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Tranquil metta

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Wishing,
longing,
craving for things to be different.
Like a downcast elephant in the corner of the room.
Won't budge
So I gave up trying,
sat with it as a friend.
'Ah! Sadness be at ease.'
And relaxing,
letting go.
It was gone
transformed
into joy.


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Asoka

Melody Day

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Tuesday, 21 Dec 2021, 00:12

Melody day, what have I done? Ah
Now our hearts are locked up tight again
And when I pray it's all begun
And when you smile it melts away again.

Melody day, where have you gone? Ooh
All the hope I had has gone away
And what we had has come undone
And when you smile it melts away again.
" [Caribou - Melody Day]





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Asoka

Abandonment

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Wednesday, 15 Dec 2021, 18:05

Abandonment is hard. I have trouble with communication and human relations. I make friends only for them to abandon me because they can't handle my mood swings and delusions. This has happened to me numerous times with people I thought were good friends. I think they have to cut me off for their own sanity, because I can get a bit intense sometimes. I feel regret for that. I don't judge them, although I did judge them at the time, hated them for it in fact, being cut loose and abandoned by others feels cold and painful and just reinforces all the negative beliefs I hold about myself. But I also understand why they did it and there's nothing I can do to change what happened, it sucks, but I have to let it go. I can't force people to like me or be my friend. 

I wish I didn't lose friendships like this, it hurts a lot. So I think for my own sake, I need to practise some self-care and just not bother making anymore connections. I'll stay solitary I think, it is less painful that way, rejection is unpleasant and triggers me, makes me go on a downer, and I get depressed and I start feeling the self-loathing and wishing I wasn't alive, and that isn't a good way to be. I figure if I just keep myself to myself from now on and avoid connecting to others then I will avoid that trigger (I hope). Although loneliness is hard, but one is only lonely if they think they are lonely. And I am making friends with non-human beings, both seen and unseen, so I am not completely alone, just alone in the sense of not having many human friends/companions.

Still there are some good people whom I do still have a strong heart connection to, who haven't abandoned me or misunderstood me, and they have seen me at my worse over the years, and they still want to know me and be my friend. I am grateful for those people, they warm my heart and make me want to carry on living. And although some of them don't live close by, it doesn't matter, the connection I have with them in my heart is strong and cannot be broken. They help me feel fearless and remind me that I at least matter to some people out there.

My inability to connect with others is painful.

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Asoka

Sadness

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Wednesday, 15 Dec 2021, 18:06

A playlist about sadness, enjoy:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ_OuDCKlduVJ5RGQQzV8FKxBfKfc1B

I find melancholic music can be strangely soothing at times, like sonic therapy.

As Suzuki Roshi famously once said: 'What's wrong with sadness?'

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Asoka

Sour times

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Wednesday, 8 Dec 2021, 16:40

It is a horrible experience being alive. One is just born in a body with whatever genes one is given, and this body just grows by itself and life gets increasingly more complicated and one is stuck with whatever personality and DNA they are born with and expected to just get on with living in a cold and often cruel world. Noone gets to choose who they will be, what they will be good at, what kind of body they will get. No-one can help being who they are; and yet we get judged for it and made to feel guilty if we aren't up to the task of fitting into this bloody difficult world. Being a human sucks. Being any being on this planet sucks. Being alive sucks.

 I can only seem to meditate when I feel good. Meditation when depressed is not helpful at all. It just makes me feel worse. I am trying my best, but I keep failing catastrophically. I can't generate any joy at the moment, I am trying but it is like an engine that has run out of fuel and won't kickstart. 

I am also feeling broken hearted as well. Particularly for the local wildlife. So much life has disappeared at the local beach. Tangled up in the seaweed are the bones of seabirds that have starved to death from lack of food. The beach here used to be teeming with life of all different kinds, it was magical, but now it is like a watery graveyard, an oceanic desert. The sea here is dying and nobody else seems to notice or care. I read that now one in four species of bird in the UK are on the endangered list, and insects have been steadily disappearing, every summer there's fewer and fewer.

 Then there's refugees drowning at sea escaping all kinds of different horrors in the world caused by the greed, hatred, and delusion of the West; while the super rich just compete to be the first to reach outer-space so they can colonise dead planets, their rockets like penis extensions, ignorant of the poverty and environmental destruction their greed has caused. 

And the government is determined to vaccinate everyone, is obsessed with it; but if they really cared about saving people's lives why don't they help those who are now homeless in the freezing cold of Winter after been kicked out of their houses by banks who repossessed their homes after lockdowns destroyed their incomes. And why don't the government help the old people abandoned and dying alone in care homes and hospitals? I thought all this pandemic and vaxxing was to save their lives, but it seems to be more about destroying them.

I am sorry for the rant dear reader. I feel so unhappy just now, sometimes writing it out of my system is the only relief I get. (Albeit temporary.) I wish I could feel hope and write something uplifting, but I feel there is something terribly wrong with the world just now.

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Asoka

Knowledge of suffering

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Wednesday, 15 Dec 2021, 18:07


Feel the pain and grief.
And let it give you power.
The momentum to move forward.
To go beyond this empty world.
Beyond the tears of Samsara.
On to the other shore. To higher things.
To the deathless, and the freedom of nibbana.

Use the sadness to break the illusion.
To see through the delusion.
As Mara crushes your heart and mind.
Smile with equanimity at the rain, the pain.

Strength through adversity.
The first noble truth.


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Asoka

New blog post

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Edited by Richie Cuthbertson, Sunday, 12 Sep 2021, 14:00

Sorry for all the spiritual stuff. I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but then noone has to read this.

 I guess I just don't feel much hope for the future. Feels like the world is ending. The oceans are dying, the forests are burning, the insects are dying, many species are going extinct. The rise of the right wing fascists and the surveillance state. The loss of welfare and worker's rights, loss of human rights next, and the misery of low wage crap jobs, working long hours in sweatshop conditions, suffering from lack of sleep, and despite working so hard having to survive on food banks is the experience of many. And when the shit really hits the fan, there will be a refugee crisis unlike anything the earth has known, worse than the one even now. 

I don't feel much hope for this world, and it causes me to want to escape and look deep within for solutions and freedom from all this madness and oppression.

This world is so fucked man. Our poor kids having to inherit this hell.

The only positive I can find is that this amount of suffering makes the incentive to become enlightened much more appealing. A grand opportunity to become awakened for everyone in these times, and there's so much spiritual knowledge at our fingertips, more than at any other time in history, that is something at least.


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