September 30, 2006 | 09:12 PM
Am I speaking of Death ?
Lu asked : You speak of a limbo with no structure and context as frightening. Maybe it is frightening because, as you said, we cannot leave our structures and obligations behind. If we did not have such ties we would have no problem. Then we would find "true happiness"? Are you speaking of death?
Perhaps Lu, I am speaking of Death, but not as Death as an end, for in our mind even death is context by which we view life ...
First, what is 'no structure and context' frightening to ? It is frightening to the mind and to the ego. For the Ego cannot survive without context. And if are able to seperate our selves between 'me the ego' and 'me the observer of my ego' then we can observe how frightened the ego, (or lets give it the name 'mind') is when you take away context and structure. That is the battle though. The battle to be able to seperate the 'I' and the observer of the 'I', both of them being the correlation between your mind and your consciousness. And the understanding of ' who is the observer' of the 'I' ? Is the observer also the mind, or does the observer sit outside the mind ? Is that what we call consciosness.
Death ? I am not talking about the passing away of life. I am speaking of the ability to come out of the mind as an observer within this existence of what we percieve as life . But that is another discussion. For if there is no concept of linear time, then there is no passage of time between Birth and Death. They happen at exactly the same moment in Time and Space. And then if that is true, then they exist not in any particular space or time, but in eternity.
You exist (not existed) before your percieved birth, and after your percieved death, and the perception of your birth and death exist in a continual eternal existence.
True happiness ? That is also a play of the mind and the ego. Perhaps we should be talking about true happiness in context of harmony with the Tandav Dance of Shiva. In my next post I will put forward the ideas of the Tandav dance of Shiva,
shekhar
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Doubt ! part 2
September 26, 2006 | 06:16 AM
Doubt ! part 2
Lu asked me : I do not understand your allusion to courage--why should it take courage to see the suspension of time? I do not see it as frightening or dangerous. What if instead of chaos we find absolute tranquillity?
Lu, everyone has ther own experience, and I have no doubt that you will find tranquility if u can 'live' in the experience of 'no time'. And perhaps you ahve explored much more than I have, though I have explored a bit more in the 5 years since I wrote that piece on Doubt.
I refer to chaos as the first step to giving up living inside structure. Inside contexts. After all we always refer to ourselves in the context of something else. We imagine ourselves always in context of something else, and we mostly are consumed by our lives in the context of time.
I watched as my daughter who is now 6 years old struggle to come to terms with the 'adult' concept of time. And ofcourse we 'adults' imposed it upon her. We celebrated her birthday every year, once a year. and while she thoroughly enjoyed each birthday, she could nto comprehend that the celebrations came only once a year. Why not celebrate everyday ?
More than that, the question in her mind was always " How old was I before I was one ?" How old was I before before I was zero ? These questions to me at first semed those of a mind coming to grips with the real world, till I realized that they were questions trying to come to grips with a world as adults saw it. In terms of linear time.
So back to your question about Chaos. I often see the universe in terms of the Tandav dance of Shiva, which in Hinduism is the random dance of creation and destruction and then creation again. Continious, seamless and eternal. Like the ocean, with countless waves forming and destructing at the same time.
How random is the Dance of Shiva ? I guess so random that it is impossible to find a pattern, a structure to it. It is impossible to learn it. But if you throw out the very idea of structure, throw out the very idea of patterns, and become one with Shiva, you will perhaps be in harmony with the dance.
I guess my struggle has been to drop the idea of stucture, and have the courage to believe that there is no context, no 'given' as it were. A kind of a limbo that can be pretty frightening to an ego driven mind that needs me to believe in contexts by which to define myself.
So that is the first step of 'Chaos' that I speak of - and then to step off into the abyss, into the void, into a space that has nothing to hold on to, that is what needs courage.
shekhar
Doubt ! part 2
Lu asked me : I do not understand your allusion to courage--why should it take courage to see the suspension of time? I do not see it as frightening or dangerous. What if instead of chaos we find absolute tranquillity?
Lu, everyone has ther own experience, and I have no doubt that you will find tranquility if u can 'live' in the experience of 'no time'. And perhaps you ahve explored much more than I have, though I have explored a bit more in the 5 years since I wrote that piece on Doubt.
I refer to chaos as the first step to giving up living inside structure. Inside contexts. After all we always refer to ourselves in the context of something else. We imagine ourselves always in context of something else, and we mostly are consumed by our lives in the context of time.
I watched as my daughter who is now 6 years old struggle to come to terms with the 'adult' concept of time. And ofcourse we 'adults' imposed it upon her. We celebrated her birthday every year, once a year. and while she thoroughly enjoyed each birthday, she could nto comprehend that the celebrations came only once a year. Why not celebrate everyday ?
More than that, the question in her mind was always " How old was I before I was one ?" How old was I before before I was zero ? These questions to me at first semed those of a mind coming to grips with the real world, till I realized that they were questions trying to come to grips with a world as adults saw it. In terms of linear time.
So back to your question about Chaos. I often see the universe in terms of the Tandav dance of Shiva, which in Hinduism is the random dance of creation and destruction and then creation again. Continious, seamless and eternal. Like the ocean, with countless waves forming and destructing at the same time.
How random is the Dance of Shiva ? I guess so random that it is impossible to find a pattern, a structure to it. It is impossible to learn it. But if you throw out the very idea of structure, throw out the very idea of patterns, and become one with Shiva, you will perhaps be in harmony with the dance.
I guess my struggle has been to drop the idea of stucture, and have the courage to believe that there is no context, no 'given' as it were. A kind of a limbo that can be pretty frightening to an ego driven mind that needs me to believe in contexts by which to define myself.
So that is the first step of 'Chaos' that I speak of - and then to step off into the abyss, into the void, into a space that has nothing to hold on to, that is what needs courage.
shekhar
Doubt !
September 26, 2006 | 01:15 AM
Doubt !
Here is one of the more frighteniing conversations with the Astrophysicist, Piet Hut (which I am serializing in The Film maker and the Astrophisicist blog ) : From: Shekhar Kapur, Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001, To: Piet Hut : You Said : < Needless to say, IF linear time is not real, then a realization of that fact makes one a more effective player in alleged linear time; just like you can only be an effective film director if you realize that a film is not real -- which doesn't mean it is arbitrary. >>
Dear Peit :
I am going a different way : I still want to see (because I imagine everything as a picture) - time like a little canary in a cage : caged by us - therefore I look and say :
" this is a Canary in the cage - and that is the reality" The cage is my mind - and the canary a way of making time absolute. In my mind I open the cage - and the bird fies away and just in one whoosh disappears - as if there was nothing else.
I have to destroy the cage and throw myself into chaos. I have to understand that I am not caged by time - but time is caged by me interms of a linear concept - I would rather go this left field way because it forces me to completely think chaotically. Like the bird represents a spirit - and time is actuall a free spirit. But gentle and soft and ethereal.
Time is Space : Free flowing like God. Time is God. That is the unknown dimension - GOD/TIME/SPACE - I know that in my bones - but my mind must force itself through the pain of logic - I must put my mind through absolute chaos and put it in self destruct - and the only way is chaotic thinking - not to allow it to to hang it's coat on any peg.
I know that at the end there is light. But the the tunnel is dark and dangerous - and for those without courage may get lost in the tunnel - and destruct everything without understanding.
No, not understanding, but - without experiencing.
A half a Buddha is perhaps worse than someone enclosed in Maya.
Lets keep up these conversations - I do not have to totally understand what u say - nor do you, I guess. But as long as we keep questioning each other - there will be at some points of time a coming together - a synchronization - and then like a wave - disbelief and questioning again.
shekhar
Doubt !
Here is one of the more frighteniing conversations with the Astrophysicist, Piet Hut (which I am serializing in The Film maker and the Astrophisicist blog ) : From: Shekhar Kapur, Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001, To: Piet Hut : You Said : < Needless to say, IF linear time is not real, then a realization of that fact makes one a more effective player in alleged linear time; just like you can only be an effective film director if you realize that a film is not real -- which doesn't mean it is arbitrary. >>
Dear Peit :
I am going a different way : I still want to see (because I imagine everything as a picture) - time like a little canary in a cage : caged by us - therefore I look and say :
" this is a Canary in the cage - and that is the reality" The cage is my mind - and the canary a way of making time absolute. In my mind I open the cage - and the bird fies away and just in one whoosh disappears - as if there was nothing else.
I have to destroy the cage and throw myself into chaos. I have to understand that I am not caged by time - but time is caged by me interms of a linear concept - I would rather go this left field way because it forces me to completely think chaotically. Like the bird represents a spirit - and time is actuall a free spirit. But gentle and soft and ethereal.
Time is Space : Free flowing like God. Time is God. That is the unknown dimension - GOD/TIME/SPACE - I know that in my bones - but my mind must force itself through the pain of logic - I must put my mind through absolute chaos and put it in self destruct - and the only way is chaotic thinking - not to allow it to to hang it's coat on any peg.
I know that at the end there is light. But the the tunnel is dark and dangerous - and for those without courage may get lost in the tunnel - and destruct everything without understanding.
No, not understanding, but - without experiencing.
A half a Buddha is perhaps worse than someone enclosed in Maya.
Lets keep up these conversations - I do not have to totally understand what u say - nor do you, I guess. But as long as we keep questioning each other - there will be at some points of time a coming together - a synchronization - and then like a wave - disbelief and questioning again.
shekhar
Is this where my father resided ?
September 18, 2006 | 02:51 AM
Is this where my father resided ?
As I lit my father's funeral pyre and watched the flames consume his body, the priest handed me a long bamboo pole. To puncture the skull. To release his spirit, he said, but also the skull has a tendency to explode..
And then the unthinkable happened. The wood fell away and I watched as the exposed white fatty tissue of the brain began to bubble and melt in the intense heat. I called my sister to watch with me. Is this where my father resided, I asked ? In this piece of tissue ? Is this where his mind existed ? The mind of one of the best known peadraticians in India ? Is this where his passion, compassion and warmth for all the little children who's life he devoted to saving existed ? Excuse me for not using the word soul, though I am so tempted to.
And is this where his love for his own children existed ? For me and you ? And with the brain extinguishing into flames, does that love no longer exist ?
And what about me ? Is that who I oved really ? That brain ? Was that the sum total of my father ?
Or is the truth something else. That the mind does not reside in the brain. That emotions do not reside in the mind. That that which we call love and memory and emotion exists in a realm beyond the physical body. More then just synapses of neurons that express themselves through chemical reactions
shekhar
Is this where my father resided ?
As I lit my father's funeral pyre and watched the flames consume his body, the priest handed me a long bamboo pole. To puncture the skull. To release his spirit, he said, but also the skull has a tendency to explode..
And then the unthinkable happened. The wood fell away and I watched as the exposed white fatty tissue of the brain began to bubble and melt in the intense heat. I called my sister to watch with me. Is this where my father resided, I asked ? In this piece of tissue ? Is this where his mind existed ? The mind of one of the best known peadraticians in India ? Is this where his passion, compassion and warmth for all the little children who's life he devoted to saving existed ? Excuse me for not using the word soul, though I am so tempted to.
And is this where his love for his own children existed ? For me and you ? And with the brain extinguishing into flames, does that love no longer exist ?
And what about me ? Is that who I oved really ? That brain ? Was that the sum total of my father ?
Or is the truth something else. That the mind does not reside in the brain. That emotions do not reside in the mind. That that which we call love and memory and emotion exists in a realm beyond the physical body. More then just synapses of neurons that express themselves through chemical reactions
shekhar
Rationalising or fooling yourself ?
September 10, 2006 | 03:17 PM
Rationalising or fooling yourself ?
"Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective."
yes absolutely, raviswamy, our five senses in their limitations need to reduce perception to rationalize our understanding of the world we inhabit...
So we give everything a begining, and an end. We see time linearily. And then we spend our lives wondering and being afraid of the event called Death, because we have decided the universe exists in beginings and ends, in events separated in time/space. The question we should be really asking is "if the event of Birth never happened, then how can Death happen ? Or is my Birth and my Death continious even as I write ?
What I keep struggling with is why we need to reduce everything to a point where we need to rationalize it. Why do we need to rationalize ? It seems purposeless, but then of course it is difficult to find any purpose in this world. The only purpose we have ever seem to have found is in imposed 'morality'. But the Universe is neither moral nor immoral. It's amoral.
I do not believe we are born with an addiction to only the 5 senses. We acquire the ability to shut ourselves out of anything that does not fall into the perception of an increasingly limited rationalistic world. That's modernism. Logic.
My daughter at 4 was extremely comfortable with the idea that Angels existed and at the same time did not. She saw no difference between the logical world and the illogical one. To her the connection between what she saw and what she imagined was not contradictory. But now at 6, with her going to school she is already getting trained to ignore that which cannot be touched, seen, heard or smelled,
Consequently she is less and less comfortable with her emotional life, as myth and imagination are played down in schooling. But the do not go away do they ? They bubble up in the most unexpected ways. And sometimes dangerous ways. You and I are coming to terms with our loss of universal percepton by arguing out right now through words.
Buddhism says that at the root of all human suffering is Desire. I do not dispute that. For Desire only arises out of a misunderstanding of Time/Space continuum. How can I desire something unless I see the object of desire as something seperated from me in time/space. But even Quantum Physics now reveal that all such seperation is not real fact, but is assumed fact through the act of observation by the observer.
What i want Buddhism to explain to me is the purpose of Desire, if there is one. Procreation of the species? is that all ?
Shekhar
Rationalising or fooling yourself ?
"Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective."
yes absolutely, raviswamy, our five senses in their limitations need to reduce perception to rationalize our understanding of the world we inhabit...
So we give everything a begining, and an end. We see time linearily. And then we spend our lives wondering and being afraid of the event called Death, because we have decided the universe exists in beginings and ends, in events separated in time/space. The question we should be really asking is "if the event of Birth never happened, then how can Death happen ? Or is my Birth and my Death continious even as I write ?
What I keep struggling with is why we need to reduce everything to a point where we need to rationalize it. Why do we need to rationalize ? It seems purposeless, but then of course it is difficult to find any purpose in this world. The only purpose we have ever seem to have found is in imposed 'morality'. But the Universe is neither moral nor immoral. It's amoral.
I do not believe we are born with an addiction to only the 5 senses. We acquire the ability to shut ourselves out of anything that does not fall into the perception of an increasingly limited rationalistic world. That's modernism. Logic.
My daughter at 4 was extremely comfortable with the idea that Angels existed and at the same time did not. She saw no difference between the logical world and the illogical one. To her the connection between what she saw and what she imagined was not contradictory. But now at 6, with her going to school she is already getting trained to ignore that which cannot be touched, seen, heard or smelled,
Consequently she is less and less comfortable with her emotional life, as myth and imagination are played down in schooling. But the do not go away do they ? They bubble up in the most unexpected ways. And sometimes dangerous ways. You and I are coming to terms with our loss of universal percepton by arguing out right now through words.
Buddhism says that at the root of all human suffering is Desire. I do not dispute that. For Desire only arises out of a misunderstanding of Time/Space continuum. How can I desire something unless I see the object of desire as something seperated from me in time/space. But even Quantum Physics now reveal that all such seperation is not real fact, but is assumed fact through the act of observation by the observer.
What i want Buddhism to explain to me is the purpose of Desire, if there is one. Procreation of the species? is that all ?
Shekhar
Time and Event
September 10, 2006 | 03:04 PM
Time and Event
ravi swami : Yes...moment and continuity are contradictions in terms - an 'event 'assumes a "before event and after event" situation - what you are saying is that every "event" exists and is not marked by a start and end point, if it did then "time" as concept has to exist -
as in editing a film, an in point and out point, but outside of the "edit", events and actuality(for want of a better word), continue, despite the film makers division of the continuum to make logical sense and tell a story....
Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective.
I sometimes ponder on the idea of dividing time into ever smaller divisions - like you see in "time slice" films - at a certain point time appears to stands still - on a theoretical level this is what is supposed to occur for a viewer if he/she/it approaches the speed of light, time "stands still" and all "events" become simultaneous...
Time and Event
ravi swami : Yes...moment and continuity are contradictions in terms - an 'event 'assumes a "before event and after event" situation - what you are saying is that every "event" exists and is not marked by a start and end point, if it did then "time" as concept has to exist -
as in editing a film, an in point and out point, but outside of the "edit", events and actuality(for want of a better word), continue, despite the film makers division of the continuum to make logical sense and tell a story....
Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective.
I sometimes ponder on the idea of dividing time into ever smaller divisions - like you see in "time slice" films - at a certain point time appears to stands still - on a theoretical level this is what is supposed to occur for a viewer if he/she/it approaches the speed of light, time "stands still" and all "events" become simultaneous...
Time and time again
September 10, 2006 | 12:51 PM
Time and time again
rawi swami said : .....time is actually (as we understand the meaning of the word) better described as "moment" or continuity - not an evolution of anything but a constant...within that constant there are "events"...us, supernovas, all instances of "local time"....
I agree, ravi swami, but.....
..... if time is a constant and not an evolution, then we have reconsider our definition of the word 'event', for the word event assumes a moment that is not continous, but singular. But a singularity of an event assumes a past and future where that singularity never existed, right ? And if so then are we not, after having described Time as a constant, contradicting ourselves ? So every event too, in that case must also be'constant'. So it always existed, does exist and will always exist. And is therefore not an event at all, but also a constant.
shekhar
Time and time again
rawi swami said : .....time is actually (as we understand the meaning of the word) better described as "moment" or continuity - not an evolution of anything but a constant...within that constant there are "events"...us, supernovas, all instances of "local time"....
I agree, ravi swami, but.....
..... if time is a constant and not an evolution, then we have reconsider our definition of the word 'event', for the word event assumes a moment that is not continous, but singular. But a singularity of an event assumes a past and future where that singularity never existed, right ? And if so then are we not, after having described Time as a constant, contradicting ourselves ? So every event too, in that case must also be'constant'. So it always existed, does exist and will always exist. And is therefore not an event at all, but also a constant.
shekhar
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