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Beach Bum Dharma: reading Buddhism instead of practicing it? Both are needed (TDB). |
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| Get a tan, take a swim, and meditate. |
When I read, I imagine the world is one way.
But it's really another.
In my head, sandals and cold drinks are dancing. There's sand everywhere, and the mighty sea crunches into the sand, churns it up, and exhales. Then it all rushes out and happens again, like a body breathing.
But summer around here, far from the beach, far from the shoreline, inland where most people live, is green, muddy, and the water doesn't breathe much.
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| The devas' hollow, far from the madding crowd (SatoriNihon/flickr.com) |
Where do the devas (shining ones) go? Isn't it exactly these wilderness haunts, pleasant groves unspoiled by human noise and destruction?
East Coast
We thought "West Coast" was the best song Lana Del Rey created for "Ultraviolence," but that might actually be "Brooklyn Baby."
Since the album is at No. 1 on Billboard, readers might have heard the whole thing by now. (After all, isn't that what YouTube is for?)
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| You never liked the way I said it/ If you don't get it then forget it/ So I don't have to f'ing... |
LYRICS: "They say I'm too young to love you/ [that] I don't know what I need/ They think I don't understand/ The freedom land of the seventies/ I think I'm too cool to know ya/ You say I'm like the ice I freeze/ I'm churning out novels like/ Beat poetry on amphetamines/ I say, I say// CHORUS: Well my boyfriend's in a band/ He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed /I've got feathers in my hair/ I get down to Beat poetry/ And my jazz collection's rare/ I can play most anything/ I'm a Brooklyn baby/ I'm a Brooklyn baby// They say I'm too young to love you/ They say I'm too dumb to see/ They judge me like a picture book/ By the colors, like they forgot to read/ I think we're like fire and water/ I think we're like the wind and sea/ You're burning up, I'm cooling down/ You're up, I'm down/ You're blind, I see/ But I'm free, I'm free// CHORUS// I'm talking about my generation/ Talking about that newer nation/ And if you don't like it/ You can beat it/ Beat it, baby/ You never liked the way I said it/ If you don't get it then forget it/ So I don't have to *ucking explain it/ And my boyfriend's in a band/ He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed/ I've got feathers in my hair/ I get high on hydroponic weed/ And my jazz collection's rare/ I get down to Beat poetry/ I'm a Brooklyn baby/ I'm a Brooklyn baby/ Yeah, my boyfriend's pretty cool/ But he's not as cool as me/ Cause I'm a Brooklyn baby."
According to HollyscoopTV, "She also recently told the New York Times, 'I love the idea that it'll all be over. It's just a relief really. I'm scared to die, but I want to die.'"
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| I was born to die, and I want to die already. |
Maybe Lana's great because she's so troubled and depressed. Imagine being that famous, that talented, that successful, that beautiful, that young -- and wanting to die. It can all be explained in terms of what the Buddha says about disappointment.
We translate the Sanskrit word dukkha as "suffering." But it is a rich word that means "there's no fulfillment here, no satisfaction, no satiation." In other words, it's disappointing. What's disappointing? Everything but nirvana. Everything else is "off center, askew, and hard to bear."
There are forms of dukkha as subtle as annoyance, as enduring as longing, as severe as anguish. Wanting to kill oneself is painful. It is an unwholesome desire based on wrong views and an expression of aversion (frustration, revulsion, anger, depression, hate, fear).
I wish I were dead! I'm scared to die, but I want it all to be over.
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| Death is pretty, says la Llorona |
Why do we get depressed or put off or upset? We say: "I want this. So long as I don't have this, I'll be unhappy" as if the world were out to make us happy.
But not getting what one wants is dukkha. Getting what one does not-want is dukkha. Rebirth, aging, sickness, and death are dukkha. But this is the worst dukkha, and Lana knows it:
Getting exactly what one wants, what one had wished for, what one had yearned for, AND still not be happy! Why? It didn't fulfill me. It lied or somebody lied telling me this would satisfy me, satiate me, fulfill me.
What did it do instead -- any of it, whether it was hot sensual pleasures or cool spiritual experiences? It disappointed me! Therefore, I want to die. What's the point of going on?
"Summertime Sadness" (Acapella)
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| I'm thrilled and feel a surge of love chemicals |
Maybe someone will argue, "Lana just needs to find the right partner and settle down." Nope. Depending on someone else for her happiness, she's already doing that; she's been in "love" and engaged for a while.
Know what Lana really needs? God. The god is the answer to all problems. Not so much, because she's already got that. The god's son and his special mojo? The god's human wife or his son's mother with her special dispensation? Pact with Satan? More expensive shoes? Drugs? Lots of sex? Money! Attention? Our approval? More accolades (like having the No. 1 album in the country isn't enough)? More awards? More magazine interviews and interest? Bigger ratings than Lady Gaga? Her own show? How about if we elect her "Emperess of the Planet" and all send her tribute due on April 15th of each year?
(The Ryon Show) WARNING: Mild cussing, gender confusion, suicidal story. Lana Del Rey LIVE in Los Angeles, 2014, talking to fans before her recent Shrine Auditorium show. More
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| "Suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism" is humor? |
It all sounds good, but with wisdom, with right view, and often with painful experience, one sees that these would never fulfill one, never satiate one, never solve the real problem(s).
They lead to more desires and more disappointments. If they led to the end of suffering, we would recommend them and the Buddha would have recommended them; we would all be hedonists. But they don't work, as you will all find out.
(Why? Because we know that that's what our horrible Judeo-Christian corporate capitalist mentality/society is promoting, not only to us but also exporting to the entire world).
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| Annihilationism is a basic wrong view |
Look at Judaism, the root of Christianity; it's all about, "Live it up now, for tomorrow it's sheol for everyone," a very harmful wrong view.
Look at Christianity, which does more to promote "sin" (unskillful karma) than to dissuade anyone from it. How? It does so by hammering and pontificating, by being full of loud hypocrites, sophists, and apologists. How bad the world is with it. How much worse would the world be without it? It would likely be better because this is the world with it, and this world is not working for the good. But it sure is working for inimical forces, seen and unseen.
If one gets depressed and starts believing it's all hopeless -- and we know that what one had done to bear it only made it worse -- made more bad karma -- then it's no surprise one starts talking about suicide. Suicide? Who said anything about suicide? She used to pout, but she's happy now.
"Feeling super, super, super suicidal" (Lana Del Rey)
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| Are you calling me the next la Llorona? |
How wise was the Buddha, knowing-and-seeing things as they really are. There are only three roots of all unhappiness, three sources of all unwholesome karma, three problems with life/existence. What are they? They are:
- greed (lobha, which actually means craving, desire, liking, or preferring and is NOT limited to selfish voraciousness as some people reading Buddhism only in English come to conclude),
- hatred (dosa, which means all forms of aversion, especially wrath and fear, which we don't normally take to have the same root), and the biggest problem of all, which serves as the root of the other two,
- delusion (moha, wrong view, unknowing, confusion, doubt, uncertainty, ignorance).
*If greed, hatred, and delusion are poor translations, why does everyone use them? Sometimes a poor translation is still the best possible translation because each of these words represents a range (each is a multivalent term). They represent their categories well.
Root-condition (Pali, hetu-paccaya) is a basis that resembles the root of a tree. Just as trees rest on roots and remain alive only as long as those roots are not destroyed, all karmically wholesome and unwholesome mental states are entirely dependent on the presence of their roots: greed, hatred, delusion or, conversely, greedlessness,hatelessness, undeludedness.
- For definitions of these six roots, see mūla.
"The roots are a condition by way of root for the (mental) phenomena associated with a root and for the corporeal phenomena produced thereby (e.g., for bodily expression)" -- from the Patthāna ("Conditional Relations").
(Lana Del Rey) The superstar spectacle of Coachella 2014 performing "National Anthem"
