Histriography of tantra, materialism, mozart, and my day

This blog features my learning process as a sci-fi writer, and my personal struggles in the everyday world. The latter I should add is censored a little since this is a public medium.

I have been advised to split the two, but I will not because the intention here is to evolve a whole voice, neither personal nor impersonal, not public nor private but both. I am pretending that the distinction between public and private does not exist in this blog, that the contingencies of storytelling do not apply to my life.

So where other blogs are deeply thought-out, mine remains randomishly focused. So to speak.

Wrote an essay on the historiography of tantrism this morning. It was on my mind as I slept: I dreamt that buddhism was a virtual visual world, negotiable by icons that were subjectively experienced as one's own self; that certain icons were unviewable until certain other icons were seen.

This certainly is in the spirit of buddhism, which posits a profound progression of means and techniques towards enlightenment.

But a virtual world to generate enlightenment? I don't know. I am sure that my unconsciousness is handing me here to means to create the sci-fi story Murder on Pureland. But is it sufficient? We will see.

Yesterday I spent evenly on four things:
1 Moving my flatmates' furniture out
2 Downloading, playing and copying music and games,
3 Rewriting the novella I wrote in May, Vincent's Party.
4 Regretably, chatting online.

The last only gave me occasion for sorrow. I am not bigger or greater than my desire to chat, simply more sophisticated at turning it to creative and useful ends... the sorrow for me is when time is frittered away on inconsequential wastes of time which in my right mind I have absolutely no regard for. END OF SELF-DENIGRATING RAVE. No use in going to war against myself.

As to the other three activities, they yielded a pure delight and balanced joy. I went to sleep reading Robert Silverberg's masterful little story "A Tip On A Turtle", where the heroine, merely seeking a root after a horrible divorce, finds instead the ability to see the future that renders attachment to anything material completely, well, IMMATERIAL. It is a fascinating riff on desire and attachment, and appropriate for my exhausted and numb mood.

On a lighter note, I woke in a house almost all mine! What remains of my ex-flatmate, besides the annoyingly rearranged furtniture, is chests of drawers, the hands free phone, and cutlery, which at present is piled up dirty in the sink as a wee message to myself that I do not like excessive possessions for any reason.

It has been interesting explaining my attitude to materialism to my ex-flatmate, and I will try here since it seems unique. Possessions come as a consequnce of certain patterns of orderly behavior in one's life. But these patterns of orderly behavior do NOT come as a consequence of working like a madman unless you wish to trade happiness for material posessions, which is clearly absurb and inadequate, since we could die at any moment and render the entire pursuit a joke. Therefore, the patterns of orderly behaviour which produce wealth, posessions, etc, come ONLY as a consequence of aligning oneself with eternal principles which are inherently joyful and satisfying.

The paradox of this inner alignment is that it at once severs any attachment with aforesaid posessions, and at the same time creates the conditions for these things to appear in one's life. It is not ascetic to deny that one wants posessions, it is stupid. Asceticism is useful solely for demonstrating the true source of pleasure, which is a phenomenon that, although triggered by outside events, originates completely from within the self. Asceticism demonstrates, in appropriate time, the reality that posessions give no joy, but only give you excuse to feel the joy.

To explain it seems complicated. I experience it as a calm inner knowing, like a warm light in my heart. So it is very simple and obvious to me.

Speaking of warm-heartedness, I am listening to a newly acquired BBC recording of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. It distinguishes itself by above all the quality of HONESTY to itself, an internality or inwardness which can only be described inadvertently as a fidelity to itself, or as a faithfulness to it's own intrinsic originality. Honesty is perhaps the simpler word. But it is above all a music in the influence of which dishonesty becomes simply impossible. It is like lying to a child you love.

I would include a clip of it online had I skilful means, but I am still a novice at this blogging art, so I request and humbly appreciate your forebearance, Kind Reader... :-))