tim profile picture

tim

you are these words, not someone observing them

About Me

Who are you? Tim. No that's what you're called. If you were called Mike, you wouldn't be Mike any more than Tim. How about this story and memories about Tim and this list of tendencies and adjectives. You're not a story. You're who these adjectives are about. Memories are only recalled when needed. What is the nature your Self? Who are you? I'm me. That's not useful. I know who I am. Who does? I do. Do what? Know. Know what? What I am. You do? Yeah. Then what are you? Me. What's that? A person. So nothing specific? No, I'm me. An individual. Could you describe that individual entity? No. So you don't know who you are? No, I know. I just know it. But you can't give an account of who or what you are? It's obvious. I just am. I know I am and that's all. So you take it for granted that you know, even though you can give no expression of this assumed knowledge? It's just a given. You assume it is given but you are unable to show understanding of this other than useless statements like "I am me." Well then such things aren't knowable because language has limits. Is that satisfactory? Couldn't you appeal to something other than dualistic conceptual statements? Aren't there ways to know things other than through concepts? Such as "gut feelings", instinct, or intuition and insight. I suppose. Who supposes? I do! Ah! We'll now we're getting somewhere. Where? Right here. Now. And here. And now.Thought and the "I" are the result of our acculturation in this world. We are conditioned to have this separate sense of self which is an illusion. You and I are the same and in the end there is only one of us. The observer is the observed. Our mechanical thoughts and personal desires are the result of memory and conditioning. Myspace is strange place to glorify and reify this illusory self our bodies have developed to give us feelings of security and permanency to our lives.

My Interests

thought and laughter, listening to music and playing guitar, being-in-the-world, nature, truth, reading and learning, keeping a low casualty count, meditation (seated and lived)

I'd like to meet:

artists, activists, musicians, thinkers, my Self, animals, beings

Music:

not much music grabs my ears these days. grew up on punk rock and hardcore if that's any sort of indicator. lately, anything unamerican, classical, complex, rhythmic. of late ravi shankar, slide guitar, celtic guitar, anything spanish

Movies:

children of men and the fountain were the last good movies I can remember seeing, anything with a Good point.

Television:

television pacifies you. give up your addiction. there's nothing on anyway. you're just killing time until you die. if you weren't such a boring person, you wouldn't need TV for fun. stop lying to yourself.

Books:

after steeping myself in zen and buddhism all summer I've moved onto J. Krishnamurti. I'll probably be into him for a while. finished a book on Ken Wilber. he's cool. i want to check out his actual books too. just finished alan watt's wisdom for insecurities - kind of rehashed krishnamurti but with more metaphors. not bad. just got some more K. to read. it seems all these kind of books have finite utility for what we really need to learn but they are a useful stepping stone nonetheless.

Heroes:

Eventually I'll have to kill them all...
...but here are some cool people.

My Blog

(un)just man in Ethics class

In my History of Ethics, we first "tackled" (beat around the bush and made no progress) The Ring of Gyges, a short bit by Plato where his characters lay out the ideal just and unjust man for Socrates ...
Posted by tim on Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:02:00 PST

rutgers doesnt have the philosophy department it claims to...

to professor: "why does our course and the philosophy department almost exclusively focus on Western thought?"answer: "blah blah blah. superficial, uninformed gloss on Eastern thought and practices. m...
Posted by tim on Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:38:00 PST

relgion, proselytizing, argument for a path, spirituality

(Before I go on...I have a big aversion to the word spiritual for some reason but it is the standard terminology for this sort of thing. The word has to many flaky connotations but hopefully these wil...
Posted by tim on Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:45:00 PST

ken wilber, conscious sleeping, meditation

I dove into the book on Ken Wilber today... He's figured a lot of stuff out (or other people have but he wrote it all down in a coherent system). The book I am reading is about his life and works to ...
Posted by tim on Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:12:00 PST

stuff i want to write about but am too tired to right now

This is some stuff I want to consider more in depth and hopefully will get to at some point. I don't know what the point of typing it up is when I already have it written down but whatever.Aug29th wri...
Posted by tim on Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:55:00 PST

pleasure+pain, being right

Any thought which is a desire to become draws attention away from what one currently is. The thought also implies your predicament. "I want happy, pain-free time". This is really an expression of the ...
Posted by tim on Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:44:00 PST

meditation, bodys aims, non-verbal thinking, aloneness

K. - "I woke up meditating." Real meditation does not seem to be something I can initiate but a process or action the body takes when it realize the extent to which thought is counterproductive to its...
Posted by tim on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 05:14:00 PST

The Ending of Time

TWO OLD DUDES GOING AT IT!I took a lot of notes throughout reading "The Ending of Time" in the book. Reading the book precipitated in me a thought struggle to understand and realize the point of the b...
Posted by tim on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:02:00 PST

cogito, method for no-method, poetry/creativity, reading, re-cognizing/new/old experience

Shut the fuck up Descartes. I think therefore I am. Cogito ergo sum. And it fucking never ends. It is he cause of struggle. Though at this point I fint it hard to regard the effort as struggle or diff...
Posted by tim on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:08:00 PST

a little UG, questions/answers, image, memory, thought

No enlightenment, no eternal happiness for man. Not in "god" or material pleasures, both of which are born out of thought. These are fictitious goals. Nothing to seek and no one to seek it. What to do...
Posted by tim on Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:20:00 PST