What the cat doesn't know

[MindAbiding]

Hey Dudes,

Bear with me here-- I'd like to get your thoughts on an idea that's been bouncing around in ole duder's head recently.

My special lady and I have one of the chillest cats I've ever met. He's more of a dog cat, in that he likes to be around people constantly, he enjoys having his belly rubbed,  and he plays fetch. He's also extremely lazy, and is kind of a paragon for me of the Dude lifestyle.

Anyway, the thing about living with pets (even chill ones) is they sometimes freak out about crazy things. Our cat, for example, gets very serious during a game of fetch, gets totally worked up when he finds a rubber band (he loves them), freaks out when you blow bubbles at him, and whines a little each night when we go to bed. I knew a dog once who was afraid of hardwood floors. You can add your own experiences to this list of idiosyncratic pet behaviors.

What's interesting to me is that as an on-looker whose perspective is somewhat broader than that of your average cat or dog, I can see that the things that get my cat worked up are all illusions. None of the stuff he freaks out about has anything to do with his actual safety or well-being. I sometimes find myself thinking that if he could just realize that his every need in life is taken care of (by us), he'd have a life of complete ease. He'd basically be a buddha or some other enlightened being.

So, the idea is that all creatures have limited perspectives on their life and circumstances and if they could just view their life with a little broader perspective, they'd realize that nothing is actually fucked. We freak out about things because our understanding is limited.  If we were able to take an ultimate perspective on our lives, we'd realize that we're safe and that things are just fine.

My question is this, Dudes: What does your ultimate perspective look like? If you could achieve ultimate perspective on your life for just a few minutes, how would you relate to your worries? And maybe most important: What are the "yeah, but's" that pop into your head when you think about this (such as "Yeah, but nobody's buying my food and providing me with shelter, so actually some of my worries, unlike those of your cat, are real!"). I wonder if we as a group could find a way to refute a lot of these "yeah but's". I bet we could.

Any thoughts, Dudes?

[Bo Abides]

So, the idea is that all creatures have limited perspectives on their life and circumstances and if they could just view their life with a little broader perspective, they'd realize that nothing is actually fucked. We freak out about things because our understanding is limited.  If we were able to take an ultimate perspective on our lives, we'd realize that we're safe and that things are just fine.

My question is this, Dudes: What does your ultimate perspective look like? If you could achieve ultimate perspective on your life for just a few minutes, how would you relate to your worries? And maybe most important: What are the "yeah, but's" that pop into your head when you think about this (such as "Yeah, but nobody's buying my food and providing me with shelter, so actually some of my worries, unlike those of your cat, are real!"). I wonder if we as a group could find a way to refute a lot of these "yeah but's". I bet we could.

Any thoughts, Dudes?

Yeah but the world has been pretty fucked for a pretty long fucking time - if my dog could understand the news she'd attack the TV, she is a pacifist but if she senses any aggression (directed towards her or anybody else) she will go Walter. Luckily the dog does not know, I think her not knowing gives her a sense of serenity until the doorbell rings. I suspect your cat knows, probably has big plans and right now is toying with you while plotting taking over while putting on the show of not knowing, cats are like that.

I remember when I had the innocence/ignorance of a child, then a bigoted uncle came to visit, he called my friends names I had never heard before, he was so hateful he tore a little piece of my paradise down during his very short stay, so I did my best to put it back together, but life was never the same knowing there were hateful people out there, it had never occurred to me that my Hispanic and Asian friends were different than me even though I always thought they were better than me (they were first generation so were bilingual and I could only speak English) and they were so very beautiful. Hmmm like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie...
 
A few years later I was a newspaper girl (back when it was a job for kids) I'd read the paper but didn't really understand most of the news about Vietnam because I could not wrap my mind around the concept of war, we had studied some wars in school but they were old wars, I had thought we should have grown out of wars, silly stupid kid, maybe if they had a current events class in my school I may have been better informed or become jaded at an earlier age.  They'd talk about guerrilla warfare on the news and I thought they were talking about gorillas, I wondered how people had made such wonderful animals so angry. My mom wouldn't explain Vietnam (she didn't understand it either) but she assured me gorillas were not going to go on a rampage in our house. Eventually I learned the evil of wars, but it's still something I don't understand.


So I guess I would say yeah but the world would be a better place if we all had the innocence /ignorant bliss of a child, there would be no war, no bigotry,  I think that bigotry is the real root of all evil.

As an adult I try to make a little mental paradise around me and hope that others make their paradise too, if enough people do it eventually we'll cover the whole damn world in it. Yeah but some racist fascist will come along and try to tear it down, then we have to build it better, it may take time...



PS "beware the cat" sayeth my dog, she may be mostly clueless but at times she can be very deep and she knows cats they will trick you!
She also says hardwood floors are slippery as snot and to be feared more than bubbles! bubbles won't make you skid out and hit the wall unless you're running away from them on a hardwood floor... She likes a big rug to tie the room together and prevent wipe-outs.

[MindAbiding]

Interesting observations, Bo Dude! I think what I was trying to get at, though, is not that taking an ultimate perspective on the world returns you to a state of ignorance or innocence -- just the opposite. That the state of ignorance is actually the limited perspectives we take on the world, including the stories we tell ourselves about how terrible the world is.

In some sense the whole art of abiding or any spiritual practice (to me, abiding is a quasi-spiritual thing to do) is to achieve peace within an imperfect, fucked-up world. All the things you mentioned are true and horrific, but I look at people like Tibetan Buddhists who have known horrors like these first-hand for more than 50 years and keep on abiding in their own way because they know that all this strife (inner and outer) comes from our limited mindsets on the world.

[Masked Dude]

I wish I had an ultimate perspective which would lead me to a conclusion that nothing is fucked and that all is (or will be) well. Without going into detail, there were times in my life during which the next day wasn't guaranteed. And although at the moment, my tomorrow is guaranteed, my longterm OK-ness isn't.

Yeah, but, many say, that's in the future. I agree the future is not set. However, some things are out of my control, and some things may not be malleable enough that I can change them. So for some people, abiding is literally a minute-by-minute or hour-by-hour thing. And every once in a while, something can come in, harsh that buzz, and we have to start abiding again.

Albeit no one can abide 24/7/365, some of us have to deal with sometimes not being able to fully abide and listen to bowling audio for more than a short period of time. It sucks at times, but it's all we got.

So keep abiding if you can, if not, try again.

[wuliheron]

My question is this, Dudes: What does your ultimate perspective look like? If you could achieve ultimate perspective on your life for just a few minutes, how would you relate to your worries?

Over two thousand years ago Socrates was executed for loudly proclaiming his ignorance, daring to ask questions in public, and making a few lame jokes. One of the first thing Hitler did, was to make it illegal to crack jokes about the Nazi party because he damned well knew a single good joke could undermine everything he worked for. I once had a conservative attempt to bait me claiming I made him sound cold and heartless. I told him I merely saw him as having an underdeveloped sense of humor and that attempting to understand politics especially without a well developed sense of humor is like confusing a rubber sex doll for the real deal. The confusion, anger, hate, frustration, and really bad Vaudeville slapstick becomes inevitable. What all of these have in common is entrenched culture denial that attempts to suppress awareness and acceptance of our ignorance, when the smallest child among us will laugh at the slightest suggestion humor, truth, and ignorance ever require any justification.

Thankfully most cultures have taboos about executing children even if they do ignorantly laugh at the emperor for parading himself naked through the streets in front of everyone. What they tend to do instead is beat the crap out of the kid and then deny it's anyone else's business. There are now 32 countries that have made it illegal to hit or strike a child and, in Sweden, this was done by public demand without the politicians getting involved. The Swedes knew they had a serious problem and took appropriate action. Why? Because sooner or later the truth comes out, humor cannot be suppressed forever, and denial of our ignorance cannot last forever either. Nonetheless, according to the National Science Foundation one in five Americans still insists the sun revolves around the earth and that many also believe Jesus will return in their lifetimes. The world is in serious need of cultivating it's sense of humor and learning to accept their own awareness of their ignorance.

Thankfully humor is about to become a serious science and the ability to automate a sense of humor has already achieved computers that crack jokes with the best of them. Still, the rubber sex doll slapstick will get more extreme before many learn to laugh at themselves with the gentle laughter of a toddler. Roughly half the world believes if your God or philosophy does not include a gentle sense of humor its nothing to them except a possibly interesting abstraction.

[cckeiser]

For your enjoyment!
http://dudeism.com/smf/is-that-some-kind-of-eastern-thing/skeptical-idealism-2-0/msg8371/#msg8371

[cckeiser]

Sorry dudes....I did not mean to kill this thread.
Please just ignore my post and carry on.

[DigitalBuddha]

Sorry dudes....I did not mean to kill this thread.
Please just ignore my post and carry on.

Nothing is fucked here, dude.