Buddha this, buddha that.

Mine is the cutest wood-carved buddha I bought for £60 at an Ashton Court festival a while ago. The good old chap allegedly attracts riches while money is placed under his base. Fact!! Not a rich uncle sent us £1500 2 weeks ago. I had placed £35 under his base 4 weeks ago, then to forget all about it! We had suffered needlessly (?) on a couple of occasions for want of a fiver.

I treat my budhha with respect; this makes the magic work when it is actually needed.

I keep my buddha close, buddha thrives on humility and self-effacement. Reaping happiness and joy to which no claim is made and to which I do not cling. There is no thought I may care to bid it bide a while. No mind keeps itself clear.

Trying in public to remember that loving kindness can stop animosity before it starts.

The path of liberation is exactly the same as the unfolding egoic lotus.

Let go of what is within before it does you harm. (paraphrase).

Z.

Bad god dead god

Above all other creeds, is the one that states that "god is love." There may be a fundamental flaw in biblical descriptions of such a loving god. At the inception of evangelical dogma, god got elevated to the unenviable role of being the world's one true heavenly father. At this point, every other belief system on Earth became randomly defunct, not fit to stand in the presence of such a greedy god. If god was so supreme, why do we stand 2000 years after the death of jesus in a world where christianity continues to vie with many other beliefs? If s/he is a god of love, why are christian societies as adversairial as they have been for 2000 years? In Nick's world, love, or loving kindness is the world's default morality, a belief which I admit derives from early personal exposure to the christian faith plus a later overlay of buddhism. This 'philosophical lottery' lies at the roots of hugely successful societies, where diversity nourishes and reflects the massive moralities stealthily usurping the laws of diverse gods only useful for 1 or 2 millenia at a time. You have nothing to lose but your chains, 'freedom is the new black' if I may be so bold? The king is dead, long live the king.

Z

What is the difference between a misanthropist, a philanthropist and a humanist? Answer? None. Each exists for the other in equal measure at one time or another.

Hate people, love people, just people. It concerns me that wherever I join the gang, ordinary people habtually outvie their personalities on which they will rely for decades to come. Because, they realise they are trapped in the roles they began to learn 10 years before.

Lives become increasingly fashioned by a series of opportunities or threats that were preferably shaped according to forebear's rulers and compasses. Few ever peeped outside their boxes, a miniscule amount could live outside the boxes.

I wonder if time is wasted trying to differentiate between authenticty and excitability? Really nice people you might place in the new world order, turn out to be militarists or racists. Normal people dread dropping conversational "stiches" I can look nuts by pointing out an interest either in nature or architecture.

Everyone craves inclusion as well as credibility, anyone who is eccentric provides an opportunity
to the credible to sharpen their claws and behave patronisingly. How close to authenticity is this? Never mind, get back in your box and think of Utopia.

Z.

About this, I stand so out of line with Joe Public, namely the remembrance issue. Because I have a tendency to mock nationalism including strong national identity because both create strong judgements about "foreigners" and because this provokes racism which I abhor, I am unable to mourn or be seen to mourn war dead, men and women who "fought for queen/king and country. There's a huge issue of emotional blackmail where all us citizens ought to be grateful to receive hard-won freedoms courtesy of the sacrifice of others. A huge contingent of mainly young men were equally duped by grandiose promises made be our national political and military leaders. It would be patently foolish to point out the utter futility of war such as Vietnam and millenia-old disputes over the Khyber Pass, politicians and generals seem fetishistic about digging up the past as if the past needed their guardianship. I say "bury the past with its dead", come to live with us in this place of immediacy and leave all those poppies in Flanders.

Z.

Our local school calls itself, "Oasis Academy Brightstowe." It has done what can only be described as godifying itself (sorry about neologising, not even a decent attempt). The fuckers sent home a burgundy (puke) little new testament with my daughter that I inserted at the very back of a drawer full of crap. Where are the potted versions of the koran, the tao te ching and a couple of sutures (-)? Right! Nowhere! Christians are fully communing with the big daddy of world faiths, and my daughter is blessed with attending a school brimming with the fervour of the true followers of christ the lord aka the son of the top dog. I am so going to pay for this somewhere along the line. I still haven't cashed in my god-given free will however. That'll be a hotel on Mayfair please and all the stations (of the cross, I guess.)

Z.

As a congenital outsider, it occurred to me to question the apparent contradiction that, blessed with above average intelligence, I can now at 49 pull a measly £20,000. But that is precisely it: unable and unwilling as I am, to adopt the communication choices and moeurs of normal British people, my ostracisation stems from sounding and appearing 'odd.' But as I age and start to accept the wisdom of placing the appropriate grunts in the appropriate places, people smile at me more and encourage me to reciprocate, warmth and humanity. 30 years of sceptcism and paranoia draw me close to a tender, less angry place. It remains in my power however to study the shiny happy people and ask myself if they can understand me talking about the Emperor's clothes or if they took on board the perspective's of Gide's, "Les Faux Monnayeurs"? Bad Faith or Facticity? The role vs. the person, the worker vs. the revolutionary?

I was as mad as a Tasmanian Devil when a property program on TV made it completely commonplace to buy a house according to school catchment area, young couples planning the time of their lives and an educated bourgeois dynasty based on the price of fish, tide times and an hour of reflexology every month. The empty whisky bottles are not a source of local gossip, so they get buried like shame in the shameful black bin whose millions of bottles of Famous Grouse end up at the tip enticing young new age paupers to ask the question: "What if?"

Z.

Call me old-fashioned, I work alongside hip dudes mostly atheists mostly well to the left of Karl Marx. Right now, I stay at a distance while I carry out my own secret reality checks. Meaning, who's buying in and who's buying out. Going back a bit I was friends with a network of young french intellectuals who lived in small communes mostly in the Ardeche. On the door to one of the houses, someone drew a picture of a cute duck with the expression, "Take off your mask through entering this place." Over 4 years, I found a pathway to excrutiating parts of my character time and time again. I have not found the way to nirvana quite as well as I did then. I know that everyone strove for the very peak of the mountain the likes of Cat Stevens sung of in praise. Zion is close, the rastas know this. Rastafarianism is like this.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Z.