In an alternate universe I lost my way

in sizzling neon lights. they leave ghosts in my eyes.
The soothing burn of whisky.

feminine silhouettes in dark lights,     my mind dies little deaths.   
they walk in reckless trance.
A human lumbering, an animal romance.

The uglier I get, the more beautiful everyone else becomes.

Oh Death, the seductress!
She will feel the sting in a feather—
penned tattoo

of a thin moon.

Fight me;
I belong to combat
against disease, old age, death.

lust is a leprosy; we hold our wretched skin to the fire for some comfort in pain.
There is worse than pain, dear one.

caught in the minds' cobwebs where pain becomes a helper

Come to me, lost soul,
For I am the absence of truth, and I will hold you.

The mind needs truth like the body needs medicine.

my tongue           a runway           for flies

Sorry, I don’t do policy

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Bill Murray in the movie “Broken Flowers” (2005) plays a lonely character who receives word that he has a son through one of his past lovers. He looks for him but never finds him. In the end (spoiler for this 20 year old film) he is sitting and enjoying company with a young man he doesn’t know. He realizes that this young man could be, or might as well be, his son. The young man asks for advice and Murray says “Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future, isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is, is this. The present.” The young man asks if Murray is Buddhist, and Murray says “No.”

It is like this with the truth. The Buddha does not claim the truths he taught. He said he found an old path to enlightenment, and just cleared the way for others to follow it more easily. But the task is not done. We must investigate the here and now (Dhamma), and try to communicate it with each other. We must use the common words we know, rewrite them, redefine them, until the path the Buddha took is clear again. The old words the Buddha offered don’t have the same effect; words change and move. Words are impermanent. Also, the reality we face is different now, less stable (I would venture to say). The days when the Earth could withstand all our hatred and pain are nearly over.

Unfortunately, some Buddhists mistake the teaching they find in the holy books to be the teaching of the Buddha, and worse, they believe this is Buddha’s teaching, while that is not Buddha’s teaching. The Buddha gave us work to do, the most important work: liberating our minds, our purest mind, from this world-moment-already-enveloped-in-flame. The desire to shock us awake and begin working again is desperately portrayed in the call of a Zen Master:

Zen Master Seung Sahn says that in this life we must all kill three things: First we must kill our parents. Second, we must kill the Buddha.” https://kwanumzen.org/teaching-library/1997/10/01/kill-the-buddha

The Dhamma is not the Word. Aj. Sumedho has a famous teaching “It is like this.” We don’t understand it with words and descriptions. We use “it is like this” because it is so unhelpful, so useless, that we are compelled to deal with reality as it is directly sensed. This moment I am writing is not the same moment you are reading this. but a poet can capture more depth in this moment, with a simplicity that is vastly improved from the minute steps of mathematics. A poetic text invites a sense of touch, a euphoria of touching and sharing the texture of words. one can understand a poem better with “Our poem is like this.” because by the time these leaves of thought are revisited by a future reader, “this” is no more. But Buddhism was about “this.” Now “this” has changed. My words have moved off-target. The mark has moved too. Everything is impermanent. Missing the mark is all we ever do. Our poem can share in this melancholy of the failure of words. Our poem begs to be excused and at the same time it is our most widely intimate shared moment.

I want to dedicate this message to Buddha, Dhamma (the teaching), and Sangha (the community of monks and followers).

The winning card

We find ourselves in a place only for running away. our minds, caught in a flood, leap for the shore, even as the body is pulled in. Who will raise the call, who will speak the dead shadows and make them live?

This is the prophecy

There is a low woman in the hospital who cleans the sick. She washes vagina’s for a living. And oh holy of holys, she does a better job than you could do yourself. The cleanliness, the godliness that she achieves in this life…

she will one day be a god in her own right. She will unfold from a flower and be ordained in the Temple of the Sky.

Her name will mean ‘friend.’  It is the last of the Buddha’s names.

said already and repeated, 
"the flag of truth must be destroyed to see the truth for yourself."

The Word was not the beginning

You were flung on reality, played like the winning card.

The Ace of cups uses our souls to wash the sins of wealthy donors

The only card left in our hand
The Wheel of Sympathy
is made a whirling cesspool
"accepting bodies" says the Sign
As if there was only one Sign and the Wise ones say
"Follow the signs" but the signs are everywhere, hitting me over the head like
"save a dollar, buy a coffee" strong enough to defend my own weakness

The Marketplace of Salvation
There was something before these words,
Something before the first word,
Something Fierce and Metallic, brandished

The old knowledge was transmitted from mouth to ear

Older knowledge was transmitted from breast to babe.
The biology of knowledge,
The woman silently transmits more than can ever be thrown across cosmic chasms. DNA Flung like wordless signs

The light of those ancestral eyes held an empty landscape with no line.

the womb is the original space, giving birth to the mind

and there is no difference between mind and womb.

Now

Milk mongers selling scientific messianic molecules
fit in the brain like our young men fit in sex robots.

compared to the old ways
Science is not a scalpel,
it is a bludgeon.

Writer’s Block

I want to write, I thought I could understand the reach of words,
I want to write the universal, spinning and echoing like a ring
Of a planet on fire
Or, I want to write the reversal, to rudely unveil,
To write with a scalpel
On the forehead, deeply.

"the truth is no-w-here"

I want to write of wars in this age,
"Be warned", I would say, if children are being bombed,
Write it down, don't hide it, or it won't ever stop.

I want to write

How did I become this?

Excerp of “A Defense of Poetry Against the Mathematicians” (in French)

La contribution : Différents types de distinction

Peirce a défini l’imprécision en termes de loi de non- contradiction, qui est un exercice d’application de l’opération de négation classique : ~~P → P. Peirce dit que nous sommes dans une situation vague lorsque cette loi n’est pas vraie : ~~P → P. (Peirce 1960, 505). La loi de non- contradiction peut prendre différentes formes. La forme moderne, celle utilisée dans la preuve par contradiction, est ~~P → P. Le pluralisme est possible lorsque “pas-pas-P” ne signifie pas “P”, mais plutôt un type distinct de “pas-P”, ou une manière différente de nier P. Par exemple, la plupart des personnes soucieuses d’éviter l’imprécision peuvent facilement convenir qu’une étoile à neutrons est différente d’une question d’une manière différente de celle dont un citron est différent d’u n citron vert. Cependant, le fait d’accepter des types distincts de distinctions (appelons ces distinctions “A”) fait échouer la loi de non-contradiction et place les personnes qui tentent d’éviter l’imprécision dans un territoire vague.

On peut dire que le fait d’avoir différentes façons de nier P n’indique pas une indistinction, mais une plus grande distinction. Cela dépend de la façon dont nous utilisons le mot “distinction”. Tout d’abord, avec l’idée d’une “plus grande distinction”, nous avons déjà déplacé notre utilisation de la simple distinction vers une idée non définie de degrés de distinction, ce qui implique une imprécision dans notre utilisation de la distinction. De plus, supposons qu’il existe des distinctions de type A entre la même chose – par exemple, un triangle isocèle droit avec deux côtés égaux mesurant 1 cm (appelé triangle x) et un carré avec des côtés de 1 cm (appelé y). x et y sont différents en ce sens que l’un a 3 côtés et l’autre 4. Ils sont également différents en ce sens que x est un triangle et que y est deux triangles x mis ensemble. Se contenter de dire que le triangle et le carré sont distincts revient à rester vague sur la manière dont ils sont distincts. L’argument avancé ici est que c’est exactement ce que nous faisons et que, pour cette raison, la distinction est indistincte/floue. Nous ne sommes pas précis quant à nos types de distinctions.

Il existe de nombreuses tentatives pour résoudre le problème de l’imprécision. L’une d’entre elles consiste à soutenir que nous pourrions trouver toutes les précisions d’un usage vague donné du mot distinction, et que cela ne fait aucune différence si nous utilisons la distinction pour toutes ces distinctions par souci d’économie. Supposons par exemple que nous voulions savoir exactement où se trouve le bout de mon nez (c’est un exemple courant du problème de l’imprécision). Nous voulons être très précis sur toutes les parties de la ligne qui distinguent mon nez de l’air et nous grossissons donc. Malheureusement, ce grossissement rend la ligne de plus en plus difficile à décrire et, finalement, nous entrons dans la physique quantique et ne pouvons plus trouver la ligne. L’imprécision de la distinction est comme toute autre imprécision, elle ne peut être résolue par une plus grande précision. En cherchant toutes les distinctions entre les distinctions, nous ne sommes plus sûrs qu’il s’agisse bien de distinctions (voir la section “Sur l’imprécision” ci-dessous). Cependant, nous pouvons être sûrs de certaines distinctions entre les distinctions (comme dans la distinction “A” ci-dessus).

Il existe différentes façons de préciser l’opération de négation. La négation ou la distinction n’est pas universelle, mais la négation logique classique tente d’être universelle, et la caractéristique déterminante de la négation logique classique est que ~~P implique P. La seule façon dont cela peut être vrai est qu’il n’y a qu’un seul type d’opération de négation, et qu’elle est universelle/absolue. Si le premier “~” dans “~~P” signifie une chose et que le second “~” en signifie une autre, nous ne savons pas si nous avons P ou un autre type de “~P”. Wittgenstein (1976, p. 80) a déjà soutenu qu’il existe d’autres façons d’utiliser la négation logique. Dans son exemple, en effet, une deuxième négation en plus de la première ne fait rien d’autre que d’ajouter de l’emphase à une négation unique. Il est proposé ici qu’une double négation puisse avoir de nombreuses significations logiques au-delà de la simple mise en évidence, et au-delà de l’inversion totale de la négation logique classique. Les différences réelles entre les différences, ou les opérations de négation logique, observées ici sont amenées à leur conclusion naturelle : le concept de différence est vague.

zephyr

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My chess medal hangs on the door.
I won a trade with the same kind of luck
I use for acquiring rare skin diseases

And here I am with all the poets in me waiting to eat

Mistletoe, and I, have poisonous berries,
And to make harmless little green things 
sharp, Really sharp 
takes a lot of mathematics

I have a friend who tries to figure me out, and I enjoy the attention
great fires love me and 
I have loved... 

oh how I have loved

old women 
because they are so dangerous.

"you are good!" said Dr Povlovski who took me in
And gave me a cell in his hospital
He tried to take my goodness, but I gave it away too fast
to the other patients
Screaming, crying, and easily beaten in monotonous games of chess.

The chessmaster I played was a Spanish girl of 24
and I was 16.
She could see as far as I could. 7 moves mas o menos

She made a great trade with me on the chess board,
And she congratulated me on forcing an equal trade.
Then she beat me
And gave me my medal for trying...

The monks moved the moon to help me escape

I have so many secrets that I am dying to share.
Teachers give the best gifts. Priceless gifts.
The gifts I gave my father... I gave him my heart so completely
As a child.

And then on and on I gave him ideas.
He honed them and wrote great things.

Once he showed me his brute strength... only once he showed me I could not beat him.
and then 5 years later, I was 9, and I beat him in a game of chess.


He never forgot how I gave him my whole heart,
Yet He dropped me
At the door of the greatest witch
This side of the Mississippi.


I love her now.

Discontinuity: A relationship with Free Will

“In these writings Florensky defended the importance of the idea of “discontinuity” (a theme he undoubtedly picked up from his professor Bugaev), both in mathematics and in social behavior. Like many members of the Russian Intelligentsia of this time, Florensky believed that all intellectual life is a connected entity…Florensky was convinced that intellectually the nineteenth century, just ending, had been a disaster, and he wanted to identify and discredit what he saw as the “governing principle” of its calamitous effect. He saw that principle in the concept of “continuity,” the belief that one could not make the transition from one point to another without passing through all the intermediate points. In contrast to the “false” principle of continuity Florensky proposed what he saw as its morally, even religiously, superior opposite: discontinuity. He realized of course that this was not a new topic, and that discussion of the antinomy of continuity/discontinuity were very old, dating back to the Greeks. However, Florensky believed that the problem had a particular relevance to the beginning of the twentieth century “the cementing idea of continuity brought everything together into one gigantic monolith.

Florensky faulted his own field, mathematics, for creating this unfortunate monolith. Because of the strength of differential calculus, with its many practical applications, he maintained that mathematicians and philosophers tended to ignore those problems that could not be analyzed that way–the essentially discontinuous phenomena…And this emphasis on the continuous, Florensky believed, affected many areas of thought outside mathematics, Differentiable functions were “deterministic” and emphasis on them led to what Florensky saw as an unhealthy determinism throughout political and philosophical thought in general, most clearly in Marxism.

Intellectual modes based on continuity, said Florensky, had spread to geology, in the uniformitarian ideas of Lyell, and to Darwin, in the concept of evolution through gradual small change. Both opposed “leaps” in natural development and postulated smooth, even transformations. Florensky believed that similar ideas had influenced many other fields, including psychology, sociology, and religion.”pg87-88 Naming Infinity

Numbers are Metaphors

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Mathematics proposes numbers to measure real things. There are notches corresponding to numbers on the measuring tape, but even if the notches succeed in referring to that real position. (although they remain a sign of the real object), gaps are still on the measuring tape with no notch and no number to describe the intermediate positions.The real number system attempts to fill the gaps that most numbers leave when describing something real, removing the need for metaphor. “Metaphorical language is language proper to the extent that it is related to the need for making up for gaps of language”(Giuliani, 1972, p. 131). The system “covers the gaps” and does the job of describing physical reality (and more) without metaphor. But how do real numbers go about covering the gaps?

The work of covering the gaps and freeing real numbers from metaphor is done with The Axiom of Completeness:

A bounded increasing sequence has a least upper bound (that is a real number)

Why would the axiom of completeness cover all the gaps of a real line?

A good example is in the act of measuring a plank with a straight-looking side. One compares the plank with a measuring tape and measures the whole meters, but there is still some plank left to measure. (The number of whole meters is the first number (position)in the sequence.) So one counts the number of decimeters left (the resulting position is the second number in the sequence), but there still remains more plank after the largest marker for decimeters. The process continues until the precision of the measuring tape is exhausted, eyesight fails, or the measurer loses interest. Even though one must fail in measuring the exact length of the plank, the axiom of completeness provides assurances that there exists a real number for the “actual” length of the plank (and that there is an “actual” length of the plank). But the process cannot take the full measure of the plank, and so we remain in the poetic world of metaphor, “a process, not a definitive act; it is an inquiry, a thinking on” (Hejinian, 2000).

We want to talk about something real, something as simple and straightforward as the length of a plank. We have an apparatus of controlled inquiry, tools and will-more than the casual use of words, but we still fail.

We must admit that the measurements (words) we have used remain metaphorical and the actual measure of the plank (object) ultimately falls into the gaps of language. The words (measurements) we started with in our task of measuring the plank are no less metaphorical than the measurement we have when we stop. How can we wake up from metaphor?


(PDF) Many Roads from the Axiom of Completeness. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327227248_Many_Roads_from_the_Axiom_of_Completeness [accessed Sep 28 2024].