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"Foolish Bombu"
On December 16, 2023 dookie


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Foolish Bombu



, United Kingdom
Joined: Jan 2013

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Age: 73
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dookie
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Darkman666

New Post! July 28, 2020 @ 08:36:48 pm
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@dookie Said

Yes, "home" more a journey than a place. There can be no going back.



in " the hobbit " and thus " the lord of the rings trilogy " - bilbo not only trying to home again, but he save a kingdom and had adventure to doing it. some ways, ulysess did the same way.


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! July 28, 2020 @ 08:43:25 pm
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Yes, that is suggestive. Home (as a journey) excludes nothing.

One image of Reality-as-is in Pure Land Buddhism is of "infinite potential."


Darkman666

New Post! July 28, 2020 @ 09:00:39 pm
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this pure land - it sound like something like the wizard of oz or peter pan 's neverland. it sound like these two places. pure land deals with conscience mind - a place - where you be safe and at home. this place you get to, because only in your mind?


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! July 29, 2020 @ 06:54:48 am
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What is in a "word"? I would not use the word "safe" in this context. There is the Christian cry of "though He slay me, yet will I trust Him". Just how "safe" are you?

Again, once we start using phrases like "all in the mind" we have to ask just where the "mind" begins. Is the "mind" trapped within our heads? "If mind exists only in the skull, how can joy exist?" say the zen Buddhists.

The Dhammapada, a well know Buddhist text, begins, "ALL things are led by mind, created by mind....."


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! January 19, 2021 @ 10:39:45 am
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Here on my bench beside the river coffee in hand. Just passed by a couple of guys sleeping in a doorway of Global Britain. I say sleeping, but one was choking his guts up. Having already done my good deed for the year I continued on, but stopped to feed a flock of pigeons. Which made me think. But not for long.

As I have just been informed on Facebook by a mate of mine, people are using the word "unprecedented" like never before. Yet just how unprecedented is ANYTHING? Reading a history book, the author observed...."Where there is money to be made, there are people who will wish to create privileged access to it" and also "Where there is money, there is power and hierarchy." I think this is why Brexit is being driven by many, they don't really give a s**t about just who is left behind, just so long as it isn't them.

Still, no one is forced to listen to such as them. Maybe we can't now enjoy freedom of movement (although the money flows freely, if not into the exchequer) while stuck here in one place we can choose our mentors and friends.

Poets. T S Eliot wrote:- Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

I think in these "unprecedented" times that observation is apt. On a much wider scale. We all absorb and most simply regurgitate (as that poor sod in the doorway did), but we can create and make all things new, seeing with new eyes. There is nothing new under the sun except for our very own heart and eyes, each of us unique.

Anyway, I've just remembered a few words attributed to Richard II, the English king who put down the Peasants Revolt in the late 14th century.....

‘You wretches’, he said, ‘are detestable both on land and on sea. You seek equality with the lords, but you are unworthy to live. Give this message to your fellows: rustics you are, and rustics you will always be. You will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example to posterity.’

Well, you could not get away with such words these days...... THINK THEM, perhaps. (Richard II was once described as "too heavy in the arse, he only asks for drinking and eating, sleeping, dancing and leaping about." )

I'm not sure exactly what "leaping about" implies, but there are rumours that he batted for both sides, if not for one side only.

Must go.


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! January 20, 2021 @ 10:41:58 am
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Not on my bench at the moment. It is raining so I have to stand here in a shopping centre and make do as best I can. Life is full of trials. Anyway, I passed by the guy who had been coughing his guts up yesterday (is he one of the ones who "goes home in a taxi"?) and he asked for "change". Well, no wonder......but I suspect he meant cash in hand. Cash is a thing of the past for me, now I'm one of the tap and go generation, complete with shredded jeans and a mobile phone that enables me to communicate even when I'm in a crowd of people. (How many in the crowd are crying out for company, REAL company?)

Quite peaceful here. I think it is David Gray wafting across on the tannoy.

My mind wanders a bit and I sometimes wonder if this is the onset of dementia, which runs in the family. At 71 coming up 72 it makes me think. Well, I bought the guy a coffee and a bacon butty, plus some vanilla wafers. I did wonder at the time if he would have preferred a first class rail ticket, to make a change from the taxi, but never asked. I just made sure he was not not vegetarian or vegan before handing over the butty.

He told me part of his "story" but as most people I meet seem to think such street dwellers are all liars I won't pass anything on. Who wants to hear it anyway.

Good old Boris, he's doing a marvelous job.


Jennifer1984

Returner and proud

New Post! January 21, 2021 @ 02:15:48 pm
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At least Richard II got his come uppance for the way he handled the Peasant's Revolt. Whether or not he abdicated or was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke is disputed, but his reign was certainly curtailed by one means or another. The manner of his death is also disputed. Was he starved to death in Pembroke Castle or did he die by natural causes..? Was the person who came forward in Scotland two years later really Richard or was he really an imposter..? That person was clearly reluctant to become a figurehead for various anit-Lancastrian and Lollard intrigues so most likely an imposter. It didn't really matter because years before that, Henry V had had the body of "the king" buried in Pembroke dug up and re-interred in Westminster Abbey where he lies to this day.

English history: Making things crystal clear since the fifteenth century.


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! January 28, 2021 @ 10:31:31 am
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Well, our beloved PM has made his latest pronouncements as UK Covid deaths hit 100,000. I must say that I do appreciate that he has simply "followed the science" - goodness knows where we would be now had he followed himself.

Anyway, the oracle has spoken. Having now got brexit done and set sail for the Sunlit Uplands, it's another six weeks of Lockdown for the immediate future.

Of course, such time scale is conditional on certain factors yet unknown. I do know some of them......panic, the indecision of virtually every Government minister, the propensity of our current PM to lie through his teeth and break every promise. But other "unknown" factors could kick in. Mutations and failure of vaccine supplies (now that those b*****ds in Brussels are keen to look after themselves first given the vaccine is manufactured in the EU - really, putting themselves first! Where would that attitude end?)

Well, so another six weeks, give or take a week or two to allow for the "unknown".

I still enjoy my take-away coffee. My guitar is more in use, we are composing a little letter to our grandchildren who we miss terribly, I am editing a new Blook of the Tang poem "Song of the Peach Tree Spring" complete with some really beautiful images of misty mountains, blossoms and lone fishermen from the great canon of Chinese painting. It sure beats trying to find out if the Pandemic originated in some inscrutable oriental mind (I tend to suspect men in black suits, who often seem behind much of the world's misery)

Anyway, must go.


mrmhead

New Post! January 28, 2021 @ 01:42:01 pm
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So now he wants to "follow the science" ... sounds familiar.

Are you sure your PM isn't just a parrot?

(not claiming anyone on our side of the pond is much better)


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! January 29, 2021 @ 08:31:10 am
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@mrmhead Said



Are you sure your PM isn't just a parrot?




Hi.

This goes beyond Party Politics. Boris Johnson is unfit for purpose. I'm not into demonising anyone, but if we had a genuine meritocracy in the UK then Mr Johnson would be lucky if he got a job sweeping the streets.

Sadly, there is a trickle down effect. He chooses his ministers and that is the beginning of his own deceits and dithering becoming par for the course throughout government.

I do not have the time to speak of the current state of the UK vaccine rollout but putting a few things together some signs suggest that too will turn into a mirror image of the man at the top - a fumbling, bumbling, incompetent fiasco. I truly hope not.


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! January 30, 2021 @ 10:23:18 am
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More from the Pure Land.

Coffee in hand, pissing down, seeking to draw comfort from "what does not destroy us makes us stronger", I read a few bits and pieces from Stephen Batchelor. A man who advocates no position.

He speaks of some obscure Tibetan "view" on "emptiness".....

".....the emptiness of inherent existence is a simple negation as opposed to an affirming negation. This means that the absence opened up by emptiness does not disclose and thereby affirm a transcendent reality (like God or Pure Consciousness) that was previously obscured by one’s egoistic confusion. It simply removes a fiction that was never there."

The Buddha spoke of "dwelling in emptiness". As Mr Batchelor says, "emptiness is first and foremost a condition in which we dwell, abide, and live."

Stephen Batchelor goes on:-

Rather than being the negation of “self,” emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human. Such emptiness is far from being an ultimate truth that needs to be understood through logical inference and then directly realized in a state of nonconceptual meditation. It is a sensibility in which one dwells, not a privileged epistemological object that, through knowing, one gains a cognitive enlightenment.

As a Pure Lander I identify with the above and would call it Faith. Always open to the simple hearted. Very egalitarian.

Faith has no content. "Though He slay me yet will I love Him" as theists might say - thus pointless in many ways. It offers nothing. Mocked by many. Yet I find it more and more life-giving.

"What are the teachings of an entire lifetime?" Answer, "An appropriate statement."

Yes.


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! February 02, 2021 @ 10:38:33 am
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Well, more from the Pure Land....

Various scientific advice regarding the extent and the duration of the UK Lockdown. (I say UK but those pesky troublemakers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales keep trying to Take Back Control and having Self Determination, all having various ideas and opinions of their own which they then impose on their people. Boris will soon tell them where they get off when they seek full independence from the Bullies and Dictators of Whitehall)

Anyway, some scientific advice says that the Lockdown is too stringent, while another source thinks it is too lax. Boris, who simply follows the science, thinks it just right, so there is possibly logic in there somewhere. Some of his own MP's want the Lockdown lifted early. Boris said..... "Oooh, um, ar, um, um, um" while thrusting his Churchillian fists at the camera - then walked away mumbling something about being glad he had an Eton education otherwise he would possibly be cleaning loos for a living.

Latest on the various Virus mutations is that scientists are trying to determine if the South African variety, now being found in the UK, did in fact originate in the UK and thence spread to South Africa. Who can tell? As for the UK variant now being found in South Africa...........

It is consoling to know that after taking back control of our borders we have virtually achieved complete freedom of movement, with most science telling us controls were imposed far too late to have been effective.

On another subject, apparently 300,000 Hong Kong citizens, victims of Chinese oppression, are being offered visas to enter the UK. "Welcome the stranger". Meanwhile, the thousand upon thousand of citizens (aka "refugees" ) of various Middle Eastern countries, victims of UK oppression and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, are unwelcome - why should they get onto the UK Gravy Train? We are far too soft these days. Turn them back! Take back control!!

Global Britain Rules OK


dookie

Foolish Bombu

New Post! February 03, 2021 @ 10:22:45 am
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Well, here I am again. It is raining so unable to take up my seat on the bench beside the river. Maybe for the best......yesterday a little wagtail appeared looking for crumbs and I had nothing to give. His/her chirps were in vain.

I live in a small retirement complex, about 45 apartments. All self-contained, it is not a care home. We have a two bedroom groundfloor apartment looking out over a park.

It is the sort of place where, as I observed once, you can only exit feet first. From a Buddhist perspective, the whole ambience assists with daily contemplation of one's own mortality. Possibly this can be deemed morbid but in fact I find it life giving. Insight grows into the reality of thankfullness for the present moment, whatever that moment holds. Insight grows slowly, very slowly at times, but grow it does - which nourishes faith in the grace of Reality-as-is.

Every so often another resident exits feet first, or takes a tumble, or has time in hospital. You remember them when they are gone. For me, often, I recognise that the time you saw them stumble by, or welcome their grandchildren, or join in the christmas sing-song, that you were seeing their "golden age". That recognition helps me bless the moment now.

While I can acknowledge that some might see all this as cheap platitudes, for me they do not come cheap. The cost can be seen as infinite, a price only Reality can "pay" or even understand.

We all have to speak from our very own Pure Land.


mrmhead

New Post! February 03, 2021 @ 02:36:20 pm
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Maybe you and your mates can get together one evening to enjoy a game of Kick the Can



Darkman666

New Post! February 03, 2021 @ 08:23:10 pm
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years ago, i played kicked the can with my ex-wife and her mother. i missed the can, but i kicked my mother-in-law's a** into the front yard accidently. well, the front door happen to be open by itself.

i am lucky, i opened the front door, before i kicked her in the ass. she could got hurt, if the front door wasn't open.

i still kept that can all these years.

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