Dukha: A Sure Road To Hell

According to my understanding, Buddhism teaches that all suffering stems from our craving for pleasure. This causes an attachment to the unreal self; or tamba, that prevents us from being able to perceive what is real (i.e. nothingness, or nirvana).

Buddhist's tell us of the eight fold-path that helps us break away from tamba, and achieve enlightenment (i.e. direct awareness of nirvana). This path seems to essentially consist of denying oneself pleasure, much like the Chistian path of virtue. But, like the Christian path, I think the eight-fold path is often misunderstood and incorrectly followed.

The idea, as I see it, is not to deprive ourselves of pleasure, but rather to disconnect ourselves from it. Indeed, it may be useful to deny ourselves our every desire, but only as a tool for helping us recognize desire, and pleasure, for what it is, dukha. Dukha is the life of suffering that attachment to the unreal causes. But it is not necessary and in fact can be very harmful to deny ourselves pleasurable experiences if we only do so with the aim of enlightenment or salvation. To seek enlightenment for its own sake is a deceptive form of seeking pleasure. And hence, seeking salvation (in the Christian sense) is a sure road to hell, and only ends up leading to more suffering.

The idea of Buddhism, and Christianity when correctly understood, is fundamentally about balance; balance between desire and apathy, between that that is, and that that is not. It is a matter of seeking without effort, which is not something the intellectual mind can ever accomplish, though it can certainly interfere.

So, the idea of meditation, and/or prayer, is not to control our minds, or desires. But, it is to surrender control instead. And attempting to deny ourselves every pleasure, and suppress every desire, only ends up being another form of control that will lead to more dukha, and straight to hell.

(PS: Surrendering control over desire is not the same as surrendering TO desire - so be careful to make this important distinction.)

Evolving Crime

Crime evolves, like a living thing. It adapts, and changes in order to survive, and propagate. Modern crime would not survive in the past any more than a modern human could survive with the dinosaurs. Neither could past criminal behavior survive in our modern world. Imagine a cattle rustler attempting to rustle a herd today. He'd never get past the first fence.

And so crime evolves. Someone like Jack the Ripper would never have gotten past their first victim in today's world, not with even the most basic forensic techniques. Even Ted Bundy would not have gotten very far before he was made just another anonymous crime statistic rotting in a prison cell somewhere.

But rotting criminals don't solve the problem of crime. It only forces criminals to evolve. As laws get tougher, and detection gets more sophisticated, so do criminals. If criminals didn't evolve there'd be almost no crime at all these days. The so-called war on crime follows the pattern of escalation that precedes war, not the destructive chaos that defines war. Real wars only come AFTER the escalation (and is unfortunately all we have to look forward to if we allow the escalation to continue).

Soon, criminals will be compelled (by "tough on crime" laws) to commit crimes so heinous and sophisticated that what i did will look almost innocent (I raped and killed four children, and killed three other people, an entire family, that I perceived as, "in my way"). Soon men will attack adults with children right out in the open in order to fulfill fantasies that are shaped by the very social mechanisms purported to stop such crimes. Attacking the means of crime while ignoring the motivation only compells the criminal to find some other means. Where there is a will there is always a way.

If I Could...

I would rather worship the devil created by God, than a god that created the devil.

(Fortunately, I know better than to worship either.)

The Bad Guy Affirmation

"I am bad, and that's good.

I will never be good, and that's not bad.

There's no one I'd rather be than me."

Wreck It Ralph

Me After All

I have attempted to say this before, but I have yet to be satisfied with my words; as usual. So, I will try it again and hope I can be at least a little more clear.

The reason I stopped murdering and raping to get revenge on what I perceived to be (and still perceive to be) a morally corrupt social system, was not because I realized that what I was doing was wrong. It was because I realized that what I was doing was pointless, and futile.

I wanted revenge before I had this "epiphany" (as it has been dubbed in recent court proceedings concerning my crimes, and the reason I stopped killing even though I could have easily continued). But something made me change my mind. I no longer wanted revenge, or forgiveness. In fact, I suddenly no longer wanted anything at all, except for the Truth to be known.

But, unlike most who want the "Truth" to be known, I realized that it was not a truth that only I knew, or one that I had to convey somehow. Instead, I realized to the core of my being that The Living Truth - as I have since often referred to it - can, and does, reveal itself to everyone, at all times.

In other words, I realized that the Truth was infinitely greater than me, my life, or anything I could possibly think, much less convey with words. I also realized that my entire life's experience was only an infinitesimally small part of that greater Truth. And yet, as a part, my life was no less, and no more important than anyone else's life. Suddenly, the naked little girl standing in front of me, whose skull I was about to crush with a large rock that I was holding over my head in preparation for the killing blow when this "epiphany" came to me... suddenly her life was equal to my own, even superior in certain ways.

But, not equal in the mathematical sense. Her life, and my life, were equal in the absolute sense. I suddenly saw, or realized, that she and I were one and the same in the "eyes" of the infinite Truth. That is why what I was doing - killing her to "send a message" to those who had so injustly hurt me when I was yet just a child (i.e. society) - became a pointless and futile jest. I could no longer send my "message" because I could now see through this understanding - through "the eyes of the child before me" (Shasta, as I have oft poetically claimed) - that the intended recipient of my "message" was ultimately me!

I saw not only that I and Shasta were one, but that we are all One. So killing her in order to hurt society no longer made any sense to me at all. And killing me now, in the name of justice, makes no sense to me either. I can see how it makes sense to someone who cannot see the Oneness, though. And that's why I don't blame them for wanting to kill me. They are me after all! And the message they are trying to send is for their own ears to hear someday, hopefully.

The System's Dilemma, As I See It

During the competency hearing last month some twelve or so doctors testified on the question of my sanity. All of them, both for the defense (who claimed I was insane) and for the government (who claimed i was sane), concluded that I was not malingering (faking symptoms or being dishonest), and all of them also agreed that all of my decisions, both legal and otherwise, were inextricably intertwined with and based upon, my unique belief system. But the defense doctors said my belief system was psychotic and delusional, while the government doctors all claimed it was idiosyncratic, but perfectly rational.

While my full "belief system", as they call it, is complex and admittedly difficult for me to articulate, there are certain aspects of it that clearly and directly effect the so-called "choices" I have made in regard to my case, and hense directly relate to the question of my so-called "legal competence". For example, the decision to represent myself and and to waive the appeal of the several death sentences ordered against me.

Unlike most defendants who make such choices, I did not imagine that I could do a better job representing myself than my attorneys, nor did I desire to die, or otherwise seek some personal objective in any regard. I only wanted to "let the Truth speak for itself" and not "interfere with the process". It was consequently this Truth - with a capital "T" - as I see it, that became a focal point of the competency hearing.

The question the court must answer is: Is Mr Duncan's understanding of "the Truth" delusional or rational? And therein lies the Systems dilemma. If my understanding of "the Truth" is rational (which a finding of competence would assert) then it is rational to view the System as "an evil entity with an intelligence and will of its own" that cannot be "outsmarted on its own terms" and can only be overcome by submission to an even higher "intelligence" which I incountered directly "on the mountain" just hours before I turned myself in. This was the "epiphany" that I have often spoken of since my arrest in 2005, which also became a major focus of the competency hearing.

Was my "epiphany" a rational choice, or a psychotic event? If the court decides that it was rational, then it also admits that the System itself can be rationally perceived as "evil". And if the system can be rationally perceived as evil, then shouldn't we be questioning the system's competence, instead of mine?

I can only hope that the significance and importance of this question, as derived above, is realized by those who would pretend to judge. It is a question that strikes at the lying heart of the System, and has the potential, if asked and answered honestly, of exposing the true nature of the Beast, and bringing about a revolution in the way we all think about ourselves, and our roles in this world. And that is what my "belief system" is all about!

The Color of your Soul

A person cannot change their psychological makeup any easier than they can change the color of their hair or skin. They can dye their hair, and tattoo their skin, but that doesn't change the nature of these things any more than behavior therapy or changing a habit changes the nature of the person.

So to judge someone for the way they think, ie. the color of their soul, is no better than judging them for the color of their skin, or other physical attribute. In many ways it is the ultimate form of prejudice, and incidentally one that literally defines most religious institutions and that causes most of the misery in this world.