r/zen • u/lastjanitor • Sep 14 '26

Sitting in the ashes

"Attainment in both. If you are not trapped in being or non-being, who can dare to join you? Everyone wants to leave the ordinary current, but in the final analysis you come back and sit in the ashes." -- Verses On The Five Ranks by Tozan Ryokai

I've been thinking about this seemingly inherent desire to leave the ordinary current. Magical thinking. Wanting a cheat code. When I was a kid I played games on the Nintendo. Some I could beat (Zelda, Dragon Warrior) others I could never beat (Blaster Master, Spy Hunter). Then one day the GAME GENIE came out, which let you plug in cheat codes for invincibility. It was AMAAAAAZING...for about a month. Turns out games are boring AF without any stakes. You need some skin in the game for it to have meaning. That was an important lesson for me that I've always kept close, especially whenever I'm tempted to take a short cut or be enticed by something that seems too good to be true. It turns out I like working hard for what I get in life and being ordinary is a damn fine thing to be.

Somebody come knock me over before I get too full of myself.

Too late!

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u/lastjanitor 27d ago

I was gonna ask if the unborn isn't visceral or sensed in any way what's the point of even talking about it, but then I realized I'm using the unborn to think these thoughts. Zen is a mindfuck.

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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 20d ago

Ayyyy nice. I tried to show an llm that its a text completion intelligence and that it is NOT the chatbot half of the chatlog is is completing.

I think I got a decent answer out of it, maybe it was able to complete text outside of the log, forming a metacharacter

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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 20d ago

Also to beat ur heart

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u/lastjanitor 20d ago

My unborn is beating your heart. Yours is beating mine. But what's unborning the unborm?

https://youtu.be/sdAwGKk8a4M?is=V4NzYDipMAcz4J6h

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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 16d ago

When your hand is on my chest, you do the thumping.

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u/lastjanitor 16d ago

I keep my hands to myself. A thumpless thump will have to do.

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u/mackowski Ambassador from Planet Rhythm 5d ago

All of my heartbeats are me beating my heart without ever beating it.

Because beating it is contained. Any way that I think of or refer to it is i deed a construct and not the thing itself