Excitement and Growing Old

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Just found out this week-end my Wife and I are going to be Grandparents for the first time, Thanks Nick and Sandra. I'm quite excited.

Congratulations Grandpa!

So your disco days are over

If you'd ever seen me dance...........Thanks Cigdem.

Nostalgia, its not what it used to be.

[Jean Walker]

I received the notification that I had subscribed to this thread and I had also forgotten all about it. My post was in 2005 and here I am now having been retired for almost a year. I've found interesting things to do and have been overseas (to your part of the world) for 10 weeks. I'm involved with our local, new U3A and on the Board of our nearby Young Women's Shelter. However, after the initial novelty of freedom, I have applied to be a casual sub-editor for our state parliament Hansard, passed the test and got the job and start in early March when parlt begins its first sitting. Should be interesting!

[Cigdem Göle]

Just found out this week-end my Wife and I are going to be Grandparents for the first time, Thanks Nick and Sandra. I'm quite excited.

Congratulations Grandpa!

So your disco days are over

If you'd ever seen me dance...........Thanks Cigdem.

Nostalgia, its not what it used to be.

Yes, things are not what they used to be but still I think every age has its own beauty and excitement .

[Jean Walker]

Article in paper today reporting on large research study which says the answer to warding off dementia is a drink a day and pottering in the garden. I'm well in front with the first!

[John Dolva]

I thought it was when one stops trying to prevent the gut take its unrestrained shape .

However, Dr Arthur Janov in "Imprints" describes much that provides answers.

Ditto, Buddha essentially taught that "all is fire". The cause of misery is ignorance ie not knowing oneself. Craving and aversion is at the core. Craving for that in which one finds pleasant sensations, aversion to that which is deemed unpleasant. As perceepion of self and other is within and through the mind-body phenomenas' sense doors, the world and all that is joyful or sorrowful exists within self. Life simply has the quality of being, nothing more. A sunset is just a sunset, as is a pile of vomit. Upon percieving through the sense organs, reactions within qualifies the outer (and inner) and is called beautiful or horrible whie in fact the beauty or horror exists within. Misery arises from the denial of this or a lack of equanimity. One can study self through ana apana, vipassana and metta with equanimity and through stages arrive at what only ever exists which is now, and now etc. ("Be Here Now" - Ram Dass). Most spend their time as a smear from the past to the future, occassionally pausing in the Now, and then with glasses of various hues. Through studying self equanimously continuously, ie meditating according to the techniques taught by Buddha, the true nature of such things become seen as they are. (sit with S.N. Goenka, if in sydney, Dhamma Bhumi, Blackheath). What one finds is that Joy grows as Misery diminishes. Perhaps a better way of describing it is that the joy that naturally exists is revealed as the bondage to 'that which ia not' lessens and hence misery lessens and joy becomes dominant. At the end of this process or Path or Way lies the egoless realm of Nibbana.

Likewise Iesus taught with simple analogies a path of love and forgiveness that again leads to Joy. It's a path of empathy and to have true empathy one needs to see all that one is repulsed by in other as an aspect of self so that when one finds the capacity to love all of self one naturally loves all. This love heals, self and other. He explained that heaven is not up there or over there but in ones heart. By analogy such is also hell. Time on earth is best spent storing treasures in heaven.

[Jean Walker]

Or as Shakespeare put it: "there is nothing god or bad but thinking make it so"

[John Dolva]

Or as Shakespeare put it: "there is nothing god or bad but thinking make it so"

GUILDENSTERN:

My honoured lord!

GUILDENSTERN:

My honored lord!

ROSENCRANTZ:

My most dear lord!

ROSENCRANTZ:

My most dear lord!

HAMLET:

My excellent good friends! How dost thou,

Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye

both?

HAMLET:

My excellent good friends! How are you, Guildenstern?

Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?

ROSENCRANTZ:

As the indifferent children of the earth.(235)

ROSENCRANTZ:

As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN:

Happy, in that we are not over-happy.

On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.

GUILDENSTERN:

Happy in that we are not over-happy,

We are not the only button on fortune's cap.

HAMLET:

Nor the soles of her shoe?

HAMLET:

Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ:

Neither, my lord.

ROSENCRANTZ:

Neither, my lord.

HAMLET:

Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her(240)

favours?

HAMLET:

Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her

favors?

GUILDENSTERN:

Faith, her privates we.

GUILDENSTERN:

God, we are her privates.

HAMLET:

In the secret parts of Fortune? O! most true! she is a

strumpet. What news?

HAMLET:

In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true, she is a

loose woman. What's the news?

ROSENCRANTZ:

None, my lord, but that the world's grown(245)

honest.

ROSENCRANTZ:

None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

HAMLET:

Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let

me question more in particular. What have you, my good

friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you

to prison hither?(250)

HAMLET:

Then is doomsday near, but your news is not true. Let

me question more in particular, my good friends, what

you have done to deserve such fortune, that she sends

you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN:

Prison, my lord?

GUILDENSTERN:

Prison, my lord!

HAMLET:

Denmark's a prison.

HAMLET:

Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ:

Then is the world one.

ROSENCRANTZ:

Then the world is one.

HAMLET:

A goodly one; in which there are many confines,

wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.(255)

HAMLET:

A goodly one, in which there are many cells, wards, and

dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ:

We think not so, my lord.

ROSENCRANTZ:

We don’t think so, my lord.

HAMLET:

Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either

good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

HAMLET:

Why, then it is not a prison to you, for there is nothing

either good or bad but only thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ:

Why, then your ambition makes it one. 'tis too

narrow for your mind.(260)

ROSENCRANTZ:

Why, then, your ambition makes it one, your ambition is

too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count

myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad

dreams.

HAMLET:

O God, I could be put into a nutshell and count myself a

king of infinite space, if it were not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN:

Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the

very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a(265)

dream.

GUILDENSTERN:

Those dreams are indeed ambition, for the very

substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Could be there are allusions to 'the middle path' (Buddha). Ancients wisdoms, such as "Know Thyself" equanimously, should have a universality. I suggest there are universal ways that not only recognise ultimate truths but also provide the solution for all humanitys' search for Joy. In the end one could perhaps say that the very search is a hindrance as it involves a will of a mind (id, I ,ego) that does indeed see the world, not as it is, but according to past imprints. ie we are imprisoned in misery through our endless craving for Joy.