Glenn Matson Meditating

1934-2017

Glenn was my friend for forty years.

Poetry Heals

Unending Love - by Rabindranath Tagore

Unending Love - by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

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Memories of a Sierra Nevada Summer

the winter cold wanes

bits of orange flame spray through slush

Indian Paintbrush

Be In Wonder

be in wonder

like a child again

embrace life

Salutation of the Dawn - Kalidasa 2500 BC

Salutation of the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life,
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.

~ Kalidasa (2500 BC Sanskrit)

Technology and the meaning of life

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
…
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

-- T. S. Elliot

We uncouple technologies, such as computing and road building, from our deepest human values. The questions asked by T. S. Elliot become irrelevant as we refuse to acknowledge the human context.
Students at universities become mainly focused on "practical knowledge" that leads to high paid jobs. The values by which we guide our technological development and application become afterthoughts. We must wonder if technology now controls human life more than humans control technology.
Information technology is valued above wisdom. There is no "wisdom technology". It's easier to understand information technology then wisdom. A high school student can quickly grasp computer programming, but it takes almost an entire lifetime to mature to wisdom. People who think of themselves as wise because they have read some books are dangerous. Wisdom is lived, not mastered as procedures and facts that can be scored on an exam sheet.
Data and information are the "atomic" components of knowledge. These components don't make a lot of sense by themselves. Water is composed of molecules, which are in turn composed of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. We could say that molecules are like information and atoms (a level further down) are like data. But such an understanding does not allow us to understand the "wetness" of water. Wetness is an emergent phenomenon that is experienced by sentient human beings. When we look at a friend, we just don't see atoms and molecules, we see a friend.
Meaning is the real food of human life. Our real task is to arrange education, family, society, moral training, technology and economic arrangements in way that allows meaningful human life to unfold for as many people as possible. Clearly, we have remarkable technologies. But do we have enough meaning?

For "God" to be God

Life and death animate deep feelings... Confront this complementary pair of opposites... You can't see life without death...  If you bring God into this picture there is only Life... For "God" to be God ... God becomes an eternal standing outside/inside our world of relative time... We can be rid of words such as "God"... but not being... presence... consciousness... And, yet, what do we know? 

My Bambo Flute

My bambo flute
Moving Fall's air beyond a
Place and time

Marble Universe

Name and Reality

Name and Reality

"What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."

                        ~ Shakespeare

What's a name? A symbol that points to something beyond itself (as a symbol). On any single day our minds are flooded with symbolic thoughts that pull us away from direct experience. Education can be harmful to the intuitive-feeling levels of perception and understanding. Meditation helps clear away some of our thoughts, words, images, and desires. We improve our chances touching the ground of reality.

 

Buddha Drinks Tequila

Japan Sunset

Japan Sunset

Universe Communicating

The Universe is vast -
and bigger than
we can imagine.
But love is greater.

The Universe is always 

communicating with us. 

It's our job to listen.

Fire And Rain - James Taylor

Water

Natural Disaster - Loudon Wainwright III

Pete Seeger - "Forever Young"

Deep Reality

Human brains are somewhat fuzzy. Our bodies are not the all that strong. We walk around on two feet. Our eyes don’t see in the dark. Our bodies are not the strongest. It takes many years for us to mature enough to be able to live without our parents.

Reality seems endlessly deep. How do we get to the bottom or is it (reality).
Dictionary definition of reality: (in ethology) the world as it is experienced by a particular organism. Brooke Gladstone’s little book, The Trouble with Reality introduced me to the word “umwelt”. A word that suggests the idea that different animals living on the same patch of earth have radically different experiences of the same local environment.

Uses of philosophy

Life is complex and uncertain. Modern & post-modern life is much more complex than 2,000 to 5,000 years ago. The pace of change makes it difficult to "get a handle" to "feel the ground under our feet". Philosophy is simply the love of wisdom. And, wisdom is a deep clear sense of understanding (standing under) all that is happening and being. To philosophize is to map the all-that-is, even including what seems to transcend the world. I started doing philosophy as a young person. I'd study different philosophical schools and systems. Later, I created my own philosophy. This was my quest, my love for wisdom. Something beyond ordinary knowledge. Eventually, I got academic degrees in philosophy. That seemed impractical. But, I learned a holistic way of thinking that lead to a wonderful set of careers and life paths. Much more on this later.

Full Moon in August

The Old Farmer's Almanac

Knowing When to Quit

It's okay not to succeed. By acknowledging the value of failure we can open the door to true success. We can be kinder, more loving. Knowing when to quit is as important as knowing when to start. Dogged persistence is often encouraged, at the expense of community. It takes time and persistence to accomplish noble projects in life - such as raising a sane healthy child. Knowing when to quit is wise. Keep things from getting too complex. You may start a project and quickly realize that it's a waste of time. The best action may be to turn around and walk away.

David Bohm Interview on Nature of Particle Physics