Hedonism is my Religion; Art is my method of worship.

[Lewcifer]

So, I was busy writing, and I went off on a massive tangent. I thought the tangent was one you guys might like to chew over, but if not feel free to let it die.

A journey into emptiness is the longest and most arduous journey possible. On any other journey, even one, or perhaps more accurately, especially one that involves great amounts of physical pain and mental resilience, the senses are stimulated and the conscious mind is pre-occupied with innumerable stimulants. When there is no smell, neither fetid nor dulcid, no rancid taste nor saccharine taste and no Siren song nor caterwaul, the mind is free from distraction. A mind free from distraction is free to meditate, free to pursue enlightenment. But what is enlightenment? Sitting crossed legged in silence in a darkened room? Perhaps you should take that as a rhetorical question, for I don't have an answer to it and I doubt you would give one which would answer it anywhere near satisfactorily. But if enlightenment is the abstinence of sensual stimulation, then I don't want it.

It is the greatest crime to abstain from the countless, wondrous stimuli which exist on this planet. Give me music, give me food and give me narcotics. But most of all, give me art. Not paintings in a gallery, but real, everyday art. Give me street lamps and headlights, waterfalls and torrential rainfall. The artist who sees the staggering beauty of these everyday objects and occurrences must be among the happiest men in the world, for everywhere he looks is a breathtaking masterpiece. He is not subject to the unbearable dreariness of modern Britain that most people on this grey island force upon themselves. Without endless hours of meditation and without struggling through verbose passages his conscious self enters Nirvana when his body is trapped in the claustrophobic grey box of a British city. This is as close to enlightenment as I could ever hope to achieve, and without the pseudo science and years of sensual abstinence advocated by the Buddhist faith.

Let me appreciate the beautiful work of whoever or whatever created this planet to the fullest extent.

Perhaps hedonism is not the correct term; it implies selfishness and destruction. Collective hedonism, which spans species and generations, is my Religion. The Buddhists are famous for the "My body is my temple" belief. My body is wretched creation in relation to most objects on this planet, and is no place fit for the worship of the divine articles which I am privileged to share it with. The world is my temple. Every shining light and every glistening raindrop make up my holy text.

Let me meditate through visual stimulation.

For better or for worse I am a conscious, thinking, feeling being. I have the power, as we all do, to make myself happy, simply by losing myself in everyday art. Social and monetary problems fade into insignificance when the mind is focused on natural and anthropogenic artworks. As a person I am insignificant, but I would have it no other way. I am free to appreciate the the things that are significant, free to marvel at the sheer improbability of their Chemistry and how the cold, brutal, inflexible rules of Chemistry lead to such thaumaturgic marvels.

Let me pursue an understanding of the world and everything in it through first hand experience, rather than inward thinking and seclusion.

When I surround myself in real world Art and let myself get lost in admiring it I feel at one with the environment which contains it. Perhaps not the people I am sharing it with; somehow those who live their everyday lives oblivious to the pulchritudinous scene they are in seem out of sync with it, separate from it. Their worries and stresses overcome them when they are surrounded by the ultimate methods of stress relief, if only they were to stop and think. Perhaps as an admirer of Art I can view them as a more curious, abstract piece. Their social rules and written laws make little sense in the bigger picture and in many ways seem completely contrary to the overall Gallery. The living, breathing sculpture of human society is the only work in the Gallery which fights the inevitable.

Let me lose my fear of death by accepting that I am part of this beautiful creation both in life and death. If my corpse serves the purpose of feeding an oak sapling, then I give it gladly.

My intention wasn't to slate the beliefs of others, but in criticising the more common search for enlightenment it could easily be interpreted as doing so. This provides an excellent opportunity to say that perhaps an even healthier, happier search for meaning in this world is simply to shrug and say vive la différence.

Good night totse