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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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May 29, 2015 - 02:01pm PT
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All the wealth vs happiness stuff is because humans are a social species so it would make sense that we get a positive feedback when we support our fellow community members. After all, that is why humans dominate. So are those feeling of happiness or sadness really things or just chemical feedback to our instinct driven brain machines? I'm a late comer but I guess I disagree with the last part of the original premise: that there are subjective realities, in the physical world.
Moose,
How is that though experiment different from the "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it" question? Wouldn't the device measuring the photons only effect how we interpret their travel, and not now they traveled to begin with? It seems weird that the title implies our decisions can change the past when in fact it's just our perception of the past. In other words, as per the original post on this thread, those photons are intrinsic to reality and not observer-relative. So what would the observer matter?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 29, 2015 - 06:51pm PT
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Moose: I am not surprised Largo is trying to use those phenomena [quantum mechanics, photons] to promote his own philosophy.
I would say that what he's pointing to is not “his own philosophy.”
(What should one say about manifestations that cannot be defined or pinned down?)
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WBraun
climber
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May 29, 2015 - 06:58pm PT
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to promote his own philosophy
It's as old as the dirt itself.
It's the gross materialists who are inventing their own fantasy.
You can't invent reality.
It's already there .......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 29, 2015 - 08:05pm PT
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I would say that what he's pointing to is not “his own philosophy.”
I agree. He seems to be working toward a metaphysical theory that unites no-thing in meditation with virtual particles having "no physical extent." It's an interesting project.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 30, 2015 - 05:29pm PT
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I have given JL's comments about no-thingness some thought, even though I poke at him about them and have never actually had that meditative experience. The idea of relating no-thingness to virtual particles or other aspects of physics may not be as outlandish as some of us have reasoned. I have had an ongoing interest in the nature of time for quite a few years, and I have come to the conclusion that the psychological aspect is as important as the physical one. Perhaps quite a bit more important.
When I was very young my mother would require I take a nap in the afternoon (for her sanity, I suspect), and I would lie there watching the second hand slowly make it rounds, creeping at an incredibly slow pace. I would close my eyes and drift off, then open them and find that only a minute had passed. What suffering . . .
Now that I am approaching 80 I find that time seems to move much, much faster, and I have to be careful when driving and turning onto a lane of traffic because the cars seem to move much more rapidly, even if they obey the same speed limits that have existed forever.
There are, of course, articles citing research showing how some filaments in the brain control our perception of time, but there is a metaphysical dimension to the phenomena as well. If you are one of the lucky ones who sleep soundly, head hitting the pillow at 10pm, waking at 6am as if no time had passed at all, then you can see a kind of limiting process at play, wherein the closer you come to unconsciousness, the more rapid the passage of time appears. Think of people in comas awakening after 10 years and having no notion of time's passage.
The dream world also reflects the highly relative nature of time. Have you ever had a dream that encompasses several days or even weeks, to wake up and find that half an hour has lapsed? Or the weird experience of a loud sound like a gunshot waking you up, but fully integrated into a narrative in a dream?
I play with time-dependent contours in the complex plane frequently, and watch as a contour whose development is theoretically one minute appears almost instantly when I hit "run." Writing and running computer programs emphasizes the relative nature of time - which of course is the relative nature of change. Without change there is no time, in my opinion.
So here is a metaphysical conjecture: although change occurs no matter what units of time we employ, our perception of the passage of time can be anywhere from an eternity to an instant. In other words, it may be that there is in fact nothing at all in our universe except that which may be said to "exist" for a mere "instant." And when we die, we are instantly transported to the very end of time.
As to whether we regain some form of consciousness there, that is, in my opinion, religious dogma.
The no-thing JL talks about may mean more than "no physical extent", it may mean nothing at all exists - no elaborate holographs or alien species or anything else. Time not only comes to a halt - it never existed to begin with!
It's been mentioned before that the Einstein-Bergson debate about the nature of time effectively separated science from the humanities. One can argue about whether time passes in discrete infinitesimal units or continuously, but it might make no difference at all since we may "live" in an instant.
;>)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 30, 2015 - 07:01pm PT
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Thanks for the comments, jgill. Another aspect of perception which I find curious is the angst occasionally felt when contemplating the end of life and the years and experiences those who survive me will have after I am gone, while feeling no regrets about the billions of years I missed out on before being born. Curious, but probably natural for a human animal with children and relatives of close personal connection, since looking back in time beyond my parents I barely remember grandparents and earlier than that have no memories.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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May 31, 2015 - 09:42am PT
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Moose, it's been a while so I could use a refresh, but I spent quite a bit of time as a physics minor reading about the uncertainty principle and entanglement and double path and such but what I remember is that it usually doesn't work to apply observations in quantum physics to the large scale and that humans know way less than we think we know. I'm also suspicious that the observer principle is more related to entanglement than we think. But, I never understood it on more than a superficial level.
Anyway, don't want to take the thread away from the no-thing discussion!
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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May 31, 2015 - 10:03am PT
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Hi Jgill here is a cut and paste about zen practice and time geeting at what you posted. probably should be in the meditaion thread.Katagiri wrote a good book about Zen and time. The cut a paste is much beeter than what I could write ; it's a bit long but well done.
PP
Time, Space, and Being
Dogen’s Being-Time and Katagiri’s Each Moment is the Universe
Uji
Being Time
For the time being, stand on top of the highest peak.
For the time being, proceed along the bottom of the deepest ocean.
For the time being, three heads and eight arms.
For the time being, an eight—or sixteen—foot body [of the Buddha].
For the time being, a staff or whisk.
For the time being, a pillar or lantern.
For the time being, the children of Zhang and Li.
For the time being, the earth and sky.
O
Ten thousand images reclaiming past, staking out future,
Totally exert every incompleteness.
All one in the splendor of Being;
This Magic Moment.
—Taigen Dan Leighton
Thinking about time is never easy. St. Augustine said that he knew what time was
until someone asked him to explain it. When he was asked to explain it, he used
Aristotelian logic to discuss things like what God was doing before he created the
universe. Dogen’s approach is much more radical. He says that it is impossible to
understand time by thinking about it because thinking always creates a gap. He says
you must experience time as the pivot of nothingness, as a universal functioning of
energy. Katagiri, in his commentary on Dogen, tells us that it is “very hard to put
[these things] into words, but through experience [we] can understand [them].
Understanding the Dharma intellectually is okay at the beginning, but we need to
allow it to penetrate our skin, muscle, and bone.
Without this experience of time there is always gap between us and others; between us
and the universe. And the best way for us to experience the source and nature of time
is in our Zazen. Buddha says in the Kalama Sutta: Do not go upon what has been
acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is
in a scripture. When you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome
and wrong and bad, then give them up. And when you know for yourselves that
certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. There is
no truth outside our own experience. So when faced with seemingly impossible
questions like what is time or does have a dog have Buddha nature we need to find a
way to experience the question with the whole of ourselves and see what appears. We
need to sit so we can experience the truth of the Dharma which is really the truth of
ourselves.
Many years ago, my first teacher likened our practice life to a laboratory. He
suggested that we take a teaching as a scientific postulate and not as an axiom and try
to verify it or not with our sitting practice. Zen is not about doctrines or beliefs or
even faith, it is about direct experience of reality as it is. If Buddhist teaching says that
all beings in the universe appear and disappear in a moment. If it says that all life is
transient, constantly appearing and disappearing, constantly changing then we have to
find out if this is verifiably true. Nothing more and nothing less is asked of us
Our common sense understanding of ourselves and the world around us is dependent
on our experience and understanding of time and space. How could we think about
anything without considering its time and space? Our sesshin was scheduled to start
at 5 PM at Jikoji and so we all made plans and got into our cars to arrive in Los Gatos
before 5 PM on March 11. But are there deeper dimensions of time and space?
Modern science, especially String Theory postulates that there could be as many as ten
or eleven dimensions of space-time.
So, what happens if our usual understanding of time (past, present, and future) and
space (various points in the world) is radically altered? If our understanding of time
and space is changed, our views of who and what we are is changed. Dogen says that
is so because time must be understood in deep interrelationship with all sentient
beings. Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being
or any world is left out of the present moment…Time itself is being. You are time. Mountains are
time. Oceans are time.
So, what is time? According to Buddhist teaching everything exists together
simultaneously in a moment. We usually think that time is separate from beings, but
there is actually no separation. Being and time work together. When a moment begins
all beings temporarily appear as independent beings in the stream of time and seem to
have their own independent existences. When a moment ceases, all beings disappear,
but they do not go away. They are interconnected seamlessly in timelessness. When a
moment begins life is form and when it ceases it is emptiness.
But since our practice is about experiencing things and not thinking about things, we
need to find a way to experience what Dogen is talking about. In my own practice I
have tried to use my breath as a way to experience what Dogen is saying. At first, I
tried to imagine that my life was appearing out of nothingness on each in-breath and
that it was disappearing on each out-breath. After a while, I was able to go deeper.
My body took over and each in-breath felt like it was gathering life and each out breath
felt as if it were letting go of life. There were no thoughts, there was just a full bodied
sensation of things appearing and disappearing.
During each in-breath life was appearing and during each out-breath it was
disappearing. I became more and more interested in the out-breath, the letting go of
things, the letting go of myself, as it were. I followed my outgoing breath in the same
way that I follow the echoes of the three bells before each Zazen period. And I began
to sense something quite unexpected. As I followed my outgoing breath into
nothingness I began to sense that my usual boundaries of self and other were
disappearing. I began to sense the boundlessness of self. To put it another way, as
my out-breath came to its conclusion, I sensed that there was nothing separating me
from the universe. I was the universe! Dogen would say that I occupied the whole of
space. He would say that I was experiencing being as space. This timelessness is a
formless, functioning energy that links the whole universe without any gap.
But then being reappears as time in the next breath, the next moment. Dogen says
that this is the movement of our life. We live at the pivot of nothingness. In the
present moment our lives appear out of nothingness. In the words of the Judeo
Christian tradition: creatio ex nihilo.—creation out of nothing—At the beginning of
God’s creating the heavens and the earth / when the earth was wild and waste/darkness over the face
of the Deep. Here, I should add that during the years, as my Zen practice deepened, I
found myself reading the opening verses of Genesis almost daily. And throughout my
daily life I would find myself returning to the phrases that seemed to be coming not
from the bible but from myself.
Next, Dogen tells us that we need to be present at the source of time. He says that
time does not flow from the past to the present to the future. The past no longer
exists—it is memory and the future is yet to exist—except as plans and expectations.
That is, the past and future are merely thoughts created by our ego centered
consciousness. But what about the present? He says that if you look closely at the
present it too does not exist. Imagine an hour glass. The sands on the top represent
the future and the sands at the bottom represent the past. The grain of sand that is at
the middle of the glass is at the present. But imagine magnifying this grain with a
microscope and you will see what we previously thought of as the present is
composed of what sand has yet to drop and what has already dropped. Now, think of
Zazen as a powerful electron microscope. If we look very carefully at what we
understand as the present moment, we will see that it is filled with thoughts of what
was and what will be. The real present has no content; it is formless.
So what is the real present—this very moment, right now? It is the full aliveness that
exists at the cusp of nothingness before your thinking takes over and creates an
imaginary world. You have to have an aha! moment of the isness of the present—
experienced as immediately as the burn you feel when your hand touches hot water.
So, in a way, our life begins at the pivot of nothingness which then becomes what
Dogen calls the twelve hours of the day. For a split instant we touch real time which is
really no-time or zero time, as Katagiri calls it, but we cannot really see it until it
manifests as the stream of time, which is our life as we usually experience it. When we
are present at Zero time, we are calm and tranquil, but we cannot stay there. The
pivot of nothingness continually manifests as the twelve hours of the day and we
become busy. Our life is the movement from zero time to twelve hours, from quiet
tranquility to busyness. Or as Dogen puts it, we swim at the surface but our feet
touch the bottom.
The twelve hours of our day-to-day lives are filled by thinking of how things were or
how they will be. The contents of our present are just pictures or imaginations of
things that are not. They fill the vacuum of the nothingness that is the source of time
and of ourselves. But when this vacuum gets overfilled, when our life becomes too
busy we long for the tranquility of zero time. Having tasted the silence and tranquility
at the pivot of our lives we long for it. And that is our practice. We constantly return
to our zafus each morning. And sometimes we make the special effort of continuous
sitting that we are making this weekend.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 31, 2015 - 10:12am PT
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My musings about time concern the future rather than the past. Dying cuts off our ability to see how things we are interested in now turn out, at least on this plane. Lately however, as I grow older I have noticed another trend as technology ever increases and the culture of those much younger than me continues to change at a faster pace than I do.
Lately, I have for the first time begun thinking like an old person, that at some point I won't care to try to keep up. And then if I want to really depress myself, I can read future projections for a world of 9 billion which is running out of oil and everything else. Then I am content that I lived when and where I do and am glad I am not born in the future or living that long. Probably, every older person has thought that way however, if they lived long enough.
Perhaps my mood will lighten when I no longer have to face the daily crises of dealing with my 91 year old mother who resists even the smallest change - at least for a time. I do remember her swearing 20 years ago that she would never be difficult like her mother in old age but here we are. Not having children to burden, I hope that I and others of my generation will find a better way to live extreme old age and the final exit.
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WBraun
climber
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May 31, 2015 - 10:23am PT
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All those who think when they die will not have to face the future will be shocked.
You will come back and suffer fruits of your karmic reactions,
no matter what anyone says to differ.
There's no escape for those whom remain materially conditioned .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 31, 2015 - 11:00am PT
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Thanks Moose. Me too.
As for coming back, the best explanation I've heard for why we don't remember is that if we could see all of our foolish decisions over many lifetimes, and what slow learners we are we would be so depressed we couldn't continue on.
Along these lines I like what the Buddha said.
If you want to know your past lives, look at who you are now. If you want to know your future lives, look at who you are now.
We can't change our past but we can change our future.
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jstan
climber
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May 31, 2015 - 11:39am PT
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Recently as I went under anesthesia it occurred to me a failure to awaken would mean only that I had completed what I came here to do. The thought was quite positive. As it turns out, however, I am not yet done.
Quite some time ago I posited that consciousness may be just the running expectation that the present moment will, very shortly, be followed by another. It is a seminal expectation so when that expectations is not met we might well expect some psychological( if not physical) discomfiture. This ties in directly to Hawkins' hierarchical temporal memory model for a neural organization designed simply to increase our chance of survival despite having an energy budget of milliwatts. That budget is met by the existing organ primarily because we are talking about large physical bodies on the order of a meter or two in size. We have as much as a second to respond. The organ is designed to monitor several sensory inputs in real time and to remember correlations bearing upon threats to survival. In those cases where we intentionally put our survival at risk our brains are at their highest level of function. And the brain knows it. I need not follow this last further. The relevance to ST should be obvious.
Thanks to advances in cosmology and the connection to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle "nothing" has become a topic of interest. It's quite generally a positive when the interface between what is known and what is not known, becomes interesting. This tells us the interface is moving. In this environment, if we want success, we need carefully to nurture our sense of humor. Otherwise we will see only nothing no matter where we look.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 31, 2015 - 12:42pm PT
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And jstan is back in full form.
So glad you awoke from that anesthesia!
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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May 31, 2015 - 01:23pm PT
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So glad you awoke from that anesthesia!
I'll second that emotion.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 31, 2015 - 02:43pm PT
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For there to be time, there needs to be something (an event?) which is not now. What could that possibly be?
The past is a memory, and the future is a speculation. If either occur, both occur now. There is no other.
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WBraun
climber
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May 31, 2015 - 05:33pm PT
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For there to be time, there needs to be something
Exactly!
The impersonal feature of God is Time.
No living entity in the material world can escape Time.
Thus God is proven repeatedly.
Except for ignorant insects posing as .......
Traveling shoe salesmen.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 31, 2015 - 06:47pm PT
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All those who think when they die will not have to face the future will be shocked.
But will I have to face the past?
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