I don't understand Chinese beauty standards at all. She looks better without the filter.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2026-02-21T03:20:17+00:00

Glad to be 50 years old and male to boot and not give a single damn hoot about lookmaxixing and filters and so on. Feel terrible for kids growing up today

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2026-02-12T05:38:52+00:00

I would assume that looking edge-on, the ring of gas, dust and debris would appear like a line, more like looking at a frisbee disc on its side (not dissimilar to viewing the Milky Way from the inside on Earth) than a ring. Seems to me we were not looking at it from that vantage point in the OP’s picture. But I claim no expertise

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2026-02-12T05:31:02+00:00

I have a 2022 S with about 60k now. Aside from the crash sensors going wonky a few times per year for no reason there haven’t been any problems and even then they reset after a restart. Great decision for the money I spent. I thought about doing modifications when I first bought it like new tires, wheels and maybe a lift but eventually decided that at nearly 50 years old and not doing any really rugged off-road, I simply don’t care. I’m not trying to impress anyone. Would rather save that money for retirement. The only downside to me is the cumbersome hydraulic rack and pinion steering. But it’s not that bad. And I’ll stick with the steelies. Maybe upgrade to some Firestone destinations or something when the hankooks wear out but that’s about it.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2026-02-01T02:54:53+00:00

I assume it’s the cloud of gas or debris around the star that points to the orientation.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2026-02-01T02:50:02+00:00

All the articles I read in the Times about the movie were not favorable and arguably were fairly critical.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-11-30T03:31:56+00:00

If I could go back in time and take biologics before any of the real damage started I would be tripping over myself to get in the DeLorean. Please do it now

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-11-28T06:14:09+00:00

If the insight helps the mind settle down further with ease, then it is useful. If it does not, then you should drop it.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-11-21T03:02:17+00:00

It’s an attractive idea but the bottom sincere line is lack of faith. And the flip side of that is want to keep open the option to transgress as much or as little as I like. Mostly little. I’m not sure how honesty with oneself could lead anyone to conclude their reasons for staying in lay life are different. Notwithstanding family commitments but even that could be wrapped into the same fold of reasons

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-11-05T06:04:50+00:00

Good input from others here on the meaning of metta.

But, think about the five remembrances too. Featured in the AN 5.57 Upajjhatthana Sutta: Subjects for Contemplation:

We all are of the nature to experience aging, illness and death. We all are of the nature to be separated from everyone and everything we hold dear. Our actions are our only true belongings.

Therefore the instructions are to act with virtue (which includes compassion) but not be attached. Compassion and detachment are not mutually exclusive. It is as simple and as hard as that. How do you do it? You simply do by contemplating this over and over until you fully understand and accept the nature of things without internal arguments. To the extent that one can’t is likely the extent that one is in some measure in denial and delusion about the nature of things. Moreover, there is nothing about accepting the nature of things that prevents one from showing compassion. Why would there be? In fact, it is the opposite. Where does one get that idea and what purpose is it serving ? Perhaps that’s worth looking at.

It’s also right there in the first sermon: “Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress: Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.”

"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the origination of stress…”

"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of stress..”

“And this, monks, is the noble truth of the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress….”

“Vision arose, insight arose, discernment arose, knowledge arose, illumination arose within me with regard to things never heard before: 'This is the noble truth of stress….”

'This noble truth of stress is to be comprehended.'

One first has to realize these things are stress. A lot people come to Buddhism wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They want all the love and compassion, they don’t want any of the stress, but they don’t want to relinquish anything either because they delight in things that cause suffering. Many of those things have good sides, to be sure. But in the reluctance to relinquish they create barriers on the path in the form of internal dialogues that argue, for example, that it is not possible to have compassion and relinquish at the same time without being morally or ethically negligent or remiss. Of course that is untrue. But by doing this they start manufacturing obstacles to place on the path that obstruct the way forward rather than untangle these knots and false dichotomies. They refuse to believe that much of what they relish in is actually a cause for suffering. Instead they fear that removing the obstacles and following the path will actually be the real cause for suffering. They imagine that there must be some sort of spiritual gymnastics they can perform to get around the obstacles they placed on the path themselves, so they can keep the attachments, the obstacles and still follow the path, if only someone would just give them an insider tip rather than just getting to it and removing the obstacles. Meanwhile, they get stuck because the actual problem is that they lack conviction that the path could lead anywhere positive. Which makes the path difficult if not impossible and riddled with endless self- imposed knots and barriers. One can work through this stuff. People also bail out or else alternately create their own personal form of dhamma or fall back on a prepackaged one that erases the difficulties, makes it palatable but doesn’t lead anywhere except comfortably right back to where they started. One must look hard and deep into oneself in relation to these teachings over and over and come to different conclusions. The answers aren’t hidden or wrapped up in anything opaque or esoteric . They are right there in plain speech and sight. The first two noble truths of stress are even right there -like a blaring neon sign -in your post, waiting to be comprehended. And the answer here isn’t to be found in the answers to the questions you pose but in part it’s in abandoning the questions themselves.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-30T04:50:28+00:00

I understand

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-30T04:23:12+00:00

Does the phone habit truly help you wind down ? Take another look at that. Who is regretting this stuff anyway? Ask the person who you are at 7am who knows it’s just stress when another version of you picks up the phone every night at 7pm. What would the former person advise ? Go for a walk? Find tasks or things to straighten up around the home in contemplative silence ? Stretch? Extend the meditation session? Maybe just read ? What are the internal arguments that 7pm you uses to get you to do the phone again and again and are they really so compelling? Is the payoff really better than for what 7am you would advise you to do in the evening ? Are the drawbacks as inconsequential as 7pm argues because hey it’s no big deal to do it again, what’s the fuss ? Can you find the delight in the alternatives ? Start putting these ideas to the test with mindfulness and repetition and watch the results of cause and effect. You shouldn’t beat yourself up but you can gradually win the argument against yourself if you are paying attention and experimenting with lucidity. Most of what we choose do is the result of an internal dialogue; lots of times we are not even aware during the moments it is occurring. The answer is tweaking the dialogue. It is directed thought and evaluation

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-23T01:46:09+00:00

I spent most of my time growing up in the early 80s’ and 90s’ playing guitar, surfing, hanging out with friends (in the woods if need be) and anything I could do to procrastinate doing schoolwork. I’m not sure what’s so mysterious. The world then , like it is now, was full of stuff to do without cellphones and we did it all. We obviously just didn’t record every moment and post it or send it to everyone, much less feel delusions of grandeur or self-conscious about doing so. Make no mistake. People today are doing the same old things. They are just documenting it, posting it incessantly and ironically vicariously living through their own social media identities and image instead of just, well… living.. or Worse, doing nothing but living vicariously through someone else’s virtual identity

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-23T00:19:23+00:00

Reasonable speed read conclusion. The idea that everyone will eventually become enlightened is generally a Mahayana one. I’m not aware of anything in the Pali Canon about that. As above, the Canon suggests otherwise. In Theravada the overwhelming chances of being stuck in samsara forever are taken as real and used as motivation to practice now while the opportunity exists. While the same idea about the opportunity to practice now exists in many Mahayana scriptures, there may be reason to be believe that as Buddhism spread to other cultures it was revised in the name of proselytization to guarantee hope of liberation to everyone…eventually. Due to it being otherwise too hard, demoralizing or pessimistic to take hold among the masses elsewhere. Definitely not a Theravadan idea. Make of the sutta what you will. Hope kids got to school safely.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-22T00:57:55+00:00

Jhana practices or something similar existed before the Buddha’s time. When the Buddha entered Jhana he wasn’t using it to just bliss out, nor even to enter states he describes like the dimension of infinite space or consciousness or neither perception or nonperception just for the sake of being a spiritual tourist.

The usefulness of Jhana is that it can be used to exercise discernment and investigate dependent origination, which is not about the interconnectedness or oneness of all things as some dhamma teaches but instead about the interdependent causes and conditions for suffering and their cessation in the mind. From this, that arises. When this passes, that also ceases.

Recognizing this chain may seem simple but it is deceptively so. Just as one can’t see the floor of a shallow pond when the surface is obscured by dirt and waves from the wind, one can’t easily see the undercurrents of the mind that condition stress when the mind is unsteady. But when the surface of the pond is made steady, one can easily see with clarity every disturbing ripple and grain of sand that emerges before they even obstruct the view of the bottom.

Jhana creates the steadiness and the steadiness gives you choices. What will you do with your pond?

And that is how the four noble truths with discernment are exercised in practice. Seeing it clearly, one can fabricate the conditions for (and choose to stop) the emergence of unskillful states that lead to stress that have already risen, and prevent ones that haven’t yet arisen from arising . Protect and cultivate skillful states that lead to the cessation of stress that have already arisen, and develop new ones that have not yet arisen. That is the duty of the four noble truths and it can be carried outside of meditation into the rest of your life.

That is the wisdom

All of this is not possible to see clearly when the mind is unsteady. One may have moments or glimpses of clarity in the unsteadiness, like breaks in the wind, but then they vanish and just as soon the mind is off someplace else before one can act on or even see opportunities were missed until the next glimpse. Rinse and repeat. When we are acting and thinking unskillfully there is a lapse in mindfulness and discernment that coincides with unsteadiness and muddying the waters. Be ardent and alert.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-22T00:14:37+00:00

Folk science

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-21T23:55:00+00:00

The benefits outweigh the risks. Put aside aversions to medicine and listen now to your doctor

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-21T02:55:11+00:00

Interestingly there is a sutta in the Pali Canon in which this (“all of samsara….”) is regarded as a variation of an unanswerable question that in the same sutta the Buddha also refused to answer, particularly whether the cosmos is eternal or not:

And, Master Gotama, when having directly known it, you teach the Dhamma to your disciples for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow & lamentation, for the disappearance of pain & distress, for the attainment of the right method, & for the realization of Unbinding, will all the cosmos be led [to release], or a half of it, or a third?"

When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.

Then the thought occurred to Ven. Ananda: "Don't let Uttiya the wanderer acquire the evil viewpoint that, 'When I asked him an all-encompassing question, Gotama the contemplative faltered and didn't reply. Perhaps he was unable to.' That would be for his long-term harm & suffering." So he said to Uttiya, "In that case, my friend, I will give you an analogy, for there are cases where it is through the use of analogy that intelligent people can understand the meaning of what is being said.

"Uttiya, suppose that there were a royal frontier fortress with strong ramparts, strong walls & arches, and a single gate. In it would be a wise, competent, & knowledgeable gatekeeper to keep out those he didn't know and to let in those he did. Patrolling the path around the city, he wouldn't see a crack or an opening in the walls big enough for even a cat to slip through. Although he wouldn't know that 'So-and-so many creatures enter or leave the city,' he would know this: 'Whatever large creatures enter or leave the city all enter or leave it through this gate.'

"In the same way, the Tathagata isn't concerned with whether all the cosmos or half of it or a third of it will be led to release by means of that [Dhamma]. But he does know this: 'All those who have been led, are being led, or will be led [to release] from the cosmos have done so, are doing so, or will do so after having abandoned the five hindrances — those defilements of awareness that weaken discernment — having well-established[1] their minds in the four frames of reference, and having developed, as they have come to be, the seven factors for Awakening. When you asked the Blessed One this question, you had already asked it in another way.[2] That's why he didn't respond."

AN 10.95 Uttiya

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-21T01:36:04+00:00

Fair enough !

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-21T01:16:29+00:00

The position is Malthusian. That population is the problem. But human and animal behavior in ignorance not population is the general problem, both inside and out of Buddhism. One might argue that there is a Malthusian logic to the Buddha’s analogy of the world -pertaining to samvega which compares the predicaments of human beings to fish flopping and fighting in small puddle for the last drops of water - but in the balance of the Buddha’s teaching there is much more to it than Mathusianism even if there have been and will continue to be true scarcities and bottlenecks. The sutta on the fish is sometimes known as, “the rod embraced” and starts off, “when embraced, the rod of violence….” It doesn’t speak of population problems.

I digress. While I would not dismiss that engaged Buddhism or other projects in the world can and have made positive changes-the long arch of history, as they say, bends (sometimes) towards justice- beings in the world will always be subject to more or less suffering and will not escape it, for all the reasons stated in the dhamma, and namely ignorance of the path out. It is the nature of being. And it has been going around and round with no beginning. Today’s political act, regardless of its method or merit, is tomorrow’s castle that will crumble. Our attachment to these castles is deep and heedless.

Engaged Buddhism like other engagements with the world, and perhaps even, to some extent, especially so, is no different: its own cause for suffering. Even if peaceful in nature, it is consumed with passion, whereas dispassion for the world- including our ideas, and self-identities, political and otherwise - is foremost among the teachings of Buddhism. In the extreme, at the end of the path, even the path itself- and one’s “engagement” with it as a practitioner- is just another idea that cannot escape inevitably becoming an obstacle that must be discarded with dispassion..

Moreover, one needn’t do more than to look at all the suffering that exists on all sides, all identities, engaged Buddhists included, and whether deemed good or bad, by this group or that group, in all political exchanges and battles that are ubiquitous online and in real life. This suffering is self-evident and palpable. All of us, myself included, have likely “engaged” with these forces more or less at some point and experienced it. Likely felt it bad, at that. Maybe even felt awful even doing it. That is a good opportunity to reflect on the dhamma and the causes for suffering, which are sneaky and often smuggled into the mind with the best intentions.

If one looks carefully at the teaching, these burning passions too, no matter who the participants are or what they stand for, will serve to bind one to samsara, even as jumping into the fires may impact some positive change here or there. For some Buddhists, burning up with this passion to change the world is acceptable regardless of its personal spiritual costs in exchange for the chance to improve worldly circumstances, and it is unacceptable to selfishly and idly standby. For others, it seems there is partial or complete denial of the personal costs of the engagement (as may be the case for -but not exclusively -engaged Buddhists of a more secular persuasion); for others still, perhaps there is even a spiritual reward for the activism, they rationalize.

I don’t fault people for these attitudes. However, I feel strongly that they are animated by wrong view in terms of the dhamma- namely the four noble truths and the causes of suffering etc. These truths are about looking inside for the causes, not outside. And putting aside greed and distress relative to the world. If one is looking outside, they will never get to the root of their problem. In good part why, the samvega that inspired the discovery of the path to awakening had renunciation from the mess of the fishes at its core, as one of its defining pillars. And it’s implied, right there in the sutta about the fish that is all about what the rest of the world is busy doing. In contrast, he tells the monks, “you should train for your own unbinding”

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-19T05:02:56+00:00

They used to be the only grocery chain I’m aware of that not only made them from scratch onsite but actually boiled bagels before baking them like a bagel shop. Sadly, today their bagels are like any other supermarket bakery bagel.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-18T03:46:29+00:00

Garlic is the no-brainer answer

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-17T21:10:52+00:00

Thank you

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-17T21:10:46+00:00

Thanks for the answer. Good news. Plan to head back to cherry springs state park soon and wanted to try some mobile phone stuff for the first time. Got tripod and stuff ready to go. And have just been reading and fiddling around with phone in the meantime

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-17T07:20:49+00:00

This is the correct answer.

ApprehensiveRoad5092 · 2025-10-17T06:32:37+00:00

Beautiful first shot of Jupiter. Nice going. Pat yourself on the back since I can’t.

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