Perception is Everything

Here is a record of a real conversation I had yesterday.

"Where is the worst affected part of the globe in terms of coronavirus deaths?"
"Lombardy in northern Italy."
"And what is the biggest city in Lombardy?"
"Milan."
"Very good. Now, what percentage of the population of Lombardy do you think has been diagnosed with coronavirus?"
"Hmmmm. Ten per cent?" This I took to be a very reasonable guess, based upon the 'news' and hype around at the moment.
"The figure is, as of today, 0.4%. And the percentage who have died with coronavirus in their system, which are reported as coronavirus deaths, is 0.06%"

Perception is everything.

I once visited Lombardy in February. It wasn't like the picture-postcard image of Italy at all. The entire region was blanketed by a thick, static pea-souper of a fog. And it was freezing cold and damp. Horrible.

This is what happens in Lombardy in the winters. Cold air sinks down from the Alps onto the Lombardy Plain, where it just hangs, and hangs, and hangs. For days, even weeks, on end. The air is often completely calm, no wind. Any pollution from industry simply sticks around, mixed with the fog into a nasty, potentially lethal cocktail. With escape to the south blocked off by the mountains of the northern Apennines, the air has nowhere to go, so just sits upon the plain, increasing in toxicity by the day.

I also saw it when I used to sometimes watch Italian football on Channel 5 on Sunday afternoons, about twenty years ago. If the match was being played in Milan, you knew that you would be struggling to see from one end of the pitch to the other.

Yesterday I looked at a NASA satellite map of air pollution in Italy. It has decreased during lockdown, but Lombardy has the most polluted air by far. It is suggested that the high mortality rates in Lombardy are largely the result of the fact that the population already has chronically damaged lungs due to their lethal, polluted winters. In amongst the madness, it is a rare piece of common sense.

Climate alarmists seem to show relatively little concern for air pollution. After all, it's not caused by CO2. Also, it is demonstrably a real environmental problem, causing real hardships and deaths for life human and non-human. In contrast, show me people who have actually died from catastrophic global warming. Tony Heller clearly views climate alarmists as the scum of the Earth. Maybe he has a point.      

Not OK Computer

The words of one Prof. Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College, London, have played some not insignificant part in the unfolding coronavirus situation. As a member of a parliamentary select committee informing and advising government, he 'calculated' that 500,000 could die of coronavirus in Britain. He has now changed his mind. He says it is more likely to be around 20,000. At this point, it's time to play a little game: Spot the Difference.

After reading this, it hit me. Sometimes things do, don't they? The obvious, that's been staring you in the face for ages. So obvious that you just don't see it. The modern world is shaped largely by people (largely men) with overdeveloped brains and underdeveloped lives, who spend inordinate amounts of time sitting in front of computer screen fiddling around with numbers, curves, and the like. At the very least, their dubious activities provide dubious credibility for dubious people who wish to put into place dubious measures.

You see, the same is true for climate change/global warming/ Greta panic, whatever you want to call it. Should you examine the actual data, at least before it's been fed into a computer and modified by NASA, NOAA, IPCC or whoever, you will find nothing to get hysterical about. Nothing at all. In fact, if truth be told, data I looked at a few weeks ago showed that the majority of the Earth's surface has cooled down over the past five years (sorry to be such a party pooper).

However, if you decide to 'model' or 'simulate' the future by putting a bunch of variables into a computer programme, variables concerning the future, about which we have little real idea, then you can come up with anything you want to. You simply mess around with the variables until you get the kind of result you want, then give it to National Geographic, BBC, CNN, or whoever, and the world will react  in knee-jerk fashion accordingly.

Isn't it extraordinary? The shape of the human world decided by dodgy computer modelling? Modelling a future that we do not, and cannot, know, using a bunch of assumptions, expectations, or the like. Then basing decisions which affect millions of people's lives on that imagined future. Talk about crazy - or simply nasty.

When I wrote recently about this life being a 'test for the individual soul' this is surely a big part of it. Are you going to be just taken in by the hype? Or are you bold enough to see through the veils, or at least ask proper questions about 'official solutions'? Is your soul up to the task or not?

Modern humanity is no less liable to being taken in than were its predecessors, who modernity is fond of scoffing at for their naivety, gullibility, superstition, blind religiosity. Naivety, gullibility, superstition, blind and misplaced religiosity: all such charges can be aimed equally at those who sit at the feet of the modern god of figures, statistics, academia, 'scientists say....' What a huge and absolutely awful joke.  

Greta Gets Her Way

Part One

When the world is encouraged to take its lead from a little girl in pigtails who doesn't do her homework, we know that something is up. And when she is warmly applauded by people in high places who have 'unelected, undemocratic, and unaccountable' at the top of their CV, then we can be doubly sure that something is well and truly up.

As it turns out, she needn't have worried. Her dream has come true. The panic is upon us.

There is an arcane corner of Buddhist studies called Abhidharma. I have never delved into Abhidharma very much. It is analytical in the extreme, real head-banging stuff, guaranteed to give me life-threatening migraines. The essence of Abhidharma is analysis and cataloguing of 'mental events', the things that go on in our mind. Furthermore, it may divide these mental events into positive, negative, and neutral categories. I am pretty certain that 'panic' won't be featuring in the list of positives.

Panic is a disastrous basis for human action. It constitutes an extreme rush of emotional energy, one which bypasses all reason and reflection. It is a complete loss of ego control (there are times when loss of ego control is appropriate, but rational decision-making isn't one of them). People in a state of panic are highly suggestible, easy to influence and manipulate. They will act without thinking, and are liable to do, or agree to, extremely silly things. Which is why Greta wants you to panic; and why panic is a major player in the coronavirus crisis.

Until now, climate panic hasn't worked badly. It became officially enshrined in the fabrication 'Climate Emergency'. This constitutes the 'objective pole' to which 'climate panic' is the intended subjective counterpart.

Certain sections of the public have fallen for climate panic big-time: some of the Extinction Rebellion folk, for example; while many politicians and social manipulators have embraced it for their own ends, while their true faith remains doubtful.

There are problems with climate panic, however. To be sustained, it requires a constant flow of lies, distortions, exaggerations, half-truths, and manipulations to keep the public in line. Increasingly sensational stories have to be fed into the mainstream of 'information', which requires an army of 'climate scientists', so-called journalists, politicians, eco-believers, renewables zealots, and the rest to manufacture and get out into the public realm. And, since all the more extreme predictions made over the years have proven to be wrong, a lot of effort needs to go into shutting up those who spy the sad and sorry state of the emperor's clothing.

Coronavirus panic, however, has a lot more going for it. Unlike climate emergency which, despite anything anybody says, remains based upon a theory of catastrophe which is unproved and likely unproveable, it is founded upon reality in the physical world. There actually is a coronavirus. Scientists can see it with their instruments, and we live in a society that places great stock on scientists with little instruments being able to see and measure things. It does undoubtedly cause illness, which is undoubtedly sometimes really horrible. And it undoubtedly leads many people to die. We cannot question the reality and suffering of coronavirus. But we can question the state-and-media-sanctioned response.

Part Two

I have recently been reading a book about some Tibetan Buddhists, focussed around the central years of the twentieth century. These were people who, with the Chinese invasion, fled the high, windswept plateaux of Tibet, escaping southwards to the still harsh Himalayan foothills of Nepal, Bhutan, and northern India. A more different way of life to that of the typical modern westerner is hard to imagine. Much of their lives was spent on the knife-edge separating life and death. Poor and simple in the extreme, keeping a few animals maybe, and subsisting on little more than tea, butter, the occasional other animal product, and tsampa, a simple barley-derived meal.

Survival entailed not only finding sufficient food, warmth, and shelter. The elements were almost uniformly harsh, and much energy was put into placating the local mountain, water, and sky deities. Offerings, ritual, and prayer were an integral part of everyday life.

With sickness, pain, and death never far away, the Tibetans in the book didn't wish to die any more than anybody else. Death held its fear. But I can't imagine these Tibetan folk panicking about it all. Trying it on with them would have been futile. Death was their companion, unwelcome maybe, but not unfamiliar.

Modern western culture renders people uniquely unprepared for crisis, for the prospect of death, for dying. It insulates from inconvenience, hardship. It has created a consciousness in the head, abstracted from the physical, the body, from direct reality. Snowflake mentality of today is simply the logical outcome of the protection and insulation that has only accelerated with the advent of virtual living, courtesy of computer technology.

Modern culture also sits at the foot of scientific materialism. 'Scientists say.....'; 'Modern research suggests....': how tired and nauseated I have become by this procession of the false neo-gods. In its strident atheism and nihilism, the majority western attitude also gives a particular twist to the coronavirus crisis. It holds onto the curious belief that this life is it, is everything. That the mind is somehow the creation of the brain, so that when the brain dies, there remains..... nothing. So a certain panic, despair, and helplessness is likely to accompany any suggestion of Armageddon by epidemic. That's what's being exploited by not-very-nice people and groups today. 

Part Three

The media. It's a funny business, isn't it. That very important British newspaper 'The Guardian' has a circulation of around 130,000 copies daily (along with a few paywall subscribers, I suppose), about half the figure for a decade ago. Meanwhile, London Real's recent interview with David Icke on coronavirus had over two million views on YouTube after only three days. Perception is everything.....

My sole comment, really, is that anybody still conferring 'honourable behaviour' to the mainstream media should have been divested of such naivety by now. Maximising fear, uncertainty, horror, and panic has been the characteristic, it seems to me. There have been a few exceptions, but dark stories, worst-case-scenarios, moment-by-moment coverage of yet another death in Italy. I get the impression that a lot of people are just turning off, as a survival mechanism, aside from keeping informed of the essentials. And so they should.

A few days ago I received a circular email from a friend who works in the natural foods business. It gave advice on how to boost our immune systems in the face of this coronavirus pandemic. This coronavirus situation provided a golden opportunity for the mainstream media to do something useful: serious advice on boosting immune systems, for example, or properly thoughtful and  dispassionate articles on the bigger picture. But no. The vast majority of mainstream output has been to the diminishment of the individual, not their empowerment.

In my own cursory visits to the mainstream I've seen pictures of coffins lined up in Bergamo. Satellite photos of possible mass coronavirus graves in Iran. As if the mainstream normally gives a shit about the tens of thousands of innocent lives lost in that troubled part of the world over the past decade. I find it ghoulish, obscene. Obscenity is not Jim Morrison pulling out his penis in public (which he never did anyway); it is not this week's new videos on Pornhub. No, it's this attempt to exploit the manipulatable by the manipulators.

And worst of all, there are the 'commentators', the 'opinion writers'. These are generally parasites who don't know any more than me or you, but who get paid for laying out their own narrow, panic-generating opinions. Give them a wide berth.

Part Four

There was a moment, not so long ago, when I made the conscious decision not to be utopian about humanity. Since then, I've been a bit more relaxed about things.

What this means is that I am no longer looking for, hoping for, paradise on Earth. 'Paradise' does exist, but it does not belong in the realm of normal human affairs. Or, if it does, those humans involved will be so transformed as to be barely recognisable as such.

If anything, life as a human being constitutes a test. It's a great testing ground for souls, a kind of laboratory for souls. It is here that we can become magnificent, or we can slip into the sludge-filled pit of existential darkness. The coronavirus situation is a great test for all of us.

This view is born out on the Tibetan Wheel of Life, in the segment concerning 'the human realm'. Here, the human realm is portrayed as a place of this-and-that, good and bad; pleasure and pain, light and dark, all co-existing. It is a place of action, where choice is possible. It is, say the Tibetans, the most favourable place for 'spiritual development' as a result. The human realm: testing, testing.....

Part Five

There are uncanny similarities between the 'improved society' envisioned by Greta-style eco-zealots, and the world as it may reveal itself post-coronavirus crisis. This vision also conforms closely to that modelled in the UN Agenda 21/Agenda 2030. I am just pointing this out...…

In all scenarios, many of those who have embraced, or merely turned up in, western civilisation will find their lives immeasurably impoverished - economically, emotionally, imaginatively, spiritually. It is a world stripped bare of diversity, individual initiative, free thinking and ingenuity. This is all replaced by dull uniformity for the masses, herded into lookalike rude dwellings, coerced into a survivalist mentality. In case of doubt, check out the UN's Agenda 2030; it's easy enough to find.

I recall a phrase from my youth, of how Americans wanted to 'bomb the Vietcong and North Vietnam back into the Stone Age'. This vision of the future also brings to mind 1960s East Germany under Communist rule, with people living in ugly lookalike apartments, reduced to blobs, as Neil Kramer puts it. This is what some want for the mass of us, and will set out to achieve their goal in diverse ways.

Funnily enough, the self-appointed saviours and manipulators of the world and myself share moments of concord. In common with some eco nuts, I have been pleased to read that, with the termination of giant cruise liners (for now), Venice is now experiencing clear waters in its canals. This magnificent city with a unique beauty is not built for hordes of day-trippers turning up for a couple of hours to take a few happy snaps before returning to their ocean-going city.

I also find much air travel silly. People flying from Britain to Dubai for a business meeting; crazy. I have friends and family who fly halfway across the world as casually as I catch the bus into town. I find this mad - the human organism isn't designed for such things, and it represents a serious disconnect from our psyche.

And at this point we part company. The UN and environmental zealots see the situation as one which demands authoritarian control. For me, it is a matter of  'individual awakening', of individuals coming to their senses in all manner of ways. This is what I mean by the laboratory of souls; it is a testing place for each and every one of us. Can we rise to the occasion, or disappear down the plughole? Totalitarians, who would impose a 'solution', have no interest in such matters. They seek to close down the laboratory altogether. To put it in permanent lock-down. To diminish the individual human spirit, reduce it to mediocrity, to nothing, to zero. Let us not permit ourselves to be fooled.....  

Images: Top: You know who....
              Centre: Kullu Valley, n.India, past sanctuary for some Tibetans
              Bottom: Titian was always ahead of the game. Social distancing, Renaissance-style  

'S' is for Psychopath

Part One

I came across an interesting list recently. It's of the ten professions which apparently attract most sociopaths. The list comes from Kevin Dutton. I haven't checked out how he derived his list. He has an interesting take on the phenomenon of sociopathy, one which I do not necessarily go along with. In brief, he grants them a useful and valuable role in human society. As they possess fewer behavioural inhibitions than most people, they will readily do stuff that others will feel reluctant to do. "Need something done? Ask a sociopath." Hmmm. Needs to be treated with care.

But with these provisos in place, I present his list of sociopath-friendly professions:

1. CEO
2. Lawyers
3. Media
4. Salesperson
5. Surgeon
6. Journalist
7. Police
8. Clergy
9. Chef
10. Civil Servant

The distinguishing mark of a sociopath (or psychopath, the words appear interchangeable, with sociopath the generally preferred one these days) is absence of moral conscience. They have no empathy, no fellow-feeling. A sociopath can cheat, lie, deceive, exploit, steal, harm their way through life without qualms, without conflict. Remorse and regret are not a part of their emotional vocabulary. They will cry at a funeral, not because they feel sadness, but because that is what you are supposed to do at funerals. Provided they can get away with it, they will do so without inhibition.

Call me naïve, but some of the professions on the list are precisely those which seem to call for people with a sense of ethics; who feel for justice, truth, honesty, decency, fair play. Who possess a moral conscience. Lawyers and the police, for example: justice, honesty, an eye and a heart for the good. The media and journalism, tasked by society with providing truthful impartial information, in order for citizens to understand the world and come to balanced intelligent judgements themselves. The clergy, in whose hands is entrusted the spiritual welfare of the community. The civil service, whose job is precisely that, to serve the civil, the society.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Dig just a little deeper, and lo and behold! These professions don't carry out such functions very much at all. The law and its enforcing professions are not there primarily to dispense fairness and justice. They are there to maintain a system; one which, by the by, tends to promote attitudes that characterise those of sociopathic disposition. The media and journalism have become tools for promulgating particular socio-political programmes and agenda. Impartiality does not feature in the majority of modern media. It's been an overwhelmingly successful hijack, and one which far too many people still refuse to acknowledge.

Similarly, the civil service. Many members of this profession are not civil servants, but self-servants. Any current efforts by the UK government to drain the swamp will face stiff opposition from the self-service. As for the clergy, well...….. And even surgeons. Call me a sensitive wimp, but I'd prefer my brain transplant not be undertaken by a morality-free psychopath.

Of course, the majority of members of any profession fall short of being out-and-out sociopaths. I have read research which suggests that around 1% of the total population can be thus diagnosed, which rises to around 3% in the 'guilty professions'. But it is worth taking seriously, I submit, the tendency of professions such as media and the law to attract those of ethically-flaccid mentality. It gives a certain attitudinal slant on things, and helps to explain much.

Part Two

I have had during the course of my life a number of friends who have put forward the proposition that 'the problem is capitalism.' Much of the bad stuff in the world is due to capitalism. Take out that system and the planet will be a better place to live. I also know of people who say the same about socialism and communism. Evil resides in these systems; remove them, and life will be happier and more harmonious.

The same charge has been brought against various religious systems, particularly the monotheisms of Christianity and Islam.

In my view, all of these 'the problem is......' propositions are well wide of the mark. They are made by people with something of a moral conscience, looking for the root of immorality in the world of humans. Their well-intentioned naivety has failed to absorb the reality that much of the mayhem is caused by people who possess little, if any, moral conscience.

A sociopath on a greed or power trip will have no allegiance to anything like a social or political system, or a religious tradition. No allegiance whatever. It matters not a jot what the -ism or -ology proclaims: if it does the trick, that's all that matters. To a sociopath, this preoccupation with finding the right system is probably very sweet, very cute, very irrelevant. The mind of a sociopath has transcended such petty concerns. If it works, use it...

From the Bolshevik Revolution to the hippie movement, all manner of collective ideology or entity has been taken up and used for its own ends by the psychopathic element which is one part of moulding human history. In our times, it's notions associated with the modern fractured and fractious left that particularly bear the flag for sociopathic advancement. Globalism, 'diversity and multiculturalism', politically correct -isms and -phobias, climate emergency; these are at the forefront of advancing sociopathic agendas today. Global-tending organisations such as the UN and EU work overtime to further the cause. It is our duty as citizens on this planet to scratch beneath the surface, read between the lines, and not be duped. It's the least we can do.

Images:  Yamantaka, one of the Dharmapalas, protectors of truth and the moral order
              One view of the psychopath
              Just a random pic


         

Ama No Uzume

The Day the Sun Went Out

The story comes from Japanese Shinto. I feel that it is a good one.

One day the sun went into a strop. It was understandable, really. Her brother (the sun is female in this story), the storm god, had been wreaking havoc: destroying her fields of rice, killing her maidens, and more besides. She had had enough, so went into hiding in a cave. As you can imagine, the sun going into hiding is not a good thing for humans, animals, and all other life forms. The crops didn't grow, people didn't know when to get up and when to go to bed, it was cold all day, and so on.

The gods tried desperately to get the sun to come out of her cave, but she refused to show her face. They reasoned, they argued, they pleaded and implored, but in vain.

Finally, Ama No Uzume made an appearance. She turned a tub upside down, and began to dance on it. Gods and humans stood and stared. Encouraged, Ama No Uzume started to reveal her breasts while dancing, then took off more of her clothes, until naked, all the while dancing in a bit of a frenzy. The onlookers couldn't control themselves, and began shouting, laughing, cheering, generally creating noisy mayhem.

From inside her cave, the sun heard the racket. Finally, she could no longer restrain her curiosity, and peeked out of the cave to see what was going on. She could not help but be entranced by the sight of Ama No Uzume's comical yet sexy dance.

Ama No Uzume had craftily hung a mirror and a beautiful jewel outside the cave entrance. Seeing the jewel and her own reflection in the mirror, the sun slowly came out of the cave. Seizing their opportunity, the gods leaped forward and closed the entrance to the cave, so that the sun was unable to retreat once more. And now, seeing sense at last, the sun stayed out and the harvests flourished.

Ama No Uzume is sometimes referred to as 'The Great Persuader' and 'The Heavenly Alarming Female', a title which I find most amusing. I mean, would you wish for a confrontation with a Heavenly Alarming Female? Mixed feelings, probably.

She is thought of as the vitality and fertility which repel the forces of darkness in the universe, and reawaken life. She cares not a jot for tradition or propriety; she embodies thinking, or living, outside the box.

The story of Ama No Uzume is also picked up by Luis Royo. Well versed in, and with a good feeling for, mythologies of the world, Royo invariably sexes them up a bit. This is not surprising, since much of his artwork has an erotic flavour to it. In addition, Royo is Spanish, and his Spanish temperament bleeds through into much of his erotic art, which tends to be dark, sensuous, provocative, and a bit fetishistic.      

In his brief telling of the story, Luis Royo brings to the fore the shamanic aspect to Ama No Uzume's crazy dance. It is no ordinary dance, but the frenzy sends her into shamanic ecstasy and trance: the gods are correspondingly en-trance-d. And the mystical power of her dancing is such that the sun is touched by its energy. The sun has been hurt, gone into hiding, and it is only the crazy dance of Ama No Uzume which can heal her wound. It is thus a dance of deep healing magic.

"Ama No Uzume's dance …… took a sacred undertone under the Shaman's swaying and erotic forms, and all the gods were filled with a feeling of excitement ...….. They say that, after that day, all monsters and giants hid in the depths, their members amputated and their desire overflowing before the ghostly dance of the sorceress of dawn Ama No Uzume." It was such a nice story before Royo got his hands on it......

Anything For A Laugh

There was nothing very shamanic about it. And fortunately he didn't take his clothes off. But one reason that Boris Johnson won such a handsome majority in the recent UK elections was, in my view, the fact that he demonstrates humour. What a bunch of incredibly crabby, sour-faced beings the politicians of Britain are. Corbyn, Sturgeon, Teresa May before Boris. I have written before about my unsuccessful search for 'The Nicola Sturgeon Book of Jokes'. So among this lot of grim lips and crusty faces, Boris was bound to appear like a breath of fresh air. How much of it was a put-on is beside the point: the image was everything. Here was a guy who could take the piss out of himself, who would bluster and fluster, who seemed to enjoy the odd little prank. I have known a number of people who have raised their eyes to the heavens in despair, as to why so many folk voted for a bumbling buffoon. These people have missed the point entirely.

There is something very significant amongst all this, to me anyhow. To be truly human seems to include having a sense of humour. At least some sense of humour. I know that, subconsciously, I am on the lookout for this. And a lack of humour immediately raises suspicions in me about the all-round humanness of an individual.

To return to Ama No Uzume. The gods reasoned, they argued; they pleaded, they implored. But the sun didn't listen. Another element was required to get through the solar funk. And that element was humour - and a ridiculous branch of humour, at that.

Humour remains a potent weapon today. And it's not just polite jokes, either. Ridicule. There are elements to modern western society which are stubbornly impervious to everything - except humour. In your face humour, at that.

'Social justice'; 'intersectional politics'; climate panic. The one thing which those who uphold these notions are generally allergic to is reasoned, logical discussion and debate. They don't really do these things. I'm not all that good at them myself, but I have a go.

'Climate' is a big one. The number of people I've had 'conversations' with about this, suggesting it's not quite as terrible as is made out. It's when we get to the point where I ask: "Shall I give you the sources? The links?" Then they do a minor imitation of the sun in a mood, or throw their arms up, or change the subject. So what's that about? Don't they want to know? To at least have a look? Why won't they spend five minutes on Tony Heller's website, or something else similar? What's really going on? I leave you to sort that one out for yourself.....

Similarly, when I've pointed out that Arctic ice is pretty normal at the moment; so is Antarctic ice; there are fewer tornados than twenty years ago; the polar bears are doing nicely, thank you. People appear to think I'm being provocative for the sake of it, or being a compulsive pain in the ass. I'm not. These statements happen to be factually true, that's all. What's up with factual reality?

So when reason, logic, discussion fail. When it's a fixed belief you are up against, a matter of personal identity, cherished ideology. Or if it's a case of blind faith, religious fervour dressed up as care and compassion. Then, there is only one thing left. Ama No Uzume. Humour. Maybe even ridicule.

Ridicule is not the kindest of means, but sometimes needs must. It is a minor revelation when it clicks: beliefs and ideas that are not derived by rational means probably cannot be dealt with by reason. That's not their language of discourse. More direct, cutting-through techniques are appropriate. In the case of more extreme political correctness - intersectional politics, denial of biological realities, for example - and of climate doom-mongering, they seem to me so bizarre that exposing their profound silliness is the only course of action.      

Ladies and gentlemen, let us take off our hats and jiggle our breasts for Ama No Uzume.

Comedy in Britain has woken from its stultified, strangulated slumber, I have discovered recently. Comedy Unleashed has thrown off the politically correct straitjacket, a garb which destroys humour. I'm surprised the thought police haven't got in there and stopped them. Website below, plus plenty of clips on YouTube.

comedyunleashed.co.uk

A Random Ending

I decided to round this off with a few quotes. They may or may not have anything to do with what's been discussed. But here they are.

'If I was a 17 year-old who didn't attend school, perhaps journalists would talk to me about science.' Tony Heller of realclimatescience.

'Political correctness is fascism disguised as manners'. George Carlin.

'When we talk about compassion, we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative to wake a person up.' Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This is a particularly provocative quote. Its essence is, to me, true; but it lays itself open to serious misuse.

'My technique is don't believe in anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.' Terence McKenna

'The problem is not to find the answer, it's to face the answer.' McKenna again.

Images: Ama No Uzume
             Ama No Uzume (Luis Royo)
             Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Dinner With Hayagriva

Part One

Today we're eating at Hayagriva's Diner, the Michelin-starred pitstop joint of the Wrathfully Compassionate One. The menu is ever-changing, but guarantees to serve something for every taste. From heavenly lite-bites to hefty fibre-and-carbohydrate helpings for those with voracious appetites. From sweet and ambrosial desserts to concoctions that will have you rushing to the nearest pharmacy. Hayagriva's Diner serves them all.

Is it vegan fayre dished up in the Diner, or vegetarian maybe? Like many things, I don't know. But for sure, the Wrathfully Compassionate One doesn't go in for lettuce-and-cucumber sandwiches. And he's no soyboy. And, once inside, you'll find the vibe closer to that of a burger joint than a smoothie-and-quinoa hangout. The juke box in the corner belts out incessantly Jim Morrison intoning 'Roadhouse Blues'. But at this point, personal peccadilloes are overwhelming the Hayagriva bit of the business.

In reality, Hayagriva doesn't need any of this stuff at all. His nourishment derives from the sweet, divine nectar of gnosis. From the liquid fire that is kundalini. From the flow and play of the infinite energy of the universe. But it's a game that he likes to play.

Part Two

I make no claim to 'expertise' when it comes to Hayagriva. I have received no empowerments or had special blessings conferred. I have done no formal Hayagriva meditation or had instructions in his mantra. For me, it's not really about that. It's simply that, when you meet Hayagriva, when you feel his great presence, you just know that he's the One....

Time for some primary level education. I have no intention of going into the many symbols and attributes of Hayagriva here. These can be accessed DIY-style by anybody sufficiently interested. I'm more concerned with his overall vibe, his feeling. What is it that communicates from the presence of our terrifying masterchef?

Hayagriva turns up in various guises at various times in various bits and pieces of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. This is enough to drive crazy anybody who insists on simple logic and order as rulers of their universe. But it's just how things grew up, I suppose.

'Buddhism' is an umbrella word, a catch-all term, which imposes a somewhat artificial uniformity upon a multitude of different traditions. There is no central 'authority', no Buddhist pope. Hinduism is even more so, enough to drive any slave to consistency nuts. Things just started, morphed, interwove with other things, morphed again, often on quite local levels. The result, if you can discard the habit of trying to fit everything together nicely, is an incredible richness for the imagination.

Personally, my familiarity is confined to Hayagriva as he manifests in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. This is who Hayagriva is to me. He is one of the prime 'wrathful deities', as they are termed. There are peaceful deities, or Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, generally the better known figures; and there are their wrathful aspects or counterparts. So, for example, the well-known Avalokitesvara (also Kuan-Yin in Japan), Bodhisattva of Compassion, has a wrathful form, Mahakala, Great Death. At first glance, Mahakala doesn't look very compassionate at all. Manjusri, Lord of Wisdom, has as his wrathful counterpart Yamantaka, a monstrous-looking buffalo-type. And so on.

Hayagriva is reckoned to be the wrathful manifestation of Amitabha, a red Buddha who presides over the feeling faculty, if you like. Buddhaweekly (an online source with a good piece on the Wrathfully Compassionate One) describes him as the 'Incredible Hulk' emanation of Amitabha.

Amitabha is also Buddha of 'Discriminating Wisdom', most relevant in the modern day and age. Discriminating and distinguishing; seeing differences. It's not all One, man, after all. There is One and there are Two; and there are Many. The presence of Amitabha and Hayagriva recognises that difference exists, and it is a vital aspect to the fabric of the universe. Light, dark; masculine, feminine: the sacred polarities, one way in which the spiritual reveals itself.

Part Three

"Where 'ordinary' pacifying speech and compassion are insufficient to the goal - the goal of Enlightenment, or removing the obstacles to Liberation - then normally a Vajrayana Buddhist turns to the Heruka or Wrathful emanations."

This quote from Buddhaweekly spells out part of the story, but only part. To get divinely turned on by the wrathful ones requires a turnaround in ones basic attitude. It predicates a recognition, a realisation about the nature of energy in human life. All the stuff conventionally considered as keeping us in the pig trough - rage, sex, anger, jealousy, passion, desire - gets flipped on its head. Instead of being enemies to be vanquished or fled, they become allies, energies at the service of the Great Quest, the Big Trip, direct emanations of reality.

I have long felt a certain rapport with the wrathful ones. But this heated up no end as the kundalini energy came close to waking up properly in my body. A change in perception took place, whereby what was once to be 'escaped' or 'overcome' was now seen as necessary elements in the working of the universe. 'Feeling' is feeling; 'energy' is energy'. Void of inherent qualities, it just is. Everything else we just hang onto it by dint of our own predisposition to blindness. In this way, I could term myself a DIY Tantrik. Maybe this is the way for the west.

The peaceful Buddhas are more familiar to most people. At first sight they seem more accessible, less threatening and overwhelming. But it is Chogyam Trungpa who makes the point that, in reality, it is the wrathful ones who can be easier to engage with.

Sit in front of a peaceful Buddha form, with all your confusion, your turmoil, your lust, your resentment, your envy. The Buddha just looks back, smiling the eternal smile. Communication is impossible. It can drive you crazy. But take your mess to a wrathful deity, and it will respond. Respond in kind. There is movement, the possibility of communication, the potential for resolving something in the deep dark feelings which bounce to and fro in a frenzied ping-pong of exchange.

Part Four

Hayagriva reaches apotheosis in yab-yum. His consort is normally the dakini Vajravarahi. Buddhism is very fond of conceptualising stuff. Yab-Yum, it will sagely inform you, represents the union of wisdom (female) and compassion (male). This is all very well, and might have worked in medieval Tibet. But to 21st century western minds, this can be a cop-out. Confronted with this blood-red hulk in frenzied union with a tinier blue female with the head of a pig, we can short-circuit any real feelings this bizarre image may provoke with our well-honed intellectual musing. "Ah yes. Wisdom and Compassion. Of course. I get it." I understand. I get it. I am in control, thank goodness. And any possibility of real energetic and emotional transformation is extinguished. We can get on with life on channel normal.

When we chance upon Hayagriva and Vajravarahi in yab-yum, we are not grokking Wisdom and Compassion. We are witness to flailing arms, legs, bodies, kicking, screaming and roaring in off-the-wall ecstatic existential union. It is deep sex energy; it's actually very polarised. But we are privileged voyeurs. And, if we stick with it, we morph into willing participants. The universe reveals its true nature, it's two-in-one, and it is the end of the world as we know it.

Hey, Hayagriva, what's for dessert?


Images:  Hayagriva (Rubin Museum of Art)
              Soyboy
              Amitabha
              Hayagriva yab yum (detail)

              Hayagriva yab yum



 

Last Year's Pages

2019 was a funny year for reading and writing. On a personal level, the number one thing continued to be 'the inner work', 'the inner life'. But, whereas in previous years this was clearly reflected in blog posts - alchemy, Tarot, kabbala, tantra, kundalini, you name it - in 2019 this was hardly the case.

Maybe a point arrives when the inner work no longer requires or insists upon reading, writing, or speaking very much. It's part of the web of everyday life: you just get on with it.

But there was another angle. What I have termed 'the inner life' shouts out for qualities such as honesty, integrity, clarity, - freedom of expression! - for its own fulfilment. In 2019 the bullshit detector seemed to become more finely attuned. It would less readily tolerate apparent lies and deception, either within or in the outside world. So it began to push me more firmly along the path of seeking out truth and deception in the big wide world out there.

What had long been a subject of query now became visceral: what is honest and sincerely in the interests of human civilisation, and what is a veil, a mask, for programmes far less noble in intent. When is this really my own mind feeling and thinking, and when has it been hijacked by somebody else for other purposes? It became a forensic inquiry into situations where, as Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda in 'The Active Side of Infinity', "The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind."

I need a lot of persuading. It doesn't come easily to my anarchistic/small government individualistic heart and mind to believe that there exist people who purposely set out to control others, are prepared to manipulate and lie in order to get what they want, or feel so certain of their rightness that they see fit to impose their will on entire populations. So I set out on my quest....

I wrote in April 2019 about the BBC. For over a decade I had been aware that the BBC was not an impartial relayer of information; it was a voice for a particular way of looking at the world, for an agenda. I read a considerable tome, 'BBC: Brainwashing Britain?' to find out if it was as bad as I feared. It was worse, far worse. And the propaganda aspect to the BBC became clearer as 2019 progressed, with its anti-Brexit bias increasingly transparent.

It stood to reason that, given the bias of mainstream media, exemplified by the BBC in particularly toxic fashion, persons were being misrepresented. Mainstream media thrives on simplistic good guy/bad guy narratives. Obviously, the way to discover how far this misrepresentation went, was to research somebody with a bad press. And there was no doubt who the most despised, reviled person in the UK was: Tommy Robinson.

I watched his address to the Oxford Union, complete with clamouring hordes outside baying for his blood. And, more importantly, I read his autobiography, 'Enemy of the State'.

Something marginally interesting has occurred. The Wikipedia entry on Tommy Robinson, at the time of my reading the book, included the words 'racist' and 'thug' in their headline description of the guy. When I checked again the other day, maybe ten months afterwards, these words had disappeared, and 'British far-right and anti-Islam activist' had turned up in their place. At first sight, it looks like the long slow road to respectability for Tommy. However, read further, and you see that, according to Wikipedia, Tommy Robinson remains roughly the most criminal person on the planet.

Shock horror spoiler alert: the impression gained from actually reading Tommy's book was a far cry from what the mainstream was attempting to convey to Joe Public. A real far cry. It is difficult to imagine a more complete misrepresentation. One thing is that Tommy Robinson does not seem racist at all. He has friends - and supporters - of all manner of ethnic origin. Phrases like 'far right extremist', 'white supremacist', 'fascist' have been bandied about freely. Again, totally erroneous, and viciously so. Even in his English Defence League days, neo-Nazis, who did have a problem with people of different ethnic backgrounds and skin colour, were given short shrift. Very short shrift.

The reason the mainstream has turned so viciously against Tommy Robinson is that he sees problems with Islam, and the problems which accompany it in parts of Britain. He has criticised a sacred cow, and asked serious questions about how a problem is being treated - or, rather, ignored - in our modern western society. That's all. Most salutary of all is the terrible way that he has been treated by social media, the courts, the police, the legal system. Hounded mercilessly, as they try to silence him. Charged for offences that hardly anybody else would be charged with, silly things. He is a bit of a hothead, I can see that, but the way he has been 'dealt with' cannot be justified. Terrible.

I was on a roll. I wanted to try and get to the bottom of what 'political correctness' really is, and why. Along with climate denial, being politically incorrect is the most unacceptable thing to the mainstream way of looking at things. It gets you banned, hounded, losing your job, thrown off Facebook, Twitter and the rest. You must be silenced - no debate or discussion required. Once more, the obvious thing was to go for more despised and hated humanity. Milo Yiannopoulos, of course. Who else?

Milo was a big problem. He had to go. He was hated by 'the left' and by a lot of 'the right'. Despite that, he had a big following, especially among young people. He was a big problem because he was pro-Trump, and expert at ridiculing trendy but silly and harmful political ideas. He took his pro-Trump tour around U.S. campuses, and arguably was a factor in Trump's election victory. He was also infuriating, because he couldn't be pigeon-holed. Right-wing but gay, flamboyantly so, with a black boyfriend who became his husband. Undefinable, uncontainable. He had to go.

The opportunity arose when something Yiannopoulos said was misconstrued, twisted and distorted into 'Milo says pedophilia is OK'. Completely untrue, but there we go. It doesn't matter whether or not anything is accurate, provided it has the desired result. Which it did. Bye bye Twitter, Facebook, financial supporters, etc.

'Dangerous', Milo's best-seller, is a book that I devoured in no time. I don't find everything Milo has done and said clever, right, or funny. But this book is exceptional, as an outrageous and sometimes hilarious critique of political correctness, and how free speech is anathema to this way of thinking. Milo takes the revulsion towards him and turns it to his advantage. Chapter titles: 'Why the progressive left hates me'; 'Why Twitter hates me'; 'Why feminists hate me'; 'Why establishment Republicans hate me'. You get the drift.

For an expose of the toxicity of much of what drives today's right-on agendas, you'll be hard put to better Milo's incisive, intelligent, barbed writing. But for good measure, I followed it up.                

In rather more sober vein is 'The Genesis of Political Correctness' by Michael William. I was interested in this genesis: where did this authoritarian madness come from?; how did we get to this strange place? To a degree, I found some answers.

There are long, dense chapters on the three founding tomes of political correctness, according to William. I was vaguely familiar with one of them, 'Repressive Tolerance' (the title says it all) by Herbert Marcuse. You can cheat on these three chapters by just reading the summaries at chapter's end. And the book ends with an extraordinary and deflating catalogue of repressive events that have occurred in the UK in the name of repressive tolerance.

Together, these two books provided a far better understanding of what political correctness is: its aims and its toxicity, its threat to freedom of speech (which eventually leads to loss of freedom of thought) and a 'free civilised world'.

There were other books, but these will do for now. And, just to show that nobody is safe from the frenzied fanatics, watch this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEkosBa_qGk

And if you don't get the references to Count Dankula/Markus Meechan and Buddha the Nazi pug that got him a criminal record, watch this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rdWlVyN9es

Images: Nag Hammadi texts; Father Ted