Hello,
I go by Plaimaka. I'm an artist from the Seattle area, and this is just another medium through which I can express myself. You can check my music @ plaimaka.bandcamp.com or just enjoy the blog. :)
"If, then, after understanding, at least in theory, that the ego-trick is a hoax and that, beneath everything, “I” and “universe” are one, you ask, “So what? What is the next step, the practical application?”- I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give- to the cause of peace or of racial integration, to starving Hindus and Chinese, or even to your closest friends. Without this, all social concern will be muddlesome meddling, and all work for the future will be planned disaster."
"For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatsoever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say “Now, I’ve arrived!” Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now."
"…Life itself is a gambling game…But to take the gamble out of the game, to try to make winning a dead certainty , is to achieve a certainty which is indeed dead."
"The question is then whether technical progress actually “gets anywhere” in the sense of increasing the delight and happiness of life. There is certainly a sense of exhilaration or relief at the moment of change-at the first few uses of telephone , radio, television, jet air craft, miracle drug, or calculating machine. But all too soon these new contrivances are taken for granted, and we find ourselves oppressed with the new predicaments which they bring with them."
"The trend of all this is towards the end of individual privacy, to an extent where it may even be impossible to conceal one’s thoughts. At the end of the line, no one is left with a mind of his own: there is just a vast and complex community-mind, endowed, perhaps, with such fantastic powers of control and prediction that it will already know its own future for years and years to come."
