The Pot On The Table May 19, 2008
Posted by Kedar in alan watts, atheism, atheist, buddha\, buddhism, conflict, east, eastern, enlightenment, hindu, hinduism, karma, mahayana, oriental, philosophy, relativity, religion, spiritual, spirituality, story, tao, zen.add a comment
This one is a well known Zen story.
One day one teacher decided to throw a puzzle at his students. When everyone assembled in the lunch room, he took a clay pot and kept in on the table in front of everyone.
“Without using any of the attribute such as color, material, shape, describe to me what is that on the table.” He challenged.
Nobody spoke for a while.
One student demanded more clarification.
“Simply tell me what it is without using any of it’s name.” Said the teacher.
At that point the cook came forward. He pushed the pot from the table. The pot fell on the ground and broke into pieces.
“It was what it is not any more.” Said the cook.
It is so true for so many things in our life. We recognize their existence, their importance only when they are gone. Because human mind is very good in grasping sensation, but not so good in noticing harmony. We can understand things only relative to the change they undergo. We fail to understand those things that are always with us.
When I dig deeper into this, I can see why Alan Watts , in his book “The way of Zen”, says Not only ear makes sound, but sound makes ear too.” Because we have ear, we know that there is something called sound. So ear makes sound. But if there was no sound, we would never know we have an organ called ear that is capable of hearing something called sound. So in a way, collectively, the sounds make ear.
The Unspoken Beliefs July 24, 2007
Posted by Kedar in atheism, atheist, buddha\, buddhism, conflict, conservation, desire, east, eastern, hindu, hinduism, karma, mahayana, micro, objective, oriental, spiritual, spirituality, tao, theory, uncertainty, world.2 comments
Remember the last time you were disappointed and frustrated? You thought “I am unhappy because I do not have that job/car/house”.
There is another way to look at it. The reason for your unhappiness was not that ‘you did not have something’. Instead the reason you are unhappy is ‘you had something (else)’. What you had was the belief that ‘you need that something to be happy’. Get rid of this belief and you will be happy even without that thing. Once we imagine ourselves as the master of the belief and not the slave, we realize that it is our choice not to let go this belief and agonize ourselves.
We all have these unseen, unspoken beliefs that we are not aware we carry. We fail to grasp their existence, because do not know the world without them. After grasping this as a belief, we can change the way we define self.
Old definition:
Imperfect myself + good job = perfect myself
New definition:
Perfect myself + belief of (incompleteness without job) = imperfect myself.
Almost never we abstract ourselves away and look at our beliefs as our extensions. If I ever got handle of all my believes and I defined them all as an extension of my true nature, I will end up abstracting a truly natureless nature.
When all the Zen books are talking about not associating yourself with your mind and body and thoughts, and identifying your true nature, it is that “Perfect myself” nature they are talking about. As perfect myself, I am indeed free of all insecurities, desires and fears. Yet we never grasp it, because we have never seen the world without it.
There is a small story Catherine Ingram, the Dharma teacher, tells. One day a small fish goes to his grandpa fish and asks him “What is it they call water, everybody is making so much fuss about? I searched everywhere but I did not find it”. The grandpa fish says “Son, not only the water is all around you, but good amount of you yourself are water”
Our mind is full of such ungrasped believes and ideas. In fact that’s what makes our mind. Our aware self is floating in sea of such beliefs that we will never notice till we peek out.
How did these believes come in there? We ourselves picked them on the way. And we have forgotten how and when.
If we create many of these believes, then our will bounces from belief to belief and then we call it double mind, anxiety, fear and many other things.
If we ever peek inside this maze, we find interesting things. The very moment we identify a belief, we empower ourselves to make choice about existence of that belief.
When I am writing this, I have tones of beliefs in me. I believe somehow someday somebody will read this.
I also believe that I am great and very important person. I believe that my country and my religion are great. I believe that my friends and family are great. I believe that everything I am part of deserves special attention from this universe because it is related to me. I believe that by making choices, I can make tomorrow better than today. I believe that if something happened two times, it will happen third time. I believe that ten times of anything is ten time better than one time of that thing. I believe that I have a right to expect the better things in this world. I believe that I have right to expect better behavior from people and I believe that I know the best about this world.
Sometimes the world does not support my believes and sometimes it does. I am insulted by my boss. I feel the insult because the reality clashes with my belief.
Have you ever felt “I need more money so that I will feel free to do things I want” ?. What money brings is the sense of freedom without having to bring a change within you, your belief system. The very feeling mentioned above stands on a set of believes we never bother to put in words. I want to become millionaire because then I can only do what I want. Thus I will spend more time in doing things I like and spend less time reacting to the insecurities and fears I feel. Thus I will spend more time acting and spend less time reacting. This is core of our idea of freedom, which we rarely bother to put in words.
Macro Micro Conflict January 29, 2007
Posted by Kedar in atheism, atheist, buddhism, conflict, east, eastern, heisenberg, hinduism, karma, macro, micro, objective, objectivity, oriental, philosophy, quantum, relativity, spiritual, spirituality, subjective, subjectivity, theory, uncertainty, unified, world, zen.add a comment
Long back when astronomers were looking at the stars and planets, and calculating ‘path of revolution of stars around the earth’, they ran into several discrepancies. So they came up with more complicated equations to explain those discrepancies. That gave rise to more discrepancies. So they came up with even more complex equations.
At last Copernicus stood up and said “Wait a minute guys. It doesn’t have to be this complex. The mistake might be in our assumptions, not theories. May be the earth is not the center of the universe.”
Thus began a revolution in modern astronomy. The revolution continued with Galileo, leapfrogged with Newton and exploded with Max Plank. Then came Einstein and said “Wait a minute, still something is weird. May be the world has no center, no absolute frame of reference at all. Everything is just relative to each other.”
To put relativity in simplest form, imagine you are hanging in deep black space everywhere around you, and your friend is also hanging in deep black space everywhere around her. Suddenly your friend starts moving towards you with great speed. You shout at her to watch out and not to move so fast. She shouts back at you the same thing. Nobody can decide who is moving and who is still. Only thing that can be said is that relative to one, the other is moving.
Is this the time for us to ditch the last assumption of science- that the knowledge is objective and no matter who is trying to know it (or knows it), it is same?
Today, one of the most interesting quests in Cosmology seems to be reconciliation of Quantum Theory and Theory of relativity. To quote the simplest explanation in Briane Greene’s book “The Elegant Universe”, Quantum Theory explains the phenomena at the micro level and Theory of Relativity explains the events and things at macro level. At some points there is a strong mismatch in results provided by Quantum Theory and Theory of Relativity.
On a totally different track, imagine the question “Wasting one minute in life is OK, but wasting one million minutes is not OK. Where is the line? Wasting exactly how many minutes is OK and wasting one more than that limit is not OK?”
The same question can be asked about wasting one dollar or wasting one million dollar, or almost anything at small level and large level. The answer is that there is no answer. There will always remain a conflict between answers when events are considered at micro level and at macro level. A macro-micro conflict. The same thing applying to cosmology, there will always remain a conflict that cannot be solved.
Or let me rephrase this. The macro-micro conflict cannot be solved at objective level. The conflict can be solved at subjective individual level. If we insist on solution, it can be solved, but answers would differ from individual to individual with no possibility of reconciliation.
Let me explain a bit more why I am saying the conflict can only be solved at subjective level.
So far science has treated consciousness or awareness or aliveness in general as mere neuro-chemical anomaly. But without acknowledging it as such, science has made room for the ‘knower’ in one of the very important theories. Heisenberg Uncertainty. If somebody tries to know the position of electron, it introduces uncertainty in the position of electron. So in inverse, we can say that if there is found an unsolvable uncertainty, it must be because of presence of some knower.
In this case, it’s us. The Quantum theory and Theory of Relativity cannot reconcile because of “Us”. Because we are present. The quantum theory predictions can only be verified for “observed electrons”, which have knower induced uncertainty in them. But the object dealt with by theory of relativity are big and human existence cannot induce any uncertainty in them. Thus the conflict.
If we insist on solving, the uncertainty induced by each person, or each knower will be different. So different people trying to solve this will come up with different answers.
Kind of the same thing happens when we tackle the one-minute million minute question. Depending on who is answering it, what does that person want, believe, etc. the answers will be different if forced to answer.
Reminds me of a story.
After a long speech by a zen master, a person walked up to him with lots of notes and books. He told the master that some statement made in the speech was wrong and went on to prove it using his notes and books. The master simply smiled and told him “Yes, you are right.” and walked away.
The person got confused. He again followed the master and said “So I just proved that all what you said was wrong?”
The master smiled and said ” No, you proved that what you heard was wrong.”
Between what I say and what you hear, what I write and what you read, there stands a giant layer of subjectivity of your and my interaction. More often than not we are in denial of this subjectivity. However the fact remains. Your world and my world will never be 100% reconciled. There will exist a point where both of us will be right, yet we might be in conflict with each other.
Cycle of Will January 18, 2007
Posted by Kedar in atheism, atheist, conflict, cycle, desire, east, eastern, hindu, hinduism, india, karma, oriental, philosophy, spiritual, spirituality, zen.add a comment
Every day we are walking new paths in the material world. But in emotional world, persons and families and societies are walking the same paths for centuries. Same play, different actors. Same story new characters.
It begins with a conflict. Conflict brings a sense of agony, where we know we want change, but we can’t figure out what. It’s a first vague reaction. This agony when simmers for some time, gives rise to desire where we know what change is required. Yet we don’t know how. Desire stays at the back of our experience and being. Slowly by osmosis, it permeates into our perceptions. Now we have a mind. Reflexes are built in. Habits are forged. It results into sponteneous action. Finally it leads to knowledge and fullfillment.
Any attempts to reach quick gratification leads to faulty perception of this world, which leads to believing into mirages. Believing into mirages leads to more conflicts.
Howmuchever we hate conflicts and agony, we cannot deny their rightful place in our emotional cycle. No conflict, no experience of desire.
Walking in circles, walking in circles, it’s a mad mad world.
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