[Charles Rykken]

I haven’t posted much to this thread lately but I did watch The European Conservative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvG44mwPsbk

The feudalism remark was in a recent Q&A by Dr. McGilchrist. I know I am a bit of a quirky individual. I have been near fanatical about being honest with myself since the age of eight. I was an early devotee of William James and Goethe. It was Goethe who convinced me that the philosophy of science should be based on relationships, not objects and properties. I was 18 at the time and a high school senior. I agree very much with William James and Friedrich Nietzsche that the philosophy a person is drawn is mediated by their character or personality. Most religions have a holy trinity. In Christianity it is the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. in Hinduism it is sat, chit, ananda (suchness, consciousness, joy), and in Buddhism it is Buddha, dharma, sangha. My own version using more common terms is honesty, courage, and love. Honesty=father=sat=dharma while courage=son=chit=Buddha and love=holy spirit=ananda=sangha. I have been studying self deception for almost ten years now. I see it as the number one obstacle to spiritual realization. More recently I have been looking at semantic memory and the right hemisphere. The process of enculturation where an individual internalizes the gestalts of his/her culture/family are like more a right brain feature. But it is largely subconscious. So quieting the chattering monkey of the left hemisphere (the point of emptiness in Buddhism, I believe) only brings the right hemisphere to the foreground. There was a very interesting interview by Stephen Batchelor of Sharon Salzberg who told the Dalai Lama of the difficulty she was having with her students because of self loathing. The Dalai Lama was astounded that a whole nation could be beset with self loathing. Anyway the link is here :

https://tricycle.org/magazine/dharma-liberation/

The Dharma of Liberation, An Interview with Sharon Salzberg

By Stephen Batchelor SPRING 1993

a little comic relief from Jim Morrison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-6jiVoUOsQ

<yt-formatted-string force-default-style=””>Fear and Self-Loathing in Las Vegas</yt-formatted-string>