Posted on August 28, 2018
Zen and Interdependence
Interdependence is a zen concept that frowns upon the tendency of our minds to isolate. You cannot see the flower without seeing the stem. The leaves are the flower and the ground is where the flower grows. The air is what the flower breathes. All are parts of the planet. All part of the galaxy, part of the Universe.
I’m in the process of reading the third book of what I might conclude is a trilogy. Although they are distinct subjects, they all intersect. I started with Joseph Campbell’s “Primitive Mythology” . Just finished Daniel Dennett’s “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” and have just started Reich’s, “Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past”. All of these books linked by consciousness, more specifically, origins of consciousness, which I am finding is the origins of culture.
Anatomically modern humans, progressing from the middle paleolithic, one step removed from the ape-man, then traveling to distant planets in more or less 50,000 years. This is not the work of genetics and natural selection producing a super organism. 50,000 years is not a long time in the scheme of things. This is a collective effort by human generations, over scores of millennia, infusing the brain with personalities and ideas which give us a sense of self.
Max Tegmark from Closer to Truth: “The subjective experience that we call consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways.” It is the sound of one hand clapping.
FollowPosted on August 21, 2018
Zen Maybe?
In examining consciousness there are parallels concerning Eastern thought such as Zen and modern philosophy of consciousness based on Western scientific discoveries. I’ve been reading Daniel Dennett’s “From Bacteria to Bach and Back.” There are passages in the book that seem to be from Zen teachings:
“If we, our selves, were all “just” part of each other’s user-illusions, wouldn’t that imply that, really, life has no meaning? No. The manifest image that has been cobbled together by genetic evolutionary processes over billions of years, and by cultural evolutionary processes over thousands of years, is an extremely sophisticated system of helpful metaphorical renderings of the underlying reality uncovered in the scientific image. It is a user -illusion that we are so adept at using that we take it to be unvarnished reality, when in fact it has many intervening coats of interpretive varnish on it.” – Dennett
And Then
“What is more, if you are so foolhardy as to doubt the reality of this master, you bind yourself though you use no rope. However much you try to know it through logical reasoning or to name or call it, you are doomed to failure. And even though all of you becomes one mass of questioning as you turn inward and intently search the very core of your being, you will find nothing that can be termed Mind or Essence. Yet should someone call your name, something from within will hear and respond. Find out this instant who it is!” – Bassui Tokusho from The Daily Zen
Posted on August 14, 2018
Truth is Beauty
Zen is about suchness. East and West do find common ground.
In “Ode on a Greecian Urn”, John Keats says:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Robert Pirsig echoes Keats in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he writes, “Is quality a part of Greek thought?” With the answer being: “Quality is every part of Greek thought.”
Pirsig then goes on to talk about building a wall, a quality wall, straight and true. It is the quality of the construction that gives the wall its integrity. Yet the quality also lends an aesthetic dimension to the wall. The uniformity of the courses of bricks, the spacing of the vertical joints, the elements that give the wall strength also contributes to a certain beauty. It looks right to us because it adheres to the law of physics and chemistry and thermodynamics.
In “Ode”, the Truth Keats reference is the true nature of things, suchness. Pirsig goes on to say quality is a method to achieve Truth. And so one might write, “(A method to achieve truth) is every part of Greek thought”. Hence, Keat’s truth and beauty of the Grecian urn.
Posted on August 1, 2018
Entropy: Life’s Creator
This is a Google Talk by physicist Sean Carroll. I’ve edited it down a bit. Life, it turns out, is a function of entropy. I would try to offer a synopsis of what this is all about but It’s better to watch Dr Carroll explain
Posted on February 16, 2018
I Am the Yin and the Yang
I’m reading Frank MacHovec’s book, “Light from the East”. Included in the section about the Tao Te Ching was an excerpt from chapter 16:
“When distracted return to nature. Returning to nature is to find inner harmony.”
I found a similar translation on another website:
“Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.”
There is a misunderstanding by some, of the word “nature”, as it relates to Eastern Philosophy. Many believe that it relates to what is natural. And indeed it does, but not in the sense of the birds and the bees and the trees. Instead it describes the essence of what a person is, what is natural to being human – a stripped down version of the mental “self” as a physical process of the brain. You’re not supposed to be getting in touch with nature. You are supposed to be getting in touch with your nature. The point is not to commune with the flora and fauna of the woods and the fields, the point is to move past the distraction of your perceived reality and focus on the essence.
There is often an attempt at using escapism to simulate exploring one’s nature:
If I’m away from the hustle and bustle of civilization, I can get in touch with “myself”. But “myself” is the delusion. Duality is a trickster. How can I get in touch with the person that is me? I am the yin and the yang.
“I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together” …The Beatles
