Four quotes on freedom, craving, and staying in the struggle

I hereby juxtapose 4 quotes about freedom, self-entrapment, struggle, suffering, craving: - from Finite & Infinite Games by Carse - from Already Free by Tift - from Dzogchen Teachings by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu - from @xuenay (partway down a long thread)

Apr 24, 2020

I'm enjoying the art form of assembling these quotes. They seem to me to together form a kind of mutual causality loop: Carse: we veil our freedom so we can stay at the struggle Tift: we stay at the struggle so we don't have to experience our freedom

Psychocosm, but my friends call me Matt @Buddh_ish · Apr 12, 2020

Try translating “sunyata” as “freedom” rather than “emptiness.” How does it feel?

And then Kaj's tweets start speaking to another layer: > dropping the craving feels like losing Kaj's saying "losing the money" I say it's also "losing the [finite] game" I find the two meanings of "losing" quite telling.

While working on developing cultures of samesided non-naive trust-building, I've noticed a common schema many people have (that they may or may not be conscious of) that goes something like "giving up the power-over games means losing"

More—and, enough for now. I'll close by positing a Girard scapegoating connection here: we have embodied cultural trauma from the long history of would-be game-exiters being sacrificed. I've found that terror in myself and am trying to work with it creatively & compassionately.