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This is very watchable:

18 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

It's a pretty good game, but I don't like the environment either. It would've been better in a historical game (like Stalingrad, you're right) or a futuristic game (like fallout or Metro Last light's style).

oh I like the environment because I am familiar with the environs of DC (and NYC in the previous game) and it's interesting to see how they recreated DC as a warzone.

I would prefer Stalingrad or some sort of creative settling though

What I'm not a fan of is the story of the Division.  It's too far fetched to me to think of a "Mad Max" type scenario in the near future.

Are you familiar with "freedom fighters"?  This game has similar gameplay to that old classic.  Enemies are very bullet spongy but the Division takes it to extremes.  I like the A.I. in the Division. Freedom fighter's AI was extremely good for its time.

I've been interested in the  Zen Buddhist concept of impermanence as of late and reading 3 books about it:

"Because of this Zen monks have been renowned for their eccentric behavior and cryptic answers to questions. They believe that our reason is the greatest source of misunderstanding because it actually hinders a student’s deeper comprehension of the world that exists beyond words. Humans are slaves to words and the reason they produce."

" By loosening the concept of self, or in Freudian terms the ego, the world takes on a new dimension where true art and creativity can begin."

"The emotions of childhood and the memories that are stored in the deepest recesses of the mind can be touched by truths we may be consciously unaware of, and it may be this unconscious affinity with things wabi sabi that trigger the emotional responses we feel toward them. The Zen monks, with their insights into reality, saw this link between art and the state of an enlightened infant, and have used art as a vehicle to rekindle these connections."

"

Despite the sparse nature of the temples, they were great fountains for artistic endeavors, and much of the art was done by Zen monks. These endeavors were not limited to brush painting, but encompassed calligraphy, the martial arts, gardening, architecture, and even the drinking of tea.

The dedicated monks, in a spirit of quiet and resolute determination, sought to find artistic expression in all they did, and this art was then the fruit from their very focused minds. The renowned monk Hakuin had a favorite expression that meditation in the midst of activity was far better than meditation in stillness. For the Zen monks, everything they undertook became a spiritual task in which they had to immerse themselves totally, and in doing so they absorbed themselves in the activity rather than in their ego’s understanding of the activity."

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the work was usually done in moments of inspiration and often in broad and sweeping brush strokes, where the vision held by the artist was committed directly to paper with a minimum of deliberation or contemplation.

It focused more on the direct experience of perception rather than ideas relating to those experiences. "

"The idea that nothing remains unchanged and that all sentient beings must die has always added the touch of finality and brings perspective to all actions of mankind. Death’s touch is seen as the best possible source of wisdom, for nothing can seem more important than anything else when the idea of not existing is brought into the equation. There is within the Japanese a fascination with death, and unlike the West, which tends to shy away from what might be considered morbid deliberations, the Japanese seek to harness the emotive effect of death to add force and power to their actions. "

"

The beauty of Basho’s prose, however, took the negative aspects of old age, loneliness, and death and imbued them with a serene sense of beauty.

Melancholy, an emotion nurtured in the Zen world, was used as a whetstone on which to sharpen spiritual awareness; this was not a self-indulgent form of self-pity but rather a sadness tinged with an intangible longing. It was in the face of the most undesirable of human conditions that real beauty could be found and the chords of the unconscious spirit, so aware of our fragility, can be touched very deeply when our worlds are put into context. Some, like the great Zen academic Daisetz Suzuki, suggest that it is a longing for the world we left as children, the world of the here and now, undefined by language or values, just a pure experience of reality. It is a world that, at some point in everyone’s childhood, is surrendered for the world of logic—a world that is constantly being analyzed and explained by intellectual machinations, a world that no is longer in direct contact with the present.

lol interesting

While poems in the West tend to be longer and more expressive, the Japanese short poems, tanka , and especially the haiku , are very brief and only give the defining attributes of a scene rather than describing it in full. By withholding verbose descriptions the poem entices the reader to actively participate in the fulfillment of its meaning and, as with the Zen gardens, to become an active participant in the creative process. There is also a conscious decision to do away with anything that might taint the poem with the personal sentiments of the poet. In Japan, poems should not be tethered to the entanglement of a person’s ego. Humility, modesty, and a keen eye for small details in the natural environment are key attributes.“a poem that suggests 70–80 percent of its subject may be good, but a poem that only suggests 50–60 percent of the subject will always retain its intrigue.”

"The length of a poem is inversely proportional to the multiplicity of meanings it can convey, and as with homeopathic medicine, it is the very brevity of the haiku that makes their effect so profound. It is therefore the task of the poet to condense into the bare minimum sentiments that will hold the maximum inspiration for the intuitive imagination of its readers. As a tea master will endeavor to make his simple wabi sabi expressions as poignant as possible, cutting away anything that is superficial, so, too, the poet pares away all unnecessary words and images to leave a clear vision of the essence of life."

In artistic expressions there is the creator and then there is the person who perceives and assesses that which has been created. However, the scope of expression is so vast that no tangible barriers define the perimeters of what art is and what is just living. It has been suggested that everything we do, every gesture and every movement is in fact art, as it is the way we are expressing ourselves in the face of the environment with which we interact. This all-encompassing idea is, in fact, quite in keeping with Zen philosophy, which seeks to find artistry in every aspect of life. The term seishintouistu refers to the concentration of the mind and spirit on just one activity, and through this constant mental discipline the person is able to loose the dominance of the ego and become one with the activity. The artistry is the result of a mind focused on the task in hand, whether it be polishing a floor, raking gravel, or cutting vegetables. By bringing the mind to bear on the here and now, everyday activities can take on profound meaning and in Zen these are considered key for the development of the mind.

This attitude can then transform the most mundane tasks into art.

Zen teachers stress a state of mind called mushin , which could be likened to a state of total absorption in a task. This concentration helps subdue the ego so that mind and body can work in a free, natural, and uninhibited way. This erasing of the importance of self is seen as key to producing art that is not tarnished with the hues of self-indulgence or self-promotion.

THE VALUE OF ART

The importance that the Japanese attach to works of art is sometimes hard to put into context, but the following story may illustrate the strength of feelings that art can arouse. A samurai had been asked to look after a much-prized hanging scroll, but while his master was away a fire took hold of the building. In order to salvage the work of art he bravely reentered the room where the scroll was kept only to find that his exits had been cut off and he had no means of escape.

In an act of almost unbelievable bravery and willpower he drew his sword and cut a tract in his abdomen before the flames consumed him. On closer inspection of the charred body the scroll was found unscathed by the fire, safe within the samurai’s abdominal cavity.

Japanese value art for the wisdom it enshrines and for its ability to transfer this wisdom to others. But for true wabi sabi art, it is the impermanence of the piece that makes it so special, and therefore a large part of the value accorded to it lies in its ephemeral nature and in the fact that the same moment will never come again. Like valuable paintings in the West, highly prized tea bowls may be kept in museums, but the true appreciation of simple and humble crafts, which is the lifeblood of wabi sabi, is too fleeting to stand this testimony, and only the shape of the bowl will remain.

An essential element of wabi sabi is innovation and originality and bringing in new challenges for the mind to explore. Creativity is an integral part of the artistic process. It provides the new ideas and inspiration for new arts and seems to be an essential element in developing new types of expressions. It is usually assumed that creativity is something all humans are capable of to some extent, and few would question this—except possibly Zen monks.

If, as Zen maintains, we live in a world of consciousness, where our every thought and feeling is compartmentalized to fit the constructs of our mental grasp of the world, then what we refer to as creativity may just be the rearranging of these constructs in a clever and artful way. The actual creation of something completely new may be a lot rarer than one might have thought. If we wish to be truly creative, then isn’t it necessary to go beyond the rearranging of symbols to produce something that comes from the very source of our being?

The pygmies in the central African rain forests sharpen all of their front teeth to points to enhance their beauty, while in Japan it was an ancient custom for women to blacken their teeth. That small feet were considered alluring in China is now an idea that is a little hard to relate to in the West, and how might renaissance painters have captured the heroin chic image of semi-emaciated, ashen-faced super-models recentlyin vogue with the glossies? Even in the very limited arena of physical human appearance our ever-shifting tastes show the difficulties in applying any sort of standard or yardstick to the idea of beauty. Fads and fashions come and go, but it is individual people who must decide the artistic value of something as all beauty lies in the sphere of perception. The perception of beauty, whether visual, audio, or tactile, forms the fundamental building blocks of art.

The herd instinct that underscores man’s status as a social animal seeps from our every pore and its influence is clear in the field of aesthetic appreciation. Values are slowly developed as we are encultured by our surroundings, and these values also include those of aesthetic judgment. The Japanese, who have one of the world’s most homogeneous societies, also have a very strong convergence of opinion on matters of taste. There is a significant if not overriding element of learning in the process of art appreciation that becomes ever more pronounced in the age of media dominance.

Although all people are indeed different, with cultural backgrounds playing a large role in defining what people perceive to be beautiful, there seem to be some elements of visual aesthetics that bridge the gap between the different cultures and allow for a tentatively objective view of a shared aesthetic ideal. These elements might include balance, color, proportion, texture, or resemblance to naturally occurring phenomena, and when combined can provide some sort of guidelines for the production of work that might be considered pleasing to the eye.

the ideas of taste advocated by Sen no Rikyu have remained almost unchanged for half a millennium, and the appreciation of wabi sabi doggedly remains despite the huge changes in culture and social values. Why has this style survived when almost all others of the same era have been relegated to art history? It may well be a testament to the fact that the beauty of wabi sabi will, because of its profound artlessness and purity, always strikes a chord in the spirit of man, affirming our insignificance in a world in constant flux.

In the modern world, where design reflects the prevalent material aspirations, we live and work in areas that show scant regard for our spiritual nature. Most modern designs lack intimacy, and production costs and shrewd marketing schemes play the dominant role in defining our living spaces. As an ideology detached from the commercial world, wabi sabi provides an alternative to these poorly designed and mass-produced environments. It can rekindle the dwindling awareness of our  decay that define the inevitable path traversed by all things organic.

Unlike many Hellenic-inspired concepts of beauty, wabi sabi has nothing to do with grandeur or symmetry; on the contrary, it requires that one should observe, with the utmost attention, the details and nuances that are offered to the keen eye. For it is in these almost imperceptible details that one can find the visual treasures that lie at the heart of wabi sabi, and it is through them that one might be able to catch a glimpse of the serene melancholy that they suggest. The scope of wabi sabi expression is vast and need not be limited to just the visual arts. Poetry, theater, and music are also mediums capable of instilling a sense of wabi sabi, and as is befitting of a Zen-inspired aesthetic, there are no hard-and-fast rules for the physical qualities of wabi sabi.

But, in the Buddhist view of the world, there is no duality, no life, no death, no beauty, and no ugliness. These exist only in the minds of those who are not enlightened and are the ideas we must dismiss if we are to perceive the world that lies beyond that.

They are all considered beautiful in the way in which they instill a sense of the serene—a beauty without need for splendor.

It is through these varied mediums that people of different cultures gently remind themselves of their intrinsic fragility and use these sensory cues as a springboard for attaining a more profound sense of themselves, helping to see through the folly that pervades much of daily life. It is the uncompromising touch of death that can put a keener edge on our appreciation of life. The Japanese, along with many other cultures, have long understood the value of this and have sought through the arts to promote and share this awareness.

Where the Japanese people may have differed in the past is in the completeness of their devotion to all arts that embody the essential reference point of impermanence. Through their earnest endeavors in matters of the spirit they have managed to refine their art forms so that they are worthy reflections of the mystery that we know as life.

Their dedication to paring away all that is not necessary, of reaching the real heart of the matter, has yielded great spiritual rewards that are more than evident in the art of the spiritual masters.

Being immersed in the Zen view of impermanence as Ryokan was, when he was asked for some special calligraphy that would bring the family good fortune the monk wrote the character for shi (Death).

The surprised recipient could not understand why such an unhappy character should be written, but Ryokan explained that “When people are mindful of death, they don’t waste time or squander their wealth.”

There seems to be a dichotomy between the lives we are constantly told we should be living and the simple life that for many holds a greater appeal. Put another way, there is a choice for most in the West between hedonism and wabizumai. The wabizumai road, well-signposted by Zen (as well as most other

religious movements), is a personal path and involves a personal choice. On the other hand, hedonism is the accepted norm and claims to offer the easiest and most comfortable passage through life. Wabizumai is an ascending path full of potholes and bends, but it is a path that has the potential to take the spirit to a higher level. While hedonism tends to be more appealing, it often leads to a lowering of spiritual resolve. Zen maintains that it is effort and discipline that will bear fruits, and if we in the West wish to benefit from this wisdom then there must be a move away from the pervasive goal of instant gratification of the senses.

"

When these poets saw the scattered spring blossoms, when they heard leaves falling in the autumn evening, when they saw reflected in their mirrors the snow and the waves of each passing year, when they were stunned into an awareness of the brevity of life by the dew on the grass or foam on the water . . . they were inspired to write poems.

“Death is the mother of beauty,” as Wallace Stevens would put it a thousand years later. There are other sources of inspiration, of course, but none more ancient or enduring than the pang that accompanies our experience of loss — and our uniquely human foreknowledge of loss."

"Perhaps there is some comfort in knowing that impermanence defies its own law, is exempt from its own implacable strictures, is itself unchanging. Ikkyū states the paradox succinctly: “Only impermanence lasts.” The truth of impermanence, as Ryōkan says, is “a timeless truth.” It is not historically or culturally conditioned. It is not an idea but a process, observable anywhere at any time. ­"

"Of course, our culture encourages us not to pay attention, to live as if we will live forever"

"But living in alignment with the truth of impermanence opens a secret passageway to joy. Once we acknowledge how inherently unstable are the pleasures of “this floating world,” we are free to love all things without attachment."

"

asking the great Thai Forest monk Ajahn Chah to explain the ­Buddhist view. Chah held up a glass of water and said:

I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When 

the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, “Of course.” But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.

It is only our quite natural but completely impossible expectation that conditions remain stable that makes sudden changes sting as much as they do. If we knew ourselves as living in a ghost world of unceasing change, we wouldn’t take ourselves and the things that happen to us quite so seriously. And we would see more clearly the preciousness of all life"

"Yamamoto Tsunetomo, in the eighteenth-century samurai manual Hagakure, takes this idea of already broken or soon gone a step further, advising us to meditate on inevitable death every day: “If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way.”"

"Ajahn Chah and Tsunetomo make explicit the underlying premise of this anthology: that mindfulness of impermanence leads to joy. Living in the full knowledge that everything changes changes everything. It loosens our grasp and lets the world become what it truly is, a source of amazement and amusement. "

"Moore, though hardly a ­Buddhist, illuminates an essential aspect of the ­Buddha’s teachings: the difference between satisfying a desire and being released from desire, which is the difference between pleasure and peace. But we are conditioned to prefer pleasure, and to pursue it relentlessly, rather than to relax into joy."

"He does not bother replying to the people who ridicule him, but he does tell us where joy can be found: in the present moment."

"a nutshell — just this moment, nothing added, pure consciousness stripped clean of all our self-centered stories and desires. The people who pass by are caught up in reaction, judgment, aversion, just as we all are. But Ryōkan does not judge them. The poem wonderfully dramatizes two ways of being — one that is childlike, spontaneous, open to sudden delight; the other rigid, reactive, always with better things to do than play with children or act like a fool."

"Issa gently undermines our human arrogance, placing himself on equal footing with all other beings, even insects"

"

From the book "Viking spirit: an introduction":

"

we’ve peered into the Vikings’ world and worldview long and deeply enough to be able to tell what “the Viking spirit” was and is.

It was highly fatalistic, but its fatalism was not one of resignation or complacency. It saw life as being ultimately doomed to tragedy, but with the opportunity for grand and noble heroism along the way. The

Vikings sought to seize that opportunity, to accomplish as much as they could – and be remembered for it – despite the certainty of the grave and “the wolf.” How one met one’s fate, whatever that fate happened to be, was what separated honorable and worthy people from the dishonorable and the unworthy.

Norse religion and mythology were thoroughly infused with this view. The gods, the “pillars” who held the cosmos together, fought for themselves and their world tirelessly and unflinchingly, even though they knew that in the end the struggle was hopeless, and that the forces of chaos and entropy would prevail. They went out not with a whimper, but with a bang. This attitude is what made the Vikings the Vikings."

"

I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye, to tell her I loved her as I would have liked. I had been living in a kind of dream. I lived within the confinement of that regret for many years.

George Harrison told the truth when he sang, “All things must pass.” This moment gives way to the next. Everything is vanishing before our eyes. This is not a magic trick. It is a fact of life. Impermanence is an essential truth woven into the very fabric of existence. It is inescapable, perfectly natural, and our most constant companion."

Evolution shines a light on this immutable law when it reveals change on vastly different scales, from the micro to the macro. The magnification of an electron microscope reveals the miraculous structure of a human cell. The nucleus, the oscillating field, the waves of rhythm, protons, neutrons, even smaller particles in constant flux, living and dying moment to moment.

Looking through the Hubble Telescope, we observe the same dynamic. Our ever-expanding universe is subject to the same processes. True, planets may live longer than human cells. The sun will likely continue on as it is now for many billions of years. But impermanence is a characteristic of even the vastest galaxies. They come into form from large clouds of gas, atoms bind together, and, at some point, stars are created. In time, some fade away and some explode. Much like us, galaxies are born, they live for a time, and then they die."

"Attention to constant change can help prepare us for the fact that the body will one day die. However, a more immediate benefit of this reflection is that we learn to be more relaxed with impermanence now. When we embrace impermanence, a certain grace enters our lives. We can treasure experiences; we can feel deeply—all without clinging. We are free to savor life, to touch the texture of each passing moment completely, whether the moment is one of sadness or joy. When we understand on a deep level that impermanence is in the life of all things, we learn to tolerate change better. We become more appreciative and resilient."

"Our lives are not solid and fixed. Knowing this intimately is how we prepare for death, for loss of any kind, and how we come to fully embrace constant change. We are not just our past; we are becoming. We can release grudges. We can forgive. We can free ourselves of resentment and regret before we die"

"In the early stages of dying, people might complain that their legs or feet have gone numb. They might become difficult to arouse, unresponsive."

"The person who is dying may then experience an inability to swallow fluids, urinary or bowel incontinence, and the slowing of blood circulation."

"When this happens, the body’s temperature fluctuates. Infections may give rise to fever or a slowing metabolism may cause the skin to become cool and moist."

"As Jeff came closer to death, his hands and feet became cooler, the heat gathered in the center of his body toward his big heart. Samantha reminisced about the passionate fire of their love, the heat of their arguments, and that awful feeling of turning away from each other in bed in cool indifference. She kissed him from his head to his toes and apologized for ever having argued with him."

"At this final stage of physical death, people frequently exhibit dramatic changes in breathing patterns—slow and fast breathing with long gaps between exhales and inhales. Sometimes the only thing left in the room is breath. Death is much like birth in that way, with everyone’s attention naturally focused on the simplicity of breath."

There was no more struggle or agitation for Jeff. The anxiety, disorientation, and chaos that had shaped the last few days were gone. All that remained was the erratic rhythm of his breathing. Time slipped away, and Samantha sat quietly in an informal meditation, feeling the vitality, the miracle of life that was at once evident and ebbing.

T. S. Eliot wrote, “At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.… Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

Shortly before Jeff’s last breath, Samantha spoke to him, saying, “I am right here, and I want to go deep inside to meet you one last time.” She closed her eyes and grew still. Jeff and Samantha seemed to meet in a profound, bottomless space. The past was gone, there was no future. There was only the present.

Jeff exhaled a few more times and didn’t breathe in again.

A stillness and ease embraced us. I felt it as warmth and sensed a luminosity, a sort of brilliance. After some time, Samantha spoke out loud, as if talking to the space more than to me. “I thought I was losing him, but he is everywhere.”

We don’t have adequate language to describe this sort of incomprehensible experience, so we name it Mystery with a capital M. Over the years, I have found that what we can experience or know directly may be much more important than our ability to explain or measure it."

"The more permeable I became, the more I realized that we humans are just bundles of ever-changing conditions. We ought to hold ourselves more lightly. Taking ourselves too seriously is the cause of much suffering. We tell ourselves that we are in charge: “Buckle up! Get this done!” When in reality, we are quite helpless, subject to the events taking place around us. But that helplessness brings us into contact with our vulnerability, which can be a doorway to awakening, to a deeper intimacy with reality."

"Then one day, about six months after the surgery, I heard the doorbell ring. I instinctively jumped up to answer it. As I was walking across the living room, I felt my sense of self return to my body. It was like a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My self was reasserting itself with a vengeance.

“I’m back. Don’t worry. I’m in charge again,” it said.

Strange as it may sound, I wasn’t elated when this happened. It actually felt like a loss. I was afraid that I might slip back into my old habitual ways and lose touch with my newfound sense of my fundamentally limitless nature."

"

Instead, I discovered that I was able to function as Frank, my personality who gets things done in the world, but I also had access to the greater sense of Being that I had discovered during recovery. I realized the possibility for an inner peace. No matter the conditions of my life, I could let go. I could change. I could find contentment.

Luckily, we don’t have to wait until we are sick or dying to embrace our own impermanence. Any major life-changing event provides us with this opportunity. Think of how new parents expand their views of themselves to include their role as father or mother. Take, for example, the corporate executive who loses her high-powered job. She may flounder for months, years even, after such a blow if she is too attached to her identity as a career woman. Only when she is able to let go and embrace herself as a person who is bigger than the job she performed, as a human being with passions, interests, fears, and hurts that grow and evolve over time, can she begin to recover and forge a new path for herself.

When our sense of ourselves shifts toward Being, we move beyond our reactivity to impermanence. Not only that, but just as I did after my heart attack, we become aware of something beyond impermanence: the permanent source from which life springs. Suzuki Roshi wrote, “To live … means to die as a small being moment after moment.” What he meant is the self is not a separate static thing but a process, or actually a network of interconnected processes. When we realize this, we see that there is always an opportunity to respond to a situation creatively. Nothing is holding us back from change and transformation—and nothing ever was.

Embracing our own impermanence is a journey, taking us deeper and deeper into contact with the true nature of 

things. First we accept that things around us change. Then we realize that we, ourselves, are ever changing: our thoughts and feelings, our attitudes and beliefs, even our identities.

The beauty is that our impermanence binds us to every other human being. Empathy arises through an appreciation of our transience and an understanding of our interconnectedness. We are not separate, as we once thought we were. We are, in fact, deeply connected to everyone and everything."