In his teachings, Ben stressed that Zen was his path because it allowed him to be himself. All the other routes that allegedly lead to cosmic consciousness seemed to put him in conflict with his own nature. He advised all seekers to examine carefully what each system asked of the potential initiate, keeping in mind three rules:

1. What you are required to believe is what the system cannot prove.

2. Anything that you are asked to keep secret is of more value to the teacher than to the student.

3. Any practice that is forbidden offers something that the system cannot successfully replace with an alternative.

One listener asked, “Don’t you believe that giving up the pleasures of the senses will produce a different consciousness?”

“My personal experience,” Ben replied,”was that it produced the consciousness of fanaticism.”

– From Zen without Zen Masters

That Cuban girl
That brought me low
She had that skin so fine and red lips rose-like now
Her mouth was wide
And sweet as well
And now relentless hours of dreaming up her smell

And I feel as if I am looking at the world from the bottom of a well

Lonely
And the only way to beat it is to bat it down

Oh all the days
That I have run
I sought to lose that cloud that’s blacking out the sun
My train will come
Some one day soon
And when it comes I’ll ride it bound from night to noon

Aimless days, uncool ways of decathecting
Painless phase, blacked out thoughts you be rejecting

LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS NOW

– Mike Doughty

(ps – also check out a live performance.)

“In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits.”
– John C. Lilly

via readwriteweb:

Yesterday, Google officially unveiled its newest blog: Google Public Policy. The blog, which carries the tagline “Google’s views on government, policy and politics,” is different than any other Google blog in that it has nothing to with their technology. The blog will instead be an outlet for Google’s views “on issues like net neutrality, censorship, innovation regulation, immigration, R&D, national security, and trade” (“just to name a few”). Google’s public policy team, who author the blog, say that they hope to foster a “dialogue” with Google users about political issues in order to “do a better job of fighting for our common interests.” But a new blog is just a small piece of Google’s strategy for influencing government policy.

Google is fast becoming a proving ground for top-tier US presidential candidates ahead of the upcoming 2008 election cycle. “Does Google want to be the 51st state this election season?” was a question recently posed in the San Jose Mercury News.

from xkcd. (subject line from edgar allen poe.)