In a small village by the edge of a river, there lived a monk who was known for his deep compassion and unwavering commitment to all living beings. Each morning, he would walk along the riverbank to meditate and reflect on his teachings.
One crisp morning, as the monk walked by the river, he noticed a scorpion struggling in the water. Without hesitation, the monk reached down to rescue the scorpion, but as he did so, the scorpion stung him. With a sharp pain searing through his hand, the monk instinctively pulled back and the scorpion fell back into the river.
The monk paused for a moment, looking at his swelling hand, but his resolve did not waver. He reached out again to save the struggling scorpion, and again the scorpion stung him. This time, a passerby who was watching the scene unfold called out to the monk.
“Revered Monk,” the passerby yelled, “why do you continue to save the scorpion when it clearly means to harm you?”
The monk, with gentle eyes and a calm voice, replied, “It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. It knows no other way. But it is my nature to save and show compassion. Should I abandon my nature just because the scorpion follows its own?”
The monk carefully scooped up the scorpion once more, this time managing to place it gently on the riverbank before it could sting again. He wrapped his swollen hand in a piece of cloth and continued his walk, his spirit undeterred.
“People call me wise, but I am not,” the monk later explained to his disciples. “I simply do not overrule my nature with anger or fear. The scorpion does what it does out of instinct. I choose what I do out of understanding and love.”
There’s a parable about being struck by an arrow, causing pain. It futhers explains that if you then worry about and fixate on the pain or the circumstances of being shot, it’s like being struck by a second arrow. The first arrow represents the unavoidable pains of life, while the second arrow is the suffering that comes from our own reaction to those pains. There lies a parable that serves as a metaphor for the human experience of suffering. This parable is often referred to as the “parable of the two arrows.” It begins with the notion that life inevitably brings with it various forms of pain and suffering, represented by the first arrow. This pain may originate from circumstances beyond our control, such as the loss of a loved one, an illness, or a financial setback.
The pain caused by the first arrow is a natural part of existence. However, it is our reaction to this pain that determines the depth of our suffering. Our reaction to being struck by a second arrow represents the mental and emotional anguish we inflict upon ourselves. This second arrow is the result of our attachment to desires, our aversion to unpleasant experiences, and our resistance to the changing nature of life.
By fixating on the pain, ruminating over it, or becoming consumed by negative emotions, we amplify our suffering. We may engage in self-blame, harbor resentment towards others, or retreat into isolation. These reactions, while understandable, only serve to perpetuate our misery.
Cultivate a different approach to suffering. Emphasize the practicing of mindfulness, which involves observing our thoughts, emotions, and sensations without judgment or attachment. Through mindfulness, we can learn to accept the presence of pain without getting caught up in it.
By acknowledging and embracing the reality of the first arrow, we can begin to release the grip of the second arrow. This doesn’t mean that we become indifferent to pain or deny its existence. Rather, it means that we develop the resilience to face life’s challenges with a sense of equanimity and compassion.
In a quaint village nestled between two mountains, the residents had an age-old tradition. Every dawn, they would climb a small hill and face the rising sun, offering a silent prayer.
A young traveler named Jalen, curious about the world, arrived in the village. Observing the morning ritual, he asked an elderly villager, “Why do you pray each morning facing the sun?”
The elder replied, “Come with me tomorrow, and you will understand.”
The next morning, Jalen joined the elder. As they climbed, Jalen noticed the path was fraught with obstacles: sharp stones, thorny bushes, and sudden dips. However, as the sun rose and they faced its light, the path behind them illuminated clearly.
The elder spoke, “Life, like this path, has its challenges. Prayer doesn’t necessarily change the path before us, but it illuminates the one behind, giving us clarity, understanding, and strength to face what lies ahead.”
Jalen pondered this and realized that while the villagers prayed facing the sun, they were not praying for the journey to be easy. They prayed for the strength, insight, and gratitude to embrace whatever came their way.
The parable highlights that prayer is not just about seeking external aid or solutions. It’s a moment of reflection, connection, and grounding, providing clarity, peace, and resilience in navigating life’s challenges.
In a vast desert, there was a single oasis known as Luminara. It was said that the waters of Luminara had the power to heal and bring clarity to the mind. Many travelers, upon hearing of its wonders, would embark on a journey to find it.
One such traveler was a young woman named Sela. She had endured many hardships in her life and sought the oasis to find solace and strength. Guided only by ancient tales and a worn-out map, she began her journey.
Days turned into weeks. The scorching sun, relentless sandstorms, and deceptive mirages tested Sela’s resolve. Doubt crept into her mind. Was Luminara just a myth? Was her journey in vain?
One night, as despair threatened to overwhelm her, an old woman appeared beside her campfire. She introduced herself as Mira, a guardian of the desert.
“Why do you seek Luminara?” Mira asked.
“For healing and clarity,” Sela replied, tears glistening in her eyes. “But I fear it may not exist.”
Mira, looking deep into the horizon, said, “Luminara is real, but it’s not just a place. It’s a testament to the spirit. Many begin the journey, but few complete it. It’s not the waters that heal, but the faith and perseverance of the journey itself.”
Sela, with renewed determination, continued her quest. And after what felt like an eternity, she found Luminara. The waters were as clear and refreshing as the tales had described. But Sela realized Mira’s words held the deeper truth. The oasis wasn’t just a destination; it was a symbol of her unwavering faith and resilience in the face of adversity.
The parable teaches that while external symbols of faith, like Luminara, can be powerful motivators, the true essence of faith is found within, in our perseverance and the strength we muster during trying times. The journey, with all its challenges, shapes us, and it’s our unwavering faith that carries us through.
Today is another week, and yet another Monday ticks by. I guess it’s true that time is the inescapable mechanism that eludes us, the metronome of our existence that ticks us towards our inevitable end. As we go towards our conclusions of our lives, I’m reminded of an old saying that the pawn and the queen go back into the same box at the end of the day.
Much like the chess pieces on the board, we all must work together to achieve the goal of protecting the Godhead of our existence. Every piece must move in tandem, and in coordination with each other. Just like time is the metronome for our existence, each piece is on a clock, any delay by the slowest piece uses up the allotments for the other pieces.
The game of chess goes through developing board states through the execution of the game play, and likewise, we go through development with moving in coordination with our family, coworkers, and confidants to protect our Godhead of existence. No piece is expected to move separately upon themselves, but every piece can tie up the resource of time, which pressures the other pieces to make their moves more efficiently. This means that every individual affects the masses more than they think by simply being a participant.
If protecting the Godhead is the goal, then counter action means either dispelling the belief in the Godhead to break up the coordination of the pieces, or to make even one piece of the team refuse to participate. The piece that refuses to move is worse than the absence of a piece, because it ties up space that would otherwise be utilized.
The inconvenient truth about chess is that if a pawn, the lowest ranking piece in the board, reaches the opposite end of the board it can be promoted to the second highest ranking piece on the board, (but can also choose to be promoted to a lower ranking piece if it’s strategically in the interest of the game to do so). However, it can never replace the Godhead, or the central part in which all the pieces revolve around. If all the pawns, however, try to make it their individual goal to reach the opposite end of the board without thinking about the common strategy, the self-interest of each pawn can spell disaster for all involved pieces.
Because of this, we encounter the issue of balancing the dissuasion of the pieces to participate, the individual motivation of each piece striving to reach the end of the board, and the common goal of protecting our Godhead. And behind the delicate balancing act is the underlying tempo of time, the omnipotent force that drives us forward, much like how gravity pulls an object towards the center of the earth. It is commonly accepted that time is the only non-negotiable force in this equation, the common bar to which everything else is beholden to.
What is this wasn’t the case, however? What if time could be altered, bargained with, dissuaded, or encouraged just like all the other variables on the chess board? What if the force that was controlling time had an end goal that superseded even the goals of the established Godheads on both ends of the board? What if this force could even reverse time, only allowing events to move forward if the requisite actions had been met to progress towards this end state.
Now let’s zoom in and pretend that we ourselves our chess pieces on this board. We’re simultaneously being affronted on several parts, either through dissuasion, our motivations to promote ourselves, and identifying and working together to protect the Godhead of our existence. Through this all, the very essence of time is being affected, either through time being reversed to where we must repeat our actions over and over with slight variations which causes perverse moments of reflecting of our clumsiness, or were projected forward through time abruptly, creating gaps in our memory that we our unable to rectify?
Even more so, what if every reversal or fast forwarding of this time causes a branching of the timeline, with a phantom ghost of our slightly altered action emanating from ourselves in a type of tone vortex, which coalesce unto itself in some type of Ethereal time wave with no established beginning or end point? Infinite chess boards, infinite moves, and infinite variations of infinite outcomes, with no more right or wrong than the other. In this state of existence, would it be good or bad?
Now let’s say that armed with this knowledge, we can then go back into this chess board knowing that our actions are influenced by the altering of time. How would we then make our decisions with the actions that we commit? How would we be empowered?
It’s only in the face of this state of being that we realize that the power of propagation is immense. It means that every action that we commit, no matter how banal, is repeated into infinity. The result of your actions pierces it into all directions in this ethereal time wave, like a reverse funnel where you are the narrow point, and the result is the weirdest point.
Your actions, both good and bad, are repeated into infinity. The moment where to hold the door open for the elderly person or you decide to shortchange the homeless person asking for a dollar, don’t just occur once. It infinitely repeats, projecting or in a type of wave what only compounds in its effects the further away it gets from its point of origin. It’s extremely hard to believe, but we could very well be dealing with a situation of whether your decision to give a homeless person a dollar could either empower or collapse an entire civilization in some infinitely far away location in an infinitely far away timeline.
Everybody is both a pawn and a queen. Simultaneously, we are both making the decision to move towards the end of the board, and to refuse to move at the same time. Simultaneously, we are bother frozen in time, and infinitely experiencing all possibilities at the same time.
Where does our current perception come from then? It comes from our own interpretation of the actions that we make, which steer our experiences and perceptions that are influenced by us and outside forces. In this case, we are like a ship unto ourselves, steering ourselves through an endless time vortex of infinite possibilities.
So, the question is not whether we are pawns or queens. The question is: how will we use our understanding of this interconnected, ever-changing, and time-bound existence to move on the board? How will we navigate the countless possibilities that this cosmic chess game presents? Our answers to these questions will shape not just our personal game but, potentially, the infinite games unfolding across infinite realities. And it’s a question we should ask ourselves with every tick of the metronome of existence.
This month is ending on a fast pace, and it seems like work is relentless in it’s pacing. However, I am very grateful to be able to work, because this time last year I was still in recovery from my hospital stay and it’s better to be working then sitting on the couch playing Final Fantasy Remakes on the Playstation. However, it just continues the trend that there’s either nothing going on at all, or everything, everywhere, is happening all at once.
It’s been a good year, and my primary goals are to totally annihilate all my short and long term debt. The post COVID penndulum swing has put some fortune into my favors, and being a little bit older and wiser, I know that the feast and famine cycles are getting longer and more pronounced. When it’s good, it’s really good but when it’s bad, well, you get things like the COVID shutdown.
2023 has been marked with due diligence, keeping my head low, my mouth shut, and just forging forward and being a good citizen and doing my job. The only way we’re going to get through this is as a community, and being part of a community means that everybody has their particular vice that they contribute to. Recovering from my ailment took intervention from the government, where people I never met, holding higher positions that I ever hoped to attain, judged me and merited me worth the effort to keep alive, and for that gift I am now contributing back with my talents and capabilities in the best fashion that I know how.
It hasn’t been completely automoton Joe here. I do have a plan for the future, but to enact that plan it involves making some sacrifices now in the near term future. All the traveling and vacationing is done, and it’s time to repay and give back. In the end, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. It’s just how life works, and it’s one of the many hills and valleys in life that we encounter.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate it.
Here is yet another update to the website discussing the updates, and my future plans for the website despite the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much progress being made. Perhaps the point of talking about the updates to the website is the point, with an endless juxtaposition being made towards the constant promises towards better tomorrows, but in reality the website hangs in between this flux of hovering between being set up for better tomorrows, versus the constant background thoughts of just shutting it down, and giving it up.
In reality, this website takes a lot of time and effort to run and maintain and there’s no immediate benefits that I discern from the efforts that I put into it. I’m not sure if anybody even reads it, and there’s no promise that the information that I do put on here isn’t going to be held against me in some future, predisposed time. Indeed, the fact is that the internet, which was once a mechanism for free speech and enduring ideas, has become a very hostile, dystopian landscape where you cannot even determine if the people you interact with are real individuals or bots, with just pre-scripted talking points ready to shout you down if you stray from the corporate pre-determined talking points, which honestly is very hard to track as it seems like the scripts constantly shift and reality has just lost the narrative.
The danger that I feel like I’m running into is that I’m just flat out getting outdated with outdated ideals and mannerisms that don’t seem to mesh well with the hyper-partisan and continuously radicalization of the internet to push narratives that don’t seem to have any definitive conclusion or realistic destination. It’s just a constant march towards chaos with no real anchor point, or solid foundation of known truths to which people can base their decisions and handle the impetus of change regarding. In truth, we do not know where this is going or even how I fit into it, or even if I want to fit into it. What’s the reward, and the end game?
I guess the whole point is that were all in it together trying to figure it out, together.
