The Dharma Is Totarry A Chinese Weather Baroon
Regard ALL of the dharma as a dream
Or, if you prefer … ཆོས་རྣམས་རྨི་ལམ་ལྟ་བུ་བསམ། ། … or begin by considering all things and events as dreamlike … stop relying on fact checkers and stop basing your arguments on supposed facts … when ALL of the facts out there should be regarded as if they were dreams.
There’s a good reason why the “regard ALL of the dharma as a dream” slogan is the first of the Seven Points of Mind Training … it’s the VERY FIRST because it’s the most important. As you know, the Seven Points of Mind Training is a set of teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, brought to Tibet by Lord Atisha and written down by Geshe Chekawa.
The first main point in this training is often referred to as “The Preliminaries” … so, technically, the fact-checkers might tell you that the FIRST slogan under this main point is just the repetition or “First, train in the preliminaries” or always go back to the most fundamental part of the FUNDAMENTALS – so, in particular, always second-guess the assumptions underlying your assumptions … but the NEXT slogan to OR the first one under the main point, is to begin by considering all things and events as dreamlike is kinda right up there with the first of the first depending on how you go about your thinking. But, your thinking has to be your business … and yours alone … so it’s really kinda up to you to order the importance of these things, right … RIGHT?
It is of course important to note this stuff is just like canonization of scripture that we find in any ancient text that people wish to regard as WORD … or THEIR truth … in other words, Chekawa’s original text was [to the best of our knowledge on the topic] not arranged into these seven points. This was done later by his disciple, Sechilphuwa Özer Shyönnu1. Therefore, the order of the slogans and their categorization under the “Seven Points” was a later development, not originally designated by Geshe Chekawa. This might be why there could be some confusion or debate over which slogan is technically the “first” … but WHY IN THE LIVING FUCK DOES IT REALLY MATTER? … SERIOUSLY, why does the order matter, unless someone’s kinda just fuckin with ya, man?
Hopefully, you can you why it’s important to never take anything at face value, TO NEVER EVER EVER EVER need to rely on fact checkers or to need to base your arguments on supposed facts … when ALL of the facts sorta hafta to be regarded dreams if you’re doing this shit right?
If you can’t be fiercely skeptical of interwebs content … then … AT LEAST TREAT IT AS A BAD SARCASTIC JOKE … from the most twisted friend you have.
STOP expecting ANYTHING to be truth … stop expecting to be entertained.
NOBODY can give you the truth … because YOUR life is too much built on LIES and FAKERY; you have no balance and no sense of larger perspective, your reference points are fucked as hell and you can’t tell what’s TRUTH … and expecting someone else to give you the truth is like expecting someone else to walk for you on the shifting deck of a ship on a stormy sea – you have to develop your own sea legs.
NOBODY can give you the truth.
Discerning the nature of an idea you come across is TOTALLY on YOU … and nobody else … the reason that you can tell what’s REAL any more is that your whole existense is FAKE AS SHIT …Stop being a little whiny crab-ass little baby and thinking anyone owes you the truth.
If you want the TRUTH … shut off all of your devices, keep them turned off – AVOID all your books and papers … then do a water fast for a good five or six week VACATION from the stupid shiny shit you pick up; any time that you feel like consuming something do some serious high intensity interval training until the desire for consuming anything goes away.
Stop being a little whiny crab-ass little baby and thinking anyone owes you the truth.
STOP expecting ANYTHING to be truth … stop expecting to be entertained.
You sort HAVE TO assume that we are AT WAR … in an information war sense of being AT war.
It’s the best starting assumption until you can prove otherwise … when the ground beneath you is shifting, you need to develop your sea legs … balance is a matter of constant adjustment and adjusting the bouyancy of adjustment … conversely, needing to trust something solid is for calcified fossils.
The best working assumption about the content that you come across is that it is supplied by your enemy. Sure, that might too paranoid, but it is best to be fiercely skeptical … and that includes being skeptical of your own thoughts and working assumptions.
Most of the active measures or disinformation in the information war will be about getting you to LIKE some celebrity or figure that you have not met … there’s way more to the disinformation arsensal than just getting you to trust an avatar, but it’s kind of safe to say that MOST disinformation begins with misplaced faith which starts with inappropriate likeage of celebrities or commentators.
You sorta HAVE TO avoid regular consumption of the news or news commentary.
Mental mastery is a matter of introspective inquiry … you can use different mental models think about the process second-guessing your thoughts – you might think of it as WRESTLING with the angel of the Lord … and generally getting BEATEN over and over again. The point of that metaphor is that it’s impossible, completely uncomfortable … the constant sifting and re-sifting is about triggering one’s subconscious unthinking, re-wiring and re-programming.
In order to really THINK, you cannot be AT EASE … will need scribble notes in your own journal, write letters to yourself or write your own blog or keep a journal … you almost really need have some sort of Git-like distributed version control mechanism or automated version control system to lean into as you revise … it’s all about getting your thoughts into some form that allows for you going back later and reconstructing your thought process.
If, instead of doing this, you seek the comfort of regular programming, especially when you feel that pscyhological TUG of the comfort of being reinforced with the knowledge of what _JohnQCommentator_’s take on the news is today or this week, well …
CONGRATULATIONS! If you need your daily dose of some content, then YOU are OFFICIALLY addicted, you are programmed.
Moreover, if you feel offended by this and say to yourself something like “That’s bullshit! I’m not addicted just because I want a little mental comfort …” … well, guess what, if you feel offended or irritated by something that you know is true, then you have become weaponinized poision to yourself … and all of the people around you.
That’s just the way LACK OF mental self-control works, ie that’s why we as Christian warriors have pray to forgive others … we don’t need to be forgiven by others; it does not matter if someone hate us, haters are gonna hate us and should hate us – what we, as Christian warriors REALLY NEED is to be granted, by the grace of our Creator, the ability to forgive, to let go, to move on … this power is ENTIRELY about mental self-control. I did not make up the rules…THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT WORKS.
The POINT of FIERCE SKEPTICISM … and the point of resisting the comfort of listening to, reading or watching your daily programming … like the point of the essentiality of being able to forgive, without worrying about or expecting reciprocal forgiveness … all of those points are about being in control OF YOUR OWN MIND.
Why the OPENNESS of OPEN SOURCE content is important
I develop and write my OPEN SOURCE material … in an open manner with the full commit trail available … in order to come back to this content … to edit, revise, remove … it’s about the process of perfecting.
Other people can reconstruct it or backtrack to understand the develop by looking at the commits.
The sources of what I’m working on are never perfect … that’s WHY the sources of open source content are in a repository on GitHub. The public nature of open source repositories is to allow for the possibility of someone else finding the development process as well as the work-in-process source useful.
The whole point of open source is we CAN look at the DEVELOPMENT what’s driving whatever on the surface … always being FIERCELY skeptical of what’s behind the scenes.
We should be EVEN MORE FIERCELY SKEPTICAL when something is proprietary, polished, and presented as PERFECT product that some trusted authority or celebrity stands behind … when we can’t see and reconstruct the sources, we cannot trust shit on the surface at all.