04-06 : 3 Days of variety

(Mickorod Renard was the scribe for 4/5/6)     

"Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between
his desires and his enjoyments."

- Samuel Johnson

 chat log from:

2009.10.04 07:00

Pema Pera: How was Ramadan, Sophia?
sophia Placebo: busy and busy and busy
Pema Pera: in what way?
sophia Placebo: the daily schedule , withou sl i had to fill in with things
Pema Pera: I thought you would have more free time left, without eating during the day . . .
sophia Placebo: :) indeed
sophia Placebo: but generally was lovely Ramadhan
sophia Placebo: though it was busy but one got a time to be with himself
sophia Placebo: :) if you love ramadhan you would be happy when it comes and relativly sad if it goes without getting much from it , first the body adaptation to fewer meals ,then the change in the duty time here at least , then the enviroment that goes much rich with quraan recitation ,prayers and special events for ramadan
sophia Placebo: your transition - isnt really transition
Eliza Madrigal: Sounds like a real time of refreshment Sophia, or at least the opportunity
sophia Placebo: yes opportunity
sophia Placebo: :) we usually read all quraan during the month
sophia Placebo: but i couldnt this year
Pema Pera: it must be nice to get a complete overview of the whole book then in a short time!
sophia Placebo: yes it is :)
sophia Placebo: this may give an idea about the importance of the month

       *the prophet's sermon on Ramadan can be found in the chat log for the day

Ali ibn Talib (RA) said: “I asked, ‘O messenger of Allah, what are the best deeds during this month?”

‘He replied: ‘O Abu-Hassan, the best of deeds during this month is to be far from what Allah has forbidden

Adams Rubble: I like the turn in the last line to not do in order to do
Adams Rubble: a bit like wu wei
Pema Pera: yes, not reaching for something special
sophia Placebo: wu wei ?
Pema Pera: just living as well as you can
Adams Rubble: not doing
sophia Placebo: yes it is the hardest
Eliza Madrigal: paying attention to one's behavior and motives can create a kind of receptive shared environment...one feels perhaps 'worthy' of good things..
Pema Pera: wu wei is a Taoist notion, sometimes expressed as wei-wu-wei, doing by not doing
Pema Pera: doing without friction, without manipulation
Pema Pera: yes, Eliza, and so inspire and stimulate others
Eliza Madrigal nods
Adams Rubble nods
sophia Placebo: what do you mean by worthy of good things eliza?
Eliza Madrigal: Ah, well I was thinking that these texts are very similar across traditions at times...
Eliza Madrigal: and that in our day to day lives we often are worn down, coping...
Eliza Madrigal: so opportunities to renew our commitments
Adams Rubble: There is a parable of Christ
Eliza Madrigal: and to turn our hearts to brighter things is an opening
Adams Rubble: of a large banquet
Adams Rubble: and one person invited does not feel "worthy"
Adams Rubble: and sits at the far end of the table from the host
sophia Placebo: sure adams , in islamic point of view islam is not an original , it is what other traditions came with
Adams Rubble: the host sees him and brings him up to the head of the tab;le
Adams Rubble: being worthy by his humbleness
Eliza Madrigal: And we carry guilt around for things... when we renew commitments and acknowledge our limitations and weaknessess... our needs and fragility... then maybe we find we were holding back 'paradise'... in a sense there all the time?
Pema Pera: Yes, that's a moving story, Adams, I remember it from bible class
Adams Rubble: Christ follows that with "The last shall be first and the first last"
Pema Pera: yes, all is there, Eliza, we are the one trying to shut it out
Eliza Madrigal: I like the way you talk about the white dot, Sophia
Eliza Madrigal: But honestly I've thought about the picture of the white dot of purity in our hearts... it has real resonance across traditions
sophia Placebo: really?
Eliza Madrigal: seeds in Buddhism perhaps, and in Christianity 'guarding the heart with dilligence for out of it springs the virtues of life"
sophia Placebo: yes
Eliza Madrigal: there's this idea of cultivation and paying attention
Eliza Madrigal: really beautiful
Adams Rubble: the guarding is interesting
Adams Rubble: the heart is by nature open and vulnerable
Eliza Madrigal: I like to impose cultivating over guarding, in a sense...
Eliza Madrigal: but that's just me :)
Eliza Madrigal: I think it may mean nearly the same thing.... but there is also a kind of zero-ing in on what is essential Mary and Martha
Adams Rubble: Eliza and I have been playing with the Mary/Martha story
Adams Rubble: It is another Christian story
Adams Rubble: Christ went to the house of Mary and Martha. Mary sat listening to Christ while Martha did all the work preparing the meal. Martha complained about doing all the work and Christ corrected her syaing that is right for Mary to be listening to him and that work was not important
Eliza Madrigal: Well... that mary had chosen what was vital, in any event
Adams Rubble: metaphorically Mary is our spiritual side and martha our secular
Eliza Madrigal nods
Adams Rubble: Martha living in the world
Eliza Madrigal: jesus in suburbia
Adams Rubble: Mary in timelessness

Submitted by repenter86 on Thu, 25/09/2008 - 00:30. Think
http://www.islamicpoem.com/?q=node/364

Chop some hate and melt it down, add a dash of tears,
Spoon in a bit of modesty and evaporate your fears.

Take a slice of hurt you felt, now add it to the pot.
sprinkle lightly with some shame, let it all get hot.

Now prepare your pride with elegance, and leave it to one side,
And get your hands all sticky, with the secrets that you hide.

Grate some anger and some guilt, mix it all with love,
Now you need a piece of soul, I recommend you wear a glove

Add a 'thank you' and a 'please' and try a 'love you too'.
Let it simmer for a lifetime, then enjoy your stew.

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 chat log 2009.10.04 13:00 - AI (artificial intelligence)

picture from wikepedia

Arabella asks a question which begins the discussion which will consider artificial intelligence, but of course other things as well

arabella Ella: on what you think the future of higher education will be
arabella Ella: say in 10 to 15 years time?
arabella Ella: like a huge leap in to the future ... visions ... scenarios?
Fox Monacular: it would be nice if after specialization (like now) came integration and interdisciplinarity
doug Sosa: is that it is an even tighter strugle as a path into the elite and authoritarian control
arabella Ella: you seem to be reading my mind there Fox
arabella Ella: i was gonna ask ... will it be more comparmentalised or more interdisciplinary?
arabella Ella: interesting doug
arabella Ella: please say more if u cud
Fox Monacular: hopefully interdisciplinary, but now I see growing divides
doug Sosa: The problem with interdisciplinary is that neurology, tied to atificail intelligence ( i just got an email about a symposium on "outsourcing your memory" )
doug Sosa: will be the dominant integrating disciplie until it braks down from leaving out too much.
arabella Ella: will memory still play an important role in higher education ... or will skills take over?
doug Sosa: Look at how "finance" excluded economics, that is, wealth, resources and the rst of the real world.
Pila Mulligan: I'm unfamiliar with how atificial intelligence relates to education these days ... (?)
arabella Ella: doug brought up the topic of AI
arabella Ella: as he said neurology and AI are ... need to look up his comment there :)
doug Sosa: ther is a field called "developmental neurology."
arabella Ella: (My memory ...)
Pila Mulligan: :) I thoung AI was just an abstraction for software
arabella Ella: as far as i know AI is mostly focussed on in IT faculties
doug Sosa: It is fascinating, and a bit narrow.
Pila Mulligan: could you elaboarate a bit, please, doug?
doug Sosa: Not easy. The drive is to make models of the brain, that take into account the new developments in understanding neirons. So, is this reductionistic? Last week, anotehr symposium on "we can now simulate 1 billion neurons interacting in real time. This is jjust a factor of ten from the real brain.." not the slip from one realm to another.
doug Sosa: Now, look at where the funding comes from, big pharma and military and homeland security.
doug Sosa: not=note
arabella Ella: that is scarey doug
doug Sosa: yes, and education is not one of them except to the extent there are opportnities to replace some of education with drugs and (what, inplants, programming..?)
Fox Monacular: I think AI now is more than computational brain model... they incorporate subjectivity and artistic research too now
Fox Monacular: also, a journal that I mentioned before, AI and society publishes some pretty cool stuff
Fox Monacular: http://www.springer.com/computer/artificial/journal/146
Fox Monacular: As the 21st Century dawns, a gap is emerging between the reality of the rapidly evolving 'information society' and the humanistic vision of developing socially useful technologies which deal with wider societal issues. AI & Society provides an international forum for analysis of these conflicts and dilemmas, and a focus for a growing community committed to the 'knowledge society' and to 'human-centered' technologies and systems.
Fox Monacular: that's from AI and society

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2009.10.04 19:00

"Life is what Happens when you are busy making other plans" - John Lennon

Eos Amaterasu: Archmage has character for "heaven" on his shirt
doug Sosa: big man with horizon ontop of head!
Archmage Atlantis: A gift
Eos Amaterasu: Heaven has vision quality - big big horizon
Eos Amaterasu: question is how to connect it to earth
doug Sosa: the two horizontal lines are heaven and eart. the man in this case is the connector.
Archmage Atlantis: That is an interesting sentence structure Eos
doug Sosa: the man is the upside down v - two legs..walking..
Eos Amaterasu: yes
stevenaia Michinaga: that literal?
Archmage Atlantis: Connect in our minds, or connect that which is not already connected?
doug Sosa: i origin yes.
Archmage Atlantis: Or see the connection?
Eos Amaterasu: Yes, man as two legs :-)
Eos Amaterasu: joining heaven and earth
Eos Amaterasu: or you could say society joins heaven and earth
doug Sosa: man, spirital and prgamatic, connects them.
Eos Amaterasu: wheich brings it back to sustainability
doug Sosa: the word for king does the same, the one who conencts.

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2009.10.05 13:00 - Where does this dropping lead?

Gaya Serendipity: So dropping = playing as being? Sorry for asking this type of questions now ... just have been thinking about it again after reading Pema/Stim dialogues.
Gaya Serendipity: I should really know better ... since been around for a while. >.<
Pema Pera: dropping in the sense of dropping being glued to it all
Pema Pera: dropping an automatic pilot mind set
Bertram Jacobus: i like it very much when people don´t fear so reasonable questions gaya (!) ...
Gaya Serendipity: ^^;;;
Pema Pera: it's always good to go back to the basics, Gaya!
Pema Pera: the idea of "beginner's mind"
Wol Euler: sure
Gaya Serendipity: So part of me playing [pretending?] as Being is to drop?
Pema Pera: well, the notion of Play as Being is richer than that, but an exploration can very well start with dropping (overly rigid identification with) what you have
Pema Pera: Gaya, did you get a chance to read what I wrote a couple months ago on the wiki about Play as Being?

http://playasbeing.wik.is/PaB_Books/Play_as_Being%3a_Freedom_from_Identification/Initial_Outline
Gaya Serendipity: mhm :)

 
Richard Beacham's drawing, at the Boxbird gallery in London

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2009.10.05 19:00 - Back to the Garden

[Pila took the liberty of adding this music link to Eos's chat page --

Joni Mitchell singing her song about the Woodstock Music and Art Festival of 1969.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuISB2ksnMM

doug Sosa: I read once a pamphlet by John Milton "on divorce". most helpful thing I found, and in it..
Eos Amaterasu: the phenomenal world is more or less our garden of Eden
doug Sosa: he says, "the purpose of marriage is to recreate the garden of eden. If that isn't what's haappening, it isn't the garden of Eden."
doug Sosa: the phenomoneal world is, but not well taken care of nor enhanced. that is the task. James Hillman makes it clear
doug Sosa: you can see our stanford wiki which is setting up seond life groups to explore the social side of sustainability at http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/MAHB/101
Eos Amaterasu: Cool, Doug, I'll check this out, and tell my RL local Sl friend as well...
Pila Mulligan: I had a lucid vision-like dream once while embroiled in a development issue about ten years ago
Pila Mulligan: the setting was in a pristine mountain area where devlopers wanted to build broadcast antennas
doug Sosa: what were all those sparkles a moment ago?
Pila Mulligan: I didn't see them doug :)
doug Sosa: Pila, great imagery for a dream of bad communication.
Pila Mulligan: I was there with a very old Hawaiian man in a loin cloth (called a malo here)
Pila Mulligan: he pointed to a rock at our feet that had bird droppings on it
Pila Mulligan: then he looked at me and projected a vision within a vision of airplanes flying over Hawaii ...
Pila Mulligan: dropping big globs of muck on the land -- it was an easy to recognize image
Pila Mulligan: then it started to rain ... and he pointed to the rock ... as it was being washed clean
doug Sosa: if only...
Pila Mulligan: in time
Pila Mulligan: it is inevitable
Pila Mulligan: the glop cannot sustain itself
Eos Amaterasu thinks, like an R Crumb cartoon
doug Sosa: yes but the sequence may not be attractive, of what comes before the inevitable.
Pila Mulligan: cataclysm?
Pila Mulligan: perhaps

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2009.10.06 13:00

"Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it."

- Mother Theresa

 
Mickorod Renard: Zon is new I think
    Zon Muhindra: yes
    Zon Muhindra: so i might say something wrong but bear with me
    Wol Euler: :)
    Mickorod Renard: Wol, could you give Zon a quick insight to what we do here?
    sophia Placebo: we would bear with you
    Zon Muhindra: :)
    Wol Euler chuckles.
    Mickorod Renard: I am sure there would be nothing that hasnt already been said wrong,,he he
    Wol Euler: ok, the short version. In theory we are a meditation group, we meet to discuss our practices and matters that arise from them
    Zon Muhindra: good..im on right palce then
    Wol Euler: in reality, we often just sit and chat :)
    Mickorod Renard: grin
    Zon Muhindra: even better
    Bertram Jacobus: both fine
    Wol Euler: the practice is a kind of "time tax", in the pure theoretical form we stop to meditate for nine seconds every quarter-hour
    Mickorod Renard: when the fountain goes misty we contemplate for a few seconds
    Mickorod Renard: and dont talk
    Bertram Jacobus: mostly ;-)
    Wol Euler: the idea being to take meditation down from the pedestal of being a special thing to do only at a certain place and time
    Zon Muhindra: mmm..sounds good idea
    Wol Euler: and to make it a part of normal lilfe, a tool available to you at all times and in any place
    Zon Muhindra: agrees heavily
    Mickorod Renard: thanks Wol, I needed reminding myself
    arabella Ella: that's a lovely description Wol for all of us thanks :)
    Wol Euler: :)
    Wol Euler smiles. I'm pleased.
    Bertram Jacobus: i´m too very enlightened by wols explanations ! ... :-)

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2009.10.06 19:00

SophiaSharon Larnia: mainly I have notice how melded tight people are in their attachments, how so very wrapped up and consumed by them
SophiaSharon Larnia: myself included
Eos Amaterasu: the me cloud predates the internet cloud :-)
Archmage Atlantis: Excellent point Eos
Archmage Atlantis: And evolves as we age
SophiaSharon Larnia: a thinking visitor :)
Eos Amaterasu: Appreciative visitor?
SophiaSharon Larnia: Trying to be. I saw a baby with a rooting reflex, and realized we are meant as physical being to attach, with out the attachment of love, a baby will wither up and die, so have been confused lately
Archmage Atlantis: There is also the similar experience of standing outside one's own body and watching it as if it were a stranger
Archmage Atlantis: Sometimes near death experience can be like that
Pila Mulligan: a baby is usually free of many ego problems
SophiaSharon Larnia: by trying to step out of this, we are striving to transcend the body, is this wrong to say?
SophiaSharon Larnia: yes true
Archmage Atlantis: Hmmm....I would have said the opposite Sophia, a baby is a strongly egotistical being
Archmage Atlantis: Absorbed by itself
Archmage Atlantis: Interesting
Pila Mulligan: the baby's simple need for nurture may be closer to the sense of emptiness than a typical practitioner's contemplative mind
Eos Amaterasu: I don't think we really *can* step out of this... but we can appreciate it, and even give in to it / allow it
Eos Amaterasu: Yes, Pila!
SophiaSharon Larnia: appreciation is what i'm having a tough time with, i see :)
Pila Mulligan: maybe perceiving is an easier idea
Pila Mulligan: I don't think appreciating means much more than being aware of in this context
Archmage Atlantis: How do you mean that SophiaSharon? appreciation I mean?
Archmage Atlantis: If you don't mind my asking
SophiaSharon Larnia: no, appreciation as in accepting, things dont have to be as they are. Seeing how atached individuals really are has thrown me for a loop
Pila Mulligan: kind of how i felt after the 2000 election
Eos Amaterasu: there's troping, like the rooting reflex, and there's attachment
SophiaSharon Larnia: a culture of 'false idols' lik in the various mythologies of the world, not just the bible
SophiaSharon Larnia: sorry about the typos, am typing in the dark, just put a light on
Pila Mulligan: :)
Archmage Atlantis: That is a very deep observation, in my opinion, SophiaSharon
SophiaSharon Larnia: i think its common, just dont talk about it
Archmage Atlantis: Even seeing our own "stuff" is difficult
Eos Amaterasu: 90 secs without editing
Archmage Atlantis: If I understood that comment correctly , EOS, I agree up to a point, ......I don't think we ever escape totally our own internal editors, just minimize their impact

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                             "There are always flowers for those who want to see them."
                                                        Henri Matisse