SAR_11_along_the_way

Above: FP 30K Sunday-morning SAR BL training. Training-thought: ignorance lies at the foundation of bad-running-behaviour-and-injury, " [ the ] ignorance of believing in a truly existent self." (quoted from 'The Buddhist Way of Healing' by Dolkar Khangkar in 'Buddha's Medicine', first published in 2008 on YouTube, link below). It leads to the worshipping of (stiff- and greedy-man-made) lifeless monuments ( "'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough..." ) -- which -- like the (quoted above) Noah Cross character in Roman Polanski's/Robert Towne's 'Chinatown' (1974) -- point the way to resistance-to-change. We need training to be healthy, in balance. We need to stay flexible -- to be able to keep on training (health and flexibility are two sides of the same coin); stiffness is a symptom of ignorance and at the roots of injury!

"Understanding is such a liquid path. Like walking on water. And words are drops.Their meaning changing like seasons. And yet in the circle they make while dancing i hear the truth. Self is not one of them." Rutger Hauer, commenting on his YouTube Channel (published 3 years ago, link below)

 "Dancing is especially known, by its circulation of the blood, to keep off the disease of old age." Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa in 'The Classic Noh Theater of Japan', first published in the U.S.A. in 1917 (page 29)

"The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the [...] mind is to get an old one out." B.H. Liddell Hart as quoted in 'Changing Minds in the Army: why it is so difficult and what to do about it', first published in October 2013 (page 1)

"Individuals pay particular attention to information that supports their beliefs and either ignore or discount the value of evidence that contradicts their beliefs. [ When encountering information contrary to their own beliefs or opinions ] they face a condition known as cognitive dissonance, or the state of tension arising from holding two cognition's that are psychologically inconsistent. Researsers using images from MRI scans found that when subjects were confronted with dissonant information, they often used the reasoning areas of their brain not to analyse new data or information, but rather to develop a narrative that preserves their initial frames of reference. Once the narrative is created, the emotional areas of the brain happily light up. […] Individuals, when faced with dissonant information, use their reasoning skills to "twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want." The resulting release of neutrotransmitters gives strong reinforcement for justification of their existing  perspective. Conformation bias emerges as information is interpreted in a way to confirm old preconceptions and dismiss new contradictory evidence." Stephen J. Gerras, Leonard Wong in 'Changing Minds in the Army: why it is so difficult and what to do about it' (page 19, 'Conformation Bias')

"Oddly enough, the relationship between having smarts and having the propensity to change one's mind is counterintuitive. In his highly regarded book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt asserts that intelligence quotient (IQ) is the biggest predictor of how well people argue, but only in terms of how well they support their own position. […] Smart people tend to excel at buttressing their own cases but often fail at exploring the issue fully to appreciate other perspectives and perhaps change their minds." Stephen J. Gerras, Leonard Wong in 'Changing Minds in the Army: why it is so difficult and what to do about it' (page 10, 'Nature and Nurture')

" [ Alex Simon: ] Brian De Palma made an interesting comment once about his group that hung out in the Malibu Colony during the ‘70s: him, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Margot Kidder, that once the era of the blockbuster started after the mid-70s, and people began making astronomical amounts of money, as opposed to just making a comfortable living, that’s when the fractures started, in terms of their relationships with each other. [ 'Chinatown' screenwriter Robert Towne: ] That’s quite possibly true. I think the promise of making money split a lot of us up. [ AS ] Who’ve you remained friendly with over the years? [ RT ] You mean those of us who are still alive? (laughs) Well, I don’t see him much, but I’m friendly with Jack, very friendly with Warren (Beatty). [ AS ] Do you talk to Polanski at all? [ RT ] Oh yeah, we’re still very friendly. I forgot to mention him. I’ve managed to see him once a year or every couple years when I go to Europe." From: 'Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview' by Alex Simon, first published Februari 2, 2014

'Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview': http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.nl/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html

YouTube-Film-Factory-Shorts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVbqSkFgg1o

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidyā_(Buddhism)

US Army War College/Strategic Studies Institute publication: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1179

SAR_9_along_the_way

Above: FP SAR BL 30K training. How to train? Run from - to and unite start - finish! Start it, do it, repeat it.

 "I am writing this from Budapest, the city in which I was born. I went to the United States so young that all my memories of Hungary were acquired later in life or through my family, whose memories bridged both world wars and the Cold War, all with their attendant horrors. My own deepest memory of Hungary comes from my parents' living room in the Bronx. My older sister was married in November 1956. There was an uprising against the Soviets at the same time, and many of our family members were still there. After the wedding, we returned home and saw the early newspapers and reports on television. My parents discovered that some of the heaviest fighting between the revolutionaries and Soviets had taken place on the street where my aunts lived. A joyous marriage, followed by another catastrophe -- the contrast between America and Hungary. That night, my father asked no one in particular, "Does it ever end?" The answer is no, not here. Which is why I am back in Budapest.

Hungary is a country of enormous cultivation and fury. It is surrounded by disappointments that can become dangers. Europe is not what it promised it would be. Russia is not what Europeans expected it to be. Within and without the country, the best [prime minister, leader of a right-of-center party and quite popular] Orban can do is balance, and those who balance survive but are frequently reviled. What Hungary could be in 2005 is not the Hungary it can be today. Any Hungarian leader who wished to avoid disaster would have to face this. Indeed, Europeans across the continent are facing the fact that the world they expected to live in is gone and what has replaced it, inside and outside of their countries, is different and dangerous."

George Friedman in 'Borderlands: Hungary Maneuvers', published today on the Strafor website.

Read more: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/borderlands-hungary-maneuvers

SAR_10_along_the_way

Above: FP 30K SAR BL training. Identical to running… " [ a ] movie flows trough real time, like a river carrying you toward your destination. If you ask a question or think about something other than the movie, you're out of the river and up on the bank -- out of the flow. This is seldom good."  -- Howard Suber ' The Power of Film ' (page 168).

Structure: How reality affects story:

 "When I examined what the structure [ of the film 'Au Revoir les Enfants' ] should be, I thought it was important, little by little, to see the war breaking in. The central story is the arrival of this new boy and how he and Julien become friends; there's hostility at first and then step by step we see the birth of a friendship between two children who are equally curious about certain things, probably a little smarter than the rest of the students, and how they find their affinities." Louis Malle in 'Malle on Malle', edited by Philip French (Chapter 5, 'Coming Home', page 170 - 172)

Story: attempted quest for unity by the character(s):

" [...] "I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me -- and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough, too -- and pitiful -- not extraordinary in any way -- not very clear either. No, not very clear. And it seemed to throw a kind of light." Joseph Conrad 'Heart of Darkness', first published in 1899 (page 11)

As adapted in the 'Apocalypse Now' screenplay (John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, narration written by Michael Herr):

               EXT. MILITARY COMPOUND - DAY

               A darkly painted Huey lands in a guarded military compound 
               somewhere in Nah Trang.  The two enlisted men jump out of 
               the helicopter, leading Willard, who seems in much better 
               shape.  As he gets out he sees a platoon of new men drilling 
               in the hot hazy sun.  They are clean and pale.

                                     MEN (Chanting)
                         I wanna go to Vietnam.
                         I wanna kill a Vietcong-

                                     WILLARD (V.O.)
                         I was going to the worst place in 
                         the world, and I didn't even know 
                         it yet.  Weeks away and hundreds 
                         of miles up river that snaked 
                         through the war like a circuit 
                         cable...plugged straight into Kurtz.

               He follows the escort across the fields as the platoon 
               drills.

                                     WILLARD (V.O.)
                         It was no accident that I got to 
                         be the caretaker of Colonel Walter 
                         E. Kurtz's memory, any more that 
                         being back in Saigon was an 
                         accident.  There was no way to 
                         tell his story without telling my 
                         own.  And if his story is really a 
                         confession, then so is mine.

               They approach a civilian-type luxury trailer.  It is 
               surrounded by concertina wire, and its windows have grenade 
               protection, but it still seems out of place in this austere 
               military base.

               CLOSER ON WILLARD

               He stands before the door for a moment, as the M.P.s 
               guarding the trailer check his papers.

SAR_8_along_the_way

Above: FPS Sunday 9K SAR with Jesse today (2002). "Most [people], when experiencing fear or anxiety, tend to magnify the unknown. Training, including knowledge and experience gained in simulated situations, has the power to reduce the unknown and contribute to the control of fear." From: The Air Force Survival Training Manual.

"I expected it to be heavy."

Jesse van Broekhoven, member AV Haarlem

"Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice."

Shunryu Suzuki in 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' (page 73)

"Many of us have come to consider comfort as our greatest need. Comfort is not essential, and we often value it much too highly when the alternative is survival. You must value your life more than your comfort and be willing to tolerate heat, hunger, dirt, itching, pain and almost any discomfort. If you expose yourself to capture because you have a blister and think you can't walk another mile, you have not thought the situation trough. Reason is the key to this change of attitude; reason which identifies discomfort as a temporary problem in comparison with the much more serous problems you will be faced with if you are captured." '

From:'Survival Training Edition' , first published in 1962 by Air Training Command/Department of the air Force, reprinted in 1978 (chapter 1, page 8: 'The Will and Ability to Survive')
 
"The Tibetan tradition maintains that contemplation on suffering is much more effective when it is done on the basis of one's own personal experience, and when it is focussed on oneself, because, generally, we tend to be better able to relate to our own suffering than to that of others. This is why two of the principal elements of the Buddhist path, compassion and renunciation, are seen as two sides of the same coin. True renunciation arises when one has a genuine insight into the nature of suffering, focused upon oneself, and true compassion aries when that focus shifts to others; so the difference lies simply in the object of focus."

The Dalai Lama: 'The Dalai Lama's book of Transformation', first published in India in 2003, page 89-90.
 
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." 

Charles Darwin as quoted by Don Mann in the introduction to 'The US Navy Seal Survival Handbook' (2012)