Leave the question open

If you were to ask, "what is the meaning of this life on earth". I suppose you would get as many answers as the people you asked. If the person was religious it would be to serve god by following as closely as you could his word from the bible. If you were agnostic or an atheist you would be less formal, more open to be representative of the many factors which make us as diverse as we are.
Of course the meaning we attach to life is dependent on our age, our health, our maturity, our economic position, so many factors that when we ask the question it clearly has no one answer. And yet life I s so precious and it's remarkable that we don't step back and at least consider our time on earth and the use we make of it.
We are usually frivolous with our time if the time is not directed by others, people we might work for or who have the power to make us do things which we normally wouldn't.
Should we be hedonistic and only do the things we ourselves want to do or should we throw ourselves into working for others and merging ourselves and our time by standing on a street corner rattling a tin. It's said 'the good we do others is repaid many times over' and therefore the more we expose our-self to say charity fundraising, then the intrinsic return should run deep.
Many people though would find spending their hours in this way a waste of "their" time and would rather be out playing sport or watching sport, weaving baskets or painting landscapes. The time spent thus has its rewards in the contentment people receive but is this contentment not simply not another way of avoiding the question, of how to spend the time we have.
If we were as conscious from the start of the total package available it would probably make most people paranoid, imagine having to account for your time, useful time and less than useful time but of course, we haven't defined what useful means yet.
If your eye is on the rewards of heaven then you have an unfair advantage over the person who sees his time on earth as finite. If you are spending your time searching for answers and practising what you believe is a correct way to live life productively, gaining an insight into the profundity of death and the life cycle, then right up until the last second you are immersed in a question which only you will know the answer to, the second after.
Given that most people hardly ever think about the meaning of life, then their immersion in the stimulus of drugs, sex and rock and roll is not only predictable but worthy. At least their nirvana is here on earth and not a complex belief of an after life. At least, when they shrivel away with kidney failure they can pinpoint to their dilemma even before they go.
"The hope that passes all understanding" might turn out to be a mental aberration dreamt up as a cry for redemption, but a redemption from this life. It's the only one we are likely to know and seems a poor return for two thousand years of civilisation.

The future is bright

What is interesting as the EU Commission makes its statement regarding the exit of the UK from Europe is the breadth of the nationalities which make up the teams who represent and negotiate for Europe. 

What is often lost on people in Britain where we have always remained separate in our analysis of the condition of the separate nations which make up the European Union. We see the German as German the French as French and so on and whilst this view is reflected amongst large swathes of the representative population, the bureaucracy which runs Europe and the bureaucracy which governs the nation states in Europe, is more Federal than national.
Given that The Project has grown from the Iron and Steel Community, an agreement between five very similar nations regarding basic trade to the complex arrangements that have grown, like blood vessels supplying the nutrients needed for life to continue in a human body.
Nations in Europe have known the disaster of political conflict in a way we have never had to deal with. Invading army's terrorising the local population and the weight of a dictatorial authoritarian government has never thankfully been our lot.
Since the end of the last world war we have seen an unprecedented series of social changes, most of them positive. The Channel insulates us from other nations and has a tendency to make us insular. Insularity is not a particularly attractive feature since it isolates us from the growth we normally obtain when we get to know someone new, when our modus operandi goes into overdrive as we come into contact with someone or something quite different as we try to learn from the experience and evaluate it with our own.
The trick of course is to feel that this is a collaboration and not a loss of influence.
Influence in Europe is always a trade off. There are 27 nations and theoretically each is  the equal of the other.  As the Union widened its boarders it has to consider opinion from a wide range of cultures very different from the cosy relationship that existed when the Union was more a western seaboard thing and much more problematic.
Living with our past as a Empire builder and the continental democratic backstop when other great nations traded their democracy for dictatorship we have always been mildly suspicious of Johnny Foreigner. In our island home be have built up this concept of pedigree and unashamedly placed ourselves on top. Now as reality hits home have we the nerve to set out again and prove we are as good as everyone else.

Thought for the day

Subject: Thought for the day.

If our search for "dependence arising" is a process of analysis, a process to establish the root of our experience and more importantly in our own relationship to that understanding, does it not disconnect us from reality, 'our reality' as it seeks to impose an understanding of the layers which make up that understanding.
There is only one way to look through a telescope to make sense of what we see but in a sense, what we see is imperfect and the more we try to define the distortion we simply amplify that distortion. How then, other than defining what we look at can we see the reality of that which lays around us. What lays around us is inconsequential, it's the snow on the radar screen which prevents us from seeing the object we actually wish to see. Seeing only the snow we have to imagine what it is that lays beyond but if we haven't experienced what lies beyond we have to experiment with a series of assumptions. The first assumption "awareness arising" would have us question our resolve to put "self" at the centre of 'our' equation. If we rid ourselves of the notion of self in this search for an elemental truth and put in its place the collective 'we', then we escape the questions surrounding our experience, and the distortions found, and pursue instead a generality, a sort of base line on which our philosophy can make progress.
So emptying the mind is rather a transference of the individual mind, to the fundamental mind, a philosophical mind which has a philosophical basis on which to create a new way to consider our existence.

Dependency arising

 

 Dependency arising

If our search for "dependence arising" is a process of analysis, a process to establish the root of our experience and more importantly, our own relation to that understanding, does it not disconnect us from reality, 'our reality' as it seeks to impose an understanding of the layers which make up that understanding.
There is only one way to look through a telescope to make sense of what we see but in a sense, what we see is imperfect and the more we try to define the distortion we simply amplify that distortion. How then, other than defining what we look at can we see the reality of that which lays around us. What lays around us is inconsequential, it's the snow on the radar screen which prevents us from seeing the object we actually wish to see. Seeing only the snow we have to imagine what it is that lays beyond but if we haven't experienced what lies beyond we have to experiment with a series of assumptions. 

The first assumption "awareness arising" would have us question our resolve to put 'self' at the centre of 'our' equation. If we rid ourselves of the notion of self in this search for an elemental truth and put in its place a collective 'we', then we escape the questions surrounding our experience, the distortions, and pursue a generality, a sort of base line on which our philosophy can make progress.

So emptying the mind is rather, a transference of the individual mind, to the fundamental mind, a philosophical mind which has a philosophical basis on which to create a new way to consider our existence.

Living just to the east

  Living just to the east

Grey sky's and a sandwich for lunch. Sitting in my car in East London one experiences the dilemma most English people have as winter slowly takes hold of all that surrounds us. The streets are wet and the people look miserable as they rush around on those interminable journeys we are prone to. 

Not far away is the tube station and an escalator running into the hot stale depths of the tunnel system by which millions of commuters have each day to make their way about the metropolis. The crowded platforms, and stifling trains which rush out of the dark tunnel mouth like monster dragons, squeezing the hot air in front of them they rush at you as you jostle with other people, like yourself tied into this devils merry go round. Once on board the train, having forced your way through the throng of people wishing to disembark you stand staring into a strangers face not twenty inches away as the doors close and the train jolts into motion. Searching for a hand hold you sway and stumble in unison with all the other passengers as the train flees once again into the blackness of another tunnel. The screeching of the steel wheel,  the friction of steel on steel rails provides a ghoulish background noise as the train sways around the unseen corners on its way to the next station. Every day the commuter on the London Underground absorbs this punishment for the so called pleasure of living in one of the great cities of the world at least that is what the blurb on the tin says.
London does have its historic buildings particularly around Whitehall and on up to the palace. It does have the reprieve of the Royal Parks and the Embankment to stroll along watching the tidal Thames, ebb and flow regardless of the city.
The street names are, for the prodigal from the north a wealth of history and storytelling passed down in the tales of Dickens and Conan Doyle.
The majestic buildings of State. The Foreign Office and the Home Office, the Admiralty with its radio masts keeping in touch with the fleet were, in my minds eye, as a boy, enraptured by my fathers commentary, flights of fancy enhancing the picture that this very spot was the centre of the world and we the most important country in it.
The reality is now far different. Disparity is all around, with wealth and attainment displayed by the exclusivity of the hotels and restaurants, the very private domain of the mega rich. Central London is not for the likes of you and I other than, cap in hand we join the queues to gawp at a world so exclusive, our tender minds would become unhinged at the callousness of it all.
As a lad I had no wish to wave at the queen. The whole pomp and pageantry of our traditional heritage, interesting is now an anathema in the modern world and whilst I, like the rest am drawn to the jingle of the House Hold cavalry as they trot by or the ramrod smart drill of the sentries, it's all a bit irrelevant when a mile or so away they are feeding the poor from a food bank.
I wonder if Disney will ever do a feature length film of this dysfunctional nation with its elegant disdain for that other nation, living just to the east.

Please keep it on the back row

Subject: Please keep on the back row.

Watching Mrs May bounce back and forward, between her seat and the dispatch box answering questions from parliamentarians on all sides, reminds me of watching Geoff Boycott playing cricket for Yorkshire and England. His stonewall style, straight bat to each ball, dealing with each as a singularity, totally separated from the innings as a whole, not interested in the run rate but only in the time spent at the crease.
Her strength is also of someone who has to spend time at the crease, she is playing for time in that deadlines are coming from the timetable which Article 50 triggered two years ago. Each week and each month she scrapes by, handing off the opposition (playing that other game) she pirouette and sidesteps the tackles, slowly getting closer to the try-line. She understands that perhaps that will be enough. The complexity of the deal she is tabling bewitches the mind and unnerves the sane observer. Her team, those who are left, will congratulate her for the try but only then to announce to her she has scored under the oppositions post.

Yes she is beginning to resemble that other female prime minister who's famous utterance "the ladies not for turning", reflected Mrs Thatchers attitude to the growing unemployment her economic package was causing and highlighted the 'winners and losers' philosophy which her tenure in office was all about. 

Perhaps the "Iron Lady" will be cheering from the grave as this modern day Boadicea standing at the same dispatch box, hectoring the class for not keeping up.

An assumption of innocence

Subject: An assumption of innocence.

Quite clearly there is a wide gap between the parliamentary committee members and life as it is lived on the ground. A report has been published criticising MI5 for not adequately following up on monitoring known potential terrorists when they re-enter the country after training by ISIS.

The committee is made up mostly of men, men gifted in the sly obfuscation which is the double speech which determines how well a politician performs in his or her job. There must be few professions other than perhaps the legal profession, which rely on sidestepping what "they know to be the truth" for statements which are pre-vetted by the 'party' for political ends.

To the ordinary man or woman in the street, it is questionable that people who are seen as a threat to the security of our citizens are protected by the laws which are designed to protect the innocent when even the term, innocent is a minefield of assumption. Until a crime is committed you are innocent and unless you catch the criminal/terrorist either gathering the equipment to build a bomb or are caught carrying one, then the guys remain innocent. You are not guilty for thinking or wishing and therefore as things stand, in terms of the law they, MI5, can only monitor what is going on around the potential terrorist until they step over the line.
Clearly the officials hands are tied. But it is also clear that when they don't follow up the information and an act of terrorism takes place then condemnation is also fair. Not just the terrorist but in the sad case of 'Baby P' where social services didn't draw the conclusions which seem obvious after this bruised and battered toddler eventually died and revealed a trail of missed opportunities to rescue the child from its parents.
One gets the impression that the complexity of laws designed to protect the individual from the authorities are the clincher when it comes to the criminal avoiding jail time.
We have to ask, would we like an authoritarian diktat where people are thrown into custody on the slimmest accusation or see people get away with all types of crime for the privilege of giving everyone an assumption of innocence.