You DO realize you are just going to have him say something like, "No, I couldn't. I would get too tired, and I also need to eat, drink, use the bathroom, as well as sleep."

What I find fascinating is that I am completely able to take XB-70 at his word if he says he is happy, rather than the 'interpreted by their inner voice' way that most others seem to. From my reading, even BaldBlake cannot help but read meanings other that what is stated into XB-70's posts.

LOL, you're right.

It is interesting how moods can alter the tone. XB-70's voice sounded different on his Youtube link of him talking to his kookooburras. Then again, I suppose one would get more satisfaction talking to a nice animal than into a little microphone. The bishop who is rather like the equivelent of Deputy Headmaster (or Vice-principal) at our university is Australian as well and sounds not unlike XB in terms of pitch and accent- albeit with more of a Hannibal Lecter-ish edge to his tone every so often.

Since we're on the subject of reading, accents and (from BaldBlake at least) spirituality, just before Easter I was asked, along with several other students, to read St. Mark's Gospel of the Passion. You can find us here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thepassion/peoplespassion/

Click on the audio-link under where it says "A Passion for Liverpool". If you stop it and listen to it at 3.15-3.57, 8.03-8.18, 8.54-9.20, 13.58-14.14, 14.35-14.55 and 15.19-15.50 you can hear what I sound like as well.

When I was a very rational person...
My parents often asked me "Are you happy?!"
And I'd say "Sure. Why shouldn't I be happy?"

One thing I WASN'T however, was truly at peace with myself. I wanted to be making a difference in the world, a positive difference, one from my self-determination and not just the kind of "stumbling around in the dark knocking things over" difference, frankly - I wanted the world to be a better place from my presence, from my self-determination, a better place not just a more diversified place. And I WASN'T making that kind of difference, so I wasn't at peace.

I may have been happy, but I wasn't at peace.

I am now both happy and at peace.

Peace I find, is easier to understand than happiness. You are at peace, if you can't find the slightest hint of conflict in your mind.

Honestly, I still don't know what happiness is. But I do now know what peace is.

and i think the person who alerted me to it was right.



you can say the same sentence (eg: flies have compound eyes") whilst either being tortured or tickled, and they have the same meaning.

i am not aware of other people's inflections (i hear them but i seem not to take any stock of them) and i consider only their "skeleton" words.


there are 2 levels of "inflection".

firstly, i have to define that i identify "inflection" as a tonic oscillation in a persons speaking pitch and tempo which is a fundament in how a person narrates their thought.

so there is 2 levels of inflection.
(my mid childhood doctor and me devised this idea)

the first level is simply "mental punctuation". it is a series of rises and depressions in thinking "pitch", which a person demonstrates if they talk spontaneously.

that is all i possess (the first level).

the second level is the "personality flavour advertisement" level.

this is designed to make a persons voice sound almost musical.
it is an entirely socially oriented level of inflection.

the most serious examples are like the "valley girls" in los angeles.

the really rich girls are the beverley hills girls, and the girls who live down in the valley (santa monica?) have less status so they exaggerate every facet of their beings to match the hills girls.

they inflect like crazy. they say things like "ohmagodddddd! i mean like...gag me with a spoon!!!...i mean like....how grotey...."

they say that in a very powerfully second level inflective way.

i have zero secondary inflection.

i narrate my thought in the way i think it, and it is always the same inflections (L1) i use, and people tire of my voice quickly in reality.

i would report that i just won 100 million dollars within those same parameters of inflection.






does that mean you wish you had an australian accent or just any other accent than the one you have?

i find it interesting that when i see american tv news (on foxtel (my cable provider)), that there is never much news about australia, and when there is, if an australian person is talking, they sometimes subtitle it.

also, there have been some australian tv shows aired in the US, that have had the voices overdubbed with american voices.

i thought australian accents were considered "lazy".

i do not have a strictly australian accent. australian people who are nt, and speak with all the inflective bells and whistles, hear my accent as "alien".

but it is australian in in it's foundation.

australians have the very same accent in every place in australia. there is no "southern" or "northern" accent, and there is no class defined accent.

i like a certain american accent very much.

in america, you have many formations of your accents it seems to me.

there is the southern accent "git y'all up here and chaw 'pon our vittles"

there is the ghetto accent "wazza doin' bro?"

there is a northern bostonian accent which is like "you wahna go git a koowafee (coffee)" there was a show here called "laverne and shirley". i do not know which woman is which, but the lighter haired woman of the pair had that accent.

but there seems to be a standardised american accent which all american reporters use.

i do like that accent. it is a very "caramel" kind of accent.

british accents are stiff and formal as if they place great importance upon their delivery. (although british accents range from cockney to aristocratic, so it is hard to bracket english accents).

but there always seems to be an element of formality in every british accent.

i find british accents to be depressing a bit.

i find american accents to be much more rounded and curvaceous, but it requires a lot of tongue strength.

you now how you intensely pronounce you "r"'s (as in the word "work") ?
english and australian people do not intensify the 'R" i n the word "work"

i can not spell phoenetically how we say it (the word "work"), because i would have to include an "r" which would be read with the wrong pronunciation by an american reader.

so, if you know how an english or australian person would pronounce the word "work", then say that word in that way 100 times.
it is easy.
say "work" in an american eccent 100 times. it is tiring.
but american accents (the standard televised one we hear most) are enthusiatic and happy.

british ones are guarded and traditional. they follow strict local protocols.

and australian accents are the "lazy" way to pronounce words.

the thoughts are as good, but less energy is spent in pronouncing them.



i did not read what i said in that sound bite.
i recorded that before i even decided to respond to this thread again.

so my typed words about the "little voice" were typed after my sound recording.

i can most probably "talk" to you all day, but i think i could not "read" to you all day.





when i said what i said on the file last night, it was totally sterile, and it was like i speak to the staff at the companies i work for.

but when i speak to my animal friends, i discard that and go into a "goo goo" phase of my personality, and they really like it.
i can not talk to people like i talk to innocent animals.


(about your voice post) i have to download the link content in order to cue to your time references. the default player is quicktime, and it shows no "timeline" data.



so you are no longer constrained by rationality?



my parents rarely interrupted me.




what is "peace"?
"peace" is a sanctuary from "conflict".
i think you were displaced from "peace", because you did not love yourself and your company.

then i imagine you found "peace" when you felt you had some influence over other peoples "despair" (as you may conceive it).

that is a nice intention.






ihave analysed "peace" to pieces and i can not piece it together.


is the fact that you can find no conflict in your mind because you really have no conflict in your mind ? ....or because you are
not sufficiently equipped to be aware of any conflict in your mind.

i have to go and scratch my fluffy little marsupial's tummies.

they like it and so do i.

did you ever wonder what wizened monks saw that you, as a little kid, didn't?


maybe so, maybe not.

looking at the single most difficult aspect of asperger's experienced by those with asperger's (as i see it) - an inability to perceive an additive form of communication - certainly there are profound difficulties in understanding that flow from unexperienced sense in lives lived with the awarenessess of a way of life, but the 'way' may itself give rise to the non-experience of the sense.

one can wonder what the incidence of asperger's is in buddhist cultures (and then wonder what its incidence is in each culture. is there a cultural influence?).

i find this an interesting point and will ask b.blake about a possibley related statement of his later.


regards,

Monks don't wish for happiness. They actually don't really wish for anything. The happiness just comes as a side-effect of not really wishing for anything.



The astounding thing to me, in my Buddhist path, other than having so much more energy (I only sleep 5 hours a night), is my new ability to communicate with people.

I used to say, that there was a key to communications - and I just didn't have it...

Now I can communicate without opening my mouth. By that I mainly mean I can get people to break out into broad smiles and even wave at me, just by.... doing what? I don't even really know, it's just some kind of inner serenity expressed through body language or something.

I used to have a metaphor for my aura. I called it "10 foot long black spikes", that's what I was like, mentally poking everyone who came near me, making them uncomfortable around me. Especially women, women were uncomfortable around me.

Eventually after warming up my mind the spikes retracted and I became neutral.

Now I have some kind of comforting aura, a soft warmness. People feel safer and more comfortable in my presence.

It doesn't have to be any more mystical than body language, but it still awes me just how powerful this thing is.

And there's NO WAY I'd go back to having spikes, because this is way more fun.

And the thing is, it doesn't matter what kind of person it is I communicate with. Very shy people, very confident people, toddlers, old people, devote Christians, hardened criminals, even animals (animals R people too!!!!). I now have the universal adapter of communications. And to be honest, I don't know exactly how it works, it just does. I could write whole books of philosophy on communications, but all those words - can only point to what is going on, they can't describe it, they can't describe it any more than you can describe the flavor of a particular dish, in words. Like you could take any approach you want, to describing the flavor of truffles, could write books filled with metaphors or chemical analysis. You could have long arguments with other truffle-describers. And none of that would even get close to communicating the flavor of truffles to someone who hasn't tasted them. That actually says a lot about communications and experience. If you fall in love with words, you lose most of the ability to communicate and experience.



Probably very hard to say! Eastern people who have been culturally indoctrinated in Buddhism, tend to exhibit MANY of the qualities of AS, like they have difficulty with eye-contact and have trouble raising their voice. The point is, people with AS would fit right in. How would you tell? How would they tell? Would you care if no-one ever bothered you about it?

if you intend to be understood as i understand you in that sentence i'll venture there are a few people that would like to talk to you on that subject.


love known outside its natural state is/must_be the filling experience it is known to be in its natural state; the difference seemingly being that in its natural state love can be something one is willing to die for whereas outside its natural state it is experienced in clear contemplation.

love, in its natural state, can lead to irrational behavior, but i'd not call that behavior "stupid". i feel sure that you intended pointing to potential consequences superficially similar, not a characterization of.

i'd simply call love's one experience natural and its other experience contemplative.

i am given to understand that bodhisattvas delay their entry into nirvana for compassion's sake and see this as a form of a natural love's willingness to sacrifice.


if one is to speak of the "power of love", one must speak either of the consequence of love's experience or one must (i think) speak of the perception of its nurturative radience,

elsewhere, another person's feelings don't 'get into one's head', they are felt with one's heart once understood/seen with one's mind.


is there a difference between buddhist "unconditional love" and unconditional love as understood in the west? as i understand it, in the west unconditional love is love experienced under conditions that would "normally" deny its flowering, or extinguish it.

i'd imagine its existence in contemplative form would not be found to possess unhealthy consequences said sometimes found in natural love, but understandings differ and it is said 'no higher form of love exists...' which unequivocally celebrates a path to death.


you cannot mean physically injurous forms of sensory overload, lasers beams on retinas or high decibel sound on eardrums, etc. else, even not knowing from the experience of practiced meditation i'd agree; i believe that intellectual and emotional experiences as expereinced by anyone with asperger's can be governed given the will to do so and the necessary practice.


he's not.


ummm... yes and no. you are in dialog with several people, but predominantly in an explanitory mode.


would you, ah, care to rephrase and/or amplify?


balance. yes, balance... good stuff.


this has bearing on something read earlier this am (thought well worth reading in full):

* One example, a note: "This is about the
* speaker discovering that she is completely
* powerless, that the control she so prizes
* is nonexistent."
*
* This was for me, even as I wrote it, novel
* information. I had never before thought of
* myself as a person prizing control.
*
* Joan Didion's
* Year of Magical Thinking
* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/19/btdidion119.xml&page=3

but to the point: in what way is engaging in behavior for its known consequence not exercising control?


although tempted, i will not ask 'in what way are they not?' :), but i will venture that you'd agree that buddhist meditation is but one of the attainable and worthwhile states of altered consciousness say, for example, that which a fine japanese stone garden can induce.


reminds me of a time when i was six or so. at dinner, when it was my turn to say grace, i mentioned something about my being thankful for 'all of these years'.

that one echoed in our family for awhile. i soon knew that echo's spirit though, and i was happy with it.


regards,

the sight of something leading to a thought, leading to another thought, leading to another thought; a proliferation of thoughts, something no longer seen


the threads in a rug with a pattern are...


regards,

What I mean, is an NT who puts his heart into the Buddhist spiritual path, ends up looking like a buddhist, walking like a buddhist, and quacking like a buddhist.
An Aspie who puts his heart into the Buddhist spiritual path, ends up looking like a buddhist, walking like a buddhist and quacking like a buddhist.

All buddhists express their personality very strongly, the senior monks have such unique and sparkling personalities, they're all quite different. Yet there is a common set of attributes which buddhists let go of. Like greed, anger, fear, that kind of stuff. Buddhists look kind, walk softly and talk gently ;-). That kind of thing.

If you ever experience greed, anger or fear, you do know for sure you are not a fully enlightened one. Greed, anger and fear are heavy and painful emotions. No enlightenment while carrying around such heavy emotional baggage.

But note that fear is incredibly difficult to detect, since it distorts your perception. In fact, fear isn't really possible to detect at all, except through telltales and consequences. But if you ever KNOW you're afraid/anxious, then that is REALLY strong fear.


I've always been happy with who I am.
But who I am, has never been anything to do with my greed, anger or fear.



Theravada, the school which follows the original teachings of the Buddha, doesn't have bodhisattvas. The Buddha saw no need for this concept. It's not clear if a bodhisattva actually makes any useful sacrifice, a fully enlightened one, makes a better teacher, and it's not like they poof out of existence.

This really depends on how you look at enlightenment and "freedom from the cycle of rebirth". One way to look at it (and it's an okay way), is that rebirth is not real in any sense and the spiritual path to Nibbana (and general practise of virtue) simply makes the world at whole a better place to be born into (along with improving your own happiness and fulfillment in life). In this view, it only makes sense to maximize your own skill as a teacher and your own happiness, that's the maximum achievement in life.
From my own view, it doesn't really matter who gets born (whether it's me or not me). Because that's what unconditional love is like, I love others as I love myself. So what does it matter who is getting born?

That's just my personal view though, how I tend to look at it.


It's always your own feelings you are feeling, not other peoples feelings. There is, as far as I know, no true "spiritual direct link" between hearts. But the depth of subtly in body language and stuff is astounding, so feelings can be induced in others quite easily. But it's still their feelings they are feeling, not your feelings.

It may be nice to induce feelings of being loved in other people, but they have to choose to allow those feelings to exist. There's an awful lot of choice involved, much more than most people realize.

When I was depressed, my parents still loved me a lot, but I couldn't feel it.


Unconditional love is unconditional and unattached.

The best example is this:
Your wife runs away with your best friend.

You should be very happy for both of them, for you love them, and their happiness is your happiness :).

That is unconditional love :).
You don't have to like it (that example is kind of a joke, but one with the message ^^), but if you want the power of unconditional love, to not be held an emotional hostage to/by your loved ones (I love you, so if you leave me, I'll be unhappy!), that's what you have to cultivate.
I can't really explain unconditional love any more simply - there's just no conditions which can make the love go away.

The conditions come through thinking about it. They are the addons.



There is video footage of "mad" monks who self-immolate to make a political protest. They don't bat an eyelid while their entire body is on fire. They really look like they're completely at peace, it's really like they're just chilling out while on fire. Not stressed in the least by it.

It's a disturbing example, but evidence is, that there is no level of suffering which can't be overcome.

Sure, the physical damage is still there, but it doesn't cause mental suffering.

I return to an example I think I used earlier:
"Monks, if someone should take a rusty saw, and start slowly and painfully, hacking off your leg, if you feel even an ounce of ill-will towards that person, you may not call yourself my disciple!"

There was a reason it took me like 7 years before I would call myself a Buddhist. It's not an easy thing to sincerely call yourself a disciple of the Buddha it is hmmm... not an easy path. Not easy attitudes to cultivate. Sometimes it can even be scary, like to relinquish anger as a mean to "solve" problems.


Another thing I wish to point out,
Is that Buddhism does not use Punishment.
But nor is Buddhism permissive towards causing harm.

That makes life.... interesting. It's so easy to just lash out at people who cause harm and then say it's for a good cause.
To refrain from both punitive and permissive attitudes, is a very powerful thing. It motivates one strongly to find effective peace-keeping strategies.

This is in contrast with how things are usually done. Where a line is drawn in the sand:
Okay, anything on this side is WRONG. People get punished for doing it.
Anything on that side is OKAY. People don't get punished for doing it and must be free to do it since it's not wrong.

The Buddhist attitude gives a lot of liberty in dealing constructively with harmful behaviors which everyone can agree is harmful, but which everyone lets be because they "Aren't wrong enough to punish".

The thing is, punishment never helps. It just makes people bitter, confused and resentful. That's the main reason why Buddhists don't punish, ever. Because it wont help.

That's something to know about Buddhist Right/Wrong, there's never any punishment involved.


It's like one of my friends. He works hard all day, then drinks and gambles all night.

Can you say there's nothing WRONG with that? We can probably agree that there's no need to punish him. But does "no need to punish" mean "It's right to be permissive?".
It's only right to be permissive towards harmlessness, and thus it's never right to punish (since punishing is inflicting harm), and still not right to punish punishers.
The only way to break the cycle, is through "unreasonable harmlessness". Because you can always "reason" your way to committing violence in the name of good. Abandon that reasoning, and you learn to get creative in problem solving.


It's not JUST an intellectual exchange.



What people have done in the past doesn't matter much.

Whether they've come from a life of crime, or a life of devote worship to God, if you forget about the past and treat them with dignity and respect, they will act that way. It's when you treat people like bad people, that they act like bad people. Treat people like good people, and they act like good people.

I find it quite amusing. A couple of my friends, living together, have both been in and out of jail. Both of them are very kind towards me, they never raise their voice or get angry at me or show the slightest sign of ill-will towards me. But they still raise their voices and get angry at each other, even when I'm in the room, hahah. You'd think I was the one they loved, not each other :P.

But that's what I mean - by people act how you treat them. They act that way towards you, and over time, it teaches them how to act that way all the time, because they're practicing it on you. It's basically tricking them into being kind ;-).

But it doesn't matter who I'm interacting with, I can always get them to interact with me, on my level. People I show no ill-will towards, show no ill-will towards me. So they make great people to hang out with. But I DO prefer to get them alone! It's very frustrating when they start going at each other.
That's why criminals are only the next best thing to devote Christians.



Well... it's subtle. Like in Buddhism, we look at the "power between" rather than "power over".
A healthy relationship, is not about the power OVER each other (control), it's the power BETWEEN each other which counts (getting along).

The idea is the same, the power with emotions, is found in the relationship with your emotions - the power is between, not over. You learn to get along with your emotions, not to be controlled by them, nor control them.

I hope that doesn't read too much like gobblygook, it's a difficult thing to explain .


Read my "Three kinds of meditation" thread in the Thoughtful Discussions forum.

Kind Regards,
Blake.