(no subject)
I packed my bag and a small lunch and the two books I'm reading and had a lovely drive up to the Peace Pagoda. The air was much cooler up there but not so cool that I felt odd in my shorts and tank top. I sunned myself on a flat rock and watched the ants bother the dragonflies. I listened to the bullfrogs sound like the kind of music "yoga" tapes have on them. I watched a caterpillar and thought about conditional arising and interdependence - how that animal will totally liquify and form a completely new form.
Mind-body dualism, ex nihilo creation, nihilism, realism and other concepts that will generate no real answers. The birthless mind, the laws that cannot be taught but must be "seen".
There is neither a painting in the mind
Nor a mind in the painting
And yet, where else can one find a painting
Than in the mind?
How unnecessary a "beginning" is.
How the idea of Creator possessing all the causes and all the effects can only be realized if you maintain that everything was already there.
What a "space" looks like.
It is relative to all things. Its form is emptiness yet its emptiness is not an immutable property.
I thought about the nested heirarchy of science and empericism. Chaos theory, string theory, quantum mechanics, local variables, the distinction between a cause and its effect. The percieved continuity of linear time, the idea of tachyons and universes outside our own. The only thing we do directly perceive: ideas. The unbroken process of causality.
Buddhism's emptiness versus energy-filled vacuums. Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia politely calling Descartes out in correspondence, asking how the mind and the body could communicate. Laughing at the idea of the pineal gland governing conciousness. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne's fun outfits, poems about atoms and her pansychism.
Thinking hard about my own mind training.
A fly was really really bothering me. I'm not going to lie and make it sould more elegant than it was. I stood up and was distracted by a butterfly. Only then did I hear the bells chiming time for prayer and started slowly wandering over. A monk in jeans and a yellow camp counselor t-shirt was unloading those really, really heavy old metal folding chairs, two by two, from a van parked in front of the temple into the temple. The van had the seats removed and the entire back was full of those chairs. I asked if I could help and he said yes!
I Have to go to the gym now to destroy my legs. I'll write more later.
Mind-body dualism, ex nihilo creation, nihilism, realism and other concepts that will generate no real answers. The birthless mind, the laws that cannot be taught but must be "seen".
There is neither a painting in the mind
Nor a mind in the painting
And yet, where else can one find a painting
Than in the mind?
How unnecessary a "beginning" is.
How the idea of Creator possessing all the causes and all the effects can only be realized if you maintain that everything was already there.
What a "space" looks like.
It is relative to all things. Its form is emptiness yet its emptiness is not an immutable property.
I thought about the nested heirarchy of science and empericism. Chaos theory, string theory, quantum mechanics, local variables, the distinction between a cause and its effect. The percieved continuity of linear time, the idea of tachyons and universes outside our own. The only thing we do directly perceive: ideas. The unbroken process of causality.
Buddhism's emptiness versus energy-filled vacuums. Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia politely calling Descartes out in correspondence, asking how the mind and the body could communicate. Laughing at the idea of the pineal gland governing conciousness. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne's fun outfits, poems about atoms and her pansychism.
Thinking hard about my own mind training.
A fly was really really bothering me. I'm not going to lie and make it sould more elegant than it was. I stood up and was distracted by a butterfly. Only then did I hear the bells chiming time for prayer and started slowly wandering over. A monk in jeans and a yellow camp counselor t-shirt was unloading those really, really heavy old metal folding chairs, two by two, from a van parked in front of the temple into the temple. The van had the seats removed and the entire back was full of those chairs. I asked if I could help and he said yes!
I Have to go to the gym now to destroy my legs. I'll write more later.