I love coffee. I love the taste, I love coffee shops and the ritual of making it and I love the high that makes me feel like I am achieving more than I have ever achieved. And then I Crash And Burn.
Damn you coffee.
A lot of traditional Buddhism is no use to me because it is laden with Indian tradition, religious concepts and suggests withdrawing from the world to best practice Buddhism. None of these things are practical here and now for me.
It also seems a bit pointless withdrawing into a monastery. Day to day life is what needs the concepts of Buddhism, not living in a castle half way up a mountain. Life is inherently easier there in many ways because you don’t have to deal with the ignorant masses.
Anyway, back to engaged and contemporary Buddhist practice. (more…)
There are lots of people around, whether it be print, TV or internet that will tell you “how to be…” something or other. Whether it is “How to be romantic” or “how to look like some idiot celebrity”, it’s everywhere. This is fucked up.
Nobody needs any advice on how to be anything. We would all be a lot happier if we stopped “trying to be” and were content with “being”. It’s one of the Buddhist precepts – contentedness. It doesn’t need some blogger or TV presenter to show you how to “be content”. All it takes is accepting that you wish you were more like someone else, then letting it go. It is that simple. Each thought can either be repressed, accepted or fixated on. Repression and fixation lead to Bad Times, so just accept that you want something, and let it go. The feeling will pass.
Just be yourself. Don’t listen to those that tell you to “be like” someone else. Behaving or dressing like them will not make you them. Behaviour is not the person. Just do what you want to do 
We have a bean to cup Gaggia machine in the office, and it makes delicious coffee. I am really sensitive to things. Not a good combination, and resulted in a rollercoaster of manic depression during the day, followed by crashing and burning in the evening.
After deciding to give caffeine up as an experiment, I had a pounding headache for five days, was generally slothful and had trouble sleeping. I did my turkey, and have returned to a coffee free equilibrium. My moods are more stable, I can focus better and I don’t crash in the evenings
The book is “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics” by Alfred Korzybski. Now I am free of the clutches of endless essays, I can go back and read the things I have got wind of while studying. I have been tempted to get this book for a few years now, but with being at uni I didn’t want to get it while I was trying to study.
I don’t really know how to explain what the book is about. It calls for the rebuilding of human thinking. Modern science is based on finding general principles and rules for what is around us. This is all well and good, but can be over-general.
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