The Art Of Pissing People Off

I have seemed pretty nice so far on this blog, or so I believe. But let me tell you, I enjoy arguing as much as the next person. And my views can be pretty controversial to conservatives and fundamentalist Christians. I see theism as misguided, for one. But that’s not the main point. Main point?

People should know what their place is when they get into an argument. People, whether they believe it or not, think it is good to take a side. It inflates the ego whether they are defending the idea or someone else is supporting it. This is a fundamental delusion. The point of language since the dawn of human origins in evolution was to be used as a tool. Not as a weapon. Now, if one sits around using this tool to play, build themselves up, or protect their sandcastles they’ve built around ideas like creationism or evolution, they have lost their original point.

I think evolution is a very sound scientific fact. Even so, when translated into human words, no matter how elementary, it comes off like an opinion to everyone who disagrees. Therefore, it is still an opinion until the other party is satisfied. Sad, isn’t it? How we are all so fundamentally alone as far as communicating ideas is concerned. Everyone sees things slightly or massively different than everyone else. And they can attach emotions to those ideas. “Building sandcastles” is how I term it, to defend these ideas on an emotional level. And the ocean of suffering and change eventually tears them all down, whether they like it or not. This is the same as the Buddhist idea of attachment.

Never think the ideas of yours, no matter how elementary or apparent (like Evolution) are good enough that you are noble for upholding them. All ideas are just conceptual understandings of real things. Ideas don’t need protecting. If people or society are at stake, yes. Work with the ideas like tools. But do NOT put a personal stake in it. This is a very laid-back, yet pragmatic approach. No need to get your sandcastle equipment out. People are all that hear your communicated ideas. If you fight for what your idea means to you, you are already stepping into the delusion. Just calm yourself down. Take deep breaths.

On Lovecraftian Cosmicism

I recently read a series of short informational articles about a certain Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the famous author of the Cthulhu mythos of weird fiction, and that eventually led to another article about his worldview, Cosmicism. Besides the fact that the name itself is captivating, I think that it the conclusion would could have before reaching existentialism if one has rejected the idea of a deity as the absurd invention of man at a primitive level of superstition and some would say, manipulation.

Cosmicism is, to summarize, the philosophical idea that humanity is a microscopic presence in a vast, impersonal universe, a miniscule phenomenon of conditions subject to being destroyed at any given moment by cosmic forces of any given number, such as alien intelligences of indifference, meteors, and general impact or intense heating of any kind, going on to say things like the Big Freeze or the Big Rip as the result of universal expansion following the Big Bang.

The progress of human science is baffling as we see it, but it is in this philosophy, this cosmic perspective that I find our progress is nothing to the vastness of what could lie even beyond our universe, such as other universes, or any matter of forces or places that we could not fathom. The greater our light shines, they say, the greater we understand the darkness to be.

The link between Cosmicism, which excludes any religious belief of dogmatic form (such as a loving, caring God as evidenced enough to be real) and existentialism is that once we realize how small we are in the cosmos, we understand how fragile our existence is on Earth and how it is best that we are authentic and not subject to moralistic or ethical ideas that we do not agree with, because they are essentially human constructs used to protect the rest of society.

Yes, I know I will have some statements here regarding how that could be seen as nihilistic, but this is REALITY. You have to find your own peace. Externals be damned. Cosmicism does not imply that life is meaningless, simply insignificant in regards to the galactic scale of things.

Lovecraft said, “the human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure ‘Victorian fictions’. Only egotism exists.”

What I believe Lovecraft means by this is that good and evil are conventions of society, and by going out of their way to help people, they are acting more out of the principle than out of concern for the person. I am not indifferent, myself, to the problems of others.

Existentially, while I see humans as only a tiny part of existence, it is the only part I have any influence on. That, and myself. While I will not go completely out of my way to do a kind act, I will do it when it comes to me to do so, when it feels natural. Or I may do it to gain allies to keep loneliness at bay by gaining new friends. I won’t die for someone else unless I know that is the authentic thing to do, as I don’t know how the situation will turn out.

My worldview includes slicing the ego in two. That doesn’t only mean acting kind to others. It also means not trying too hard, not to do things for the principle when we are all struggling in this life. And that may seem unbearable at times. We all wish we could save everyone. But being sane means knowing that you cannot always save those less fortunate than you.

Our bodies grow memes, or infectious ideas and categories of information, that try to control the way we live. Cutting them at the source makes us real individuals. We are not some idealized beings. We are sentient beings. We feel. We hurt. Our emotional realities and physical realities mean more than a thousand speeches, or any wise thing a man will ever say. If we relax and don’t attach to ideas, we will be really existent, because we will be aware of how they pass. Of how we pass. How all things will pass and how all things will come. We are conditional. Don’t take those conditions for granted, because you will eventually lose them, as they were never yours.

Nox Arcana & Sparks

This first video is by Nox Arcana, a Dark Classical band that makes ambient, gothic sounds. I find the atmosphere in their work fascinating, as well as soothing. I also like the name of the track, Crystal Forest. Mainly because “crystal” is one of those words that turn a switch on in my brain. I’m pretty sure it’s a side effect from doing item quests in video games for most of my life.

This next video is Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown set to clips from Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. The second of these is a horror no man should have to witness. And won’t have to, since the only minds that survive the skullfuckery of that game are retarded, prepubescent girls.

Anyway, the song in question is an exception to the rule I have about most R&B music: That it is primarily crap. I actually like this song, as gay as it may sound to all the parties listening. It appeals to a rarer side of me. So, enjoy.

Nightwalker Tao

Some people are very confused about Zen and the Tao. They say, “I don’t get the Tao,” or “I don’t get Zen. It’s over my head and there’s nothing more to it.” Zen and Tao are the same thing, you see. They are both symbols representing the mind’s true nature. This may also be confusing to people, and so I will do my best to clarify.

Taoists and those who understand Zen have no use for hope or fear. They understand both as empty as the change in the world. Everything anyone owns is actually composed of conditions. No matter how they think that they are content as they are now, someone who is awake to a certain extent is aware that this is not going to remain. Everything comes and goes. Even the mind is made of conditions. A Taoist or Zen Buddhist has faith in this truth, that solid things are but dreams. Gradually being more and more aware of this allows one to detach from their desires as they cannot always possess. Indeed, what possesses anything but the conditions that create them?

Once this is all understood, that the world is a dream and that we too are also but dreams, not non-existent but not truly real, we see the Tao. All perception without attached thought is the Tao. Zazen practice, sitting meditation, is dwelling on the dream.

A man and a Buddha both die. A man and a Buddha don’t die. The difference is the Buddha is aware of both of these things. The man only sees it one way or the other. Awareness is seeing the dream, not grasping to emotion.

A vampire is not-dead, not-alive. A vampire is Buddha, who sees the majesty of the Tao, whether it be rotting, flourishing, feeding, weeping, or laughing. A Vampire realizes he is the process of the Tao, an emanation of something that is beyond him.

William Butler Yeats said, “Man can embody the Truth, but he cannot know it.”

Vampire Zen 00

Now, my first spiritual talk. I admit, I have no training from any sage or patriarch, and I do not claim to have any kind of amazing supernatural abilities. I am simply giving a lesson, and if you like it, you like it. Now, to begin.

Vampire Zen sounds ridiculous as a name, and yet it feels good to me. It implies facing a powerful fact of the world; both you and I, everyone who has ever eaten and who was born from a woman is a vampire. We all feed on other living things. In the womb, you fed on your mother’s blood. It is profane, but it is life. And life, as we might say, is sacred. So, then. The sacred and the profane perpetuate one another. If nothing was profane, nothing would be holy. And even further from this, we unlearn those words “sacred” and “profane.” They are opposites, and therefore the same.

Some Buddhist Sects refrain from eating meat. While I think this is a good practice for compassion, it is not always practical, and not always the first lifestyle everyone can be accustomed to wherever they are in life. So, while I have no problem with it, even vegetarianism still involves destroying a form of life and eating it. And even beyond that, with every step one takes, you kill millions of bacteria.

So, the point is not that killing is bad; it is just unwise to kill with the intention of the ego, and not the body. When a vampire drinks the blood from another, the vampire knows he must do it to survive. It is the circle of life, of the profane and the sacred as one mysterious whole. That is why murder is murder, and killing is killing.

Man is perhaps the only animal who kills his own kind, and the only one who loves as deeply as he loves. For that reason, man is the most unstable and powerful ape, especially for his third trait, his intelligence. I shall then explain in this philosophy how a man becomes, by realization, a vampire, which is also known as a Sage.

When man knows he is born, and yet, the result of the natural “profane” act of intercourse among his species for generations–a cyclical process in motion–He learns that he is only a small appendage in the world’s body. When he sees himself and his ideas change over time, he realizes that none were his. When he knows he will die one day, and leave it all behind, he realizes that his absence means he was never there. He is, therefore, not a whole one, but an entity of intricate parts, and no source of “him” or “essence” can be found anywhere.

That is emptiness. And when he knows he is emptiness, he know what he really is can never die, and it is natural and good to live and die as a physical body. It has limitations, and it falls apart. On top of that notion, he learns through science that time is but an illusion of change. All change being illusion, then, was he is now, he cannot lose. Even in death, what he is then, was, and will be has nowhere to run. It is still there, like frames of a video. And when he learns the nature of the illusion his perception creates, he knows he is a walking camera, and separation from this unknowable whole around him is impossible. That dying is impossible, and that even when he was born, “he” was always there. From death to life, though, he appears to come. Non-existence to existence.

And so he is undead. Being undead, he is also unborn. He abides by no logic, for his nature has no logic. From a distance, things appear fully knowable, but when the vampire inspects them, he sees things as mirages, and they vanish like marvels.

That is my first lesson, an intro to Vampire Zen. As I learn more, I will give you tips on living, dealing with life situations, and other things through spirituality. I will also reemphasize the things I have covered here.

Introduction–

Master Hakuen here.

This is the blog where I’m going to review video games, movies, albums, and novels, plus talk philosophy and spirituality, among other things. I’m also a writer (on hiatus for research) and so I’ll talk creativity, too. If you like it, it’s appreciated that you comment or email me feedback. If you don’t, do the same thing. Tongue-lashings make room for improvement and break the ego’s illusionary pride.

Here’s a random video from a band called Omnium Gatherum to start things off on a musical perspective. The vocalist is a lot like Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse, but the instruments are awesome and perfect, and the video’s style is exceptional. I admit, I’m a fan of melodic black metal.