Flamingo Bowl Fall 2022 Bowling League Week 5 11/22/22

 

 

 

Game 1:

On January 5th, 2003, Ken Jones was caught in two avalanches, which broke his legs and pelvis, and was able to climb free and drag himself for 4 days to the nearest town.

On July 27th, 2006, Tom Boyle saw a driver hit a bicyclist, pinning the cyclist underneath the Camaro. Boyle was able to lift the car up so another person could pull the cyclist free.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th 1945, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city, killing between 70,000 and 80,000 civilians and destroying 70% of the city. Yamaguchi survived and returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, where on August 9th, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb, killing 50,000 civilians. Yamaguchi lived until 2010.

On November 22, 2022, the Flamingo Bowl bowling league offered a bottle of tequila to whomever first bowled a turkey. Jonathon Hunt rolled a turkey in his first 3 frames, and was presented with a bottle of Hornito's.

Game 2: Free will is a myth, but not in the sense the deists think. Anaximander may have been the first to write down his ideas about "multiple worlds," which would contain every conceivable outcome of every decision, but the idea surely predates him. And survives him. And is contemporaneous with him, as time does not exist as we experience it but instead exists all at once. There is no "now" there is only now. So, given that everything and every time exists at once, our specific experience of any one event is the result of a multitude of chances and occurrences, selected from an assortment of possible occurrences so numerous as to be basically infinite. And we don't get to do the selecting. It's still tight to bowl 200, though.

Game 3: Daily samsara. We have bowled this game before and will bowl it again and are bowling it now.

Flamingo Bowl Fall 2022 Bowling League Week 4 11/15/22

 

we lost all 3 games

 

And when our final hour comes, we shall meet it humbly, and there beyond the grave, we shall say that we have known suffering and tears, that our life was bitter.

- Sonya's monologue from Uncle Vanya

 

 

    Sonya is, of course, able to bear her suffering with the grace that unequivocal faith in a Christian god and heaven brings. But when that Christian salvation is exposed as a dream or a lie, where can we look for the strength to get through this suffering? The league will end and our record will be all we have. The record is our life and afterlife - what we know and how we are known.

    Should we then revel in this misery? Unable to attain the eternal bliss of the Christian heaven we instead praise our miseries and sufferings as divine manifestations of a universal truth? The Noble Truth of dukkha teaches that birth is suffering, death is suffering, bowling 180+ and losing is suffering and bowling 180+ and winning is also suffering, as suffering is a fundamental aspect of our universe. Joyous moments, such as bowling 180+ and winning the game, are impermanent and their absence, then, can cause suffering, so this suffering is part of their totality. So, as beautiful and improbable creations of this universe who are capable of exploring its truths and singing its glories, should we not celebrate suffering as the ubiquitous component of the only universe we know, which has directed itself to allowing us to be in this moment? No. Of course not. Attachment is attachment, no matter how unorthodox the object of attachment, and the Noble Truths teach us that this attachment is itself the mindset to be overcome to escape samsara. Suffering is there but we must not revel in it nor give in to desire and luxury and avoid all suffering but instead follow the Noble Eightfold Path and recognize the impermanence of even suffering as we will bowl the next game and if there is no next game we will bowl the next week and if there is no next week we will bowl the next league.