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17 thoughts on “Mean Ppl Sucks”
Your point about survivor’s guilt is very much the plot in Moto Hagio’s Hanshin. I hadn’t made the SWF connection at all with that, but it’s interesting. I need to think about it some more.
So thanks!
It’s weird to think that the guy who directed Single White Female is the same guy who produced a large number of Eric Rohmer’s films.
My wife and daughter went out of town, leaving me alone with lots of time to myself, an ideal situation. But it sucked. I was bored. I had assumed the ideal situation was myself in a vaccuum, separated from context. But this “self” is always replaced by another, continuously. I need to keep moving forward, shark-like, to avoid this abstraction of self.
I didn’t know there was a sequel.
Weird Al did a funny bit on strange sequels. “Ghandi II; He’s back– and this time, it’s personal!”
“But this “self” is always replaced by another, continuously.”
That’s a very Zen look on life, J. There is no continuous entity that is the “self”, but people get caught up in their image of what their previous self was and try hard to maintain it.
“There is no continuous entity that is the “self””
Depends on who you ask! I was reading Kristeva and that’s pretty much what she says (the self is an illusion, though an illusion connected through the unconscious to the society and culture. I think is maybe what she’s saying.) There’s a harder core of self in a lot of Christian thinking. C.S. Lewis has a quip about the loss of identity which some pantheists think of as occurring in heaven actually exists only in hell — and E.M. Cioran (if I remember right) basically prefers Christianity to Buddhism because he admires the romantic hanging on to an image of self, and sees that as truer than the effort to let go of the self.
Maintaining the self is definitely a frustrating monkey-with-its-hand-caught-in-the-bottle kind of thing. But you can see the refusal to let go as either what ennobles us or what dooms us, depending on your perspective. Or as both, I suppose.
there is a marginal strain of Eastern Orthodox mysticism that says the self is made up of an unknowable overseer self, a semi-conscious but janus-faced middle-management self, and a crew of confused hyperactive slave selves with conflicting personalities and interests…in the insane, it is said that the slaves take over and quite literally Raise Cain (from the dead, as the new master self)
also that we are an iphone with different mental processes as ‘apps’ but what happens when we replace the iphone with the iching/ibrain ..? obviously that definition falls flat.
but most importantly: ‘Naomi Portman’
‘Naomi’
Naomi.
(see article)
isn’t the self that continuously wants to depart from the self a consistent self with consistent desires?
¡ ‘the illusionist’ is now playing in my area !
That’s a nice point…and an inconsistent self is a kind of consistency as well…
I think the only way to go for me at this point is the Christian and not the Buddhist way, to select a self (arbitrarily?) and operate that self, knowing that’s a game/maya/bull-honky. I ‘believe’ in God, an anthropomorphic entity and this works for me. Zen takes too much effort. At this point I’m relatively comfortable with the chaos of my warring internal systems.
Hah! That’s so funny; the reason Cioran doesn’t like Zen is that it takes too little effort. I wonder if he’d advocate Zen if that’s harder? I haven’t read him in a while….
Anyone can claim their free form is Zen, but people generally use the word pretty shallow-ly? Success at Zen is hard, I think.
But, then again, I’m being pretty sloppy and loose with my use of “Christianity.”
Yeah. The point of Zen (or Rinzai anyway) is to hold tighter and tighter until you realize the futility and let go, which is enlightenment. Cioran argues that you should never let go; just nail yourself down harder and harder until you die. Like Christ basically.
Achieving enlightenment is obviously difficult (to put it mildly.) And crucifying yourself is also difficult. Different kinds of difficult, is I guess the point; one of which is about release and one of which is about the opposite of release. Cioran prefers the second.
I’ve been reading a lot about Soto Zen lately, and, well, it depends on who you ask, because even in that tradition there are variations, but it’s not about holding tighter and tighter, it’s about letting go. As one teacher (Kosho Uchiyama) puts it, in sitting one “opens the hand of thought.”
And in this conception enlightenment is not difficult. Enlightenment is sitting zazen. It is not some mystical experience. Which isn’t to say the practice is easy. But it’s not supposed to be something that is cut-off for lay people or from everyday life.
(I’m sure I’m oversimplifying, but I thought I’d at least point out a different strand of thought on the matter.)
Yeah…I think Rinzai is different…and also, I probably don’t exactly know what I’m talking about (to no one’s surprise.)
But I think Rinzai is about confusing and confounding — showing you the futility of holding on. Isn’t Rinzai the one where they have stories about the student asking the teacher a question, and the teacher hits the student with a stick?
Aha! Wikipedia will help:
“Rinzai Zen is marked by the emphasis it places on kensho (“seeing one’s true nature”, or nirvåna ) as the gateway to authentic Buddhist practice, and for its insistence on many years of exhaustive post-enlightenment training to embody the free functioning of wisdom within the activities of daily life. Training centered on koan is one tool to this end, which the Rinzai school developed to a high degree. In general, the Rinzai school is known for the rigor and severity of its training methods.”
Yeah Rinzai is all about the koans. In Soto you don’t meditate on anything, you just sit and try to “think the non-thinking.” They still have the koans, they just don’t use them as meditation tools.
Your point about survivor’s guilt is very much the plot in Moto Hagio’s Hanshin. I hadn’t made the SWF connection at all with that, but it’s interesting. I need to think about it some more.
So thanks!
It’s weird to think that the guy who directed Single White Female is the same guy who produced a large number of Eric Rohmer’s films.
…and also the guy who directed Barfly.
My wife and daughter went out of town, leaving me alone with lots of time to myself, an ideal situation. But it sucked. I was bored. I had assumed the ideal situation was myself in a vaccuum, separated from context. But this “self” is always replaced by another, continuously. I need to keep moving forward, shark-like, to avoid this abstraction of self.
I didn’t know there was a sequel.
Weird Al did a funny bit on strange sequels. “Ghandi II; He’s back– and this time, it’s personal!”
“But this “self” is always replaced by another, continuously.”
That’s a very Zen look on life, J. There is no continuous entity that is the “self”, but people get caught up in their image of what their previous self was and try hard to maintain it.
“There is no continuous entity that is the “self””
Depends on who you ask! I was reading Kristeva and that’s pretty much what she says (the self is an illusion, though an illusion connected through the unconscious to the society and culture. I think is maybe what she’s saying.) There’s a harder core of self in a lot of Christian thinking. C.S. Lewis has a quip about the loss of identity which some pantheists think of as occurring in heaven actually exists only in hell — and E.M. Cioran (if I remember right) basically prefers Christianity to Buddhism because he admires the romantic hanging on to an image of self, and sees that as truer than the effort to let go of the self.
Maintaining the self is definitely a frustrating monkey-with-its-hand-caught-in-the-bottle kind of thing. But you can see the refusal to let go as either what ennobles us or what dooms us, depending on your perspective. Or as both, I suppose.
there is a marginal strain of Eastern Orthodox mysticism that says the self is made up of an unknowable overseer self, a semi-conscious but janus-faced middle-management self, and a crew of confused hyperactive slave selves with conflicting personalities and interests…in the insane, it is said that the slaves take over and quite literally Raise Cain (from the dead, as the new master self)
also that we are an iphone with different mental processes as ‘apps’ but what happens when we replace the iphone with the iching/ibrain ..? obviously that definition falls flat.
but most importantly: ‘Naomi Portman’
‘Naomi’
Naomi.
(see article)
isn’t the self that continuously wants to depart from the self a consistent self with consistent desires?
¡ ‘the illusionist’ is now playing in my area !
That’s a nice point…and an inconsistent self is a kind of consistency as well…
I think the only way to go for me at this point is the Christian and not the Buddhist way, to select a self (arbitrarily?) and operate that self, knowing that’s a game/maya/bull-honky. I ‘believe’ in God, an anthropomorphic entity and this works for me. Zen takes too much effort. At this point I’m relatively comfortable with the chaos of my warring internal systems.
Hah! That’s so funny; the reason Cioran doesn’t like Zen is that it takes too little effort. I wonder if he’d advocate Zen if that’s harder? I haven’t read him in a while….
Anyone can claim their free form is Zen, but people generally use the word pretty shallow-ly? Success at Zen is hard, I think.
But, then again, I’m being pretty sloppy and loose with my use of “Christianity.”
Yeah. The point of Zen (or Rinzai anyway) is to hold tighter and tighter until you realize the futility and let go, which is enlightenment. Cioran argues that you should never let go; just nail yourself down harder and harder until you die. Like Christ basically.
Achieving enlightenment is obviously difficult (to put it mildly.) And crucifying yourself is also difficult. Different kinds of difficult, is I guess the point; one of which is about release and one of which is about the opposite of release. Cioran prefers the second.
I’ve been reading a lot about Soto Zen lately, and, well, it depends on who you ask, because even in that tradition there are variations, but it’s not about holding tighter and tighter, it’s about letting go. As one teacher (Kosho Uchiyama) puts it, in sitting one “opens the hand of thought.”
And in this conception enlightenment is not difficult. Enlightenment is sitting zazen. It is not some mystical experience. Which isn’t to say the practice is easy. But it’s not supposed to be something that is cut-off for lay people or from everyday life.
(I’m sure I’m oversimplifying, but I thought I’d at least point out a different strand of thought on the matter.)
Yeah…I think Rinzai is different…and also, I probably don’t exactly know what I’m talking about (to no one’s surprise.)
But I think Rinzai is about confusing and confounding — showing you the futility of holding on. Isn’t Rinzai the one where they have stories about the student asking the teacher a question, and the teacher hits the student with a stick?
Aha! Wikipedia will help:
“Rinzai Zen is marked by the emphasis it places on kensho (“seeing one’s true nature”, or nirvåna ) as the gateway to authentic Buddhist practice, and for its insistence on many years of exhaustive post-enlightenment training to embody the free functioning of wisdom within the activities of daily life. Training centered on koan is one tool to this end, which the Rinzai school developed to a high degree. In general, the Rinzai school is known for the rigor and severity of its training methods.”
Yeah Rinzai is all about the koans. In Soto you don’t meditate on anything, you just sit and try to “think the non-thinking.” They still have the koans, they just don’t use them as meditation tools.