You don't have to do anything with your mind, just let it naturally rest in its essential nature.
Your own mind, unagitated, is reality.
Meditate on this without distraction.
Know the Truth beyond all opposites.
Thoughts are like bubbles that form and dissolve in clear water.
Thoughts are not distinct from the absolute Reality, so relax;
there is no need to be critical.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
simply don't cling to it, but immediately let it go.
What you see, hear, and touch is your own mind.
There is nothing but mind.
Mind transcends birth and death.
The essence of mind is pure Consciousness that never leaves reality,
even though it experiences the things of the senses.
In the equanimity of the Absolute, there is nothing to renounce or attain.
Dakini Niguma
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Coraline as a Buddhist parable
Last night while I was writing down the Four Noble Truths with a brush pen in my sketchbook (I do stuff like that sometimes), my roommate put on the movie Coraline. This was entirely coincidental but I was struck by how much the themes of the movie relate to everything I've been learning recently about the core teachings of Buddhism.
There is a concept in Buddhism called "right view." It is the first practice in the Eightfold Path. I think of this as referring to a person's understanding and perception of reality. When a person does not see the true nature of reality, they are vulnerable to illusions and delusions, which cause cravings and excessive attachments.
The Other Mother in Coraline has buttons for eyes, and she sews buttons into the eyes of other people who she lures into her illusory reality. She literally lacks "right view," and she tries to force other people to share her distorted view. She craves, and clings, and she wants other people to cling to her, so she offers them the things they crave. She controls others because she is so attached to them.
The moment when all of this hit me was at the end of the movie, when the Other Mother screams, "Don't leave me! Don't leave me! I'll die without you!"
The reason it hit me is because I suddenly saw myself in her. I think a lot of people live like this without realizing it. I am one of those people, or at least I have been. This "I'll die without you!" sentiment can be applied to any kind of addiction. The "You" could be food, it could be alcohol, it could be sex, it could be attention from others, etc. The sentiment behind the Other Mother's words can be related to any pattern of compulsive thought or behavior. But in this movie, and in my own life, that theme most often plays out in relationships with other people. Codependence is a key word to describe the pattern, at least the way I understand it.
I'm trying to develop the inner strength and acceptance of reality, to move beyond that way of existing. It is really painful to live like that. And I found myself feeling sad for the Other Mother, who is trapped in a world (resulting at least in part from her lack of "right view") where she never has enough, is never satisfied, and is never happy. Things change, and everything is impermanent, so clinging and controlling is only ever going to end in heartbreak.
There is a concept in Buddhism of the hungry ghost. They are ghosts who are stuck in a state of constant craving and dissatisfaction, and they can be extremely destructive as a result. I think that the Other Mother is a perfect, almost textbook example of a hungry ghost. I mean, she would literally consume children because she was craving their love so much.
The word "love" here is interesting to me. The cat in Coraline says that the Other Mother loves Coraline and wants to be loved in return. But the word love in this context indicates an unhealthy, all-consuming obsession, rather than mutual respect and care. A really helpful and succinct explanation is actually right in the book (which the movie is based on). Neil Gaiman writes: "It was true. The other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold."
Now, turning my attention to Coraline herself: I see this movie as a story about how Coraline developed "right view" after undergoing a process of reckoning with her previous approach to life. She was unable to accept reality as it was. She was unhappy, and craved a different life with different parents and different friends and different material possessions. She wanted more. And in this way, she was very like the Other Mother.
As a storytelling device, the Other Mother is useful. Characters are useful for illustrating dynamics of growth and change over the course of a narrative. But I think that ultimately, the Other Mother was inside of Coraline, and a part of her. Just as she had been a part of all the other people living in that house who were dissatisfied with their lives. She is a symbol of the attachments and cravings that all people have, taken to their extreme but logical conclusion.
In the first part of the movie, Coraline resists change. She has just moved to a new place, and she has not accepted her new reality. She has trouble connecting with the people around her, who are either overworked and exhausted (her parents), or who she barely knows at all. Because her material and social conditions are not acceptable to her, and she does not yet have "right view," she develops cravings. She lives out those cravings in the fantasy world inhabited by the Other Mother.
Sometime in the early to middle part of the movie, Coraline goes to a shop with her Mom and asks for some colorful knitted gloves. She wants them because nobody else will have them and she thinks they look pretty and interesting. Her Mom says no. This makes Coraline angry, and causes her to go even deeper into the world inhabited by the Other Mother, because that is a world in which she believes her desires can be fulfilled.
Over time, she begins to understand that the Other Mother (this dissatisfied aspect of herself) is not a good person to hang around, and that her perspective on life is warped. She begins to see the dangers of living in delusion, and clinging to sense pleasures. She becomes a firsthand witness to the instability and violence this way of living can create.
So she lets go. She lets go of her expectations, she lets go of her cravings, and instead she decides to honor her love for her parents, which is based in mutual care, rather than obsession and excessive catering to desires. It is only once she lets go of any attachment to an outcome, that she begins to receive the things she originally wanted. Love, care, attention, and even some nice physical items. Her Mom gives her the gloves she wanted as a surprise gift. But now, she is wise enough to appreciate these things for what they are. She can be happy and present in the moment, appreciating the little things while they last.
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The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.
Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.
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i'm begging you guys to start pirating shit from streaming platforms. there are so many websites where you can stream that shit for free, here's a quick HOW TO:
1) Search for: watch TITLE OF WORK free online
2) Scroll to the bottom of results. Click any of the "Complaint" links
3) You will be taken to a long list of links that were removed for copyright infringement. Use the 'find' function to search for the name of the show/movie you were originally searching for. You will get something like this (specifics removed because if you love an illegal streaming site you don't post its url on social media)
4) each of these links is to a website where you can stream shit for free. go to the individual websites and search for your show/movie. you might have to copy-paste a few before you find exactly what you're looking, but the whole process only takes a minute. the speed/quality is usually the same as on netflix/whatever, and they even have subtitles! (make sure to use an adblocker though, these sites are funded by annoying popups)
In conclusion, if you do this often enough you will start recognizing the most dependable websites, and you can just bookmark those instead. (note: this is completely separate from torrenting, which is also a beautiful thing but requires different software and a vpn)
you can also download the media in question (look for a "download" button built into the video window, or use a browser extension such as Video DownloadHelper.)
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@puppetmaster13u You called Danny a space whale in the tags of one of this post.
Now what if that was literal?
Hear me out, Danny outlives his friends, parents, sister. Danny becomes a literal whale.
Well, not a literal one because he's a ghost, but he takes the shape one of at the very least. He's just a giant, glowing white whale that looks pretty divine not going to lie.
Danny leaves earth. It wasn't safe for him anymore, what with the GIW and all that as even the ghosts found it not even worth anymore to visit the mortal world.
Except for Desiree and Spectra, but that's besides the point.
But Danny doesn't retreat to the zone, he's always longed for space, but because of his new half humanness he doesn't get believe he could've ever gone because, well. Yea.
But Danny goes fuck it and goes anyway. His form shifts from human to that of a giant whale, and he swims out into the vastness of space.
Years pass, and Danny does start getting bigger as he aged. He explored the vastness of space, marveling at many things, the different planets, the stars, the formations of rock and other things.
Then he encounters someone he never though he would've.
Vlad.
Well, he knew Vlad was left behind in space by his father but he didn't think he would find him again and Vlad seemed... different, from what he remembered.
For one thing, he didn't even know where Vlad began and space ended. He got only see those red eyes that even hinted at it being the man. His body was void black and filled with stars upon stars, all glittering from his body and Vlad barely even seemed to notice him, or if he did, he didn't seem to care at all.
So, Danny took him.
He was both curious and felt a bit bad about what happened to Vlad, even if he didn't know exactly what happened, and he couldn't just leave him there either.
So on his back Vlad went, and his travels continued.
It seemed to be the correct decision, really, because slowly overtime Vlad seemed to be regaining his awareness. Then slowly, tentatively, started to speak with him through ghost speak.
Vlad only seemed to vaguely remember what he was before space. He remembered hating a man, loving a woman, wanting a son, loneliness and a boy with white hair and toxic green eyes.
Even though Vlad was his former enemy, his nemesis, and someone who took the world hostage.
He couldn't help but feel pity for him.
Then their travels continued.
Years pass unnoticed, when in space, with Danny slowly getting bigger and bigger as the two travel throughout. They've come into contact with various civilizations, some hostile, some peaceful, some neutral.
The hostile ones never lasted long, even if Danny never lifted a flipper to do anything most of the time, Vlad made sure of it.
They came at went as they pleased, and Danny believes that they've gained a bit of a reputations over their adventures, but neither he nor Vlad knew exactly what they said. It did prove useful in some cases, however.
A few more years, and Danny feels that this system is vaguely familiar. Which happens sometimes, considering he's been travelling for so long. He then finds out why it was so familiar.
He came across Earth and, oh. When was the Earth so small?
Well, not small really, but when was he just only a bit smaller than it?
Did it shrink when he was away? Or did he just grow?
That doesn't matter though. What does, is the fact that currently seemed to be an invasion going on, on his home planet thank you very much. He did not like the fact that there was a massive fleet parked right outside his home.
So he spoke to Vlad, expressed his displeasure, Vlad responded back knowingly and went off to make the source of his displeasure disappear. That doesn't Danny was idle either, the fleet was big and, well.
It's been a while since he's stretched himself in a fight.
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