Wisdom Wheels: Cat Nirvana and Dog-Zen

At this point, readers are likely to be scratching their heads over the influx of texts with heavy wisdom polarity markup. Despite appearances, there's something fundamentally simple at the roots of wisdom. We can reflect on wisdom as abstract patterns, and we can observe it in practice across every spectrum of life and reality.

Until the Integral Human Life-cycle presentation is ready to boot, here's a primer to the basic polarities of life in the lives of our four-pawed furry friends. Cats and dogs have their eightfold paths in life as well!

≡ Nirvana in Balance: Solar Cat & Lunar Cat ≡

One is a Sun with a Moon in his heart and eyes, the other is a Moon with a Sun in her heart and eyes. Lunar Cat is here at day, Solar Cat comes here at night. Lunar Cat likes sweet better, Solar Cat likes salty better. Cats know the ways and means of approaching primal Balance and total Nirvana quite naturally. And what curious companions these two have become on the great purring journey in the wheel of life!

≡ Cat Nirvana Wisdom Wheel ≡

Here's how their basic cosmology and eight-fold operations map up. This is an application for a correlative and integral pair.

[∞0] Zero-One Singularity = Total Cat Nirvana
[±] Balance = Tao of Love: Sun Meets Moon
[+] Dynamis = Male Solar Cat
[-] Neutralis = Female Lunar Cat

[++] Big Picture = Solar Cat -> Roams Outdoors
[+-] Causality = Solar Cat -> Runs to Lunar Cat
[-+] Foresight = Lunar Cat -> Anticipates the Solar Cat
[--] Introspection = Lunar Cat -> Lounges at Home

[+++] Heaven = Power Cat -> Creating & Wondering
[++-] Lake = Wise Cat -> Contemplating & Scheming
[+-+] Fire = Eater-Hunter Cat -> Grasping & Consuming
[+--] Thunder = Romance Cat -> Excited & Playful
[-++] Wind = Wandering Cat -> Detached & Expansive
[-+-] Stream = Natural Cat -> Healthy & Flowing
[--+] Mountain = Commanding Cat -> Protects & Demands
[---] Earth = Home Cat -> Sleepy & Satisfied

Cats and dogs have few problems with balance, good time, and general relax in life. We humans on the other hand constantly struggle to find even a scent of balance lurking somewhere down the road. Confusion is our great evolutionary feat, imbalance the fruit of our mighty intellects. Cat-Nirvana and Dog-Zen guide us back to the essentials of life.

≡ Esoteric Dog-Zen Wisdom Wheel ≡

Our dog is really into food. Few know that he is actually an adherent of the esoteric Dog-Zen school of primal wisdom, knower of the great secret of balance and perennial peace of mind. Humans may study this art of peace and ecstasy to the tune of Bob Marley's "Hungry Mob is an Angry Mob" for attaining a more balanced vibrational level of life.

[∞0] Zero-One Singularity = Perennial Peace
[±] Balance = Eating-Belly-Full
[+] Dynamis = Drive of Hunger
[-] Neutralis = Fabric of Food

[++] Big Picture = Overall Aware
[+-] Causality = Searching
[+-] Foresight = Expecting
[--] Introspection = Sleeping

[+++] Heaven = Raving Ecstacy
[++-] Lake = Silently Wondering
[+-+] Fire = Eagerly Eating
[+--] Thunder = Barking at Strange People
[-++] Wind = Running Around the Fields
[-+-] Stream = Following Nicely
[--+] Mountain = Protecting the Revire
[---] Earth = Evacuating

The [+++] Heaven = Ecstacy is particularly evident in the seconds between seeing food en route and the manna falling from heaven to the bowl -- he generally jumps and spins around 3x times!!! I have never seen a Christian receive Eucharist or a Hindu receive Prasada (sacred food) with the level of enthusiasm he experiences twice a day over the same old dry pebbles. We stand to learn much from each and every sentient being!

The other polarity, [---] Earth = Evacuating, appears to be equally sacred to him. The spot for evacuation is carefully chosen -- after all, they are the after-effects of [±] Primal Balance and [+++] Raving Ecstasy. Any food is truly manna from heaven and the embodied essence of good life for him. Talk about enlightenment in the food-made sheath (annamaya-kosha) and the oral-anal field!

Whatever you have, use that wisely towards balance and peace. This is the simple but profound point in all of these models, whether traditional or experimental. The center of the wheel is peaceful; and only at the center can you make some sense of the colliding experiences that revolve around you. If you have your wheels oiled well and the polarities balance each other out, it's a smoother and more enjoyable ride for everyone involved.

Essentially, [++] All ![±] You ![-] Need is |[-] Peace and |[+] Love in [±] Balance!

Review: There Will Be Blood (2007)

Today's review deserves a prelude to do the depth of the movie full justice. It's a very decent movie about an all-out asura exploiting the people and the oil fields of early 20th century California, after all!

Asuras, featured in both Hindu and Buddhist mythology, are evil or envious gods, beings of great prowess and ambition, fallen deep into the dark side. As a psychological profile, asura-hood features intense paranoia, envy, cruelty, and lust for power over all. The asura's self-securing drive for achievement leads to consuming competitiveness and a division of world into allies and enemies — divided by their fitness for furthering personal ambitions.

Fully immersed in his schemes, the asura grows paranoid of others; they are all seeking to thwart him, they are his enemies, a pitiful foe begging to be confronted and eliminated. No abuse or crime is beyond the scope of the asura; his sheer hunger for control drives him to manipulate others, his conscience is all but dissolved in his dark primal instincts. In short, asura is a psychopath of some power. And if there is an asura, There Will Be Blood...

Title: There Will Be Blood
Year: 2007
Genre: drama
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/

Released in January 2008, There Will Be Blood explores the grim world of southern California's oil boom at the turn of the 20th century. Featuring the ghastly life of Daniel Plainview, it portrays some of the darkest aspects of human psyche with substantial realism, owing largely to the excellent performance of Oscar-winning Daniel Day-Lewis.

The narrative carries you through some thirty years of Plainview's life, from the beginnings as a budding businessman to a shrude capitalist who shuns no opportunity at exploiting one and all if it serves his purpose. As the film unfolds, the wicked nature of our oil miner becomes more and more explicit, and even apparently innocent acts in the path turn out to feature as aspects of his elaborate schemes.

The born-again young Christian priest of the village, a gifted fanatic with bizarre stage acts in his Church of Third Revelation, grew to be a second favorite character of mine, right along with Plainview of course, who did little to work on his largely irrational anger towards the priest. Overall, the characters are well performed, even if it is Day-Lewis's performance that carries the watcher to the farther shore of the two-and-half-hour movie, the theme of which might otherwise have not been that interesting to me.

The atmosphere and environment are well-created and realistic, camera moves very well and the occasional handheld shots create an engaging visual display. The movie is saturated with the eeriest of musics, if indeed it can be so called, predicting ill at each turn even where none is to be seen. The end of the movie is as grim and unexpected as any I've ever seen, perfectly fitting for a movie of such caliber of unusuality. Not your run-of-the-mill American tale, not by a long shot.

[ 8/10 ]

Buddha Blast: Conquering the Cosmic Winds

The following text originates in Maharatnakuta-sutra, an excerpt from the legend of Magician Bhadra's attainment of buddhahood. It holds interest in a number of ways, perhaps the most intriguing the highly superlative description of the Buddha's powers. The description is particularly fascinating in the light of the fact that neither the Buddha nor his followers ever declared him to be anything equivalent to a creator-god or other cosmic godheads or avatars, but rather depicted him as a man who worked his way up the cosmic ladder over eons and eons of time.

Extracted from Garma C.C. Chang's translation under the title "A Treasury of Mahayana Sutras", Motilal Banarsidass, 1991 (online). Subheadings mine. In contrast to the Pali scriptures, the Mahayana canon is decidedly more juicy and abundant in its descriptions of the Buddha, even if it causes the scene of the narratives to switch from a more history-flavored one into a world of magic and mysteries.

aṇor aṇīyān mahato mahīyān

ātmāsya jantor nihito guhāyām /
tama-kratuḥ paśyati vīta-śoko

dhātu-prasādān mahimānam ātman //

"Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest,
the self is hidden in the creature's heart.
Crosser of darkness, conqueror of pleasure and pain,
In elemental tranquility, he perceives the majesty of the self."

The anatman-doctrine (teaching of no permanent self) of the Buddhists notwithstanding, the narration that follows is almost a perfect commentary as if it were on this classic aphorism of Katha-upanishad (2.20), an early philosophical work seminal to the teachings of later Hindu philosophers. The exposition of ten cosmic wind wheels reflects the elemental principles of derivative causation found in both Buddhist and Taoist schools of metaphysical and analytical thought.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Powers of the Tathagata

When the magician saw that the World-Honored One had accepted his invitation, he thought, "Gautama does not know my intention; he is definitely not an All-Knowing One." Then he bowed and took his leave.

The Venerable Maudgalyayana was in the asembly at that time and saw what had happened. He approached the Buddha and said to him, "Bhadra intends to deceive the Tathagata and the monks. May the World-Honored One decline his invitation!"

The Buddha told Maudgalyayana, "Do not think in this way. Only those who have desire, hatred, and ignorance can be deceived, but I eradicated those defilements long ago, for I realized that not a single dharma ever arises. I have been firmly abiding in right action for many kalpas. How can anyone deceive me?

"Now, you should know that the magician does not perform real magic, but the Tathagata does. Why? Because the Tathagata realizes here and now that all dharmas are illusory. Even if all the sentient beings were as skilled in magic as Bhadra, all their magical powers combined could not compare with those of the Tathagata, even if their powers were multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, or any amount, numerical or figurative."

Producing Billion-world Universes

The Buddha asked Maudgalyayana, "What do you think? Can the magician magically produce a billion-world universe and magnificently adorn all of it?"

Maudgalyayana answered, "No."

The Buddha said, "Maudgalyayana, you should know that I can magically produce magnificently adorned worlds, as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, inside a hair's tip, and even this does not exhaust the Tathagata's miraculous powers.

The Great Cosmic Wind Wheels

"Maudgalyayana, you should know that there is a great wind-wheel called Breaker that can break a billion-world universe to pieces.
   "There is another wind wheel called Great Hurricane that can ruin worlds and then rebuild them.
   "There is another wind wheel called Propeller that can revolve worlds.
   "There is another wind wheel called Secure Abiding that can blow as high as the Akanistha Heaven.
   "There is another wind wheel called Scatterer that can whirl away and scatter Mount Sumeru, the Black Mountain, and other mountains.
   "There is another wind wheel called Fierce Flame that can blow fierce flames up to the Brahma Heaven during the raging conflagration at the end of a kalpa.
   "There is another wind wheel called Quencher that can quench the raging conflagration at the end of a kalpa.
   "There is another wind wheel called Cool that can cause a cloud to cover a billion-world universe.
   "There is another wind wheel called Universal Downpour that can pour down heavy rains on the worlds during the raging conflagration at the end of a kalpa.
   "There is another wind wheel called Drying Up that can dry up the spreading flood at the end of a kalpa. There are so many wind wheels that I could not finish enumerating them even if I spoke until the end of this kalpa. All this, Maudgalyayana, you should know.

Conquering the Great Wind Wheels

"What do you think? Can the magician dwell securely in any of these wind wheels for a moment?"

Maudgalyayana answered, "No."

The Buddha told Maudgalyayana: "The Tathagata can walk, stand, sit, and lie undisturbed in the wind wheels.  The Tathagata can also put those wind wheels into a mustard seed and display their motions without the mustard seed either expanding or contracting, and without the wind wheels in the seed obstructing each other. Maudgalyayana, you should know that the feats of magic accomplished by the Tathagata have no limit."

When the Venerable Maudgalyayana and the assembly heard the Tathagata's words, they were all overwhelmed by wonder and awe. They all bowed down before the Buddha and exclaimed in unison, "Because we have now met the great Teacher who has these awe-inspiring miraculous powers, we are greatly blessed. One who has the opportunity to hear of the wonderful miraculous powers of the Tathagata, the World-Honored One, and generates profound faith and understanding will certainly gain great blessings adn bring forth a vow to attain supreme enlightenment."