There isn't much bitterness left in me now, at 66. There was quite a lot, or at least some, for about a decade in my fifties and early 60s...things that had gone wrong, the various unfairnesses, the being foolish, the people who did, actually, do me great harm and wrong...etc...and the denying of the harm I did to other people etc...but that all seems to be gone now. I think it is what happens to most people. Not all, not everything happens to everyone, but I think most of the things that happen, unless we are in war, are pretty common to us as generic human stock. What would coffee be without a hint of bitterness? Just a plain sweet drink that makes your teeth fall out. I think I've mentioned the studies on Human Happiness and that, in general, life is pretty happy when one is young, a child etc, and then as maturity and responsibility arrive most folk experience unhappiness for a long time in various forms, though not all the time, and then, in late life, without those responsibilities etc, then life becomes kind of happy again. It's got nothing to do with who we are or what we've done, or whether we have been bad or good, etc, it's just the Wheel of Human Life, not for everyone, but for most. I've never been against the notion of self killing, suicide, etc, at all as I believe this is quite normal also. Death, does, indeed, acquit us of all responsibility. But I have suggested to folk who wish to do so, that, for their own enjoyment possible, to consider the Wheel, and how, in general, things don't get much worse and sometimes, do get a lot better...not forever etc...but for enough of the time we are alive. If you wish to kill yourself at 60, well, fair enough. But remember that no matter how you die, the folk who love you will grieve for you and, really, after a year, no matter how you die, they won't miss you so much anyway...so, don't do it for them. We are a passing parade.

Eventually all the various discriminations that people have, their colour, their gender, their race, their culture, their intelligence, their religions, their fetishes, their beliefs, their jobs, their philosophies etc...everything that separates us will fade and pass. What we will be left with, the great division, will between those with wealth and those with poverty...and this will be the only human discrimination and the only human bias. I expect that it will be a long and bloody and very nasty time for all who remain. I wish us well.

I think our family, staunchly Catholic and Irish at the outset, apart from Mum, who had intelligence AND humour, were all basically indentured as iron-collar slaves into the Irish Roman Catholic Realm...which is pretty much exactly like the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist realm, if you study these things....and, really, in no way differs at all...except there's probably a lot more, a lot more child sex abuse in the Tibetan Buddhist realm... but, anyway, it does, and perhaps should, take at least a lifetime, or two, to escape from the clever and various notions of a Really Big Faith. It's not all bad, of course, either Catholicism or Tibetan Buddhism, it's just, well, mostly bad. You can still have fun with the good notions in it...but, like having dinner, there's no need to swallow everything on the plate. Both are fundamentally about money and control, and, well, yes, money and control have their uses, to be sure...but there are other things of interest as you go along and find things out for yourself.

Thai Royal Anthem

Junior Brown - Apache plus another instrumental (guitar pyrotechnics!).MOV

Pete Seeger: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I see the Hong Kong protest folks are getting more destructive and violent hoping/demanding to get a savage response from Beijing so then they can Cry Freedom! Help Us! Independence! Democracy! But that isn't going to happen. The island is just going into a very deep economic recession, that's all. They brought it on themselves. They'll just have to work their way out of that as these years go sailing by.