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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Ed: maybe I should stop worrying and just meditate, succumb to the easy way of looking inward to obtain peace and libration from my suffering...
after all, as MikeL says, my narratives of what the night sky could be are just narratives...
This writing contains to my mind a loaded set of phrases and word choices: “succumb,” “easy way of looking inward,” “obtain peace and libration [sic] from . . . suffering,” “just narratives.”
I’ve recently been wondering why bliss is associated with base awareness (also known as, rigpa, pristine awareness, the ground state, base awareness, no-mind, pure sensory perception, consciousness without objects, yada yada). The association doesn’t seem causal to me, but I can’t be sure. My teacher says that although no explanation suffices for anything, one should be able to notice that any interpretation is incomplete. Instead, “no interpretation” is what seems complete, and in that completeness there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Nothing can be added or subtracted to the here and now. Everything is fine, perfect in fact, as it is.
When anyone laments their current state for any reason, there seems to exist a lack. Completeness does not seem to be available in “I want,” “I wish,” “light pollution,” “being divorced from this or that,” “narcissistic introspection,” etc.
Gee, I don’t know, Ed. Finding a lasting peace and liberation from suffering . . . are you somehow saying you see that as a bad thing?
Being fully present in the here and now . . . what possibly more could there ever be?
Yeah, . . . the rest ARE narratives, Ed.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Neat tale of airport depravity, JL. Thanx.
;>)
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jstan
climber
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the power up there can make bad and awesome things happen
A really fascinating article in the most recent issue of Physics Today discusses "hypervelocity stars." The authors have discovered a couple dozen stars with velocities in the hundreds of km/s and one whose velocity is several percent of the speed of light; 2 million miles per hour. These stars were ejected from the Milky Way through interaction with the four million solar mass black hole (Sgr*A) at the center of our galaxy. In order to transfer this much energy a binary star system has to be on a path not so close to the black hold as to cause tidal disruption and absorption of the stars, but close enough so as to get a sling shot effect.
Another mind bending number. Our sun is 26,000 light years from the center of the galaxy and at our location we are affected primarily by visible matter. That matter accelerates our sun 2 angstroms per second per second. While this is ten trillionths of our acceleration on earth (32 feet per sec per second), just consider the force required to accelerate something as massive as the sun.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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(Statue at Cern)
Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.
(Fritjof Capra)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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hasn't Capra been mentioned before on the STForum? a search on Capra has to resolve the ambiguities of Frank and Fritjof...
I decided to recuse myself from the discussion of his work, having taken a course he taught at Berkeley the summer of 1976 which I intended to use as a fulfillment of a breadth requirement I was lacking, and was barely able to convince my undergraduate advisor had little to do with science...
...I successfully defended that argument and was allowed to graduate.
the mythology stated above as "ancient" is so only in relative terms... if "ancient" means less than 5000 years old, I suppose a case can be made, but when looked at over the something like 2 to 4 million years, maybe not so much.
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WBraun
climber
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The most ironic of them all.
The deity of demigod Lord Shiva at Cern.
The gross materialists due to their cluelessness to lord Shiva don't even know that Shiva is in charge of the living entities in the modes of ignorance and intoxicants.
Thus it's fitting they chose him ........
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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perhaps the irony is on you, lord Duck...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Ed: the mythology stated above as "ancient" is so only in relative terms... if "ancient" means less than 5000 years old, I suppose a case can be made, but when looked at over the something like 2 to 4 million years, maybe not so much.
Try timelessness. (That’s supposed to be beyond old.) As the Zen guys ask, “What was your original face before you were born?”
Duck: . . . the living entities in the modes of ignorance and intoxicants.
(That’s the little guy beneath Lord Shiva’s feet.)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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timeless...
seems to be a slight extrapolation...
maybe Zen is just a theory, depending on imprecise information, and leading to a provisional description of the world.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Ed,
Well, many thoughtful folks have suggested that time is an artifact, that it is artificial. There is—and can only be—now. That’s IT. What anyone “knows” of the past only occurs now, and what they know of the future is also occurring only now.
If you get anything out of mythology, you are tapping or listening to what is unconscious. Unconsciousness has no event horizon; it is timeless. If there is Truth, it too is timeless.
What is provisional seems to be rooted in time.
Other than Allan Bloom and what most of us consider the “classical philosophers,” I am unaware of people who saw theories as separate from their lived lives. Bloom talked about living “the theoretical life” as something that one took into his or her heart—not at all provisional. Precise information is not needed for that.
There seems to be a big difference between living in your head and living from your heart. The first is full of time.
I know of no one who can say what Zen IS.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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There is—and can only be—now.
No four-minute mile?
This is bad news, Mike, coming soon before the Olympics.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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one can live with both head and heart
Zen has no monopoly on that...
and time is real, even if it is not what we physicists know as time (which is much closer to the Zen concept)
oddly, it is the "now" that defines a unique point in space-time that defines causality... and it is causality that creates the space-time (a wonderful speculation based on informed calculation).
what we experience as time is likely to be subjective... as are the most immediate evidences of time, just look in the mirror...
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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The two sides of the coin appear again; zen existing and not existing, form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Zen will never get very popular because how do you market something that can't be explained?; and with enough practice, from one POV it is realized to not even exist.
And all along they thought it would solve all their problems; oh! , the problems don't really exist either, from one POV.
At some point the POV has to be deconstructed. And when that happens some say you attain nihilism and others say you arrive at universal love. lots of speculating.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 4, 2016 - 03:48pm PT
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Ed mentioned the impulse he had to maybe go the easy route and just start mediating or something like that.
Any of the quite arts can be looked at like climbing. One can "climb" at a easy pace, but to really get after it, to take it on as something more than a hobby or curiosity, is not so easy.
All the people I' ve known who have really gotten after meditating all say it is the hardest thing they have ever done. Paradoxically, the "hard" part is learning to have faith enough to give up efforting and trying. It's totally counter to the way we are programmed, to compulsively narrow focus on some thing or grasp after some answer or reason or result.
Ain't easy. That's been my experience, anyway.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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That's been my experience, anyway.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Ed: and time is real, . . . .
Show it to me.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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look in the mirror, Mike...
All the people I' ve known who have really gotten after meditating all say it is the hardest thing they have ever done.
actually, given your history Largo, your forays into science seem to have been more challenging then into meditation... but then you didn't actually succeed there.
perhaps you might also believe that if you (all) just buckled down and did some science you'd change your views... after all, it is a subject most of the critics on this thread know very little about, let along have any experience practicing it.
to hold you to your own standards, you have little knowledge of what you are criticizing. unlike you, it doesn't surprise me that you go on...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Well, it's just too bad that Tegmark doesn't work for the Massachusetts Institute of Physics.
"Perceptronium does not have to be biological. Dr. Tegmark’s hypothesis was inspired in part by the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, whose integrated information theory has become a major force in the science of consciousness. . . . It predicts, with dense mathematics, that devices as simple as a thermostat or a photoelectric diode might have glimmers of consciousness, a subjective self. . . . Not everything is conscious in this view, just stuff like perceptronium that can process information in certain complex ways. Dr. Tononi has even invented a unit, called phi, that is supposed to measure how conscious an entity is."
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