- There must be progress towards embracing the underlying unity.
- Work must be done henceforth in a spirit of non-doing, without pressure or effort.
- Entertainment is of no more use
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/time-and-the-other/
Notices by hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com), page 6
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hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Jan-2019 05:37:24 EST 
hosh
If time itself is an illusion, what is the numeration of years? Illusion or not, it was jet lag that kept me awake last night thinking about life, and not a concern for new year's resolutions. Yet I decided two things:
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/time-and-the-other/ -
Matthew Graybosch (starbreaker@pleroma.site)'s status on Monday, 31-Dec-2018 23:22:23 EST 
Matthew Graybosch
Attention all #writers, #artists, #musicians, #developers, and other creative sorts.
If you're a human being with a personal website (not a Facebook page or anything like that), I'd like to hear about it.
Please post a link and a brief description of your site and what you put there in a a reply.
I want to put links to other people's personal websites on my website to help promote and strengthen the open web.
My own website is at https://matthewgraybosch.com. Please feel free to link to me as well. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Dec-2018 11:33:46 EST
hosh
Wicked Warren -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Sunday, 30-Dec-2018 22:37:37 EST
hosh
I haven't seen the video but my current phone is an old cheap Micromax. The customizations are at the software level, for example there's one that's supposed to translate between Indian languages by scanning things. (Could be useful for outsiders in TN bus stations for example) There's also a lot of bloatware and ads - most of which I was able to get rid of thanks to a free Chinese app -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Saturday, 29-Dec-2018 12:13:41 EST
hosh
Guilty as charged. I'm really sorry I moved our community over to Gmail in around 2007. And now with the free G-Suite for Education and Google Drive with unlimited storage, it would be almost impossible to extricate us from Google. Unfortunately our email systems improved dramatically with the change, as did our file system, and it's hard for a non-profit association to afford good systems with proper maintenance. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 28-Dec-2018 18:19:44 EST
hosh
It was Microsoft as well. When I completed my webmaster course in the late 1990s, Explorer had about 95% of our local market. They made us learn ASP and design websites solely for that. All through the 2000s many Israeli websites would only work properly with Explorer. At least I still manage to use Gmail and Google Drive under Firefox-like browsers, though I'm wondering if it hasn't been getting a little slower lately. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 28-Dec-2018 13:31:35 EST
hosh
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/28/experience-my-airbnb-guests-threw-a-party-for-300-people -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 28-Dec-2018 11:05:59 EST
hosh
Thanks Manuel for your comment. All of my philosophical texts are likely to be both confusing and confused; full of contradictions and imperfections.
I don't suggest to believe in anything, though there is no harm in positing an "anima mundi" or something else, for a time, if it can be helpful to our quest for truth.
Regarding the acceptance as truth of that which is reported by the senses, I think throughout history various thinkers have shown that there are some problems with that. When I look out of the window here, in Virginia, there is the soft, steady rain on winter-bare trees, the distant squabbling of wild geese from the lakeshore... and all seems to be a harmony. Yet the intellect informs us that we are living in a koyaanisqatsi world that is rapidly falling into a deep disharmony.
There is no beauty in perceived objects. The apprehension of beauty is a matter for the soul, though this is a very obscure and imprecise word. The existence of a soul cannot be proved through any scientific process as far as I know.
Again, when I open the blinds in the morning and gaze out on the gentle scene, there is the apprehension of rapturous harmony. Despite what we know, this harmony is real. We apprehend it because in this moment, the mind is quiet and the I is absent. For an instant, there is direct experience. There is no subject, perceiving objects. The sense of a solid me that is built from a lifetime of experiences is not there. The next moment, the I will indeed reassert its presence as perceiver and accumulator of our experiences, and add this apprehension of beauty to its store of memories. It may add a commentary and point out that the perceived harmony is false: The steady rain, which has passed an all time annual record in this area, is probably the result of climate change caused by human intervention.
The I, as an entity in separation from a world of objects is a false usurper of direct experience. The sense of beauty and harmony is one of underlying unity. Only in the poor memory of beauty is the I present. Inquiry into the nature of the I, or sustained contemplation in silence, extenuates and weakens the belief in its substantiality. It's a stack of cards constructed on unstable foundations.
If the separative I proves to be insubstantial, so does the "we". The reality of the other depends similarly on the existence of an underlying unitary consciousness or undifferentiated being that expresses itself variously, in a multitude of apparent forms. This is not to say that the world is an illusion, but only that the way in which we perceive it is illusory, when we fail to apprehend the underlying unity. It is due to this fallacy of perception that our intervention in the world, despite our fine motives and sensibilities, is causing such deep disturbance and destroying everything we hold dear. Without paying attention to who we really are, our own nature, we cannot properly comprehend the nature of the other. Instead, we will live in competition with others, eeking out an increasingly tenuous sustenance from diminishing resources. Human beings are in the process of reaching the limits of existence in their current state of their consciousness, as expressed in separative egoism. We can now very plainly see where it leads. Basically, we will either change or self-destruct, taking a good part of the biosphere with us. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 28-Dec-2018 02:45:50 EST
hosh
The way of thinking of our current era has given emphasis to self-involvement, self importance. For this reason we have given obeisance to religious and political leaders and credence to their human-based ideologies and causes. My inclination is to chuckle instead. It is not that the individual lacks value, but that the value is transcendent. The individual's greatness is the greatness of the undying universe. Each human expresses that greatness in the range of his uniqueness and the breadth of humanity's diversity. The essential is not mortal. We owe no allegiance to ideas, leaders, nations, causes, priests, religions or their gods. Yet we cannot do other than remain loyal to our essence, the consciousness expressed through us, so uniquely and diversely. In living, as well as in dying we give testimony to the unceasing unfoldment of the divine, like the endless back and forward movement of waves on the shore. It is due to the conviction of our own self-importance that we so easily fall under the spell of leaders and are willing to lay down our lives to fulfill their dreams. Let the foolish give credence to the foolish. We have better things to do with our time; to lay in the warm sun listening to grass hoppers, or watching ants carry grains of corn to their nests are more worthy pursuits than participating in building empires or defending them. If we are unable to serve our essential nature, in a generosity of spirit, what is the purpose of accruing time, money or goods? The fulfillment of such service (of the essential) is the dissolution of all consideration of I and mine. We take part in the manifestation, the upheaval, the outpouring of all life. We own this process; this greatness is our greatness. And whether the name and form by which we are known dies today or lives another hundred years is rather trivial. Life itself is trivial if we think only of ourselves, or serve surrogates for the true essential greatness at the heart of our lives.
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/largeness/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2018 06:25:38 EST
hosh
The 20th century may have been the last era when people were able to create innocently and non-imitatively while remaining true to the gradually constructed stack of human culture. It was still possible to believe in the myth of progress. Ideologies continued to offer hope. Affluence was still based on manufactured goods and hard labour. The earth still had a future. In the current century there is an imitative, phony atmosphere of excess. Creation is born of a cynical exploitation of past forms without inherent belief in them. Economically we have lost our gold standard, culturally there is a constant need to seek reassurance from the fake convictions of peers who are similarly deluded and obsessed. Only in the present era could leaders like Trump emerge, movements like ISIS emerge, socio-economic disparities grow so large, and mass delusion be so prevalent in the presence of available information. Meanwhile we are partying through the apocalypse, blissfully unaware: the decimation of our biosphere. Creation, as a word is from an old Indo-European root meaning to act. In order to create innocently in the current era we need to stop re-acting, detach ourselves from our culture of imitation and violence, and free our minds from old forms. Our civilization has let us down. We are basing our lives on ways of thinking that have led to the current insanity, modes of behavior that we know to be destructive. Solutions are not to be found within the matrix that has created the problems. We need to free ourselves of the weight of human culture, reevaluate our place in the universe, taking as our measure the entire biosphere. We need to de-condition ourselves from learned thinking and behaviour.
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/our-times/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Dec-2018 10:12:49 EST
hosh
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/24/what-happened-when-i-walked-into-the-worlds-most-silent-place My time in the anechoic chamber was a forceful reminder that most of the sounds we hear come to us indirectly; reflected into our ears by the things and people around us. Sound is a shared experience, formed as much by the environment we live in as it is by whatever happens to produce it in the first place. The anechoic chamber shows us what it would be like to live in a world that gives nothing back: a lonely world where sounds simply evaporate without returning.
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/what-happened-when-i-walked-into-the-worlds-quietest-place/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Sunday, 23-Dec-2018 17:50:54 EST
hosh
interesting idea - the original is there, definitely, under the surface. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 21-Dec-2018 11:14:18 EST
hosh
I use Waterfox, which is based on FF ESR, but they are also planning to upgrade to the new FF. (It hasn't forked the rendering engine like Palemoon) -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Dec-2018 15:28:55 EST
hosh
I've been reading Steven Vaughan-Nichols articles about Linux for years, but wasn't aware of this Kim Komando. Though Mint is always a safe choice, Deepin sounds like an interesting distro. I'm not currently in the market for something new, as MX is so good. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Dec-2018 13:10:21 EST
hosh
(reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY) -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Dec-2018 05:17:28 EST
hosh
Pale Moon does copyright its branding and apparently prevents anyone from repackaging or porting it under the same name. But the only reason I stopped using it is that it doesn't work with the EFF's Privacy Badger, which I prefer to adblockers. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Dec-2018 05:03:17 EST
hosh
"I'm not." -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Dec-2018 04:51:31 EST
hosh
Never heard of the Kaypro. There are plenty of images on the internet of the Osborne 1. Of course anything that included a CRT had to be a bit bulky, even if everything else could be made smaller. The Osborne had a really tiny screen (which lacked any kind of graphics ability)
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