...why did philosophy talk have to come back up? i knew i shouldn't have stuck my head back in. well, i need a mental break anyway...and its fun to blow off steam here....i think i am getting into my elite rhythm- hang out, get sick of the place, leave for a bit, repeat. Okay, let's see how many people I can offend now (just kidding)....
for the record Publias my man, whether he knows it or not that limpwristed communist moron Zach de la Rocha is quoting Galatians 6:7 and thus by extension so are you. i thot u would have preferred to quote the source....
regarding detachment:
if you have no responsibility, fine. but all that detachment crap goes out the window if you have real world responsibilities.
the only way to stay detached your entire life is to 'walk the earth'- to be a bum, as Vincent Vega would say.
if detachment is your true desire, why trade? why not just hole up in an abandoned building and sit there in the dust while you masturbate, i mean meditate? like the wise man Lawrence from Office Space said: "Shoot, you don't gotta be rich to do nothin' man. My cousin Earl ain't got no money, and he don't do s--t.'
regarding trading:
trading is not 80% anything, it is 100% everything. and when it comes down to it, I would rather be a badass with a lousy attitude than a ghandi with no skills. I cultivate my attitude because hey, why not have the whole package? But when it comes down to it, skills and discipline leave attitude in the dust on the importance scale. If you do not have real tangible skills, you will not make money as a trader with your mindset any more than Danny DeVito could make it in the NBA.
i don't care if you are the most emotionally grounded, spiritually integrated person in the history of all time, if you don't have real skills you will never pay the bills.
regarding eastern vs here and now:
Materialism is a stupid waste of time but so is asceticism.
Worshiping money or pride is nonsensical, but so is worshiping detachment or nothingness.
Worrying about what other people think is a waste of time but trying to pretend you are somehow above and beyond reality is a waste of time too.
The arrogant eastern buddha and the arrogant western materialist both have the same thing in common: they focus on a single corner of reality and incorrectly declare it to be the whole of reality. a classic case of blind man and elephant.
Easterners: perception and emotion is all, you materialists are too attached to reality.
Westerners: reality and cold hard cash is all, you easterners are dreaming with your irresponsible mumbo jumbo.
darkhorse: We must live in the real world at all times, but is the real world the here and now only, or is the real much more than that? Real actions have real consequences, but are ultimate actions and ultimate consequences available at first glance? No they are not.
I appreciate eastern philosophy for the way it brings out fuzziness in things. It reminds us that we really only know a tiny fraction of what we think we do. It highlights the fact that although logic is a valid and useful tool, in a lot of ways we are like dogs trying to understand calculus and some things are too complex or intuitive to translate.
BUT, and its a big BUT, as soon as easterners try to make hard fast pronouncements about reality they cross into doofus self contradiction land. You can't deny logic and real world concerns and then try to make statements regarding both. Why, that's as silly as an atheist trying to argue that life has intrinsic meaning.
Furthermore, True detachment neither calls attention to itself nor worships itself. The original buddha specifically requested that he NOT be worshiped, that he NOT be considered a god, that he was NOT promoting a religion but rather a philosophy of life only, and look what his followers did anyway. Funny how followers have a bad habit of wrecking what the teacher really said.
so to give props to the REAL siddhartha G. perhaps that bears repeating a few times:
True detachment neither calls attention to itself nor worships itself.
True detachment neither calls attention to itself nor worships itself.
True detachment neither calls attention to itself nor worships itself.
True detachment neither calls attention to itself nor worships itself.
True detachment neither calls attention to itself nor worships itself.
carry on.
