macs and it would help me learn how to sort out more problems the other mac users presented me with if I owned one. It was annoying but exciting changing back - I used to be a real Mac devotee in the 1985 to 1994 period. At some point PCs were just much cooler - even if they did crash.

Macs crash - ask any pro user. Usually it is the software, whereas with PCs it is often hot hardware randomly crashing.

Now the new Macbook is replacing the Powerbook and apple breathing a sigh of relief. The thing is that to design a notebook and decide what are the best chipsets to hold it together they didn't have every choice. This little computer is a powerhouse and they added more but took some things away. So you read other blogs and they are pretty obviously written by mac people who are lets just say "somewhat ignorant". I used these things since the 1k of RAM days - I find this all so amazing that the level of negativity that Apple couldn't make the new computer have everything the same but still be different. It is like the simpsons when they let Homer design a car.

My understanding of ignorance is that we mistake what can be something useful for something that is bad. We lack understanding and wisdom and that leads to think from our small perspective.

I am sure Steve Jobs and his engineers had to fight it out. Here are my terse engineer level points on the changes:
Battery life - The CPU pulls a lot of juice if you run it hard, it relies on different power management to slow it down when it is under used. The new graphics chip can also use a lot of power. In the end if you buy this computer you get more CPU power and less blue bar of boredome, usually you are just emailing or editing text if you are on battery. It is likely that they have a better battery but the computer is thinner so it is going to be tight.

Peripheral connectors - all these components like USB2 and FW400 or FW800 are essentially hard disk connectors - or why would you care about the speed. FW800 only matters if you carry around some super disk array - its just a shame that we get only one connector. I doubt anyone needs FW800 since there are few HD drives that run at more than 166 mbit per sec sustained rate what does anyone need with a FW800 anyway. Just get a cord that adapts to FW800 for your FW400 and use a USB2 for your extra hard disks. Video capture is only 25 mbit you can use a hard disk and capture video by daisy chaining. Someone said he would get a Sata card for the new pci-express

CPU - Ahem - I am buying one just so I can put linux on it - PPC versions of linux are not as complete as the intel versions. There is always something that doesn't work. I will of course use the MacOS too. Virtual PC should be a screamer. It is really a dual CPU but with chip level shared cache which means there is super duper path between the 2 CPUs on the core duo. That means some incredible time saving on various memory transfers. It will work out to be a great platform - have some foresight.

Screen - I lost 60 pixels. Since I find the 15" screen enormous and come from the old school of 8" screens this isn't a big deal. If screen is brighter it means you can sit outdoors - some of the other reviewers seem to have never seen the light of day. That I understand but I did recently try to use my computer in a park and it was difficult to read on full brightness.

iSight video built in - Apple really wants this video conferencing and photo booth to work for all it's users. It is one less thing to hoik around in the bag. Knowing mac users they will find some way to say they can't live without it after complaining about not asking for it in the early days. If of you have seen some of the really small sony portables you notice they have cameras built in - this is a part of the market that Apple are targeting. When you think "me me me" and don't want to change - then you can just miss the fun.

Video outputs - the Svideo was good, but all things change. I mean apple were the first to stop using serial ports and just force us to use USB. There is an adaptor now so just get that adaptor and shut up if you need Svideo.

Macbook Pro DVD burner doesn't do Dual Layer - this is a bummer, but anyway I always use external burners for this anyway to preserve the life on the internal drive. I did start converting to dual layer disks for my carry around the world collection of "stuff on disc" but in the end - it is all about the blue bar of boredome. Less of that. Someone said - hey the thing is thinner and that is why the burner isn't a DL burner. Thats right but I get a feeling that they made it thinner to make it cool better as well as look cooler. There are 2 new high end chips at least (don't forget the other chips for the RAM, PCI express and so forth).

Zen mind - beginners mind. We may be experienced computer users but we can polute a good experience with our experienced mind and everything becomes limited, not good enough, etc. I will be opening my box with the same amount of buzz as if I was a kid and the appreciation of the long list of what this computer can do.

If you have your powerbook and have to wait and wait and I have the macbook and I sit there saying - "hey this is already encoded" and "hey that was fast". A dual processor in a laptop (sorry dual core) who is kidding you - it will be nice.

All I am grumpy about is that it is for sale but not in stock. Grrrr

Yepp

2006-01-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

Demands on my time
the worst to deal are always mine
own thoughts and expectations
seemingly with my best interests

they wear me down through convulations
in different order and sync
I think and think and think
Too thirsty to take a drink because I would have to stop

Yepp

Good thing there is always someone else to draw inspiration from or I would really lose the plot. I draw inspiration mostly from people who would tell you to take it easy and be like them - but they are nowhere. So you look at that and think "perhaps I will continue with my expectations and they will take me forwards".

Unfortunately it is difficult to hate to be bossed around but then do it to yourself. You end up with this bizarre workload that you can't complain about because it is self imposed. So perhaps inspiration should be drawn from people who somehow acheived a lot and didn't drive themselves to an early grave in the process.

Who are those people - they are seem to be the ones in love with their career or lifes work.

I used to do things I loved but they enslaved me and they weren't going anywhere. Now I try to be in love with what I know is good for me and everyone. However in the process there is just a whole lot of stepping stones that are the equivalent of washing the dishes.

So if you want to enjoy those things you must become very patient with a long term goal or they don't have any meaning. Yepp - you have to wash the dishes - or somehow you will have to pay. You will have to worry about the dishes you didn't wash and who did wash them for you. In the end you will not get to the goal and it will all be about the dishes which have nothing to do with what you wanted to do.

It is just a metaphor - there are much worse thing than washing dishes like - looking inwards and not liking what you see.

The emptiness of grump

2005-12-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

I heard someone singing "we are the champions", english wasn't their first language. Being a fan of Queen I slightly cringed as they drifted off to humming and went to them to remind them that the part they didn't get right was "no time for losers cause we are the champions ... of the world".

There has to be a loser for there to be a champion, and I guess if you aren't born a champion then you are born a loser. So these dualistic terms just don't have much real meaning in the long run. You aren't born with either as your clear substance and it is up to someone to tell you after the event that it was your destiny to be a loser or a champion.

Right now I feel like a loser who is about to turn the corner and try to be a champion. Yet it seems like there is another dualistic pair to deal with - does one succeed by ones own efforts alone or is it impossible without the help of others, or both or neither.

This blog is aptly named because grumpiness is as good a word for what drives me to write these logs. So in the same way it is grumpiness with stagnation that drives me down the spiritual path. The ole snake in the tube - just more challenges that I have to make the decision to take on and more chances to use the teachings as help so I can be a champion and realise what a loser I have been before.

We are the losers of the world,
afraid to keep on fighting to the end
We are the losers, we are the losers
Waiting for someone one to make it more easy
so we don't have to travel to the ends ... ... of the world.

That hippy feeling

2005-10-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

I think that growing up in the 70s there was always a great nostalgia for the 60s that pervaded my childhood. I got into various things and wanted to be good at them to reap the benefits I percieved that were there to be reaped. Usually these were difficult things because there aren't usually any benefits to chase after in easy things, apart from the things that keep us alive that we take for granted. So as a musician I wanted to get good, and devote a lot of time. I wanted to join with a community of musos so that when I woke up there was something happening and I could get into it. I was very interested in free playing and free thinking.

That never really worked out as I expected and neither has being a monk at least in the community aspect since this community is still small and getting established. The struggle to make it as a musician is the same struggle to make the most of this life and avoid being powerless in the future. The future of a human life does seem to lead to powerlessness if you strive to control the uncontrollable. That is why things don't happen until you apply your mind to them. The easiest way to do that is to take stock of what you have that you can apapt to the situation.

So the hippies seemed at one point to have a great deal of success working with simple idealism. They only needed love - all else would work out. Then as they reinforced that they got lost in protectng that love and grew up into the socially responsible 70s generation with the abundance of hair to remind them they were not like their parents. So if you can find a nice grassy spot and some love you can approximate that. These days the love is redefined like a bad sci-fi movie. Love hurts, love is pain, love is sex or some misnamed new age love that is a pale shell of the old 60s free love.

Buddhist teachings are less vague - on the surface - love is wanting someone to be happy. That can be you, others and best of all both. Later on everyone learns that things don't work out like that for lack of the wisdom that brings the right choices - otherwise you could just be like a hippy and forget about consequences take your clothes off and run around in the rain. Wisdom can be easily defined too, on the surface, as applying the correct action of mind or body to the appropriate circumstance. Dogma is what we get when try to explain that in practical terms.

How to bring all this together:

Words of the wise are for now
when the wise are gone and we are on our own
bluntly losing the point and haveing a cow
and we are better off to watch the thinking
to avoid sinking deeper into our drone of mental connections

Look at what you have
enjoy it now
otherwise how will you know what to do tomorrow
actions of the wise are beyond comprehension
but it seems to me that we have to stretch
the limits of appreciation of all that is and isn't
so that happiness is our invention
.
What works for me is that the struggle trying to be happy can be happiness. Some say trying to be happy isn't it - but if just being happy is it then we can be happy in the midst of the struggle for happiness. There has to be a struggle because if there isn't how the hell are you supposed to help other people with all their difficult troubles. Surely you can't just say - "oh, it will all work out just be happy". That won't get many happy customers will it now?

La Moine Grincho

Grumpy about Technology indeed

2005-10-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

As most certainly someone who is considered to be a technomonk - living in a dharma centre as a fulltime monk with a mostly fulltime preoccupation with resolving the technology needs of dharma students and teachers - I have thus come to contemplate about many points of confusion.

Is technology science? Certainly not, it is just that scientists surround themselves with technological trappings to facilitate their work.

Does science further the benefit of humankind? It can and does but there isn't a very large amount of science devoted to that pusuit. A lot of research is devoted to the furthering of the application of science on technology and hoping for new science to come as a side effect. Building particle accelerators for example brings forth many tests of theory as a design becomes a reality.

What is there to be grumpy about then, other than technology being more important than science. Well I have noticed while contemplating on an assertion that "fashion fullfils no useful purpose" that a great deal of design and applied science has been used to create disposable technology. As if the human race wants to use up every resource as fast as possible and have nothing left and the only reason we have recycling is because there is already a big enough lack of resources that we need to reuse what we have.

Computer technology people may wish theirs to remain as a huge industry but evenually we have to accept that most of the features we pay for in new computers and software are related to fashion. In schools and educational or spiritual pursuits we use technology to preserve knowledge and aid study. However, there is a natural law in effect that you have to keep updating to the latest format and storage media that is nibbling away at our efforts. This paragraph has really geeked out but the point may interest you that some people out there are designing computers now that can last a long time and lost a very little.

Unless we all start watching 3d video soon computers won't need to get more powerful, we don't have to consume forever and the only technology that will become important will be to make things last longer. We are quite advanced at technology to make things wear out quickly - which is supposed increase wealth. Wealth comes from us all digging more resources out of the ground and eating bad cheap food. The romans made things that really lasted - spreading their civilisation and eventually settling down to a party on lifestyle. They had a lot of gods to keep happy so they could choose to invest their spare time in spiritual pursuits.

Unless people support long life computers and they become available to the masses they may not become affordable enough for non-profit organisations then those organisations will really be wasting resources by subscribing to an unending regime of disposable technology. People who grew up and went to school in the last 30 years tend to label the computer industry our friend their advice to business and humanitarian groups is essentially the same.

This brings the consequence of making it more difficult for people to drop the working life and devote more time to study, reflection and meditation. That is because spritual centres will become like mini-empires who have more interest in keeping leaving their students out there generating income. Everything is so costly that they aren't able to help people leave that type of existence so easily. They aren't really creating a future where like the indian philosophers many began noticing their way of thinking and acting. Thinking and acting creating karma for more of the same behaviour became visible bars which those philosophers attended to the development of the ways of breaking through - using thought experiments. If those bars are more invisible when we are too busy with maintaing our world we have to keep checking why were making all this in the first place.

I hope that one day my computer says - "hey, grumpy - go and meditate, I can handle things here for a while". That won't happen until I escape the cycle of installing, updating, replacing, purchasing and watching everything breakdown around me like a juggler watching the next ball return from it's apex of flight and travel back to either a dead stop or a hand that sets it back into motion.

The game

2005-10-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

It isn't nice when people who are idealistically caught up in their work come to the table to discuss work with those who play it all as a game. Not fair for the idealistic - those who thought they were in an idealistic group and found that it was more secular and businesslike.

Is business war - idealistically perhaps, for others it is just a game. Is the business of seeking enlightenment a war against the disturbing emotions and habitual patterns that reify our automatically renewed round trip from here to nowhere. Or is that just the face of samsara playing forth it's game to torment the truth seeker.

Perhaps it isn't so fair for those people trying to irk out an existence surrounded by the idealistic who feel that all should be offered and who assume that the cost of living is a matter of the merit you accumulated in previous lives. Not that merit doesn't play it's part but, as usual, motivation and understanding play some part in how one defines what is their reasonable cost of living and consequent lifestyle. To know about where we are on the trip to the end of travel means that we don't choose to set ourselves up for failure.

How does this relate back to the grumpy monk - who cares really. His cost of existence is just question of charity and free time to make web log entries. Main thing to ponder is this ... if wanting more or less affects the how much there seems to be then ... is it a game or is it a war or neither or both?

I think the aim of the game is to lose because you can cheat next time,

c^{h^{e^at}-}d_{e_{a_th}-}e^{^{v^en}}

Comment request: Title of next entry should be "Grumpy about Self Deprecation" or "Self Deprecation - from a multicultural point of view"?

xyeah

Grumpy about Shunyata

2005-10-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

So for those who haven't heard: the nature of things is shunyata, we can't really define that too narrowly. Although people who have directly percieved it (the jimi shunyata experience) do give some approximations which are like a finger pointing at something that is too big for any concept to encompass.

Translators I know all seem sorely vexxxxed about which word in english to use to translate Shunyata. They go through phases but the working translation is "emptiness - this is a bad translation" because to just say emptiness is to invite some kind of test from a dharma heckler who sits at the back making up new ways to not understand.

I am sorely vexed that I can't transcend grumpy and have this enlightened quality of vexedness. Perhaps being enlightend means nothing is wrong with being vexed because no matter what you say there are just people out there who aren't ready to take on board emptiness and instantly prostrate and take refuge in the truth. Too bad that taking refuge in the false is like crawling into a wet cardboard box to avoid the oncoming tempest of your life now and after. So why shouldn't I be grumpy - it is either that or some other manifestation of sadness at our collective sentient plight.

Can anyone tell me if the word sentient implies that something non-sentient can be, since sentient ones are able to be (being).

Mangle um

The grumpy monk on contentedness

2005-10-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

I have a small room and someone asked how I can put up with that. I just blurted out something like 'we have to make the most of whatever it is'.

I pondered that and it seems to be very, very true. Contentedness isn't looking for a reason to get upset. To never stop making an excuse to get more stuff and fill up your limited stuff-space so you can complain that it isn't big enough.

While I rant on I would take it further to say - if you can get rid of stuff you can also drop concepts. Stuff you like in the bin is like concepts that seem nice and logical that you drop anyway due to their inevitable limitations. Concepts you only stuck with because they were at least more acceptable when someone asks you think.

Still, you wake up and trip over the stuff you put in the small walking space in your small room and another day of grumpiness begins.

Life is short patience even shorter

2005-10-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

In this world of overengineered designed entropy, where food makes our lives shorter so we go to the hospital and chemist for relief it always nice create yet another blog that is just full of ridiculous complaints. So I did - may this blog have more than one entry like my last one did.

I hope to be like the arch-nemisis yet avid supporter of my vajra brother over at Lotsawa World. His is the life that many would aspire to - knowledge, wisdom and harsh cynicism. May his world explode into the light of simple and digestible dharma teachings for the grumpy monk and his colleagues.

Trashi Delek