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GeorgeAnn got us Catherine Austin Fitts. Yay.
Paying particular attention to what is said about the Divide and Conquer means of centralizing capital, one has to wonder how these insane controversies keep arising everywhere, and it gets so much worse when you look into them and find out there isn't any basis for controversy at all, yet people are gouging each other's eyes out over this shit.
I am reminded of a couple of my favorite masters.
Because the monks of the eastern and western halls were fighting over a cat, Master Nanquan picked it up and said, "If you can speak, I'll spare the cat. If not, I'll kill it."
No one replied, so Nanquan killed it.
That evening Zhaozhou came back from somewhere else and Nanquan told him what had happened. Zhaozhou took off his sandals, put them on his head, and walked out.
Nanquan said, "Had you been here, you could have saved the cat."
— Thomas Cleary translation of Wumenguan Case 14.
Your shoes are wearing you. Your ass is riding you. You can't get this divorced from reality and argue cogently. And if it's unfair of me to invoke a koan even old practitioners do not understand, I'm sorry. If you want a start on contemplating this, just substitute the cat with the salient bit, the cogent argument, the real, and see if something like insight starts to stir somewhere inside you.
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