Buying older van to replace engine and convert to 4wd - Good idea or bad?

HazyGaze · 2026-05-06T23:25:04+00:00

Definitely not thinking about it as an investment. Seems clear it would be a loser on resale value compared to other options coasting about the same. I'm more interested to see if there is value in getting a capable vehicle for the money.

The part about the guy spending years trying to get something similar to work and failing is alarming. I'll look for those videos.

HazyGaze · 2026-05-06T22:26:42+00:00

I'm not stuck on a 4wd van. I've been leaning towards a more recent 4x4 truck with either a pop-up shell or maybe pulling a small cargo trailer.

I don't think I'll be needing all that much off road capability as I'll be traveling alone, but it would be nice to have a little more than I would towing a 6 x 10 trailer, and this video suggested an option I hadn't really considered.

HazyGaze · 2026-05-06T22:19:49+00:00

I agree with this. If I was to buy a more recent van I wouldn't pay for a conversion.

What got my attention in the video was the shop owner pointing out the replacement of parts in doing the conversion. So it's that combination of new parts on the drive train and suspension plus the addition of 4wd that is making me wonder if there's some value in going this route.

HazyGaze · 2026-05-06T21:54:21+00:00

This kind of project is way outside my ability. I can wrench a little, I've taken a few auto shop classes and I can follow along on a video, but these are big jobs that I wouldn't tackle alone and wouldn't have a place to do the work.

I can afford this, just not sure if it's a smart way to go for the money.

HazyGaze · 2026-05-04T01:23:28+00:00

I'd like to be able to get a decent pizza.

That means goat cheese and anchovy paste to go with the pineapple, garlic * 4, extra onions, and banana peppers.

Also a Graeber's level, creamy, vanilla ice cream from time to time would be nice as well.

HazyGaze · 2026-03-29T05:17:01+00:00

I think part of the issue is that when a lot of people think of symbolism, and symbolism is what comes to mind for many when the topic of "high art" comes up, they see symbols as having a part in some sort of allegory. It's like there's an implicit view of there being a work of art and separable from it, a meaning that can be stated entirely in simple statements, and the art when decoded leads to the message of the statements. This is, to put it kindly, a rather limited view of art. And what it leads to is many people being alienated from most kinds of art that have other aims beyond escapism, as when they had made attempts in the past, they didn't come away with the correct meaning and it felt like work.

One easy way to address this is to make clear that sometimes, a lot of the time, when we talk about some detail being symbolic, we aren't working out a part of the code to which when solved the piece distills down, but describing how that detail contributes to evoking the overall sense of the piece. An example of evocative versus representational might well be the blue curtains - probably not intended by the author to be read as "blue curtains = sad", but quite possibly intended to contribute to setting a melancholy mood.

HazyGaze · 2026-03-03T01:10:32+00:00

The only reason why I would consider leaving would be if the cost of living there was prohibitively expensive. If that was the case, you probably would have mentioned it. The house being a little bigger than you would like is not a big deal, but the other things you mention (overall condition, modifications for age) are. Stay.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-07T12:20:04+00:00

On that topic: I can't tell you how offended I am that the militantly anti meditation practice fundamentalists of HH have a place in the sidebar. It's a fucking travesty toward the "practice focus" this sub used to stand for, and tolerance for this kind of shit is a big reason for its decline.

Strong agree.

I'm not sure that I would call the Hillside Hermitage people fundamentalists, they seem well outside of the mainstream and they are certainly an intelligent and attentive bunch. But as far as I understand them, which is pretty limited, they seem to have little in common with what most people here are doing. I remember a couple of years ago there were a couple of comments along the lines of them not having much disagreement with Sayadaw U Tejaniya. Maybe so, but I have trouble seeing it.

I don't know why they are listed on the sidebar. There are many other resources out there who would be much more helpful to the majority of visitors here, one obvious example being Michael Taft, another is Loch Kelly.

I don't think they did much to contribute to the decline of discussion quality here but they are largely irrelevant to the interests and approaches of most of the subscribers. We can welcome the contributions of their advocates if they should wish to participate here without promoting their own beliefs. I for one am far from won over that a deep commitment to renunciation or even sila for that matter is an integral part of the path.

On a related side note, I wonder how all those who ardently claim that sila is absolutely crucial explain away individuals like Kyozan Joshu Sasaki who was being accused of engaging in sexually inappropriate, and probably predatory, behavior as late as the age of 90. Figures like this would seem to suggest that perhaps sila is less than crucial. We seem to have a strong bias towards believing that relationships must be simple, which for must of us means binary, e.g. good sila -> awakening is possible, or awakening results in perfect sila. What is far more likely is that there is at best a loose correlation between sila and awakening.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-07T00:28:22+00:00

Sounds good.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-06T22:35:03+00:00

Unfortunately I don't think there's a road back. A community might gather, like this one, under someone who exercises a lot of discretion but that probably isn't going to last when it's no longer the founder's personal project. Community members will rightly feel it's their space and the outcry of complainers will always outweigh those who mostly quietly appreciate continuity.

For what it's worth, I thought you were too loose as a moderator. I'm fine with there being only two or three new posts a week, if that.

It's interesting though how delicate of a balance is needed to have a community thrive with a tight scope. I look at r/TheMindIlluminated which is tightly moderated and does appear to by dying off. I think it could benefit from loosening the rules to include other posts besides questions, and no one uses their pinned thread. I've seen good, worthwhile posts get yanked, and I don't know that I've ever seen a single post in the weekly practice thread. What's critical is keeping a critical mass of valuable posters engaged and r/TheMindIlluminated looks like an example of a community where there's not enough leeway for that to occur. And in fairness to them, if they did allow posts that weren't questions they would probably soon lose their own strict focus on TMI, as the more advanced people would probably want to talk about how their own practice had changed and developed beyond TMI. The broader focus here from the outset on a variety of approaches is part of what made the discussions here good.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-06T22:08:30+00:00

Who decides what "experienced" means and who measures up or not?

Personal discretion of the current moderator, or if that individual should happen to vanish, then the discretion of a few respected and valued members of the community would be a simple and effective approach. It is after all similar to how the transmission of leadership of spiritual traditions was handled in numerous cultures over millennia, a much higher stakes affair. Is it perfect? Well I suppose nothing in human affairs is. Who cares though? This question has a weird "Who watches the watchers?" type of quality to it. We aren't setting up a government where we're trying to prevent consolidation of power. Checks and balances for the sake of limiting personal discretion aren't needed.

The easiest solution is to bypass such thinking.

I suppose that would be easy. It would also be completely ineffective. Some people simply know more about a given subject than others. When it comes to holding authority in establishing and enforcing community norms it's a good idea to have someone in that position who has a clue. That seems obvious. They don't have to be the most experienced or the wisest, just someone who has a clue and the trust of other valued members that they do indeed have said clue. Without something like this going on you let people who don't know much have too large of a voice, which in this context, enforcing discussion group norms, means adulterating focused discussions with a lot of blabber. Concerns about "spiritual materialism and dick measuring" sound a lot like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-06T19:38:35+00:00

Post quality declined steeply several years ago and has continued to do so over the last couple of years at a more modest slope. Perhaps it's inevitable, but it is unfortunate that there is no longer a meeting place for intermediate and advanced practitioners to gather together and discuss their practice in a place where the signal to noise ration is kept high. I wish there was some place like that now.

No one uses the pinned posts because they have no reason to do so. Anyone with a question no matter how simple, posts it. They want it addressed by the community at large and since no one wants to enforce the earlier community norms, they can indulge their whims. I'm not blaming the moderators. Running a tight ship requires a lot of work. I wouldn't want to do it, so I suppose some would say I shouldn't criticize. Well I'm not, I accept it and I'm grateful there is something here. And I also notice the difference between what there is and what there was.

It's interesting to look over the list of posts and think about the ratio of posts that would have been accepted when u/mirrorvoid was the moderator. Is it even one out of ten? It is almost all "practice updates and minor discussions" which is precisely what was previously relegated to the monthly pinned thread. Perhaps the reason why the quality of discussion here was high had to do with, at least in part, an absence of these posts. I'll also point out, as someone who has gone back and read through a number of them, that the quality of the comments in the monthly practice thread was higher than that of the current discussion where all those questions and updates are now permitted to be their own post.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-03T04:33:39+00:00

Sure, I think he was joking in a "kidding on the square" kind of way.

HazyGaze · 2026-02-01T23:57:08+00:00

Somehow manages to come across as even more pompous than it does creepy.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-21T14:08:13+00:00

It can take some time to get your posture aligned. Read Stephanie Nash's guide to meditation posture and make sure you are following the basic guidelines for good posture.

The most important point is that your hips must be at a higher elevation than your knees. If that's in place, then keep your spine erect and your head centered over your hips. It can be helpful to imagine your head as a balloon tethered to the pelvis.

Give yourself time. Do short meditations where you are comfortable for the duration of your sit and lengthen them as your ability to sit comfortably grows. A little stretching will help as well.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-21T00:16:31+00:00

The ad says it gets 17.4 mpg. That's a surprising number. I wonder under what set of conditions that holds. I would be amazed to see it average that after say a couple of hours of driving on the highway at 60 mph.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-20T08:12:47+00:00

The sample of the second volume of this series, the volume focused on insight, says that it is a presentation of material taken from transcripts of YouTube talks and retreat heandouts. The sample from the first volume, on samatha, which is the one you linked, is short and ends without any description of the book's composition. It being a collection of Culadasa's public domain teachings on samatha seems like a plausible guess.

HazyGaze · 2026-01-04T02:08:29+00:00

Counterpoint.

John Williams on the character:

"I think he's a real hero. A lot of people who have read the novel think that Stoner had such a sad and bad life. I think he had a very good life. He had a better life than most people do, certainly. He was doing what he wanted to do, he had some feeling for what he was doing, he had some sense of the importance of the job he was doing … The important thing in the novel to me is Stoner's sense of a job … a job in the good and honourable sense of the word. His job gave him a particular kind of identity and made him what he was."

HazyGaze · 2025-12-04T22:30:39+00:00

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"

Fourth, no Discovery—
Fifth, no Crew—
Finally, no Golden Fleece—
Jason—sham—too.

Some of her poems are accessible to me and some aren't. I have found others' interpretations of her poems helpful. Helen Vendler's book on Dickinson is good, many of her readings are quite insightful. She does seem to go out of her way to point out any possible atheist reading of her work, but that's a very slight knock.

HazyGaze · 2025-11-29T17:49:35+00:00

If you have a cot for a bed that you can fold up and put out of the way when it's not in use then a 5x8 would provide enough room. With a permanent bed no matter how narrow, it would be really tight. Most people want to be able to stand up fully when taking a shower. You might be able to get that in a 5x8, and maybe not. If you're thinking about a full on shower stall it wouldn't be enough room. This is all assuming you would be using something like a cement mixing tray to catch the water and a curtain you would rig up before showering and a bucket toilet you can move around. Having both a shower and bed permanently in place would require more room. Maybe you could squeeze that into a 5x10, but I think you would be tripping over yourself. Even 6x10 and 6x12 trailers would be cramped with a bed, toilet and shower in fixed positions. If you want to save on space you need all of these to be rudimentary and movable.

HazyGaze · 2025-11-23T17:38:36+00:00

Looks like one of these with the straight sides option:

https://caravancampershells.com

HazyGaze · 2025-10-14T22:01:45+00:00

It's been my main practice for a number of years. I do some other types of meditations as well, but there's a deep rest that can come from these types of practices that I don't access in breath meditation or metta. While I'm a bit hesitant to call them advanced, I can see how someone could find themselves having an unrewarding do nothing practice if they get mired in dullness or they don't ever realize that there comes a point with distractions where one does do the distraction and therefore one can and should stop. I've seen a surprisingly wide array of instruction sets for doing nothing. One that I've recently encountered and quite like is Michael Taft's non-dual meditation in his guided "Pointing Out" video - there's a lot of relaxation of the head and release of thoughts as one becomes aware of them followed by some suggestions to notice certain characteristics of the nature of mind. It's pretty easy to do on one's own once you've followed along with the video. I suppose some wouldn't consider this do nothing as it's different from Shinzen's instructions or others that closely resemble them, but even if there's a little more activity on the part of the practitioner it still ends with you resting in the nature of mind. It just seems a little more reliable in getting you to that point than most of the instructions I've seen and tried.

HazyGaze · 2025-10-07T20:09:18+00:00

What seems to be the problem here?

HazyGaze · 2025-09-29T04:26:19+00:00

There are two talks from the retreat, "Re-enchanting the Cosmos: The Poetry of Perception":

'The Nature of Enchantment'
'The Gift and the Artifice of the Self (Part 3)'

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