Buddhism 202: Mahayana or Theravada? Decisions decisions…
First I save myself, then I save the world. This is my reconciliation of the old Theravada vs. Mahayana debate, small wheel vs. large, respectively, on the question of whether to devote one’s time and energies to the salvation of oneself or the salvation of the world, notwithstanding the issue of whether the concept of salvation is just an import of Christian values on to a Buddhist nexus, or not, and just what there would be to save anyway, if so, given the fact that Buddhism places no belief in self or souls, per se, in the case of the individual, or what would be there in its stead, in the case of society, or the world, as if that might have an internal essence, or something such, when it almost certainly doesn’t, just more of those non-self selves all collecting and coagulating together, they both but aggregations of views aspects factors and circumstances probably best described by verbs nouns adjectives and adverbs, as if that were capable of somehow describing reality, when it almost certainly isn’t, so we add prepositions conjunctions subjunctive moods and imperfect tenses, when all we really need to do is sit down and shut up, eat the next meal and then enjoy the view, with scarce language needed to describe it but even less to defile it, the vibrations resolved into various frequencies sufficient to excite sensations, with or without the need of mechanical waves capable of transporting objects from place to place, the definition of our existence best left to the prime movers and heavy lifters and various mechanisms for the transformation of noble metals, when all that is really necessary for spiritual existence is the light of intelligence given in a flash from above, still we default to language like an addict to his pipe, for lack of more convenient options and the desire for familiar landscapes, words sentenced to paragraphs like prisoners to cages, so that it’s almost an afterthought that almost anything that can be said can also be negated, and only then can a further synthesis result, hopefully higher…
hardie karges and 
Yes, I’m talking about that theoretical ghost in each of our machines. So the first time a human being saw his reflection in still water must have been incredible, our hero unbelieving, disbelieving, unsure if what’s he’s seeing is really him, himself, and so now aware of self, for maybe the first time, previously only aware of everything other…
Though not often heralded as such, language is arguably the world’s greatest invention, and I think that, like most inventions, it might have a limited lifespan of prime utility, and it’s a very arguable point that the world just might be better off without it. I don’t arrive at this conclusion lightly, given that fact that I love language with all my heart and all my soul, but if it’s outlived its usefulness, then it just might need to be put out to pasture (and there just might be something better)…
Control, unwavering control, of yourself, or even better: non-self, if you can manage it, easy enough but for the vicissitudes of will, that one part of the (s)kandhas that escapes easy categorization and refuses to fall blindly into place as but one of the ‘heaps’ that comprise our personalities and personas and persons that we oftentimes think of as ‘self’, or ‘selves’ if you’re bi-polar, or even ‘soul’ if you have long-term plans, or God forbid ‘ego’ if you can think of little else…
Beyond all the fibs and fantasies, behind all the lies we tell ourselves, is the l-DNA we create for ourselves in language, a trail to our past and an arrow to our future, and pretty much the only thing we had before y-DNA and mt-DNA, revealed now to be something like a parallel universe to those more precise measurements, yet far more analogous to the largely hypothetical cultural tracks and traces, like c-DNA, full of long lonely nights and broken promises, frightened misgivings and belated thanksgivings…
streaming consciousness... 
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