La verdad (con minúsculas) no siempre es terrible. Además, qué tan terrible o buena es una verdad depende de quién la está recibiendo.
Las personas generan verdades.
Un blog compulsivo en donde trataré de quitarme de encima algunos enigmas y/o hacerme la interesante. Probablemente será lo segundo más que lo primero.
miércoles, 27 de junio de 2012
lunes, 25 de junio de 2012
Irreversible
Lo mejor que podría hacer es ya no hacer nada.Ya lo tenía planeado de todos modos.
Por favor no me odies.
Por favor no me odies.
viernes, 22 de junio de 2012
Hijos
"¿No quieres tener descendencia? ¿Entonces quién chingados va a enterrar tus huesos?"
¿Importa?
¿Importa?
viernes, 15 de junio de 2012
miércoles, 6 de junio de 2012
Sobre el cuerpo
"The human body likes to be noticed. It appreciates being concentrated on in a gentle and peaceful way, but if you're inconsiderate and hate the body, it really starts becoming quite unbearable. Remember we have to live within this structure for the rest of our lives. So you'd better learn how to live in it with a good attitude.
You say, 'Oh, the body doesn't matter, it's just a disgusting thing, gets old, gets sick and dies. The body doesn't matter, it's the mind that counts.' That attitude is quite common amongst Buddhists!
But it actually takes patience to concentrate on your body, other than out of vanity. Vanity is a misuse of the human body, but this sweeping awareness is skilful. It's not to enforce a sense of ego, but simply an act of goodwill and consideration for a living body -- which is not you anyway".
"Disgust has a valuable natural function. It evolved to stop us from touching, and especially from eating, infectious substances. The things that naturally disgust us are likely to contain germs or parasites: bodily fluids, secretions, and wastes; corpses; open wounds; and worms and bugs (which might be parasites, or transmit parasites).
Religions co-opt this natural function for their own purposes. Whatever a religion disapproves of, it declares “impure,” and it persuades you to transfer your disgust from infectious substances to that.
Anything “immoral” (even if harmless) is made disgusting. If a religion wants to stop you from having sex, it tries to associate sex with “dirt” and “defilement,” and draws connections between sex and excretion. Some societies suffer from elaborate, rigid systems of taboos. They require constant paranoid effort to avoid ritual contamination from perfectly harmless substances, creatures, thoughts, or acts. Many societies declare some people to be impure. Then it is supposed to be moral to mistreat and exclude them.
Some forms of Buddhism use disgust in this same way: to deter you from anything that interferes with their approach to Buddhism. For example, monks are taught to suppress their sexual desire by visualizing women as rotting sacks full of revolting substances".
"As we saw with Early Christianity, for example, in the writings of Saint Augustine, there appears to be an extreme devaluation of the body. Similarly, Early Buddhism seems to denigrate the body. For example, in the early stages of Buddhist meditation one of the primary objects that a practitioner contemplates is the human body, in different stages of decomposition.
However, it was not an ideal that such meditations should lead to excesses. For example, one story in the canonical texts tells of some monks who, having practiced these Cemetery Meditations, had become disgusted with their own bodies, and committed suicide. The Buddha condemned these actions and promulgated the monastic rule against murder and suicide (Collins 1997:95).
It could be argued that the Buddha would have condoned monks who burn themselves to death in present times to draw attention to the suppression of Buddhism. However, in this instance the monk can do such a thing because of his meditation on the impermanence of the body, but he does not do it because the body is undesirable. Rather, it is seen as precious and therefore can be nobly sacrificed for others' benefit.
This notion parallels the idea in Christianity that the body can be sacrificed, not because it is inferior in any way, but because it is holy. In fact, the Buddha encourages his followers to cultivate the body, and Anne C. Klein (1997:141) has said that "much of Buddhist practice can be understood as a way of consciously seeking a more spacious way of experiencing our embodiment."
Buddhist texts like the Sutras call the body a 'bag of excrement," a "heap of corruption," a prison, an abscess, an ant hill, a pot (which is created and later destroyed), and refer to bodily functions as "impure." Introducing an instruction for meditation, the Dharma-samgiti Sutra says the body (kaya) "is just a collection of feet and toes, legs, chest, loins, belly, navel, backbone, heart, ribs and flanks, hands, forearms, upper-arms, shoulders, neck, jaw, forehead, skull, accumulated by the action that causes existence, the abode of sundry passions, ideas and fancies" (Bendall and Rouse 1971:216).
However, Sue Hamilton (1995:51) argues that the Sutras imply in these exercises that there is nothing about the body that is intrinsically undesirable or repugnant; rather, the exercise is simply analytical. It is only because we identify (falsely, say Buddhists) so completely with our bodies that we must be made to see they are actually impermanent.
This is strikingly evident in the verses in the Therigatha where Subha responds to a man who is infatuated with her: "What you, infatuated, see here in the body and regard as excellent/ is subject to destruction and fit to be tossed in a cemetery filled with corpses" (vs. 380 cited in Trainor 1993:65). Subha then gouges out her eye, which he had earlier admired, and offers it to the man.
Because the fundamental cause of suffering and rebirth is attachment to transient things, Subha is displaying vividly the Buddhist ideal of nonattachment. Thus, it is not the undesirability of the body that is to be focused on, but the temporality of the body and Subha's compassionate regard for the man, whom she helps attain enlightenment. Moreover, there is a shift in somatic imagery at this point in the poem. Previously, the body was characterized negatively but when the Buddha's body is described it is so extraordinary that it heals Subha's eye. So the positive use of sight, especially directed toward the Buddha's body, is emphasized".
As well, in Post-Ashokan Indian Buddhism, the female body takes on a horrific appearance in order to save a renunciant (Wilson 1995:76). Grotesque figurations of the female body are instrumental to men seeking total closure which is the ideal state symbolized by a highly controlled body (Wilson 1995:92).
In the Tathagatacint-yaguhyanirdesa Sutra the female bodhisattva shows her lover her body as a corpse to release him from his lust (Ku 1984: 237 cited in Williams 1997:215). Indeed, it is the final vision of dead women that leads Gotama to renounce the world, by fleeing from the palace of desire in which his father had imprisoned him (Wilson 1995:77). Thus, while terms like "rotten," and "putrid" appear to negatively value the body, they are actually used to emphasize the body's impermanence.
Hamilton even goes so far as to say that because the Buddha defines karma as volition: "I say that volition is karma. Having willed, one acts through body, speech and mind" (Sutta Pitaka cited in Hamilton 1995:48), it is not the body from which passion, desire and hatred originate since the Buddha distinguishes volitions from the body. Thus it is misleading to claim that volitions such as passion and thought that disturb the mind arise from the body. Instead it is one's state of mind, not one's body that is the source of desire.
Hamilton (1995:52) concludes that "the Buddha's attitude toward the body is therefore not a negative one. In fact, it is neither positive nor negative. As we have seen perhaps most clearly in looking at the mindfulness exercises, one is to have a purely analytical attitude toward one's body."
You say, 'Oh, the body doesn't matter, it's just a disgusting thing, gets old, gets sick and dies. The body doesn't matter, it's the mind that counts.' That attitude is quite common amongst Buddhists!
But it actually takes patience to concentrate on your body, other than out of vanity. Vanity is a misuse of the human body, but this sweeping awareness is skilful. It's not to enforce a sense of ego, but simply an act of goodwill and consideration for a living body -- which is not you anyway".
"Disgust has a valuable natural function. It evolved to stop us from touching, and especially from eating, infectious substances. The things that naturally disgust us are likely to contain germs or parasites: bodily fluids, secretions, and wastes; corpses; open wounds; and worms and bugs (which might be parasites, or transmit parasites).
Religions co-opt this natural function for their own purposes. Whatever a religion disapproves of, it declares “impure,” and it persuades you to transfer your disgust from infectious substances to that.
Anything “immoral” (even if harmless) is made disgusting. If a religion wants to stop you from having sex, it tries to associate sex with “dirt” and “defilement,” and draws connections between sex and excretion. Some societies suffer from elaborate, rigid systems of taboos. They require constant paranoid effort to avoid ritual contamination from perfectly harmless substances, creatures, thoughts, or acts. Many societies declare some people to be impure. Then it is supposed to be moral to mistreat and exclude them.
Some forms of Buddhism use disgust in this same way: to deter you from anything that interferes with their approach to Buddhism. For example, monks are taught to suppress their sexual desire by visualizing women as rotting sacks full of revolting substances".
"As we saw with Early Christianity, for example, in the writings of Saint Augustine, there appears to be an extreme devaluation of the body. Similarly, Early Buddhism seems to denigrate the body. For example, in the early stages of Buddhist meditation one of the primary objects that a practitioner contemplates is the human body, in different stages of decomposition.
However, it was not an ideal that such meditations should lead to excesses. For example, one story in the canonical texts tells of some monks who, having practiced these Cemetery Meditations, had become disgusted with their own bodies, and committed suicide. The Buddha condemned these actions and promulgated the monastic rule against murder and suicide (Collins 1997:95).
It could be argued that the Buddha would have condoned monks who burn themselves to death in present times to draw attention to the suppression of Buddhism. However, in this instance the monk can do such a thing because of his meditation on the impermanence of the body, but he does not do it because the body is undesirable. Rather, it is seen as precious and therefore can be nobly sacrificed for others' benefit.
This notion parallels the idea in Christianity that the body can be sacrificed, not because it is inferior in any way, but because it is holy. In fact, the Buddha encourages his followers to cultivate the body, and Anne C. Klein (1997:141) has said that "much of Buddhist practice can be understood as a way of consciously seeking a more spacious way of experiencing our embodiment."
Buddhist texts like the Sutras call the body a 'bag of excrement," a "heap of corruption," a prison, an abscess, an ant hill, a pot (which is created and later destroyed), and refer to bodily functions as "impure." Introducing an instruction for meditation, the Dharma-samgiti Sutra says the body (kaya) "is just a collection of feet and toes, legs, chest, loins, belly, navel, backbone, heart, ribs and flanks, hands, forearms, upper-arms, shoulders, neck, jaw, forehead, skull, accumulated by the action that causes existence, the abode of sundry passions, ideas and fancies" (Bendall and Rouse 1971:216).
However, Sue Hamilton (1995:51) argues that the Sutras imply in these exercises that there is nothing about the body that is intrinsically undesirable or repugnant; rather, the exercise is simply analytical. It is only because we identify (falsely, say Buddhists) so completely with our bodies that we must be made to see they are actually impermanent.
This is strikingly evident in the verses in the Therigatha where Subha responds to a man who is infatuated with her: "What you, infatuated, see here in the body and regard as excellent/ is subject to destruction and fit to be tossed in a cemetery filled with corpses" (vs. 380 cited in Trainor 1993:65). Subha then gouges out her eye, which he had earlier admired, and offers it to the man.
Because the fundamental cause of suffering and rebirth is attachment to transient things, Subha is displaying vividly the Buddhist ideal of nonattachment. Thus, it is not the undesirability of the body that is to be focused on, but the temporality of the body and Subha's compassionate regard for the man, whom she helps attain enlightenment. Moreover, there is a shift in somatic imagery at this point in the poem. Previously, the body was characterized negatively but when the Buddha's body is described it is so extraordinary that it heals Subha's eye. So the positive use of sight, especially directed toward the Buddha's body, is emphasized".
As well, in Post-Ashokan Indian Buddhism, the female body takes on a horrific appearance in order to save a renunciant (Wilson 1995:76). Grotesque figurations of the female body are instrumental to men seeking total closure which is the ideal state symbolized by a highly controlled body (Wilson 1995:92).
In the Tathagatacint-yaguhyanirdesa Sutra the female bodhisattva shows her lover her body as a corpse to release him from his lust (Ku 1984: 237 cited in Williams 1997:215). Indeed, it is the final vision of dead women that leads Gotama to renounce the world, by fleeing from the palace of desire in which his father had imprisoned him (Wilson 1995:77). Thus, while terms like "rotten," and "putrid" appear to negatively value the body, they are actually used to emphasize the body's impermanence.
Hamilton even goes so far as to say that because the Buddha defines karma as volition: "I say that volition is karma. Having willed, one acts through body, speech and mind" (Sutta Pitaka cited in Hamilton 1995:48), it is not the body from which passion, desire and hatred originate since the Buddha distinguishes volitions from the body. Thus it is misleading to claim that volitions such as passion and thought that disturb the mind arise from the body. Instead it is one's state of mind, not one's body that is the source of desire.
Hamilton (1995:52) concludes that "the Buddha's attitude toward the body is therefore not a negative one. In fact, it is neither positive nor negative. As we have seen perhaps most clearly in looking at the mindfulness exercises, one is to have a purely analytical attitude toward one's body."
lunes, 28 de mayo de 2012
Unseen things
Me gusta estar limpia y no temer a que me conozcan, pero tampoco tengo porqué pensar bien de todos.
sábado, 31 de marzo de 2012
Motivos para pensar
Si el dolor no existiera, no nos preocuparíamos por encontrar respuestas a nuestras preguntas. Schopenhauer dijo algo similar, supongo que acertadamente. Yo razono, porque razonar es una manera de encontrar soluciones a mis problemas; o bien, porque quiero deshacerme de la inquietud de no tener una respuesta. No se trata de ningún interés por la verdad en sí misma. Si el conocimiento sólo nos trajera sufrimiento, yo abandonaría su búsqueda.
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Recuerdo que una vez leí un artículo que decía que los humanos primitivos desarrollaron la razón no para encontrar la verdad, sino para convencer a otros de que hicieran lo que ellos querían y así aumentar sus posibilidades de supervivencia. Yo le creo a ese artículo, aunque, aún así, podemos usar la razón para otras cosas, con fines más "dignos"; igual que desarrollamos dientes para comer, pero Hendrix usaba los suyos para tocar la guitarra.
---
Recuerdo que una vez leí un artículo que decía que los humanos primitivos desarrollaron la razón no para encontrar la verdad, sino para convencer a otros de que hicieran lo que ellos querían y así aumentar sus posibilidades de supervivencia. Yo le creo a ese artículo, aunque, aún así, podemos usar la razón para otras cosas, con fines más "dignos"; igual que desarrollamos dientes para comer, pero Hendrix usaba los suyos para tocar la guitarra.
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