“If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever.”

• The first truth is that life is suffering i.e., life includes pain, getting old, disease, and ultimately death. We also endure psychological suffering like loneliness frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment and anger. This is an irrefutable fact that cannot be denied. It is realistic rather than pessimistic because pessimism is expecting things to be bad.
• The second truth is that suffering is caused by craving and aversion. We will suffer if we expect other people to conform to our expectation, if we want others to like us, if we do not get something we want,etc. In other words, getting what you want does not guarantee happiness. Rather than constantly struggling to get what you want, try to modify your wanting. Wanting deprives us of contentment and happiness.
• The third truth is that suffering can be overcome and happiness can be attained; that true happiness and contentment are possible. lf we give up useless craving and learn to live each day at a time (not dwelling in the past or the imagined future) then we can become happy and free.

 

“A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does”

Quoted from Dan Millman

Three of the four noble truths by Buddha

Picture from Alex Grey

Fortune favours the brave, they say.
Am I brave enough to meet my own requirements and ideologies?

In that case I must take action.

And there we have it again – I’m having a lot of “wants” and telling myself to do something about my pity life. Change is a must and The goal must be accomplished in a certain amount of time..
And I’m not the only one. I allow myself to speak for a majority of the human race on this planet. Lazyness is within us all. It controls our lives now more than ever. Lazyness combined with old habits and the everlasting search for comfort, together they are the ingredients to 90% of our creations. Not to mention the reason why we continue to push our planet to it’s limits. We are our own worst enemy against ourselves.

It sickens me, really.
I cannot find peace in this. Peace can only be aquired from within. And my insides are burning. A raging white flame that’ll burn as long as I continue being a slave to myself. So… Why don’t I just break free?

“Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strenght,
through strength, I gain power,
through power, I gain victory,
through victory, my chains are broken.”

Because it’s still my choice, being here. My choices, subconscious or not, sums up to a whole bunch of matter that eventually looks like me. I watch myself in the mirror, give myself the grin of a homocidal maniac, whereafter I go out and stab someone in the heart and… Then I open up my eyes.

This is how it’s supposed to be. Life is pain and suffering. The Buddha made no other assumption. We are given a choice of how to cope with that suffering. Complains and self-pity may further infuse the thoughts of change, but will only do so for a certain amount. Discipline and willpower must be present with a touch of love.  Find the love.

Hello world.

I’m here and i’m ready when you are.

For most problems the soldier is issued a solution. If ill, go to sickbay. If wounded, call a Medic. If dead, report to graves registration. If losing his mind, however, no standard solution exists.

A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper; his hands remember the rifle.

Fuck politics. We’re here. All the rest is bullshit.

– Quotes originating from Jarhead, by Anthony Swafford

A small journey filled with beauty, humour, transparency, disgust and foremost patience.
You could imagine a place of disgust and despair. A place where the mere scent of it all is sole witness of what has happend there.
But when you stand inside that place, it surely is much worse than you could ever imagine. I’ve seen the capital of human decay. I have seen a side of humanity that shouldn’t exist. A place where God is sought every waking minute but only the Devil has responded.

The brief visit to Kabul was not itself mindblowing. As always, it’s the journey itself. I must confess that my earlier thoughts on this mission had traces that resembled a sort of empathy or will to help the people of this country.
Over the years, they’ve been promptly destroyed.
By none other than the people itself. The belief that we actually could make a difference to these war-torned people. Of course we do change and make a little difference. Problem is that they just couldn’t care less..
The majority of the afghan people doesn’t care who I am. They don’t care about any ecological systems that define their country. The only thing that matters most is their illusions of how their religion is practiced and how they, alone, will survive until tomorrow.
They are the worlds most efficient people on accepting lazyness into their lives.
I’ve made a personal note to place the afghan people as a sub-culture and race within hte human race – referring to that they may only look human. They may have traces of our instincts and some of our feelings. But anything resembling of human willpower and understanding as we know it are an illusion.

So then, you say, who can blame them? Without any educational system to support them in their youth they can’t be blamed for their incompetence?
Over 4 million people lives in Kabul. None of them ever grows up being an adult. It’s a city filled with 4 million retarded children – trying to build houses, driving cars and running a family of their own in the name of Allah. Without any resemblance of success.
My language is harsh, I know. But truth be told.

Of course there are a minority that makes a difference. There always is. A minority that alone lifts up this shattered country. Like Atlas, they’ve achieved in gaining all my respect. But I don’t talk minorities in this entry.

I find some peace in knowing this might very well be the last time I visit and work in this forsaken corner in the world.

Moreover, the ecological system of this place has to have it’s shed of light. The road to Kabul is an 15 hours drive through the foots of the himalaya mountains. The salang pass, stretching up to 3400 meters, is wondrous as you pass in it’s wake. It wasn’t built for humans. If God ever built such a thing, is was for the ancient giants. I couldn’t feel more tiny in the presence of something so massive. I also traveled through the Salang Tunnel, built in 64′ by he Soviets, which was responsible for the deaths of about 2700 people in one instance.
I played with the thoughts that Afghanistan was once below the ocean, and the walls of the pass I could examine on the journey, were once filled with an ocean – the mountain walls telling the story with their endless scars.
Ultimately I noticed how tired my mind actually was when I was beginning to imagine whales and other pre-historic animals swiming above my head while travelling..

It’s time to rest. I will meditate on this later.

Lance Corporal Fresh,
Out.