XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 9/4/2016 4:17 PM, brian mitchell wrote:   
      
   > As a fan of Henry James I consider myself to have had some practice in   
   > this business, but never, in all of his long perambulant digressions   
   > into the intricate interlayering of the psychosocial traffic of his   
   > time and milieu, with its endless and apparently tireless efforts to   
   > circumvate the trappings of convention while being, at its sentient   
   > core, slaves to conventions of a deeper and less conscious kind, did I   
   > ever find myself abandoned in such an impenetrable thicket of   
   > confusion and as unable to conceive in which direction an exit might   
   > be located, as I did while trying to negotiate my way through your   
   > first paragraph. I salute you!.   
      
   Brian my sweet and loving son, You trip me up   
   with "circumvate". I can guess the meaning of   
   circumvent from the context, but Henry James   
   is famously slippery, and his English is more   
   circuitous than a labyrinth. But from what I wrote,   
   you might have sussed some vague mimicking of   
   some ice cream cone, or whatever, all proportions   
   being kept. The trick here is to get out from all   
   psychosocial traffic of any time and milieu, but   
   one is still trapped in such whilst trying to get out   
   from it, so one has to use poison to cure poison.   
   However the same alleged milieu famously   
   inveighs against laying mind on top of mind, and   
   here one wants to shed mind, but gently and   
   softly, so that it is gone but not broken, therefore   
   one does not want to double up mind. Yet the   
   same alleged milieu (or some versions of it)   
   teaches the turning back of mind to be mindful   
   of itself, in closed circuit, in effect mind catching   
   mind. So how does one get out of the whole trap?   
      
   Ah! The conundrum! One would want to do what   
   the British sailors did when they telegraphed   
   home: "Sighted sub sank same."   
      
   But some (rare) people do break through and   
   attain peace and tranquility, and even grace.   
   What did they do? Or not do?   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)