CHANGE HAPPENS

Look around you. Do you see permanence or impermanence? Then why do we cling to permanence? The dictator's minions proclaim: No Change when yesterday it was Fundamental Change. Which is which? The dictator says: Only God will upset the current state of security---meaning only an act of God will replace him. The previous (implying change) Prime Minister is reputed to have said his yellow (now without yellow tie) party would rule for another 50 plus years.

Look around you. Seasons come, seasons go. The river does not flow backwards. There are ripe mangoes on the trees, and there are none. A little baby becomes a hot chick whose gait and smiles steal hearts. The hot chick is deflowered, becomes a woman and eventually an old woman who may turn out to be an hag, a crone, a witch or a wise sage.

Let us look at the big picture. Things on earth are transitory, tentative, appearing out of emptiness and then disappearing. Ajahn Chah says: Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain are always changing. Notice nothing lasts. It will put your success and failure in perspective.

It seems then that without the big picture, the inevitable changes in life can overwhelm us. Change is the dance of life. We embrace it within the interplay of other cosmic codes. It is not about "waiting" in inactivity. It is acting in the confidence of universal laws that change will happen as day follows night. Just keep on trucking.

SYNCHRONIZING BODY AND MIND

Of course, you remember when good grades came easily and you did not have to pull all-nighters to get As. What about the girls? Not a problem. You had your picks! Those were the days. But, not to worry; you still have your mojo. It's just that along the way you lost the mechanics of synchronizing your body and mind.

 

A sage said: When mind and body are properly synchronized, then you have clear perception and you have a sense of being without doubt, being without tremors and without shaking and without the short-sightedness of anxiety, the opposite of which result in totally inaccurate behavior.

He went on: When mind and body are not synchronized, sometimes your mind is short and your body is long, or sometimes your mind is long and your body is short. So you are uncertain even to pick a glass of water, or clean up your house, or in doing archery, you can't hit the target.

 

Do you get the drift? These are the times you don't want to get out of bed where in the night you turned your back to Memsahib. These have been too frequent these days. And the madam has called a clan council in the Acoli tradition of "taking whole." She is not a sister of the clan, but a wife, she proclaimed. You have failed in your marital duties. Her aunt, your sister took to her cause. Wasn't it her dowry that got you  a wife? So, she has a stake in your marriage enterprise. She would like to see smoke coming out your bedroom tonight if you know what is good for you.  

 

Synchronizing mind and body is connected with how we synchronize or connect to the world. When properly aligned, we are like the Great Eastern Sun---majestic, powerful and inexhaustible

The Art of Deception

---------In the epic Homers' the Iliad and its sequel, the Odyssey, the Acheans, in a show of power and strength,  pound the wall of Troy without much luck.  Odysseus, then uses cunning, guile and deception in the form of the Trojan Horse and the Trojans were decimated. Trojan Horse virus; anyone?

A flower opens up and an insect is attracted to it. As soon as the insect lands the flower closes and the insect becomes protein. The story in the village is that a fox would open its rear-end in the vicinity of chickens feeding themselves. A chicken gets attracted to the red-looking aperture and attempts to peck at it only to have its head closed and locked in with nowhere to go but become a delicious meal for the fox. Cunning, guile and deception are at work.

 

As it is with plants and animals, so it should be with us humans. But with us,  it becomes tricky and complicated with no clear biological rules---courtesy of the added bonus we have of conscious self-awareness. Even if so, there are rules as was  demonstrated by Odysseus.

 

Effective use of deception presupposes what Sun Tzu called  using the Ordinary/Orthodoxy and the Extraordinary. The ordinary is conventional and mundane. You can say and do things to make people believe you are a good person or a very dangerous person. Once a mind assassin has induced the desired state of mind in the subject, then he  uses the extraordinary, the unconventional and the unexpected to score. Little sweat and  not much blood is shed---winning the war without going to war!

 

In matters of the heart, boobs are propped, manners are observed and, boom!---like a fly, a boy is trapped and can't sleep until he sees his beloved.

 

In business we see many instances of bait and switch, or bait and run away with someone's money.

 

It is in  politics where we have all the fun in deceptions. Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union and shattered its empire to pieces by a false claim that United States was working on a space defense system. Our own dictator has mesmerized the world  ever since he was a bandit in the bush and emerged victorious by cunningness, guile and deceptions not unlike of Odysseus. Many young people staked their lives for his supposed cause for  freedom and liberation. It turns out it was a bill of goods. 

 

In the end deception is deviousness meant for survival. We all use it at one time or another. Even the smartest amongst us has been taken for a ride and lost a shirt or two. So, what to do?

 

The first step to minimize the chance of being a sucker is to understand how humans communicate. It is in communication that con artists could be a step ahead of us ordinary folks. Being aware at least gives us a fighting chance of shifting the wheat from the chaff or the real from the fake.

 

There  are three main channels of communications:

---The Intellect or the Conscious by words

---The Unconscious through feelings

---The physical by body movements

 

Here are some classic use of words to bamboozle by some famous mind assassins:

---You are either with us or with the terrorists

---I think the problem of Africa are leaders who overstay

---I think we are bringing a fundamental change

---Let them get rich

---The NRM is against sectarianism

---I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky

 

The unconscious is usually reflected in body movements without any control of ours. For example, a person verbally says "yes" while shaking his head sideways. That is a tell that he is probably lying.

 

Overall, we need trusting relationships so that we don't need to deceive or be deceived in order to survive. But it is a dog-eat-dog world yet. Beware!

What Matters

Who meets you at the airport?
Who picks your medicine prescription when you are sick?
Who holds your hand when you are in a funk?
Who cleans after you when you are a pig?
Who can sit with you without talking and ya'll be at peace?
Who understands you in spite of yourself?
Who feeds you when you can't?
Who shelters you when you're homeless?
Who defends you even if your are a dog?
Who cheers you in your moment of brilliance and glory?

The answer, my friend, is in love
And love knows no tribe, no race, no age, no physical or mental handicaps, no sexual orientation, and no status
And so folks,
Let us love one another and be free!
For the yolk of hate, greed, anger and delusion is too burdensome .

The Creationism-versus-Science Debate

Was God a Good Designer?

My cousin, Auna (RIP) went through Budo and the University of Nairobi to become a brilliant architect. I went to school with him earlier on and we shared a deep respect for one another. Steve Job (RIP) of Apple was a  genius in electronic designing, and I only saw him from a distance. Auna and Job are my heroes. Since I admire both a great deal, I decided to channel this question through them: Was God a good designer of man and woman?

Esthetically both agreed that God did a fairly good job. What you see sometimes that make you turn your eyes away quickly is that man or woman decided to do some renovations with too much beer and pork, and the rolling blubber that you see on the streets perverts God's original intent.

 Both Auna and Job had a problem with the structures below the belt. In a woman, down there are all kinds of things too close together. What was he thinking? What designer would make a birth canal so narrow that we have to tear our way through it when we become claustrophobic and decide to get out like yesterday? In the process, with no regard to the kind woman who initiated our life and protected us in a bubble, we even kill her as we get out. Does this look like the work of a benevolent all-loving designer?

Let us not forget the man. He is not off the hook either even if he seemingly has an elegant sac enclosing two pebbles, and to which is attached a cable. Functionally the size of the cable does not matter, but tell it to the man with a tiny peck who had a difficult time among his peers in childhood--he won't believe you. Kids can be cruel: Johnny, your ding-a-ling can't even penetrate a leaf! Did you hear that one about the Acoli prostitute who ran away after seeing the enormous Dinka client's ding-a-long?

Man's problem does not stop on size on the outside. On the inside, the bladder sits on a walnut-sized gizmo , called the prostate. In normal function the gadget squirts some liquid to carry the man's seeds into the female receptacle to begin the frantic trip upstream to burrow into the egg and initiate another life. Let alone prostate cancer, in some men this walnut grows bigger and touches on the bladder. So, as soon as there is some drop of filtration, the pouch sags and touches the sensitive Mr. P and the man has to go. If you have to get to the John three or four times a night, you are not going to be a happy man. Next time you meet a grumpy old man, be understanding!
  

So, overall Auna, the Agnostic and Job, the Buddhist gave God a B- for structural design.