The Bird Path

Four Noble Truths: a perception of narrative

2012-02-08T17:07:00.000-08:00

One of the difficulties with existing forms is their formal existence. Language has evolved, and with the evolution of language a more succinct expression of fact is inevitable. The "Four-Fold Noble Truths" tell the story of self and narrative. We are not born a blank slate. We are born with an instinctual narrative upon which we build a personal narrative. All that is promulgated and all that is advised in the "Noble Truths" is awareness of and subsequent freedom from narrative. If we construct no narrative we are found in a world of perception.

The Koan Exercise

2012-02-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

Many years ago (in human terms) when I was voraciously hunting down every thing that could be found with my limited resources concerning the meaning of life and the core of consciousness, I encountered the koan exercise. I had been a meditator since my early teens (Yoga Ananda) and had been initiated into the Nichiren Sect while living in Japan in my early 20's. By my mid 20's I knew enough to know that I knew nothing about the ultimate nature of consciousness, and I got serious. I looked into every system I could find without regard to race, color, or creed; in those researches I discovered Zen Buddhism, and in discovering Zen I met the Koan Exercise.

The Koan borrows it's name from jurist prudence and refers to established case law. It shows up in the enigmatic questions and answers between master and acolyte found in the historical records of Buddhist monasteries. The most famous koan is doubtlessly "The Sound of One Hand Clapping", but there is a veritable rainbow of koans; all of which are hopelessly opaque from one angle and and open to brilliant white light from another.

What captured my youthful imagination was the anecdotal evidence of human beings awakening to the very thing that had thus far eluded me: to encounter the root of ones consciousness. In these gleanings from the historical records we find a person who has practiced meditation and austerity: an intelligence that has practiced self cultivation, but that has not yet "awakened" (just the right word). The koan emerged as the pin prick to induce such awakening, and again and again we see an earnest human intelligence on one side of the koan and an enlightened being on the other. My favorite will always be Huang Po's slapping of Lin Chi. I took up the koan exercise in my clumsy way. It was maddening. What were they seeing? What was the nature of this dramatic transformation that occurred in nanoseconds?

There are many koans and the literature concerning the efficacy of the koan exercise is often quite charming. Each koan is a different key that opens the selfsame door; or better yet: dispels all doors. D T Suzuki's "Essays in Zen Buddhism, second series" is devoted to the study of the koan exercise, and it is a hugely rewarding piece of work if you like that sort of thing. Chang Chung-Yuan's "Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism" is also second to none.

The light came on for me as the result of a phrase casually dropped in conversation: casually dropped, but dropped into a mind harrowed by study of the koan exercise. I was stunned. A primal darkness was seen to be woven of light. It was looking into a mirror that was looking into a mirror, and I then understood how beautiful the koans are: each an illuminated open book with nothing to hide. I have lived something of an ungoverned life, but stubbing your toe in the dark and stubbing your toe when you can see around are two entirely different events.

Affirmation, Negation, Higher Order of Certainty

2012-01-21T20:08:00.000-08:00

Affirmation, negation: the mind wants things nailed down. Certainty is a necessary nutriment for the mind, and so it wants to set a seal upon that which it considers to be real. The problem is that affirmation and negation are concoctions: mental confections to assuage the animal sweet tooth for certainty.

Meditation is not an end in its self. Meditation is an exercise that builds resources of self discovery. Much of what we identify with as "self" is the animating structure of the mind. We say "I" to the impersonal inclinations of instinct. My certainty is mine in the same way as my hand is mine. Barring cases of deformation all hands are structurally identical, and differ only in detail; and like the fruit-in-the-bottle monkey trap we must relax our grasp on ordinary "certainty" if we are to become truly aware.

The knowing that coincides with being can not be reified. When we entertain affirmation and negation we give up awareness as a hostage to mind. The finest fruit of meditation is the awakening of the pure awareness which is the fullest fact of our being. The intelligence which is the natural faculty of this awareness manifests a degree of facticity that quite satisfies the mind's appetite for certainty,

Sectarian isms of every stripe, dogmas, and madness; are mental accretions: they are diseases of affirmation and negation. The supple flow of awareness in the unfolding moment has made a knot, a tumor; has created an eddy circling its own creation. There is another way of being, and meditation is the key that opens the way.

Ego Pin, Imaginary Tail, Inconceivable Donkey

how is it that your hand

is so like that of the Buddha

The Spirit of Play

2012-01-17T13:31:00.000-08:00

In many esoteric texts we find references to the spirit of play amongst celestial forces. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that human existence is the result of the gods at play. This seems to me not the anthropocentric musings of an antique mind, but rather an awareness that play is an essential element of the universe becoming conscious. It is certainly not difficult to see that much grief in the world is the direct result of people taking themselves way too seriously.

We find ourselves at a moment in planetary evolution where humanity has tied itself in a knot. Untying the knot which is our self is the necessary step to untying the Gordian Knot of human opacity. Without the celestial spirit of play this is impossible.

Good will and playfulness . . . bring it on.

Singularity and the Many: Animal Proliferation

2012-01-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

Ideas that capture the popular imagination are not written on a blank slate. Every personality is a reservoir of instinct populated by a menagerie of habits, and the potential for differing world views is limited only by the imagination.

Historically speaking our survival has required that we look outward and shape the world to our outer needs. Science and industry are the natural extension of the outward press of natural life. The proliferation of ideas (the many answers to life's urgent questions) is the inevitable result of human cleverness. We live in a fog of cleverness, and humanity may well drown in a sea of mindless cleverness.

The central aspects of our existence are non-idealogical, and remarkably uncomplicated. The fact of being that we share with all living creatures has mass compared to which all ideas are fluff, yet by and large we live in ideas and never engage the fact of being.

It has been said: "there is no insight....there is only out-sight". The out-sight that is insight happens when, for whatever reason, the the hold of the many on our consciousness slips; and we experience the moment of singularity which is the fact of existence. The ideas that come from this place result in a different kind of animal.

Cooking the Seeds of Karma

2011-12-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

The mass-energy equation "Energy equals Mass times the Speed-of-Light-Squared" tells us that all things are convertible to energy. Inertia is the mass-energy of a subject relative to the system in which it is found. These definitions tell us nothing about the substrate of matter or energy. They describe effects. As yet no one has described prime movers. The basic substrate of matter and energy remains a complete and total mystery.

While the essence of being may remain clouded in mystery, there are valuable insights to be gained in understanding the way things work. Karma is inertia in all of its many forms. Karma is the existence within us of elements of moral mass and spiritual energy and physical urgency. Karma has all the characteristics peculiar to the inertia of classical physics. There is global karma, social karma, individual karma, and universal karma. Karma, in every case, is the existence of forces in motion that shape the unfolding of the flux of inevitability.

It is no accident that spiritual savants have emerged from opulent circumstance. The unbridled exploration of will and desire in a spiritually precocious person will bring karmic forces into the field of conscious awareness. Thomas Aquinas will call it one thing and Siddhartha will call it another, but in each case the individual has realized that there is no self in self expression.

Self expression is lending the energy of self to the inertia of karma. There is self: there is karma. Self is inhabited by karma in ways both parasitic and symbiotic. Outside of the energy of self, karma has no power. Outside of karma, self has no expression.

Growth requires nourishment whether it is a black-hole or a bean sprout. For example: we are born with an accretion of millions of years of animal nature. This animal nature exists within the personality as karma. The inertia of this "animal nature" is invisible to us so long as we do not question it's existence. Questioning produces friction; friction produces heat. Questioning engenders an existential heat of curiosity and attention which can result in cooking the seeds of karma. A cooked seed is an excellent source of nutrition, and it's sprouting days are over.

As we grow spiritually by intentionally or unintentionally cooking the seeds of the karma within us, the energy stolen from self by parasitic karma is restored to it's rightful owner. The energy consumed both by repression and expression is conserved, and a higher level of existence is made inevitable.

Prajnaparamita

2011-11-22T02:29:00.000-08:00

We find in the Buddhist lexicon some of the most wonderful words, and one of those wonderful words is "prajnaparamita". Prajnaparamita is a noun referring to a state of comprehension. The Sanskrit translates roughly to "wisdom, most high", but what is actually referred to is the state of "comprehension of things as they are".

Of course everyone automatically assumes that they perceive the world and themselves as they are. They do this without thinking, and yet their assumption is charged with thought. I mean.....when you think about it, is it possible that thought could encompass reality? Its the universe inside a coconut. Prajnaparamita is about comprehension, and comprehension is about intelligence interfacing it's environment. With the awakening of prajnaparamita ones humanness becomes translucent. Yes, one is fully human; but ones humanity is a vehicle in which the universe discovers it's self. The darkness of matter spontaneously ignites: the Sanskrit word Buddh means Light.

Well, let there be light.

The Law of Accident

2011-11-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

At what point does an automobile accident become inevitable? At what point does the formation of a raindrop, or a star, or new living being become inevitable? And why? All things happen because they have become inevitable, and the causal chain of events leading to said-happening starts with the beginning of the universe.

Humanity is blinded by the sense of purpose. It seems to us that we do things on purpose, and because of that we think everything (including the universe) must have a purpose. All of our purposes are an accident to the occurrence of our existence, and our existence is an accident made inevitable by the existence of the universe. Everything happens by accident, and the way we make things happen according to our "purpose" is by the articulation of accident.

An automobile engine is a system of trapped inevitability: a harnessing of accidental forces. The way any purpose is accomplished is by the articulation of those accidents which will result in the desired manifestation. We can start a fire with flint and steel. We can build an atom bomb. All this is harnessing the law of accident to fulfill our purpose.

To be filled with a sense of purpose, and blind to the law of accident is a naive and dangerous position for a clever animal. Is it possible that this little bit of universe could wake up, and accidentally freely will a better world?

The Meaning Saturated Gestalt

2011-11-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

As with all creatures human life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The fact of duration and it's inevitable vicissitudes gives rise to meaning. Just as in making a cup of coffee, what happens in the beginning influences what happens in the middle which determines the quality of the end. The experiential nature of quality is the foundation of meaning. Meanings are put together. All meanings have many moving parts. Living creatures are semipermeable membranes in a saturated solution: they absorb such meaning as they will, and are impervious to other potential meanings.

A living organism's existence takes place in a Gestalt: a dynamic interconnected flux of inevitability. Any aspect of inevitability may have different or no meaning from one organism to another. Some categories of meaning have broader implication than others. The environment is a Gestalt saturated with meaning, and individual access to the sea of meaning is limited by both nature and nurture.

Our existence takes place in a meaning-saturated gestalt, and the future of humanity will be determined by the categories of meaning we access.

The Curvature of Space

in the curvature of space

the surface of the earth is a limited infinite plane

the center of which is everywhere

The Rule of Law

2011-10-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

The rule of law is a necessary and good thing: it is in part a codifying of behaviors that can not and should not be tolerated, and in part a set of principles where by formal agreements can be made. When the law serves class principles or idealism it becomes a tool of oppression.

Let's take "good" for example.

The Contemplation of the Void

2011-10-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

All things are just as they are: in and of themselves they contain nothing. Suchness is Empty.

The "contemplation of the void" is: be wholly aware not using mind. When one is aware at this level, any movement of the mind is recognized as twitching. If you can be aware without twitching an interesting state ensues. You learn the nature of the twitcher. You can learn to twitch or not as you purpose.

The contemplation of the void is the contemplation of awareness. The receptive emptiness of awareness is it's facility.

Karma and Dharma

2011-09-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

Dharma is the macro flux of inevitability; of which our small portion is Karma.

It has always seemed to me that the difference between "the big bang" and "let there be light" is the difference between poetry and prose. It is remarkable that thousands of years ago meditating individuals arrived at what could be called a "unified field theory". If we let Dharma be considered as a theory of everything, it is quite comfortable with physics, psychology, economics, politics, and the ecological sciences.

There does not seem to be a corresponding theory in modern physics concerning the nature of awareness.

The Care and Feeding of the Inevitable

if you have to ask

don't mess with it

after all

every thing happens by accident

The Children and the Doors of Perception

2011-09-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Happiness, sorrow, joy, rage, hate, love, compassion, disdain: are inner states that spontaneously arise in response to perceived relationships of self to outer world. Any impetus is reduced to a sharply limited repertoire of instinctual responses. In the same manner as red blue and yellow are the substrate of the plethora of color we see before us, a very few symbolic representations are responsible for the seemingly infinite variety of our inner experience. We can no more determine the way we will "feel" about something than we can choose the taste of food in our mouths. And in the same way we manipulate the taste of food with a spice of choice, we manipulate our feelings by draping ideas over experience to reconfigure "meaning".

This again brings us to the inestimable value of meditation. If we can not not-think we have no way of recognizing our imaginary thumb on the scale of our perceptions, and therefore our tasting of the world will always be colored by predispositions that are invisible to us.

Meditation can cleanse the doors of perception: free us from what we have become, and see the children of the earth reborn as the children of the universe.

Indolence

indolence of which one is aware

and indolence of which we are not aware

are poles apart

Grandfather Trees, Chain Saws, Dozers: and Happy Endings

2011-09-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

Aboriginal cultures often have aspects of their norm which translate as "grand-father-tree". A real grandfather-tree is that tree that had the big tree thing going a thousand years before your grand father was conceived. Your people are the people of the tree??......oh...the movie... . But if you haven't seen the movie even better, because without the story line we see just the exploitation of impotent-fact-people by omnipotent-fact-people: and the only difference between them is modernity and money. The difference between power and the powerless is these days measured in fiat currency.

Humanity as being must enter into symbiosis: eschew parasitism, elitism, envy, enmity; and with forethought and knowledge enter into husbandry of life on earth.

Otherwise

We're doomed

Caesar's Lies

render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's

One Hand Clapping

2011-08-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that awareness operates outside time, perhaps feeding upon time the way interstellar black holes mature; eating such mass as can influence. Or perhaps like some cosmic surfer, awareness harnesses the wave of Now. Moving in this wave of Now for the rewards thereof, goal and balance are everything. A trout's small moves let the stream bring to it its desire.

In meditation there is the distinct awareness of existential motionlessness: something one might imagine as the state of existence before the creation of the universe. All is awareness: no mind, no matter, no energy. We return to the material world with an appreciation of the native power of inevitability, and with new apprehensions of utility.

The continuity of experience is an immaterial event . . . or perhaps one should say "non-material". We have, at this point in our understanding of the universe, no way to weigh awareness; no way to measure, to detect, no way to prove, or to capture the fact of awareness. We can measure electrical activity in the tissue of a brain, but in simpler life forms awareness exists independent of nerve tissue. So a mysterious "non-material" event happens to be the substrate of what "we" are as creatures with "personalities".

Why a mere stack of atoms should be able to ask anything at all is the right question to ask.

All things are happening or they don't exist at all. A rock on a Martian desert plain is happening. A single photon pressing through space on the other side of the universe is happening.

But what is the sound of awareness happening?

Rainy Drive to Town

inertia is more efficient

when less mechanical advantage is presented

by opposing forces

yesterday's verdant hills now blaze reds and golds

the damp sky billows gray

and how is it possible the sky could be so beautiful

or that the cry of the great flocks can be so new each fall

experience is beyond the reach of memory

for memory is an experience unto itself

the living instant of our experience is held by the senses

as a leaf holds the wind

experience nurtures and sustains us

as the sky supports the cloud

and although the fact precludes possession

in truth experience is all we own

experience is our source and our destination

it is this damp fall day

Inevitability, Time, and the Law of Accident

2011-08-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

Time is and is not. The stream of time is the same as the existence of mathematics; it is a utilitarian concept. The concept of time is an acknowledgement that all things are in flux, and therefore possess trajectories. If we take the existence of the universe all at once, every wave form is just where it is regardless of the rate of sequence in its existence. There is simultaneity of existence, but not of time. What really exist is Now, and Now is a system of ubiquitous pressure, everywhere in motion. "Now" is a roar without duration or cessation. If there is no awareness there is no time: there is a seethe of being, but that seethe of being is timeless.

Awareness seamlessly flows on the material Now giving rise to the illusion that Past exists: and of course nominally and colloquially it does. What this means for living creatures is that things done in this now will echo in our ensuing now, and no act is quite what it seems because the trajectories of existences that will impact the results of our actions in the flux of inevitability can not be known. The essence of "Good and Evil" concerns presumed outcomes, and well intended people are capable of great evil.

In meditation one sometimes has a feeling that might be likened to a boulder in a mountain stream: ones awareness is motionless and the flow of the stream of time around one is palpable.

Conscious Tillage of a Mystery

stampeding leaves herd

this way

now that

in search of some utopian frozen ground

wind waves crash

and pound

and hiss

and then recede

sharply as a hatchet lopping limbs

a crow call

the kettle hums a high note

the fire pops and cracks

smoke plows straight to ground

vanishing in silent impact

the inevitable rules by law of accident in fate's rich domain

conscious tillage of fate's field

is the one resource of destiny's slim province

Anatman and the Balloon Show Wiener-dog

2011-07-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

We have probably all seen at some time or other a balloon entertainer who can twist the air-filled resilient sack into any animal that you can imagine...say, a wiener-dog. It is no different with awareness and self. The dominant imperatives of person-hood are biologically driven and have no selfness that is not hostage to the vagaries of animal existence. Far from being de-humanizing, this truth is the foundation of all that is noble and all that is vile in humanity. At the same time it must be acknowledged that the self as popularly conceived is an illusion.

Awareness has no choice but to fill the space defined by its form; and finding self in form, accrue identity. The central fact of enlightenment is the potential for awareness to awaken existentially and then to pre-empt the biological self as the center of its existence. And far from de-potentizing the limited expressions of being human, the awakened intelligence finds its self in a garden of wondrous potential.

So what happens when the inevitable friction with environment pops the balloon? Certainly not some atmospheric reiteration of the cosmic wiener-dog.

Noticeable Change Seeking Repose

conditioned cycles of behavior

should they evaporate

what would be left of us

we who can only with great effort retain a focus

at odds with the dictates of the unconscious

we whose most cherished thoughts

are but the shadow of our being

in the light of reality

it is notice

that by saturation illuminates our being

notice is precursor to all true freedom

and powers premature of notice

enthrall

enmesh

aggrandize

idea is her novice

and genius is her adept

and though we may juggle well the ideas of others

it is what we have noticed

that is our own

in the swirling billions of galaxies

what takes notice

before this mystery unfold all questions

Icarus Pilots the Juggernaut

2011-07-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

Taken en-mass humanity is clever but not wise. There is wealth and intelligence enough to commit great crimes, but not enough of either to save mankind from its self. The kind of aggressive altruism and fearless facing of fact necessary to save our little dirt-ball, our beautiful little island afloat in the endless emptiness of space, is simply in too short supply to suggest a happy landing for life on earth this time around.

The ancient Chinese Taoists recommended that in times of disorder the sage retreat to his own virtue. Or I suppose one could stand in front of a tidal wave waving ones arms and screaming stop. The Punch and Judy show of good and evil must play its self out; after all we are only human.

There was a fellow by the name of George Gurdjieff (died 1947) who was an arch disciplinarian (and one whose work deserves survey) who in his ruminations suggested that humanity could be saved only by a threat to existence so huge that it over-shadowed culture everywhere and of every stripe.....well it seems to me that we have a rainbow of such dire information, but it is just not able to cut through the sea of darkness that is the modern self. So I'm expecting a spontaneous flowering of awakened intelligence.....no one will have seen that coming.

Clearing Skies at Midnight in December

it is that moment just midway of dusk and dawn

and between stragglers of the grey that all day fed rivulets and puddles

in lazy drift through Gemini appears

Jupiter now startling bright

now dissolved in haze once more

stars are close

tomorrow

sun

it is not

Monday droning

after monotonic cretin Monday

that brings December's dreary repetition

the days have no names

and convention's reassurance does not tame them

on every side of God's toy top the flood of light goes on forever

never is there any dark

but for shadow

and this

our little corner of the universe

rages

for reunion with oblivion

they are reckless

the stars that send their light to fill this puddle

and we

are their children

Free Teeshirt Slogns

2011-07-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

awareness ?????

consciousness ? ? ? ?

WTF

Symbol and the Nothingness of Time

2011-06-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

A proper symbol is a cymbal that resonates within the catacombs of archetype.

When we survey the art and literature of mankind's rise from blessedly ignorant earth, we find a treasure trove of truth and light. Riches beyond the imaginings of the merely acquisitive are scattered on the ground for the taking. Carl Jung (1875-1961) may have been the first western mind to fully appreciate this. I have found the more valuable gems to be those closest to the earth-source, and there are scholars that should be sainted for their insightful collections of this material.

Symbol does not reduce to icon: it is rather that icon is a pointing to symbol. Icon is a stick that would hope to strike the cymbal. Symbol is the voice of the facts of our existence in the nothingness of time.

Ten Thousand Previous Poets

the smell of your hair

is with me in the world

the thousand previous poets

have with honed pens torn their hearts

to tell of love

their words

are no mere dried butterflies

upon pins of heartless history

and I find

across the motionless centuries

we chant in unison

I find no thought . . . no yearning

unthought

un-yearned

unknown before

within our souls

are the living incarnations of primordial goddesses and gods

their life eternal is our rushing wave of mortal selfhood

and there forever

they find and they love one another

for our petty human lives

there are such riches as can assure a patient poverty

and for the restless gods within my soul

all that is found

in you

A Swig From the Bottle While Admiring a Spoon Collection

2011-06-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

There exists a pervasive difficulty with technologies of being. Most (if not all) individuals first encounter these technologies in the guise of religion which leads the affected person to identify the benefits of the discipline with an efficacy of religion. I suppose this is to be expected of the emergent state in which we find mankind, but it is rather like attributing the power of medicine to the spoon.

If we distill the "spirit" from juices of fermentation we will end up with the same chemical intoxicant regardless of the nature of the original ferment, because ferment produces alcohol. It is just fine to prefer brandy to whisky, and with a bit of sugar either will ease a cough regardless of the picture engraved on the handle of the spoon.

Enlightenment is the product of ferment within an individual. After his satori Lin Chi (died 867) is supposed to have said "So after all, there isn't much in the Buddhism of Huang Po (died 850)", where upon he immediately returned to his master. It was also Lin Chi who, when himself the master, said "If in your travels you meet the Buddha, slay him."

It is appropriate and good to respect the antique forms in which high truths were first revealed to humanity. And it is absolutely necessary to apply the ensuing evolved technologies of being to our person.

A chain of gold will do as well as one of iron if we are to be imprisoned.

The Pole

knowledge of esoteric fact

and possession of technique

are as different as roast beef from a photograph

of silence

a reflection

will never be the silence

and the power of evocation is that of resonance

expression transforms and is transformed

but noble ideas

numerous as all the sands of all the deserts in the universe

do not weigh as much as one single noble act

III

to thrive all seeds must have a matrix

a man may climb to the top of a pole one hundred feet

and there stand on his head for a week

that is all very nice

but he should proceed from there

and manifest his entire body in every quadrant of the universe

Conscious of the Little Things

2011-06-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Consciousness is huge in its implications. One might even say "Cosmic" in that it is undiscoverable in its fact, and infinite in its implications.

Human motives are quite small. There is no behavior without motive, be it smoking a cigarette or zazen. Motives are small; tiny, all but infinitesimal cues that animals get from environment. These little cues are writ large in the stuff of life and death. Motives are the result of consciousness growing into animal form over hundreds of millions of turns 'round the sun. You don't think your self up. Your self happens to you because of the myriad tiny things that humanity makes conscious in a Darwinian social-circumstance sort of way.

There is, of course, growing to the light.

Selflessness is not without self.

The Soul of Things

as if upon one knee in prayer

the rust-roofed barn sinks through the years

back to the dust from which it sprang

where cats once stalked mice that stole the draft horse grain

owls now freely wait for rats that secret acorns

beneath a steel wheeled tractor's rust pitted cowl

as dust will in a vortex all things coalesce

and then like dust by wind they are dispersed

effaced

to leave no trace

for no mark made upon the earth

will survive the earths evaporation

not in matter

but in mystery

lies the soul of things

Sway

2011-06-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

There is sway

There is that which is swayed

If the willow knows its existence only by its movements

it thinks the wind

god.

The Awakening of the Intelligence Revisited

2011-06-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

Intelligence has been variously described and the only one we really know anything about is our own [if we know any thing about it]. I've spoken about the nature of intelligence elsewhere so we will consider that as read. The question then is the fixations of intelligence, and might there be such a thing as the awakening of the intelligence. Intelligence is the very stuff of life. It is the difference between a molecule and a paramecium. Intelligence has no ideas. Intelligence is the stuff of which ideas are woven.

If we imagine intelligence as a flower in the fruition of the evolution of the universe, then it would seem that the finest fruit of this flower would be the universe awakening to its self.

The May Pole

we are the May Pole

mummified

in wrappings of imagination

dancing round are a circumference of lovely demons

weaving with colors existential

the life that will entomb us

drawn to accept vagaries of the sun

can we accept the certainty of the moon

Awareness and Mentation and the Doctrine of No Mind

2011-05-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

Simple awareness is a passive state. It seeks no affirmation of its existence or its contents. Mentation is an active state made inevitable by the existence of awareness in exactly the same way as water ripples in response to circumstance. In the absence of mentation simple awareness in all creatures presents the same sense of being.

Mind is the behavior of mentation made inevitable by the genetic imperatives of creature-hood. The existence of the unconscious mind as a template for behavior shapes our perceptions of the world and of ourselves being.

The waves are the water.

Insouciant Anonymity

it is drizzling rain
and the sleek red squirrel weaves her way
the intense glow new-green floor growth her umbrella

stop

sniff

hop a bit and sniff again

dig a bit and up with last falls full acorn
sit and peel and eat

back to the hunt and with the next find undulate the nearest tree
stub-branch perch and eat
calmly in the warm spring rain

Her kits will find themselves well fed

wind

and rain
every drop real and alone

snow
every flake cold and unique

searing heat

care not for life or for death
joy or sorrow
for pain
for pleasure

for crushing servitude or leisure

every voice proceeds to flex the void
every cry of hope and despair un-echoed
spends its immeasurably tiny weight into the void

unmet unresisted unobserved
unanswered

but yes form

and form

shapes everything

the winking out of an instance of cognisant warmth
is dissolved in the fabric of nothingness from which it sprang
and nothing there-by is enriched
by everything

the voice of the universe

is the taste of being

The Visionary

2011-01-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

Seeing is one thing, having an idea is quite another. Vision is the result of direct contact with the physical environment. Idea is an intellectual construct. The difficulty inevitable between visionaries and ideologues is that to the ideologue the visionary is merely in possession of different ideas.

We can not connect dots that are invisible to us. The sky is falling; it just falls, in human terms, very slowly. And by the time the obvious becomes apparent to the hopelessly occluded things will be totally FUBAR.

Flotsam and Jetsam on the Point and the Line

Flotsam and Jetsam

In their drift upon the sea of life discoursed and pondered

many a weighty and provocative imponderable

such as

might there exist a vertical dimension

to illustrate his object Jetsam recounted a tale about Mr. Point

conversing with

Mr. Line

Mr. Point found Line to be an interesting fellow

though something of an egotist

for though Mr Line was quite like any other point taken straight on

he alluded to possession of dimensions not shared by points around

Line boldly spoke about his intimations of the plane

at which the scoffing Point declared that

"even if there were such a thing as a plane it would be inconceivable

and therefore all talk of planes was

idle speculation"

to which Line replied that

if Point would stretch a bit he would gain perspective

well, Flotsam was not entertained by reasoning in this line

for thinly veiled in Jetsam's anecdote was his tired old point

concerning rectilinear space

which

not merely contrary to experience

blasphemed the sanctity of the plane

The Mechanics of Wellbeing

2011-01-15T10:05:00.000-08:00

Understanding the mechanics of the sense of purpose no more invalidates having one than a degree in chemistry ruins the enjoyment of fine wine. There is no purpose that does not tug at our human nature.

The awareness that one cultivates in meditation is capable of mining a rich field of self knowledge through recognition of the tides of purpose generated within ones self as the gravity of being acts upon the mechanical fact of our humanity. And as a water wheel provides an endless and practically free source of energy, awareness of the mechanical aspects of our humanity can provide an awakened engine of well being.

In the Prime of Your Life

I have no fear of growing old

and I would choose to die the death that old age brings

my fear of future

is that I might never again hear your voice

or touch your face

and I am so glad to be here

in the prime of your life

Merry What Ever

2010-12-16T16:04:00.000-08:00

Religious belief opens a Pandora's Box of credulity that leads the holder to equate fact with faith. When intuitions are transformed into dogmas, confusion can not but follow. The parable of "the blind men and the elephant" is a simply stated truth, and holds true for political beliefs, or belief of any stripe. We know enough within the simplicity of our humanity to answer the seemingly complex questions of human existence. But who can be that intelligently simple?

The efficacy of religion to unite the social imagination has throughout history brought tidings good and evil; and as our understanding of the universe and ourselves matures, religion will find its place amongst the lovely landmarks of awakening.

Cosmic Postal Service

oh . . .

the message was delivered right on time

and it was from the hand of God all right

but something went awry

for they have long since ceased ponder of the message

and spend their holy days worshipping the envelope

Lightness of Being

2010-04-07T19:40:00.000-07:00

Shine a flashlight or burn a candle and the photons go at the speed of light til they hit something. The light of a candle in a featureless desert proceeds in space to the limits of being. That light is absorbed by something or moves on forever. Brain waves are no less an element of electromagnetic emanation. The sphere of your existence is written into the fabric of being at the speed of light times your age.

Let those who have eyes see.

The earthworm and the elephant.

Individual Self Expression

2010-03-31T08:29:00.000-07:00

Those who languish for an affirming identity are vulnerable to ostentatious displays of self expression. And this quite simply because they have something to prove to themselves and to the world. There exists a pervasive brand of mischief spawned only by practitioners of nervous self expression.

It is categorically impossible to not express ones self. Grotesque displays of self expression are inversely proportional to the progress of individuation.

Zen Pretzel

2010-03-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

Twisting ones self into a Zen pretzel is not the way to freedom.

People Like Me

people like me
aren't like me

they are, like

them selves

Local Limitations

2010-03-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

Any discription of what is real is a discription of "local limitations". A single photon screaming through space is a manifestation of "local limitations". A walking talking stack of atoms known as a human being is a manifestation of "local limitations". A universe ablaze with imploding galaxies is a manifestation of "local limitations".

If the organism that we are were not limited in the eye's perception of the electromagnetic spectrum there would be no light.

Our life is the swim of conscious awareness through the sea of local limitations.

What is the Who 2.0

2010-03-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

If you do not own what you are, what you are will own you.

he wore a man-skirt from India

and a beanie from some South American tribe

and the smock from some table waiter in Japan

and he loved to speak in shopworn riddles

the same cloth

will clothe a wizard

or a clown

Uniformly Uniform

2010-03-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

When one dons a uniform one is in costume. And each costume represents an idea proclaiming the wearer as an advocate playing a role. The Dali Lama, the tattoo gangster, the stripper, are advocates playing a role. As human beings there exist necessary functions, but roles are made necessary only by collective naivete. There also exist myriad functions made necessary only by the un-evolved state of the creatures we are. A world without uniforms will be a world in which the power of symbol is wholly awake.

In spite of ones self one finds admirable those individuals who so dedicated themselves to their vision of truth that they would make a symbol of themselves for the good of history and of humanity. Without them ignorance and injustice would proceed unchallenged.

There is a very good chance that things could sort themselves out if intelligent people were simply brought to the fore.

And role playing is part of that.

The Meaning of Life

2010-03-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

The question is a misguided twisting of an observation. The life of meaning is life its self. Where there is no life there is no meaning. We ask the meaning of life in the same way the eye must seek a mirror if it is to see its self.

Field Guide To Reality

only if we recognize the difference

between imagination and perception

can we touch the inconceivable truth

which is the abode

of being

Distraction

2010-02-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

After several seasons lost in the Om zone it is time to return to work, and I shall start with a poem that suggests the silence of my normal winter day.

The Fire Is All There Is

tending the fire is all that there is in the world

a boistrous band of crows call to each other
hunting down the ridge

the fridged morning breeze sends the smoke swirling through the snowclad bare trees
oak twigs pop in promise
the yellow flames snap like some searing fluid whip

and tending the fire
is the only thing there is in the world

Garland Crown of Flowers

2009-07-17T15:59:00.000-07:00

the girl-child's little legs carried her back and forth
her hands full she ran rampant flowers to the garden table

"What will you make for me?" cried she

"A garland for a crown"
said I

they were daisy-like
a brilliant yellow aura around the blood red core

I plaited long stems into a flower spangled crown
and set it upon her head

the gold of her hair shone in the summer sun
and the brightest flower of all
was she
in her garland crown of flowers

she struck a pose and she cried out
"I'm Beautiful!"

and I was struck through the heart

I saw the garland crown of hours plaited for me
by you
in the moments of our life together

and I found my self whispering her words

I'm beautiful

.

The Only Sound

2009-07-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

the cool dark of the forest
was shelter from the blazing moon

and fire flies punctuated the darkly seen

crunching foot falls

the only sound

Hearing as Seeing, the Noise of Being

2009-06-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

In the market today I couldn't avoid the sense that I was hearing the being of those around me. Just as each creature in its movements makes a sound, each creature in its existence is a noise in the silence of non-being. Civilization en-mass is rather like the roar of the 17 year locusts, and the sound of a given individual is the noise of its hopes and dreams, its disappointments, its weight of archetype, and the cacophony of its individuality.

We could be perceived as singing our selves into being. And though we are taught to sing certain songs, the song of our individuality can always be heard through the chorus by those who know how to listen. Most individuals are a source of random noise; the modern jazz of being I suppose. One finds greater and lesser degrees of harmony, but a being that strikes an awakened chord of being is a rare find.

Until we have met the silence that is the substrate of our existence we will never hear the sound that is the fact of our presence. All that exists is noise. Music is the product of integration. To hear the music of the spheres is to know ones self.

Slice and Dice a Bucket Full of Stress

2009-06-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

The slice and dice guru guys crack me up. Last night on the TV the guy says that no one can bring him a bucket of stress. Well now. He says that there are only stressful ideas. Well I don't live in my head the way that he does, and I guarantee that if he would like a bucket-full of stress, I can deliver.

The salesmen of self-hypnosis make a darn'd good living. The sick part is that they teach posture as being.

We are what we are. Perhaps we should start there and find ourselves before we launch off into some exercise of self improvement.

The Monkey Factor

2009-06-13T09:37:00.001-07:00

There are all kinds of dogs. There are all kinds of cats. There are all kinds of birds and all kind of bees. There are all kinds of monkeys. As animals go we are apes. And the only thing that will make us happy is the life that makes the ape that we are happy.

Perhaps we are unique in the animal world in that some of us are capable of a radical awareness that transcends the chipmunk-like unreflective consciousness we recognise as life even in paramecium. We are hypnotized by form, and fail to recognize in ourselves the endless awareness which is all manner of existences.

Would we castigate a Water Buffalo for not recognising the fact of its existence? No. Humanity has all ready specieated. If you have ever been in front of a dot matrix color-blindness test you will be in a position to recognise that you either see the dots or you don't. You can not connect dots that are invisible to you. We are animals. And we are as different amongst ourselves as wolves are to sheep.

People really are as confused as they appear to be. And if the universe should wake up in the space that you occupy my condolences. Its not much fun to be a wake-up monkey right now. Unless you content yourself with the monkey life.

The Fire Monkey

2009-06-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

We are the fire monkeys

The smartest of them all

Noses itch same way ours do

They reach up and scratch-it: just like we do

We are the fire monkeys

No more

No less

Lest the substrate of our existence wake up in the space we occupy.

Befriending Shadows

2009-05-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

We are conditioned from childhood to be critical of our thoughts and our actions. This manipulation of the instinctual need for tribal approval is probably effective enough left unaggravated. Much unnecessary suffering is caused when instictual habitual assessments are made with a view that is hostile to vagaries that are inherently human.

We do not expect our friends to be infallible. We tend to see our friends more or less as they are, and accept with good-will the idiosyncrasies that are the marks of individuality. We extend good-will when they trip on the stones of their humanity, and comfort when error has led them to sorrow. We will not jeopardise friendship by harping on some small flaw. Friends extend counsel in the face of error, and in the face of error give support such as can though the friend may have been foolish or unwise. If you have no friends who will tell you when you are fucking up, you don't have any friends at all; but this is a far cry from a beating over the head for every failure to operate in optimum mode.

Many actions for which we berate ourselves express a need to jump fences we have made in ourselves. Fervor that religious sects exhibit is due to fear that without ridged behavioral guidelines humanity would reduce to chaos. This is not so. The will to good is instinctual, and the natural aversion to disorder does not require pathological proportions. Self destructive behaviors: emotional, intellectual, physical, are almost always unconsidered attempts to jump fences that we have set up in ourselves with the generous help of others.

We cannot be set free by chaining ourselves to a self image, and unless we befriend ourselves we can never afford to see ourselves as we are. We run from our shadow because we have not embraced our shadow.

Shadows

the setting sun has put the sky ablaze

trees loom black

shadows reach long

there are shadows without

there are shadows within

vacancies in luminance

when perceived

appear as creatures of a nether light

Dream Good Things

2009-05-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

the me that looks out
drinking up the sunlight exploding from every leaf

the me that so delights in symphony of breeze and limb

the me that loves the new burgeoned closing green
closing off all avenues of vision but for its self
the tambourine of spring rain
the bandstand of the chorus frog

this me
is the only Me that is

and when not hypnotized by self
I am all creatures
and everywhere I hear the hum of Me
awakened from the silence of dumb matter

all creatures sing Me
our song is the Divine chord of Me existing

if the sleep of self hood is our fate

let us dream good things

Enlightenment Imagined

2009-04-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

When the imagination passively flows into and saturates what we find in ourselves as "reality" the fabric of the real begins to glow with awareness. this is called enlightenment. When imagination amends "reality" with an application of its projections it is called "normal". It is not necessary or even particularly desirable to separate the dye and the stain of our person hood from the fabric of pure being. And though it is not necessary or normal, it is most certainly desirable that the fabric of being be soaked with the awareness that is our person hood.

Origami

2009-03-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

in all creatures
the universe has folded itself as in a faceted white-paper swan

is it ours to
through discipline and discipleship fold ourselves tighter

ever tighter

to heat and press upon ourselves 'till we become a diamond
lucid and alone

refracting recieved colors into colors of experience

or should we through self knowledge

in perfect freedom unfold ourselves

and once again become the universe

Reason to Believe

2008-03-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

The line between knowing and believing

Is in degrees of assumed certainty and not in point of fact

They lie equidistant from existence as fruits of the intellect

The knowing that is being

Is not believing.

Bad is Pushed, Evil is Pulled

2008-03-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

Truth and Being

2008-02-27T12:41:00.000-08:00

If we succeed in securing the precipice at which human understanding falls away we discover for ourselves that Being exceeds the reach of knowing. All that is possible is such narrative as tells the story of being as it appears to us. And this is Truth.

Social Thinking

2008-02-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

In my reading the other day I encountered the thought: “societies don’t think, people think”. Well, that’s an interesting thought, but coming from the other direction it is rather like saying “cells don’t have a life, people have a life”. It’s all how you look at it. And a thought the phrase stirred in my mind was of the weight of society in most every human thought.

If we were to make note of our thoughts in the passing of a day, in most cases there would not be a single thought that was not colored by societal elements. What to wear, what to eat, on the job, in the home: every thought is a juggling of societal elements by the mysterious pressure of human existence. It is just about impossible to have a thought that is free from any societal consideration. And if one should retire to a monastery to dodge the societal bullet, one is out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Societies are myriad, and the legitimacy of their demands upon the thought patterns of their constituents is generally accepted without consideration. These “societal demands upon thought patterns” make up the bulk of what passes as thinking.

That’s the way it looks to me, what do you think?

A Personal Note

2008-02-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

This blog is not about my personal life, but today is a good day for a personal note. When I moved to the woods after returning from the war, I committed myself to the cultivation of a sustainable life style. I hoped to find a way of life as close to nature as made sense. Well, its 32 degrees in the house right now and comfortable as can be. Its around 20 degrees outside, but the earth floor always keeps the house a bit warmer than ambient. The forest is covered in ice and it is quite beautiful. I have no waterpipes to freeze, and if it gets into the thirties today I'll open the windows. Of course I'm dressed like an eskimo, but that's why they dress that way. Its not for everyone, but I like it. I like taking it as it comes and being in it and of it.

Loss of services can have tragic implications for the service dependent, but every service we avail ourselves asks something of the earth.

Living Words and Dead Words

2008-02-04T10:18:00.000-08:00

Early Chan Buddhists made a distinction between living words and dead words. Living words were those rooted in the soil of fact. Dead words were those rooted only in the fevered imagination of dreamers.

‘Twere ever thus.

Principles of Wealth

2008-02-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

All wealth comes from the Earth. There is no wealth of any kind that will not lead back to the earth if followed to its ultimate source. People who at labor remove what-ever from the soil receive modest compensation. Captains of industry deciding the fate of these resources receive maximum compensation. It seems natural that it should be so, and perhaps it is: but not for the seemingly obvious reasons.

A ship must have a captain. A ship must have seamen. The responsibility of stewardship that lies upon the captain deserves just compensation, but the fact remains that without a crew the ship goes nowhere, and without a ship they are all just beach bums: so it is with the ship of state. Compensation rises with proximity to the pool of wealth accumulated by value added to fruits of the earth: wealth is inversely proportional to closeness to the earth. Compensation amounting to millions and millions of dollars a year for chief executives cannot be considered value for value: it is profiteering.

The pools of wealth accumulated by successful industry could not exist without the complex social fabric of which any one industry is but a part. Profit as a motive is always an element of human endeavor even if it is planting a flower garden, but when does the legitimate right to profit become avarice?

How many millions of dollars aught one to be able to squeak by on? And what is the responsibility of those bathing in the pool of wealth to those who labor at the headwaters?

Thy Fearful Symmetry

2008-01-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

Blake’s use of the word “symmetry” in “The Tiger” exactly conforms to the mental structures I am referring to when I use the word.

I find it very annoying when philosophic discourse resorts to convoluted, complex, private, jargonic use of words. The difficulty is that unfamiliar conceptualizations must be conveyed in familiar terms. This necessitates a bending of words and phrases in and as the attempt to make the symmetry of the conceptualization apparent to the intended recipient.

The emergence of any faculty whatsoever, whether fiddling with calculus or raising a spoon to ones mouth, is wholly dependent upon the assimilation and recognition of symmetries. These symmetries are an inner library of correlations of elements perceived as outer world: even psyche is external to pure awareness.

The lamb jumps and gambols minutes after birth because of symmetries coeval with its very existence. Men love women in the characteristic way that they do because of mental symmetries coeval with their very existence. The moth flies to the flame because moth existence is coeval with the certainty of the moon. It is so simple that it may be difficult to grasp, but the capacity to recognize symmetries is coeval with the emergence of an Albert Einstein as progeny of the first replicating molecule. There is only one way we know or recognize anything at all. The newborn brain recognizes a basic set of symmetries and this is called instinct. The newborn brain also comes with a primitive capacity for knowledge, and what we call knowledge is an accumulation of awareness symmetries. And it is like stacking blocks: if symmetries necessary to the concept or behavior are not in our mental library then we will not be able to add one and one, or to pole-vault, or to understand the meaning of life: hence the inestimable value of education.

Tiger, tiger burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry

And did he smile his work to see

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

excerpt from William Blake 1757-1827 “The Tiger”

The Art of Solipsism

2007-12-17T12:11:00.000-08:00

“Art for art’s sake.” The statement is inherently solipsistic. And in a survey of the art considered to be “modern” it must be admitted that solipsism is a distinguishing characteristic of the “modern”. In music, in sculpture, in painting, in architecture, in literature; we find the same stamp. This does not mean that it is bad, and of course the best of it is quite good; but if it is solipsistic, then it is solipsistic: and it is obviously and blatantly solipsistic. What interests me is the phenomenon of the genius of a culture turning in upon its self, and becoming its own subject matter. When art no longer serves truth, beauty, and good; should one not ask why? And for that matter what was ever in it for culture with that “truth, beauty, and good” thing anyway? Is there any reason that it should not be abandoned?

At present we exist in the so-called “post-modern” era, but the solipsistic narcissism of the “modern” era has inoculated the popular mind. There is a navel-gazing element awakened by modernity that must be assimilated if culture is to advance beyond self-worship. Art cannot but express the seething flux of human aspiration, and perhaps the “modern” period is the cultural equivalent of the adolescent’s rebellion against the constraints to will imposed upon individuals by the dictates of society.

If so, then it is a milepost on the path of cosmic maturation. And when we have become the future we will look upon these creations as charming mementos from our rambunctious youth.

Word and Symmetry

2007-12-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

The existence of words is made possible by the minds spontaneous recognition of symmetries. Trees, for instance, share common elements that could be described as the symmetries of tree-ness. The symmetries of tree-ness can receive an additional mental symmetry in utterance. This utterance becomes a cultural artifact, and we say something has been named. When the culture of utterance achieves a palette of symmetries that enable communication of even the most rudimentary sort we have a language. Crows have a language. Dogs have a language. Almost all animals have a repertoire of utterance as behavior cuing specific symmetries found in their environment; i.e. a language. None of these languages seem rudimentary to their native speakers because any language is limited by the physical ability to form sounds, and by the native ability to recognize and bring into the field of consciousness, symmetries.

Words do not symbolize their referents. Words become part of the mental symmetry of their referents; and symmetry is the foundation of the recognition of anything what so ever. To perceive something is one thing and to recognize it is another. What ever the reality of trees may be the only way we know anything about them is through information assembly in the brain. The assembly of this information into meaning requires the spontaneous recognition of symmetries, and utterance becomes an integral element of the corresponding symmetry. Words do not re-present their referents; words are an integral element of presence.

In My Opinion

2007-12-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Harboring opinions is like keeping pet vampires.

A Poem

2007-11-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

it is not the Fall that saddens

the honey-brown forest floor and black branch rivened sky
hold promise of a Spring
the sun is with us
and the birds of winter warm the yard

it is the Winter
we approach a Winter with no end but the abyss

we dwell not upon it
but within

so let us warm ourselves at the fire of the moment
and build that fire to make radiance the fruit of our existence

and in so living

never die

.

Counting From Zero

2007-11-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

Considering the mystery of being is rather like a mathematical problem. In mathematics it is necessary to start counting not from one, but from zero. Most systems claiming some inside track on reality start their consideration from an arbitrary point: say, man as a spiritual being. This is tantamount to a mathematics that starts counting from, say….seven, or twenty one, or any other quite real number that has its true value only when the counting starts at zero.

Starting from a pre-existing point of value shifts all subsequent value judgments, and makes it quite impossible to make any accurate declaration about anything other than heat and cold and similar self-descriptive elements of the real. All things must be compared to the existence of nothing at all.

Much Ado About Nothing

between molecular atoms loosely hung by shared electrons
is Nothing

between the galaxies spinning in loose knit groups
is Nothing interspersed with very little

born into Nothing
and Nothing permitting it’s expansion
this universe and all within must have a number
but there is no end

to Nothing

nothing is beyond the reach of Nothing

Nothing is everywhere

everywhere there is not something Nothing can be found

in want of Nothing we loose the meaning of all things

an insight gained to Nothing’s nature
must be treated as a treasure

for then

we have Nothing to lose

Sense and Sensibility

2007-11-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

It can be taken as self-evident that the awareness associated with animal life is all of a piece. Creatures large and small exhibit the same faculty of recognition of an exterior world. This mysterious quality has been called “awareness” or “consciousness”, but pasting a word over a mystery does not dispel our ignorance of its true nature.

So awareness is everywhere the same. It expresses itself in ways unique to the experiencing organism's sensing faculties, but awareness is simply aware. Humans share this property with all animal life forms, and the difference between mice and men is not in what is doing the driving, but in the capacities of the vehicle being driven.

The brain is not an organ separate from the body. The hazy tentacles of nerve strands reach through the entire fabric of the body, and the brain is the nodule of nerve cells that ties them all together. It is a complex physical form necessitating a well-understood transmission of electrical impulses that supplies the brain with a flow of information about the outside world: information that in the brain becomes experience: awareness.

The brain of every creature is as much a part of its physical configuration as its mouth, and the brain and the body are all about filling the mouth, and filling the mouth is all about the continuance of the awareness attached to it. Every creaturely form is simply a form of awareness feeding. The brain and the accompanying senses exist as a necessary element of the continuity of awareness. Reproduction (which is a continuation of the same awareness) and physical maintenance both rely on awareness acting upon impulse rising from the physical shape of the brain. Senses are in place to provide information necessary to the rise of impulses necessary to the continuance of physical form, which is necessary to the survival of individual awareness. As awareness, through millions of years of refinement, has sophisticated its capacities to experience and to survive we have its latest experiential hot-rod: man.

In man, awareness has created a dangerously advanced feeder. In most creatures the limitations of physical form assure that the senses will have limited opportunity for exploitation. In man the exploitation of the senses is limited only by the imagination; and man is gifted with a powerful imagination. In most creatures the fact that awareness is wholly identified with its creaturely form is made harmless by the limitations of its form. In man the fact that awareness is wholly identified with its creaturely form is a cornucopia of un-necessary exploitation of the power of sensing. The hypnosis common to all animals as to the true nature of being is, in man, a luxury that the world can ill afford.

Refectory

Chipmunks have nibbled ’49 Dodge brake lines
Kitchen trash will molder in its high-sided bed

Wood rats will have a fine home until I get around to a fix

A bear tore up the kitchen last week
The rock that fasts the big doors downstairs easily nosed away

the 45 is kept at hand

The woods folk find nourishment where can
Questioning only the urgency of absence

All creatures are winged mouths

But for apprenticeship

Seeing: In and Around

2007-10-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

The fact of sight as a physical phenomenon is one thing, and how what is looked upon is seen is quite another. One individual looking at a certain spotted salamander sees a loathsome slimy crawly thing; another sees the beautiful living vestige of an entire eco-system. One is seeing around the thing; projecting imagination upon it as if covering it with paint. The other is seeing within the thing; imagination drawing up meaning like an old-fashioned hand pump draws water.

Sight is a physical phenomenon, but seeing has a meaning component that is wholly dependent on how one looks at things. How one looks at things is wholly dependent on the training (or lack there of) of imagination.

.

Spring Talks on Spring Walks

With friends I walked an Ozark hollow
In the time of spring flowers

Seeking a place to sit we had to laugh
For there was none

And scarce room for feet
So luxuriously had the warm days awakened the earth to life

Perched on a moss-covered limestone ledge we mused

How odd

Where one can’t find a place to sit
Another will go with a bulldozer

.

Consider the Lilies

2007-10-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

If we accept the Bang as read and don’t worry too much about the other side of it, a rather beautiful picture emerges: primal matter coalescing into hydrogen atoms, hydrogen atoms pushed together by the shadowy call of forces yet unexplained, proximity and pressure giving life to massive glowing spheres in which hydrogen is squeezed together forming more massive atoms up to the weight of iron, stars explode with pressures creating even more massive elements and spewing them all into endless space where they coalesce into molecules and again into second order stars, some bits left behind forming little balls known as planets, on some planets temperate conditions permit the formation of exotic molecules making copies of themselves, a molecule exhibits the field phenomenon described as awareness, over a period of millennia awareness refines the nature of its wakened state by building ever more sophisticated stacks of molecules, and I sit here brooding on the beauty that surrounds me.

West Window Poem #3

Sunset colors silence the imagination
First quarter moon brilliant against the blue
New leaves glow as if from inner light

Circling our incandescent dot
This ponderous bit of left behind sun
Traverses the immense dark desert

And here

Every hot day is swelling life into spring

.

Green Consciousness

2007-10-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

The words consciousness and awareness are similar to the word energy, and unlike the word green. Green is the event made inevitable when electromagnetic energy of certain wavelengths hit the optic nerve. Consciousness, awareness, and energy are described in terms of their affects. And cannot be descirbed in terms of the nuts and bolts that are the substrate of manifestation for those nuts and bolt are a complete and utter mystery.

Every life form without exception is a form of feeding. And what in every case is fed is awareness. The universe has mouths in variety that defy imagination, and in every case they feed the same cosmic principle.

.

Daddy Longlegs

Little blind men tap their way across the forest floor
Bending to drink the dew that beads upon brown leaves

In moments of power seize an injured moth
In moments of terror flee the wood ants jaws

They scuffle with each other
Or they congregate in piles
They tap their way across my table or my shoe

I think what differs most between us
Is that men
Like gods
Are subject to compassion

While spiders
Though endowed with similar appetites

See no further than the reach of their legs

Free Will

2007-10-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

It seems to me utterly ridiculous that the question of “Free Will” is still batted about. Will always has an object. We don’t decide what is important to us: and what is important to us determines saints and sinners. Will always serves something and in best case desires dignity, not freedom.

No one does anything of free will because there is no such thing. If nominally we wish to create such a category that’s fine, and we all know what we’re talking about. But those who commit heinous acts are those in whom will is the least free. The inability to exercise freedom with dignity justifies freedom being taken away.

There is willing freely, but there is no free will: those in whom will has abandoned humanity have no right to the term.

Possessing the Will

The painting is not in the brush
Nor music in the lute
Or books in the pen

It is not the hand that builds
Nor is it the mind that thinks

But that will is turned to these ends

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Impulse and Idea

2007-10-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

One element common to animal life forms regardless of the topography of the nervous system is impulse. Behavior is a kinetic response to impulse, and every creature comes replete with a set of impulses suitable for the survival of its unique physical configuration. If we would dissolve away everything but impulse from a tiger and from a lamb we could still tell them apart, though we would find the same primary urges to feed, fight, and fuck.

Impulse is the instinctual goad to behavior. Without impulse there is no behavior, but impulse in no way implies conscious awareness or thought. Creatures with no brain at all exhibit impulse, and in creatures with brains impulse is in every case responsible for the kinetic activity of thought: conscious awareness is not necessary or implied.

Impulse is specific, and idea emerges from impulse. Both are kinetic. Awareness is generic and emerges as a property of intelligence considered in the broadest possible manner. Awareness is a field phenomenon. The most striking difference between one human being and another is the point of impulse at which awareness is engaged.

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Choosing Choices

Cows choose grass

Dogs choose bones

People make all kinds of choices

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Make Nice

2007-09-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Any form of government will do if people would just be nice to each other.
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Revolution is a Song of Hope

When history has no answer to the question it has posed
and oppression’s dark grasp constricts the heart

When ideas are empowered over happiness
and opportunity’s lustrous glow dims
Flickers
And goes out

They talk of revolution

Each foaming fleck of tide perceives itself possessing a direction
And revolution is its song of hope

The moon it is
That pipes tides tune
And the singing flecks of tide’s ovation

The pull
The sweep
Of history’s dark sway
Assures the next dark movement of its day

And to the small still-rooted reed
Their song of hope is the birth-cry
Of the next oppression

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The Chicken, the Egg, and Virgin Birth

2007-09-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

Just for the fun of it let’s conduct a little imaginary experiment. Let’s take a cubic meter of space and shield it from all penetrating particles and all pervasive waveforms, then let’s identify and remove all bits of anything that exist within our test cube. What we have now is a cubic meter of nothing. And not your garden-variety colloquial nothing, but the real thing: real nothing. Our defined space is wholly empty: but there is room only for what will fit within it; the gorge point at present would seem to be matter at the state found in the interior of black holes.

There has to be nothing or there wouldn’t be room for anything (this was pointed out to me by my precocious daughter at age six). The presence of anything defines space, and perhaps defined space is the ultimate nature of everything. Absolute nothingness is devoid of properties, and string theory could be described as nothing achieving propertyness. As to why it would do that, well that is another question….perhaps it was bored.

Total nothingness has no dimensions, no time, no space. And all it takes to create endless space is for the merest infinitesimal something to take form. Everything that exists (including an idea) has the true measure of its existence only when compared to total nothingness.

So it is obvious that nothingness, in the first Virgin Birth, was somehow pregnant with space-time. And the rest is history.

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The Real Non-verbal World

There is no real non-verbal world
Of which no accurate pronouncement can be made

With conjecture or without
The stone falls
No contradistinction left or right
Anymore than up

And though the illusion that opposites exist
Will serve as fact of common sense
The properties of all things and phenomenon
Are not
And cannot be
Contained
They exist not in contrast

Everything that exists
Exists at once
And all movement in this net of simultaneity
Called the Universe

Is some degree of lateral

In the real non-verbal world

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Light and Dark

2007-09-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Allusion to “Light and Dark” may be the most ancient religious metaphor in common usage: the forces of Darkness, the transforming power of Enlightenment. And always light and dark are presented as a contrast of opposites. Well, they are not.

Darkness is the abode of light. Light does not displace the dark: light infuses the dark. And those who would eschew all familiarity with the dark are just as misguided as those who would romantically embrace it.

Manichean separation of elements sets them at war. Darkness is given a power that belies its inherent passivity. Light is left homeless in a vacuum of ignorance: agar plate for dangerous imaginings.

Self-knowledge is not concerned with protecting the thought-forms of naivety, but with informing the dark with light.

Shadows

The setting sun has set the sky ablaze

Trees loom black
Shadows reach long

There are shadows without
There are shadows within

Vacancies in luminance
When perceived appear

As creatures of a nether light

Industrial Feudalism

2007-09-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

Feudalism is the default system of human communal intercourse, and we have in the space of some few hundred years made an epochal shift from agrarian feudalism into the age of industrial feudalism. Industrial feudalism has an identical hierarchical structure to agrarian feudalism but is based on the production of goods to such a point that even agriculture is subsumed as an industrial product. There are lords; there are serfs. Lords own the means of production. Serfs are bound to labor in production no less than they were a thousand years ago, and the middle class as an economic class is a falsehood. The real middle class is not the management class serf, but rather the artist, craftsman, and small business operator. And again this is unchanged from its previous agrarian constellation.

Government is quite another matter. A democratic republic is founded on the common dignity of all beings, and on a rule of law dedicated to such principles. All government is imperiled by hubris, disenfranchisement, and ennui.

Reciprocal respect for the dignity of individuals is the only hope for civility to survive civilization. And if we are unable to grant to others the dignity of their confusion then there can be no dignity at all.

Equality

we hear a lot of preaching these days

about equality

there is no equality

never has been

nothing is the equal of anything else

equality as an ideal denigrates the low

and debases the high

it is an idea invented by the jealous to enflame the ignorant

and it is an affront to nature

the sanctity of our uniqueness is the foundation of human dignity

and the test of dignity is as we extend it to others

this is the sum total of all the equality that ever was

A Fairy Tale

2007-08-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time on a far distant planet there lived a band of omnivorous monkey-like creatures. Being omnivorous succeeding generations naturally selected a penchant for violent alpha males. Dependence upon violent alpha males, and the survival-enhancing trait of cooperation, naturally selected a penchant for obedience. The omnivorous monkey-like being was also on a systematic rising curve of intelligence.

They did very well for themselves and were soon not only able to defend themselves from larger dangerous animals, but also to exploit larger dangerous animals to whatever purpose. In some small millions of years they had established complete domination of their biosphere (no small achievement). The cumulative thought-forms of their technologies were quite impressive and the average member of their communities had not a care in the world.

Unfortunately the instinctual penchant for violence and the inclination to obedience inseminated their advancing technologies, and they ultimately destroyed not only themselves but also the natural system that produce them.

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Putting an End to Theological Speculation

There may not be a heaven

But most certainly there is a hell

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Food for Thought

2007-08-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

It seems to go unnoticed that somehow the food we eat is transformed into conscious awareness.

Madness

2007-08-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

How do we know if someone is mad (as in crazy)? They live in a dream world? Their thought is unhinged from organic reality? They value to obsession various products of the imagination?

It fits most human beings on planet earth, and is not a crime against human dignity. Most people are well intended and nice enough just as they are. The problem: soldiers everywhere think they are on the right side.

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At the Confederate Museum

The daughters of the Confederacy have a button from General Lee’s coat

And they have Stonewall Jackson’s canon
They have the bullet riddled battle flag of an overrun Ohio brigade
And a hipbone with a Minnie-ball lodged in it

And they have letters by the score
From the hands of men and boys swept up by war
To their women

On the street outside
The crowded Shenandoah Valley smelled of sulfur
(Dupont)

And there, so near
The gentle Blue Ridge

This purple mountain majesty
Was it any solace to the eyes of dying soldiers blue or grey
Whose blood now lives the flowers
Of Virginia fields

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"What is the Meaning of This"

2007-08-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

Meaning is relative, and an element with no relationship to another has no meaning. The meaning of any act or object is determined by the content of relationship. The musical note G has a different meaning sounded in a void, or in a G chord, or in an E chord, or in a C chord. G is the identical vibration in each case, but it’s meaning is different.

The categories of meaning sentient beings can form are like music: limited and infinite. In the music of being, it is normal to sound the chord life strikes, rather than sound a chord of ones choosing. We can not choose the meanings that occur in us for they are spontaneous elements of pattern recognition. Dogmas, convictions, and faiths, like tuning a musical instrument, predetermine the way any note of being will resonate in the soul. Objectivity amounts to a lack of intellectual investment in predetermined resonance, and an ear for harmony and discord.

The surface of a sphere is a limited infinite plane the center of which is everywhere.

Imagination Education

2007-08-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

For all paeans to imagination, imagination is an under-rated and misunderstood faculty of mind. Here's how it looks to me. For those who imagine otherwise I suggest we define our terms.

Imagination is a self-generated perception: no more, no less. We live in a universe that is as it is whether we have an idea about it or not, and our sensory perceptions enter the brain as electrical stimulations from physical contact with a co-existing universe. To understand the assembly of these stimulations into the mystery of experience would be to understand the nature of life its self. As yet no one has stepped forward with this information.

Creative imagination is a subset of the primitive faculty of memory. A huge survival advantage is to that creature able to compare and contrast the shapes of previous experience. These “shapes of previous experience” exist only as thought-forms. As the ability to harbor these thought-forms grew with advances in the shape of the brain, imagination emerged as a faculty of Mind.

It is quite a breakthrough when you think about it. It is all molecular action-reaction up to the emergence of experience. Experience is more than the sum of its parts, and is the only new thing in the universe; when experience assumes a thought-form something that never before existed has come into being. Thought-forms exist physically as shapes of electrical activity in the tissue of the brain, and I suspect that the same idea would occupy a similar shape in the tissue of any brain that entertained it. That we can control our thoughts is a clear demonstration of some small primacy that mind has over matter.

The fact that we can not create an idea for which we do not posses the necessary thought-forms, lays bare the extraordinary importance of education. The less we know, the greater our freedom to pin the imaginary tail on the inconceivable donkey.

Self Love

2007-08-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

The phrase “Self Love” is used usually in the context of an auto-eroticism that makes self an object of worship: always a sign of deep interior imbalance. But there is another kind of self-love the absence of which is the mark of imbalance. The love of mother for child, the love of nature, the love of art, these have elements of a true and appropriate regard for ones self. And just as in a mature erotic relationship ones self is dissolved in mystery, if one has not encountered self as mystery, one has not encountered the self.

Art

2007-07-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Art is a tricky subject these days because anything goes. If I defecate on a paper plate in some novel way and I call it art, then by definition it is art. And I might even get a museum show. And since my achievement is so remarkably novel it must be considered high art as opposed to pretty pictures which clearly are mere decoration…wall candy we could call that.

Whatever we consider to be art, it must be admitted that art is a cultural Rorschach not an objective social product: what we consider to be Art tells us a great deal about ourselves, and tells us nothing at all about Art.

Art is an intentional structuring of the imagination through the vehicle of the senses. In our troubled times of anomie the the arts attract the endeavor of lunatics and sociopaths because opportunity exists for aggrandizement in capturing naive imaginations. Much outrageous art (though it may even be fun) is the product of such of beings. There are individuals, reasonably sane, of various talents who wish to find for themselves some importance. These artists often do very good work; but though art may be an avenue to some degree of status, even drugged out tramps will be issued an artistic license if they are persistent enough. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who can make a living with a box of paints, or a musical instrument, or a pen, is OK in my book whatever illusions they may labor under. And lastly there are those whom Art has called to herself.

My theory: Art is coeval with the most distant emergence of tool making, monkey-like, progenitors; and as the curiosity of these progenitors expanded into the unseen connections between things, Art was there to enable the invisible to enter a world of form. Delights that never before existed, and truths beyond the reach of ordinary communication: these I believe to be the historical domain of Art. And in St Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologiae” you will find a description of the responsibility of the echelons of religious orders that exactly fits my understanding of the responsibility of the artist.

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Bad Art

Lots of folks don’t trust themselves
To know bad art when they see it

Well, you can always tell bad art
Because it needs an essay to hold it up

And a crowd of boot-lickers and apologists
To appreciate it

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A Failure of Imagination

2007-07-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

Strange as it may seem the world of humanity in which we find ourselves is one that has been imagined into being. Wars, art, politics, national boundaries, doctrines of every stripe, the form that the familial instinct assumes, automobiles and blenders: every aspect of what we call civilization is the product of the human imagination. And all it would take to end war, and poverty, and a wealth of other human suffering, is for in one split second humanity to begin to imagine in a different way. But that's not going to happen, is it.

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By Decree

Why should not the fish
Make free use of desert sand to spawn

Let it be so

And the birds
In stately groves of kelp beneath the sea

Let them nest henceforth

The whales
Do they not ache to share the meadow
With their bovine brethren

Let it be done

And lastly
Let all mankind
Love one another

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Principles of Personal Growth: 101

2007-07-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

The ordinary process of human personal growth proceeds entirely by accident and according to the whims of nature. And that’s OK. There are those however who experience a nagging absence of closure in the life that accident and nature provides: who are therefore called or pushed to an attempt to see beyond the veil of the ordinary. Well, it’s a jungle out there and even in the field of consciousness raising there are predators, quicksands, and parasites.

One of the dangerous vulnerabilities of the spiritually curious is the inclination to be something before one has discovered what one is. One wants to be THAT without having understood THIS, and thus the blind have led the blind for millennia. The way it works is like making a topiary of a shrub. The aspiring individual encounters an attractive form in the spiritual jungle and gravitates to systems that will help them shape their self accordingly. Some of these systems are extremely sophisticated, and topiaries are not a bad thing. However, though these forms are often quite lovely, this is certainly not the path to greatest fruition of human potential.

There is a polarity of influences in personal growth. There is moving away from the dark and there is growing to the light, and interestingly enough both of these natural inclinations lead the same direction. The dark is not going anywhere. We will always be rooted there, and draw nourishment from its mystery. White light is the blend of all wavelengths, and if we are not distracted by red or blue or yellow it leads one way.

We will never be more than we can be, and we can always be less than we are. The question is what are we, and what fruit are we destined to provide the universe. Fruit is the product of flower and comes of itself through environmental pollination. We have little influence concerning fruit. This is a crucial point. It is a tragic truth that many individuals, even those with great potential, spend their energy aping some fruit rather than gathering the light that would naturally produce the flowering of awakened consciousness. We can never be more than we can be, but we can experience at the limits of our being. And it is in living in the limits of our being that we gather the most light. And it is that light infusing the dark nature of our selves that inevitably produces the growth that leads to the flowering of awakened intelligence.

We always must begin from where we are, and nothing can be given for which there is no resting place. The first requisite is the will to be attentive: sleep, in its many forms, comes of itself.

Didactic Bluebird

There once was a bluebird
Who convened a group of chipmunks
In order to expand their horizons

“Realize your untapped potential
Spread your wings and fly”

And soon the chipmunks lined up
And flapping their little arms jumped off the stump
Bruising their noses somewhat severely

The bluebird flew off
In search of chipmunks of greater insight and ability

And certain of the chipmunks go daily to the stump
Hoping this time
To get it right

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Look Ma, No Aegis!

2007-07-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

At a certain point in the process of individuation it becomes necessary and natural for one to abandon all intellectual aegis. And in fact it might be accurate to say that where there is aegis individuation is not. And it is the element of aegis in religious institutions that is their value as well as the limiting factor of their value in the process of spiritual evolution.

So long as there exists aegis in the structure of our world-view we are leaning on imaginings. Even if the principles of said aegis are unerringly reflective of what is real, so long as we cling to any aegis we have only the reflection of what is real: we have not entered the real.

If in your travels you meet the Buddha, give him a high five.

If you meet the Christ, do unto him, as you’d like in return.

“We don’t need no stinking aegis!”

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Truth, Beauty, and Good

Life-dreams
Cloud faces on the smoke haze of consciousness
Coalesce and smile
And slowly metamorph

Though it is our habit to restrain them

The hearts wind is not our own
Save it runs our mill
And the faces in the clouds are fleshed imagination

If we lose Truth

And Beauty

And Good

What are we to imagine
That will satisfy

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One Planet, One Problem

2007-06-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

Ozone depletion, resource depletion, pollution, rising oceans, the rise of the mean temperature of the earth, the incident of civil disorder: these and their ilk are not separate problems. All civilization-threatening inconveniences are merely spoor of the true specter that is stalking the earth. Many young people are, while in high school, introduced to the classic fruit fly experiment: a single female and a single male fruit fly are put in a five-gallon bottle with about ten pounds of sugar. The population rise is swift and dramatic, as is the precipitous crash to zero. There is still plenty of sugar left.

Property ownership is a necessary element to civil order, but mankind is a guest on planet earth. We've seen photos of earth taken by night satellite. Mankind’s electrical success blazing in all its glory looks to me, for all the world, like a patient with an advanced case of smallpox. The planet is running a fever and the prognosis is not good. Like some virulent disease we have overcome nature’s checks against our proliferation, and like some virulent disease, our unchecked numbers will eventually and inevitably destroy our host. Nature will set about exploiting the new opportunity created by the collapse of the present natural order, but for those of us dependent upon civil order it is not going to be pretty.

There exist what seem to be insurmountable obstacles to any efforts other than treating symptoms. Corporate greed, insensate territorial imperatives, innocent insouciance, and the urge to fuck, are not going away any time soon. The sky is falling, but it falls very slowly in human terms. The roar of the falls can be heard quite distinctly, but we may already be in the inescapable suck of the gorge.

And as our good ship “Humanity” slowly sinks beneath the waves of time we shall hear a lot of officious talk about how the deck chairs should be arranged.

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Lord Kelvin’s Birthday

At a gathering not long ago
Speaking with a friend
We conversed thusly

“Lord Kelvin calculated

(you know how those physicist dudes
have always been fascinated with building mathematical models
of things that are real?)

That if you tagged every molecule in a pint of water
And then stirred that pint evenly into all the seas of all the world
And if you then took up one pint from any part of any sea on earth
There would be found therein
One hundred of your tagged molecules

Plus or minus ten"

What the good Lord Kelvin wished to demonstrate
Is the inconceivable minuteness of the molecule

But it made me think of some mere million gallons
Of industrial vomit

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Time and Space Revisited

2007-06-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of loose talk these days about time and space. Which is interesting since no one knows what space is, and time is apparently an intellectual construct. Energy has the same problem. If you look at the physics guy’s talk about “energy” (you know, E=MC2 and all that) you will find that there is no description of what energy is: we must content ourselves with an account of what it does. Space, it seems, does nothing; and time is the mathematical trajectory of energy.

Insofar as I am capable of understanding it, the latest theoretical model has matter as wiggles of space. Well I’m down with that, and I can picture a photon departing a distant star (no acceleration mind you) as a rift in space that has no discrete reality other than the event that is its existence. And I can picture a point in supposedly empty space that is crossed by the rifts of rippling space from every light-emitting object that does not have something blocking its way. Hardly empty, I’d say. In fact it seems to me we have here a gelatinous fabric of wiggles of space that will sometimes coalesce by an inherent affinity in the nature of wiggles into what is known as matter. So wiggling space is the fact of quarks; quarks are the fact of sub-atomic particles; and atoms are the stuff of which we are woven. Consciousness (whatever that may be), insofar as we know, arises only from certain very specific stacks of matter, which is in fact merely space with an attitude: indicating that consciousness is a spatial event engendered by temporal energy fields (whatever that means).

I consider this self-evident. It has far reaching implications with regard to individuality and territorial imperatives; and this holds interesting portents with regard to the limits of conscious awareness and our supposed aloneness.

Experience

2007-05-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

The old saw “you can’t take it with you” could not be more wrong. It is quite true that you can't take it with you if you sit on it, but if you turn it into experience there is no place for it to go but with you. Experience is the fact of our existence as sentient beings, and experience is the only thing that we truly possess. Some have said that experience is actually what we are, but it is obvious that if were no timeless empty vessel, the shifting iridescent pool of time we know as experience could not exist. If there were no clay there could be no bowl.

All physical possessions, all emotional bonds, all pleasure and all pain, reduce in the soul of being to states of experience. Experience is the taste of being midst the flux of the meaning-saturated gestalt. Some say the ultimate mechanics of experience are, and will remain, wholly mysterious; but since it is us, it is merely an exercise in self discovery. What could be simpler!

One of the great and beautiful mysteries of life is the gift that individual beings have to shape and to cultivate patterns of personal experience. For this reason a single event presents different experience in different participants. We bring to experience the colors of our being and paint such meaning as we are able. Conversely experience shapes us in an endless feedback loop that in its best-case spirals toward cosmic maturation.

We often meet, in the difficult times in which we find ourselves, a tragic misappropriation of experience: a misappropriation responsible for most of the appalling grief made inevitable by beings in whom the mind rules experience rather than experience existing as the articulator of the mind.

Hunter Gatherer and the Moral Imperative

2007-04-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

Let's consider what categories of instinctual inclination the hunter-gatherer animal must possess if it is to survive, if only to inquire about the placement of those primitive imperatives in these august days of advanced civilization. It seems to me obvious that an inherent aptitude for recognizing opportunity in the broadest possible sense of the word must be an inevitably survival enhancing trait. And we must add that the exploitation of its environment is the only path of survival open to any organism. These attributes seem self evident. It is certainly obvious that the human creature is inherently adapted to self-serving exploitation of its environment. “Self serving exploitation of environment” could manifest as tilling a garden or robbing a liquor store. What make criminal behavior "criminal" is it's effects in the lives of others.

Empathy is not a subset of “self serving exploitation of environment”. Empathy is the spontaneous apprehension of oneself in another.

Some men rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.

Democracy and the Rise of Fundamentalism

2007-04-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

These days, when the word “democracy” is spoken in hushed religious tones, it is well to remember the founding fathers of the United States designed a republic with inherent checks against the politically unsophisticated masses. When reading “The Communist Manifesto” it is well to ask if there is any reason to expect a government of and by the proletariat to be better than the bourgeoisie at resisting the corrosive temptations of power. And when Lenin stated that religion was the opiate of the masses he meant not that it brought euphoria, but that religion soothed the pain of unpleasant social realities with an anodyne of imaginings.

An unpleasant side effect of the right and proper social leveling that we are experiencing today is a degree of grass roots hostility toward intellectuals and objectivity. No one would expect the mathematical ability of the median individual to match that of a professor of mathematics. But in the field of public discourse one opinion must formally be accorded the same weight as the next with no recourse to any scale of reality. Belief is accorded the same weight as knowledge, and if I think two and two make five a serious discussion of the matter is in order.

This is a deplorable situation and perhaps irremediable. Confusion and presumption and the ensuing chaos will have to play themselves out. And if humanity survives its planetary adolescence we can expect some semblance of maturity to emerge of its own accord.

Keep your seat belt buckled.

Lore, Legend, Myth: the Evil Yes-Man

2007-03-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

Let us set aside hocus-pocus of every stripe, and talk about Soul and Spirit. Soul and Spirit are not the property of religious descriptions of reality: Soul and Spirit are perceived aspects of being that must be accounted for in even secular myth building. What is the existential nature of the Soul? What is it within us that we discover and then notice as our very own “Soul”? Taking the human animal as we find it, Soul is a haze of potential latent in the human mind. The capacity for love and loathing, for desire and distain, the inclination to be and not to be, all yearnings to and fro rise from the latent potential which is the Soul. Like a trout rises to the fly or flees a shadow in response to perceived configurations in the field of reality; so is the nature of the Soul. That the Soul does not choose to rise: that it is drawn, and that it does not choose what to find attractive, any awakened consciousness will discover for itself.

Spirit is the element of being which determines our response to the voice of the Soul. Everything the Soul is capable of is not attractive to a given Spirit: not every inclination will engage our will. And it is here, in the nature of our willing, that the Spirit displays itself. As an example let’s take sex. It is the soul that is the repository of the sexual inclination, and then it is the Spirit that determines how sex is configured in our lives. And any apparent maturation of the Soul is the result of the Soul consigning itself to the will of an awakening Spirit. This is the story told in the fable of “The Ten Bulls” that we find in Buddhist lore.

So the Soul and the Spirit could be considered organs of mentation. And mentation here need not be confined to the kind of supposed intentional thinking we find in humans. Unless we are ready to dismiss lower animal behavior as a matrix of tropisms it is obvious that they too posses these organs of mentation. It is certainly obvious that they experience joy and suffering; and if this joy and suffering reduces to tropism, what does that say about human suffering and what does that imply about that in our selves to which we say yes or no? And what is it in the creature that possesses the yes-no imprimatur?

Which brings us to the question of good and evil. The soul is an iridescent haze of potentiality. There is no evil that is not private good. It is all about that to which we say "YES".

The Invisible Man Delivers Pizza to a Mannequin

2007-03-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

Reality is unitary and seamless. Throughout history those with some intuitive understanding of the fabric of reality have had to resort to metaphor and to parsing in order to transmit to others something of what to them is obvious. There exist myriad systems that claim to have the inside track on the real thing. Some systems are thousands of years old and some are proudly nouveau. But every one of them is simply a different way of slicing up the same Cosmic Pizza. One slices a pizza to make it manageable: possible to consume with some degree of order. All systems from Vajrayana to Ekankar to Catholicism make the same claim with regard to revelation of reality. There is only one Cosmic Pizza and though it can be sliced into a jigsaw puzzle, it cannot be made more or less than what it is; and while the best of these systems have genuine technical advantages over an unconsidered view, the worst of these systems could be described as “The Emperor’s New Pizza.” Not to make light of these things, but none of these systems are anything other than a useful technology for slicing the same Cosmic Pizza and for noticing how it is put together. Systems that are wholly inventive are wholly useless at best, and wholly dangerous at worst.

Which brings us to the Invisible Man. We cannot see the Invisible Man because he is invisible. But if we dress him up: presto, there he is. So another way of considering the system thing is as the Invisible Man's tailor. Be the garments simple or garish, no matter how you dress him up the Invisible Man is just as he is. And heaven forbid that we should touch the naked form. I, being a ploddingly typical male, find myself preferring the Invisible Woman in Lycra.

And then again the system thing is like dressing a department store mannequin. Of course the clothes fit! In the best of cases whatever the style, the cloth is cut to favor the figure. In the worst of cases the figure is merely a format for a flight of couture fancy. But in the beginning and in the end there is only one Cosmic Pizza, and the Invisible Man is just as he is, and the department store mannequin is unchanged no matter how you dress her up.

Reality is unitary and seamless.

Satori

2007-01-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

It is best when discussing reality to avoid romanticized terms. Mysterious meanings are detrimental to productive discourse, and words buggered by generations of dilettantes and poseurs are difficult to use effectively. Though it often seems those who use the word “enlightenment” should have their mouths washed out with soap, it must be admitted that satori is a factual potential in the repertoire of human experience.

Followed back far enough the word Zen translates roughly to meditation. But the fact of Zen as it exists is predicated upon an event known as satori, and it is satori that has historically given Zen its unique flavor in the chocolate shop of spiritual discipline.

Satori is not the property of Zen. It is not unheard of that epiphanies of seismic proportions occur in minds that have never heard the word “satori”, never considered courting enlightenment, and in minds that couldn't care less. The thread upon which enlightenment events are strung is preparation. Preparation might be willed or unwilled, negative or positive, solitary confinement or consummate freedom: preparation is the first requisite. But a properly kindled stove needs the right spark: satori is a spontaneous event that no amount of preparation can provoke on its own. The laid up fire is a reasonable analogy. Kindling and heat-wood may sit unlit until the sun explodes: a spark is necessary. Any element inadequate, and an entire box of matches will not suffice. Soggy wood and the kindling flares briefly and in vain. Insufficient kindling and the once in a lifetime spark sparks in vain: blah, blah, blah.

The event resembles a river that in flooding cuts a new, very real, simpler course through its erstwhile meandering path. Thought travels shorter distances to traverse the same territory. Mind infuses a human vehicle, and is found identified with all that the brain requires of “human experience.” Mind in a dog is trapped in a dog experience: there is Mind, there is dog; there is dog mind. There is a bird brain in a bird, and therefore a bird mind. It is rare, but it does happen in humans, that Mind experiences something like an alignment of normally opposing polarizing lenses and the light (there all along) floods through.

Satori is is not technically a spiritual opening: satori is a physical change in the way the brain is inhabited by Mind.

The Quality of Mercy

2007-01-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Mercy is a human quality that may exist as psychological tropism, which is to say as a spontaneous reaction to the experience of empathy. Perhaps this explains the behavior of the merciless, if so it would justify their elimination from the gene pool. The quality of mercy is one of mankind’s few redeeming features, and it would be a very good thing if it were consciously cultivated in our children in place of the current cultivation of the competitive imperative. Almost everywhere we see something good happening as a product of human intent, mercy is a quality of that goodness. And everyday the news is dominated by the behavior of the merciless.

Compassion is an experience, empathy is an emotion; mercy is an act. Mercy is an exercise of will in intended beneficence. And outside of mercy entering into the cumulative will of human-kind our children are assured to inherit a hell world.

Dignity and Posture

2007-01-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

Much remarkable work is being done today in the study of animal social dynamics. The dynamic of these interactions includes more than just inter-specie behavior, for intra-specie transactions are the very stuff of which ecosystems are woven. Human social dynamics resemble more the “intra” than the “inter” when it comes to specie watching; for amongst us, the lions and the water buffalo exist in analogue full-fledged configuration (not to mix a metaphor), and pecking orders exist intra and inter. The ins and outs of who can dis whom and with what degree of subtlety differ not in kind or quality in the human being than any barnyard or pristine jungle animal. We see it everywhere in every social circumstance: in church, in business, on the highways, and in the interactions between alleged “friends.” Almost everywhere we look we find a dearth of genuine self-importance, and a maneuvering for limited resources of social position. It is as much a part of the human animal as breathing, and as unpleasant to deal with as walking barefoot through a feedlot. We can count ourselves lucky if in our lives there exists a small handful of people in whose presence we do not have to be on guard. It seems to me posturing is so germane to the human creature that it is inter-specie invisible, and were it not for "manners" and mechanical acquiescence to social convention the Hieronymus-Boschian reality would be apparent to even the most hoplessly occluded. It is as if leg-humping dogs were so ubiquitous as to be accepted, and therefore not entering into notice. We find our place in this fray to our weal or our woe taking it all personally, and if by some unfortunate surfeit of awareness we should recognize the movement we are still trapped in its sway.

It has to do with a fragile sense of dignity, and a primitive territorial imperative. If we do not take up the space that is properly our own someone else most certainly will, and if we do not extend to others the dignity of their own confusion then there can be no dignity at all.

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Getting by in Buzzard Land

In lieu of conversation
The sound of concomitant rending
Tearing
Of some dead thing

There is no malice
This is just what buzzards do
And is the result and intent of their dramatic overview

If you wish to be left alone in buzzard land
Merely demonstrate that you’re alive

If you wish to get close to one
Play dead

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Toward a Theory of Mind

2007-01-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

It seems quite remarkable that so little is known about Mind. We have the science of psychology, and we have the recent ability to observe electrical activities in the brain; but nothing is known considering the fact of experience. The fact that photons striking the optic nerve result in what is known as sight, the fact that shock waves propagating through atmosphere result in the creaturely experience known as sound; these (and all) elements of what is known as experience are wholly mysterious.

It seems to me that experience implies an experiencing matrix. There are conflicting religious doctrines about souls and such, but there is the obvious fact that were there not an experience generative event exhibiting singlularity that was somewhat motionless in the flux of time, there could be no point of reference about which an experience could accrue. I think that this “motionless in time” feature is a place to look for what we can know about mind simply because it is self evident.

Time seems to be the invention of Mind. The event that is the existence of the universe appears to be a seething present of accidental inevitable elements possessing trajectories. Trajectories make the universe predictable if a mind exists to do the math, but outside of Mind there is just the fact of existence with no past, present, or future: and therefore no meaning. Meaning is a temporal event that can only be generated from the outside; which is to say from a standpoint of relative motionlessness vis-à-vis the trajectory-bound non-moment of now.

One difficulty in the quest for a theory of Mind is the complication presented by the human nature of the mind that would busy itself with such pointless trivialities. It is natural that human-ness would be invisible to the human mind, for otherwise, as in the classic millipede story, normal activity would require more conscious regulation than is conceivable. At the same time here we have place to start. Can it be otherwise than that human-ness is something that happens to Mind because of Mind’s existence in a human brain? The brain is a physical form necessitating, which is to say making inevitable, certain forms of experiencing; this includes intellectual, emotional and physical experiencing. These experiencings are “I feel” for the individual mind: but for it’s existence the experience could not be made inevitable.

We are postulating mind not as a spiritual property, but Mind as an inevitable epiphenomenona of certain material arrangements that perhaps “wake-up” space or something: hell, I don’t know.

The Necessity of Joy

2006-12-13T12:44:00.000-08:00

The natural state of any creature is joy. I say this not from a standpoint of speculation or attribution but from the standpoint of having lived my life in the midst of nature. From earliest childhood I grew up hunting. But when as an adult I came to live with the forest creatures I had to give it up; having recognized the horrors that my simple pleasure wrought in their already complex existence. I even launched an attempt to live in peaceful coexistence with the mice and the wood rats, but alas there was a failure to communicate.

The more obvious examples of animal joy are accessible to anyone: the gamboling calf, the rough tumbling of a puppy, the kitten with its ball of yarn. What about the caterpillar on its twig or the snake basking in the sun? There is no sense in quibbling about degrees or demarcations, for we will soon find ourselves arguing about whether or not they have souls. As for me, it is self evident that life is not only conducive to joy, but feeds on joy. And though sorrow may reduce to a separate state it, is most certainly a deficit of joy. There is some thin ice here, and it is not my intention to delve into brain chemistry or socio-pathology: I merely wish to hold up as fundamental the inclination of all creatures great and small to joy, and to point out that was not joy the natural inclination, sorrow would be no burden. The earthworm on the drying sidewalk; the unfortunate human trekker lost in some vast desert: I posit that the distress differs neither in kind nor quality nor volume by weight.

Whether or not the inner configuration we know as joy is familiar to the rabbit and to the wolf is perhaps an open question, but that circumstances can obliterate any creaturely access to joy is beyond question. It is also beyond question that untold millions of human beings lead joyless lives. Joyless because limitations of environment assure that it will be so. Elaborate studies have been done with rats. It has been shown that at certain levels of population pressure a cornucopia of otherwise unknown antisocial behavior emerges in laboratory populations: and this in circumstances of ample food and water.

Gender Issues

2006-12-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

A quiet revolution is taking place as we speak. Advances made in the ability to look into the physical-electrical activity of the brain are about to put a great deal of the nature-nurture question to rest: and of course the answer to the question is yes.

With regard to the physio-psychological implications of gender it has been found that our brains are at least as different as our bodies. And as someone who has been married three times, I cannot imagine that this should come as a surprise to anyone.

Integral calculus is not the issue here: we are not in any way talking about intellectual ability, or moral rigor or matters related in anyway to the dignity of individuals. It strains credulity to declare that there exist no Darwinian stumbling blocks in the gender minefield, and science is just about to take the guesswork out of the argument. The differences in our bodies are a clear study in Darwinian differentiation, and there is every reason to expect that these differentiations include configurations of the brain that predispose an individual to this nuance, or that, in the realm of problem solving. And it also seems to me that historically speaking, it is time for the Feminine to come to the fore.

A Word About Government

2006-12-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

There is no reason to tax ones intellectual sensitivities over questions of government systems or government styles. Governments of all persuations, left to their own devises, collapse from within due to the cumulative plying of advantage by individuals in positions of responsibility. The collective corruption of individuals is the greatest single threat to public well-being, and the best system that could be arranged for the conduct of civil affairs is one that provides checks against the private ambitions of public persons. Outside of this, any system will do that can get the mail delivered: which is to say that legitimate problem solving is the spontaneous domain of human genius, individually and collectively. But we can trust the process only if we can trust the processors, and realizing that public scrutiny will interfere with their personal agendas, the true enemies of freedom and justice are like cancers that do not oppose the body: they merely wish to feed upon it.

Vigorous openness is humanity's best hope. In such an environment political systems will find their rightful place as honest global sheepdogs.

Psychotropism and Soul

2006-11-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

As the means of seeing into workings of the brain become increasingly sophisticated we are apt to see a turf war between the caretakers of the soul and the pillars of science. It has recently been discovered that the absence of empathy sometimes displayed in autism is due to the lack of what have been termed “mirror neurons” in the brain. Mirror neuron is a name given to a category of brain response first noticed by experimenters upon monkeys. They found if one monkey performed certain simple behaviors that an observer monkey exhibited brain firing mirroring that of the performing monkey. A researcher whose field of study was autism wondered if a lack of mirror neurological activity might explain the absence of empathy found in some cases of autism. Subsequent experimentation determined this to be the case.

Might there be a bell curve of mirror neurological capacity with the likes of Mother Teresa at one end, autistic dysfunction at the other, and all the rest of us somewhere in between? If it were so it would certainly explain a great deal, and soon our instruments of experimentation will be sufficiently evolved to know. If it is so then empathy and compassion take their new place as emotional tropisms. And the same laboratory regimen used to make this determination would probably be sensitive enough to make the same kind of determination about sexual disposition, predisposition to violence, and a host of other personal oddities. If much of our vaunted individuality turns out to be as mechanical as a wristwatch, where does this leave self-determination and the soul?

Actually it puts the burden right where it should be. It’s not what we are; it is what we do with it.

Awakening the Intelligence

2006-11-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

There is a theory of language acquisition postulating that language is biologically constellated, and that words do not symbolize their referents. The implications of this view are: meaning is immanent and words become conduits of meaning by an imbued association acquired in the natural process of socialization. This seems an observation rather than a theory, and once understood it provides an opportunity to touch upon a fundamental property of intelligence.

From birth we are accustomed to forming observations into utterance, and through the vehicle of utterance we are able to convey such information as can be swaddled in words: made intelligible. But understanding is nonlinguistic, or perhaps better said: prelinguistic. And for all its efficacy, the habit of language predisposes the mind to live in words rather than meanings, and to consider that hearing words it has gotten meaning, and that framing words it has expressed facts. The innate intelligence that makes words inevitable is the substance of any power inherent in words, and context determines what is derived by the limitations of intelligence in any attempt at communication.

Be as they may, the implications of slicing time; it does not take language to build a clock. A large and very simple element of the awakening of the intelligence is the cultivation of the native prelingual comprehension of one's surroundings that is the foundation of normal waking consciousness.

Emptiness, Suchness, and the Meaning Saturated Gestalt

2006-11-20T03:37:00.000-08:00

The terms Emptiness and Suchness will be familiar to students of Eastern thought. Emptiness is not the emptiness of bucket or chair. The normal emptiness of bucket and chair is an element of Platonic Form, of which my understanding is that the essential necessity of an object's function is the truth of its universal form. This is a thought provoking view, but there is another school of thought considering all forms to be Empty. Suchness refers to the observation that things are radically just as they are.

Emptiness refers to the fact of existence: of thing: of all. No thing contains anything in the Platonic way. If we insist that a baseball contains horsehair, or that a can contains beans, we are right as far as that goes; but let us consider "object" in a consequence-free matrix. For a pig a bicycle is meaningless: the seat, the handlebars, the wheels; utterly without implications. For this pig the bicycle is Empty in the way the way we are trying to convey. All things are Empty. They couldn't contain anything if they wanted to. Mind fills them with content the same way water stays in a bucket: by law of accident. When this is recognized, things can be seen as they are.

Once we get our mind around the Emptiness thing, we are in a position to understand what is meant by Suchness. No thing can deviate from the fact of it's existence: every thing is simply the presence of it's being. Any and every thing is flawlessly just what it is. It is the perfect example of it's self, and is totally, and uniquely, and radically itself; even a grain of sand amongst a universe of seemingly identical fellows. This is Suchness, and Suchness is Empty.

Suchness and Emptiness by their very arch-reality are indifferent to human meaning, but only when we have an understanding of Emptiness and Suchness are we in a position to recognize that our existence takes place in a meaning-saturated gestalt.

Does a Dog have Buddha Nature?

hmmmm

Birth and Death

2006-10-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

The life that lives in you has been continuously alive since the miracle of the first replicating molecule. Through all the shifts and turns of evolution, through crash of comet and explosion of volcano, through times of feast and times of famine, through war and and in peace, that life has managed to split off a haploid cell to find its complement and press forward into the unfolding eternal now.

Now that’s a lot of responsibility.

Happy Halloween

2006-10-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

Though the emptiness of space within an individual atom vastly overawes the cumulative space occupied by protons, electrons, and neutrons; the world of our experience is one of hard facts. And in spite of the fact that all physical forms are comprised mostly of empty space, physical objects catastrophically fail to pass freely through one another. It has something to do with the rejection mechanism of like magnetic fields. And what about magnetic fields? They seem to pass freely in the fabric of space as an immaterial phenomenon: an immaterial phenomenon with influence that is widely utilized yet not understood. Consciousness has properties similar to magnetic fields. It shares with magnetism an apparent immaterialism that is dependent upon arrangements of matter. And like magnetic fields consciousness does not appear to have a granular structure. Consciousness seems dependent upon nervous systems, but I suspect that the fact of consciousness itself is one of space and not of matter in much the same manner as the magnetic field.

Using this vision of consciousness as a starting place: if we imagine the field phenomenon of the consciousness of any given creature, and then imagine away the physical structure that makes that consciousness inevitable, suddenly all creatures look remarkably alike…… kind of like a Halloween sheet-ghost. Chipmunks and elephants: a glowing nodule trailing a diaphanous gown.

All Nude, All the Time: Toward a Contemporary Gnosis

2006-09-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

In the scientific community it is standard practice to stand upon the pedestal of the known to get a peek at the yet unexposed lovely curves of what is real. And it is these successive peeks at naked reality taken from successive pedestals of established fact that have given us duct tape and automobiles. Science does not concern itself with the unknowable but rather uses the known as a tool to plot the form of the yet unexplored knowable. If something is real its existence cannot forever go unnoticed if we know how to look and have the necessary tools of examination. If we are curious about what is real, we must search about us from a known position and find what further step can be made, and so move from the known to the knowable: rather like a blind man with his stick tapping his way down an unfamiliar street. And like the blind man if we scorn the petty little red-tipped stick of what we truly and actually and honestly know, and boldly launch into the unknown leading with our imagination, tragedy of some sort is all but inevitable.

One of my favorites from the annals of ancient Zen is the statement “one should never speak of that about which no accurate pronouncement can be made.” This has an obscure but prescient relationship to a statement of my own invention concerning the all too human inclination to "pin the imaginary tail on the inconceivable donkey". A great deal of precious Reality is cast aside as humanity builds shrines to house the envelopes in which it came. We will never see the sunrise by looking west. The word “God” is not a dirty word, but our imaginings insulate us from facts. The ultimate nature of the fabric of existence is wholly mysterious and wholly present. It is not made more sacred or more responsive to our supplications, and in fact is distanced from the core of our personal being, when we paint a face upon it.

Fast Forward

2006-08-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

No one knows what matter is. Scientific theory provides reasonable hypotheses, and perhaps ultimate matter boils down to circular wiggles of empty space. Space cannot be devoid of properties if is capable of form, but that’s not the point. And what about the ambient pressure of the bang? Is it possible that like creatures in the depths of some cosmic ocean we have our being in an environment of intense pressure that we have no way of detecting because it is impenetrably ubiquitous? Whatever the yet undiscovered facts of the matter may be, we can say for sure that a haze of subatomic light-speed behavior is responsible for the plodding world of fishes and loaves in which we find ourselves.

Stacks of atoms. Everywhere we look we find mere stacks of atoms in those careless arrangements made inevitable as individual atoms attempt to fill outer electron shields by sharing electrons with some amenable fellow atom. These liaisons are more or less enduring according to the mutual benefit derived, and it is a simple flux of inevitability that gives us this or that molecular configuration. The mechanics of these goings on are so well understood that we now have huge factories that do nothing more (or less) than stack molecules to be pilled or bagged or boxed, and then shipped off to do their inevitable fluxing out there somewhere for the alleged benefit of all mankind. We know a lot about molecules. They are mere stacks of atoms.

But why then should a mere stack of atoms possess conscious awareness? And speaking of conscious awareness what is the nature of, say, sight? The vision of the forest that occurs in this mind as I look out through the forest has a real existence. What is the nature of its exsistence? Some have said that the immediate experience of a given mind is the only thing that it can claim with total certainty to be real. What's with that? But I digress. The question is: why should a mere stack of atoms possess conscious awareness (let alone life)? It has to be something about the way the atoms are stacked, because other than that we are looking at perfectly ordinary molecules. Perhaps it is a field phenomenon created by the behavior patterns of the shared electrons that hold the DNA molecule together. No one knows, but it is apparent that life must somehow inhere in matter.

Plant-animal distinctions start at the level of single-celled life forms. And though these distinctions are sometimes hazy there exist unambiguous examples of what seems to be volition on the part of one-celled creatures. I suppose we could describe the amoeba’s “catch and consume” behavior as a tropism thing or some such; but the fact remains it does not notice, pursue, and consume it’s prey by accident. Primitive nerve systems seem to be the facilitators of awareness and not the progenitors. Fast forward to the human brain.