SAY "NAY!" WHILE BEING GAY

I think I'm approaching the moment when I decide to stop hanging around on blogs.

Leaning out the window, I know.

What else can I give but a reflection that is not aimed at verbally defeating and where can I be credible to others that when I read something I seek to take seriously the question insofar as a blogger is asking himself in my eyes. Or the statement, if he does not use an official question form. What I aim for is dialogue or conversation.

I sniff pseudo-interest, to say the least.

Where someone really can't believe the interest I have, but only have a supposed interest in the content of what is blogged?

So I have to give up, come back to myself.

And suspect that I have become too entangled, in the eternal search for answers and questions that are essential but not appreciated as such in conversation.

And as much as I'm inclined to say that ultimately it's about "(put a placeholder)", it's of little use, isn't it? Because it isn't.

What is attributed to the Age of Enlightenment was to strike a balance

... between the keepers and the seekers. What was regarded in religion as undoubted, set, as perfect, therefore as right living. It was logical that this time of enlightenment had to come, to outrank religious leaders who had put themselves in office as the keepers of the only truth.

The knowledge seekers of that past sought to obtain a balance to this all-encompassing set of conditions and rules affecting all areas of life.

Now that the scales have already tipped in their favour, where science and technology can intimidate any believer in God,

where the remaining religious believers, no matter what they call themselves, are in turn deemed to be threats to progress, one may ask:

In order to set the scales in motion again, is it not necessary on the opposite side of those who are no longer interested in all-encompassing materialistic explanations, not in an all-unifying theory in physics, not the ultimate proof that the world is as those who have been enlightened up to this point explain it?

Where once technical progress freed us from the constraints of only believing but not wanting to know, what kind of situation is it now?

The progressive, the eternally advancing in technology and its structural impressions, has given up his task as doubter, has he not? In what does he differ from those he recognises as historically narrow-minded?

What happens to me over and over again?

If I approach a subject very closely, investigate it and examine it, then at some point I realise that this subject, which can be viewed from two perspectives (to put it simply), at some point no longer allows me to differentiate between these perspectives.

There is a shocking moment when what I have so drastically distinguished from each other up to now can no longer be distinguished! This is a moment of confusion, it can become one of despair, so that no one understands me to whom I try to communicate such things.

An example: think about the roles of victims and perpetrators.

Has it happened to you that when you went deeper into understanding of someone titled as perpetrator, that at some point you were no longer really able to see him only as such but also, in some other intensity, as the victim?

Less emotionally when you think about the role of the giver and the taker? What the taker accepts does not remain statically fixed with him. He passes on what he has received, he cannot "keep" it at all. So at some point his given returns to him and he becomes a taker again. He can never, ever limit himself to just one role!

Some call this postmodernism. Someone who is incapable of distinguishing between good and evil on an ultimate level. In truth, however, no one is capable of doing so. The distinction and the struggle for what is to be distinguished itself can be seen as a helpless attempt to force decisions.

R. H. Blyth was once asked by his students, "Do you believe in God?"
And he replied, "If you believe in it, I don't believe in it, but if you don't believe in it, I believe in it."

Similarly, all Buddhist pedagogy is not directed at people in general, but at the individual who is grappling with a problem.

It cannot be directed "in general", when this is attempted to be done, what you get is suffering.

Say Nay while being Gay

It is a relief to read such things, because I began to wonder about myself that I often take the opposite view (Nay!) to the one I am talking to than the one he is taking. Even when I have held that very view myself in a conversation with another person. That's the crazy thing, you might say, but it's not crazy at all from the point of view of a dialogue!

I am positive that we human beings are striving among ourselves for some kind of balance, that what we tend to see in another and strive to counter this tendency with something alternative, we behave in the same (contradictory, apparently) way.

I find this pinning down and the conviction of "but you said something completely different last week!" a mean thing to do, one could fly off the handle, couldn't one? All I have to do is answer: "I didn't say that to you, I said it to Marianne."

There is a difference between me and Marianne and between Peter and me.

If the individual exaggerates things in one way, the teacher exaggerates them in the opposite direction so that one reaches the middle.

I am positive that this kind of teaching is not something you think of when you involve yourself in dialogue. But certainly, if you recall, you can make the same observation?

In the blogosphere, you can get yourself in trouble when you behave like Mr. Blyth.

But keeping that in mind, the next time, you and me are having a conversation (I equate it to "dialogue"), would not be the worst, wouldn't it?

Though it probably is going to create a paradox. When you know that what you tell me, will be contradicted by me, then will you still say the same thing you initially wanted to say? ;-)

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Quotes from:
Understanding Buddhism

Interesting source it might be (have not read it yet): WHY AN AMERICAN QUAKER TUTOR FOR THE CROWN PRINCE?
AN IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD’S STRATEGY TO SAVE EMPEROR HIROHITO
IN MACARTHUR’S JAPAN

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picture source:

By 朝日新聞社 - 『アサヒグラフ』 1953年5月27日号, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35448760

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^{gay (adj.)
late 14c., "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" also "wanton, lewd, lascivious" (late 12c. as a surname, Philippus de Gay), from Old French gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charming; forward, pert; light-colored" (12c.; compare Old Spanish gayo, Portuguese gaio, Italian gajo, probably French loan-words). Ultimate origin disputed; perhaps from Frankish *gahi (related to Old High German wahi "pretty"), though not all etymologists accept this.}

^{Meaning "stately and beautiful; splendid and showily dressed" is from early 14c. Of things, "sumptuous, showy, rich, ornate," mid-14c. of colors, etc., "shining, glittering, gleaming, bright, vivid," late 14c.; of persons, "dressed up, decked out in finery," late 14c.}

^{In the English of Yorkshire and Scotland formerly it could mean "moderately, rather, considerable" (1796; compare sense development in pretty (adj.)).}

^{The word gay by the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel.}

^{Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/gay}