Monakhos

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. It just always seemed odd; why wait til a year starts to start or stop a habit or do whatever else you may want. What about the rest of the year?

That said, it’s wierd how this year I’ve been feeling a lot of resolve and have been making a few resolutions of my own this year. To top it off, I didn’t realize until two days ago, that they could be construed as New Year’s resolutions.

I guess the whole point of this is just to serve as a reminder. Whenever you are reading this, there’s no better day than today to start something new. Screw the next year… Do it now.

I was holding off until I knew enough Esperanto to actual write a full post in the language, but it seems that didn’t work out. It’s an easy language to learn, but still can take a while to get the vocabulary all together. See Zuck’s blog for a real Esperanto day post.
Anyways, Esperanto Day is celebrated on December 15^th, the birthday of the language’s creator Zamenhof. It was created to be used as a universal secondary language. While it still isn’t there yet more than a century after being created, there is still some home for it, especially considering the events of the past century such as the creation of the United Nations and the European Union.

I guess we will see where it goes from here. It is a fun and easy to learn language. If you like languages, I’d recommend at least looking at it.

So happy belated Esperanto Day, Esperanto. And happy birthday Mr. Zamenhof, even though you’re dead.

Julie wrote a little on my previous post introducing choice in a post entitled “Why Should I Care?” I think (if I took her post the right way) that she did bring up a good point. You can get so lost in all these ideas that sometimes it is best to simply step back and be. Don’t worry about whether or not you can actual make a choice, just live.

I really think that is the answer to the questions too. Somehow we make decisions and somehow we don’t make decisions at all. Predestination/karmic influences/dependent arising happen somewhere and yet we still control our own destinies. It is fatalistic and yet it isn’t. If that doesn’t make your head spin, what will?

So sorry to those of you who were expecting me to know the answer. Then again, I’m not sorry. I know the answer. The answer is: yes.

Some of you may remember a few posts I had a few months back on existence, the universe and so on (here are the links if you missed them: Part I, Part II, Part II-2, and Part III.) I forget exactly why this one was never published (other than it obviously being incomplete.) There aren’t any answers, just questions. I thought I would post the questions today and maybe follow up with some answers (or ideas about answers rather) later this week.

It may seem that with all the interdependent arising going on with all the karmic influences everywhere there is not really any room for an individual to make his or her own choices. How does the whole ‘free will’ business play into this projection of the universe? Can we really make a decision, or is everything predetermined?

… To be continued