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The Masters Apprentices' Jim Keays at Palms
at Crown |
| Mike's
Pith & Wind -
Nothing
I asked my son Chris what this month’s P&W
should be about and he said, ’Nothing’.
Chris is going through a philosophical phase at
the moment – I was sitting next to him at
the dinner table the other day and he fixed me
with a serious gaze and said, deliberately and
with a hint of menace, ‘The Truth..’
Chris can be quite enigmatic like that, although
it’s also true to say that Chris is rarely
less than enigmatic most of the time.
Leaving Chris for the moment, I’d like to
concentrate on the subject he gave me to riff
on, namely Nothing. We’ve always been told
that Nothing is quite a challenge for the cluttered
Western mind to contemplate. I’m sure I
was once told that nirvana describes
the state of nothingness, but, as always, it’s
not as simple as that. Wikipedia says that: ‘In
the Buddhist context nirvana refers to the imperturbable
stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion,
and delusion have been finally extinguished.’
I guess that probably does define Nothingness
too, but it seems you have to get through some
quite hard work to get there. Simply chanting
a mantra in the lotus position is not going to
cut it as there are all these human failings to
deal with first. I suspect the quality of one’s
sleep might benefit from being able to clear the
mind leaving you with only Nothing to worry about.
Speaking of sleep, there was a conversation piece
on FB recently that suggested ‘segmented’
sleep, that is sleep broken into two segments
with an.. read
more
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| Dick's
Toolbox - Faith no more
To mix my metaphors: in general
atheists find the idea of faith an anathema. It
is determinedly and deterministically illogical
to believe in the unbelievable, to accept something
which is unprovable and beyond physics. To accept
the physicality of the metaphysical.
After seeing the film ‘Calvary’ I
think that there might be a limited case for faith
and, for those of you haven’t seen the film
I recommend that you do so as it is one of the
better films of the year; desperately black, tragic
and moving. If you intend to see the movie read
no further or if you need some clues read The
Guardian’s review. Yes there are moments
when it can seem a glib, facile and overdrawn
Irish western but, in the end, whilst not easy
entertainment, it asks what may be some of the
most important questions. Questions that probably
have no real answers. Answers that ultimately
require not scant belief – but faith.
As a footnote (which isn’t a proper..
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