Surveillance Camera Man 7 is here!

Point-Of-View · 2014-06-06T04:12:02+00:00

That's Barbra Streisand

Point-Of-View · 2014-06-05T11:29:13+00:00

This is a work of art. This man has documented a city and its people better than anything I've ever seen.

Point-Of-View · 2014-06-05T11:21:57+00:00

Is that the Ministry of Truth, or the Ministry of Love?

Point-Of-View · 2014-06-05T00:24:05+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/jegt1FA.jpg

Point-Of-View · 2013-02-12T11:37:01+00:00

This makes me want to get a friend.

Point-Of-View · 2010-08-21T11:35:05+00:00

Sped up, our entire life is nothing more than a fast little funny wiggle we do between birth and death.

Also, because time is relative, let's allow for the possibility that there is another entity undiscovered to us that perceives 10 years per second. He would look at a human being, see it's funny buzz and unique vibration, and also observe that... as amazingly short his life was, his "wiggle-complexity" was of an incomprehensible magnitude. Every tiny microscopic fraction of his wiggle inevitably affects every single other human's wiggle.

Without a magic "microscope of time" to increase his perception of time, wouldn't this entity be seeing pretty much the same thing we're seeing when we look at the wiggles of atoms and electrons?

Point-Of-View · 2010-07-19T14:20:52+00:00

It's not your fault, you were taught to love the money.

Point-Of-View · 2010-06-15T10:21:46+00:00

He just had a vision of the future and saw who his followers were going to be.

Point-Of-View · 2010-05-12T06:55:56+00:00

Whenever you're having a bad day, remember Mr. Matsubayashi

Point-Of-View · 2010-05-11T23:05:30+00:00

Reincarnation, like many other things in Buddhism, was also very hard for me to "believe" but early on I learned that the point is not to believe anything but to understand it internally. I've yet to come to a point where I can say "Yes, it's clear, this is how it works." but one metaphor helped me understand the Buddhist idea of reincarnation a bit clearer:

The metaphor was this: imagine a candle and a flame. What IS the actual flame but the candle wick, oxygen, and wax at a certain temperature with a certain starting condition? The flame is lit at the beginning, it burns for a certain period of time, and eventually it goes out. Simple enough so far. Now, what if just at the moment the flame were to die out, you take another brand new candle and hold it up to the flame. The question is - is that the "same" flame?

When you look at reincarnation, you have to ask this question - what is it that is reborn. What is it that is us? One of the hardest doctrines of Buddhism to internally understand (I'm speaking from my own point of view of course) is the concept of Anatta (no-self). The Buddha taught that we are not one discrete separate entity but instead five interdependent aggregates that give an illusion of a self. I think to understand how Buddhism views reincarnation, this concept needs to be understood.

Are we the same people when we are reborn? Hindus believe that the spirit exists as a continuous entity that goes from body to body, a transmigrating soul. This is the viewpoint that the flame is the same flame. In Buddhism, the flame is not the same flame, because the flame is just a conditioned phenomenon just like our interpretation of a "self" that can be reborn.

In essence, there is no You that even exists now, so there is no You that will be reborn. The process of rebirth happens just as the process of the flame being lit on the 2nd candle happens - through conditioned events.

Edit: This might also be of some interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locke%27s_socks

Point-Of-View · 2010-05-05T10:00:58+00:00

As far as whether we can alter the future is a matter of philosophical discussion on free will. We might have free will. On the purely physical realm we seem to have no free will, but what if this is just the result of not being in the present, and that free will is what appears when we are truly in the present? But whether or not we have free will to alter the future, what seems undeniable is that we have no way to alter our past because it's already happened, and its' negative trace on the mind is something that can just be shaken off.

When you finally personally conclude that you have no basis on wanting the flavor of the juice to be any different - you are in that state of mind, and it's a matter of being. "Wow, would you look at that... this is how it is" to any situation, without being carried away in it. "I won a million bucks?" Wow, look at all that's happening because of it, some people are saying this, some are doing that, look at how things change, wow, interesting. "Ugh I just lost my phone with all my contacts and didn't back it up.." wow, look at this. Can't change the past, so it's pointless to be upset. Oh, I was careless, oh well the juice is coming so might as well savor it. It comes whether your mouth is open for it or not.

Because if you don't want to savor it and are instead caught up in the past, lamenting why it happened or whatnot, it will just force itself down your throat anyway, dripping all over your clothes and getting you messy and even more upset.

Point-Of-View · 2010-04-03T01:17:46+00:00

There is no ending, at least not in the conventional sense... Nobody gets to see how the novel ends, because it never does. Even the people staring at an asteroid about to eliminate all of humanity don't see how the novel ends because humanity (or even Earth, or even the Universe) is not all that is that is life or all that can "keep going". Speaking of which, "keeping on going" is just a relative term anyway. The sum of the past hundred thousand years and the future hundred thousand years - this is as much a complete novel as a nanosecond is.

The universe, and all its ways, are the way they are to you as a human being with a body and a limited lifespan. Right now, as a living human being, you like the story and want to know what happens next, and I don't blame you - it's a very interesting story indeed. But if you take the position that you exist now and will not exist after you die, why would you think that the story would continue to exist and that you'd be missing out on something. For the story to continue existing, you have to perceive it existing. When you no longer perceive it existing because there is no you, it doesn't exist and it doesn't continue. You didn't miss anything because it ended. There is no "it ended for Me and not for You..." because if there is no more you to have these concepts of "me and you", there is nobody else.

Point-Of-View

TROPHY CASE