madvammer

I'm hungry now.

I hate to see snow this late in the year.

I know about the spell checker. I post in other languages from time to time and it annoys me to no end.

The Buddhist reference to your tattoo was referring to a metaphor for god that i've always found really interesting. The concept is that there are all these guys are blindfolded & each is holding a different part of the elephant. One guy holding the foot says 'an elephant is short & tough skinned', another holding the ear says 'an elephant is soft & leathery like a sheet', guy on the tail says 'an elephant is long & thin like a rope'. The Buddhist take on this is that the elephant is a metaphor for god & all the different religions of the world repressent the different guys holding different parts of the elephant. If they all removed their blindfolds & looked at the 'whole picture' they would see the true nature of god, not just their blinkered approximation. I don't believe in god but i like this as a metaphor for seeing the truth in anything, just take off the blinkers & look properly ya know?

So yeah i thought the 'truth' thing was a reference to seeing the 'whole elephant' if you get what i mean. I think the whole bohemian thing is cool though & creates a really nice connection between you & your friends it's dope. I like tattoos with meaning!

Ps. Sounds like you have a cushy job, well played!

I love that...its like a childrens book I read to my monsters, called '7 blind mice.'

To paraphrase: The mice encounter a big thing near their pond. Each mouse goes, one per day, to investigate the new thing, and each describe the parts that they discover, strong like a pillar (leg), windy like a fan (ear), supple as a rope (tail) etc. The final mouse goes up one side and down the other, from the front to the back and on, until he finds each part that the others described and is able to summarize the moral and identity of the thing, that one must see more than the parts to deduce the whole...and, vwalla, the thing becomes an elephant.

The analogy of religions only seeing parts of the whole is pretty common too I bet...I've talked about one often (that I was told once by a Sik woman) to my Christian family over our regular friendly holiday dinner religious/polito debates. (my brother is a youth/relief pastor, but one of the cooler ones who occasionally wears a mohawk and/or bright coloured hair and places bass for their modern rock 'worship' services. And you were probably assuming I was the black sheep!)

The metaphor is of a mountain...that each person/community wakes up somewhere on the side of the mountain. God/understanding/enlightenment is at the top. Each of us/religious group must find their way up the mountain to find 'inner peace.' The way there is as unique as any mountain side...rivers to cross here and there, escarpments, inpenitrable forests, wolves and the like. So even if they've been to the top and back a few times, no one person/group can ever claim they have the blueprint to the 'right way up the mountain,' only their own way. Providing advice to other humans on how to get up the mountain must therefor be done very carefully, to empower each individual to be sensitive to the pitfalls of relying too much on the directions provided by any one source, and adapting these to their own circumstances and all.

thanks! I love my elephant all the more!

I like the flower of an hour.

spiderman insignificant? never!

Glad to have you here....welcome

Welcome to the site!