In God We Trust

While the drive to obtain money increases production, it also robs the motto etched in every dollar and every cent, "In God We Trust." Do you remember that phrase or was it lost with the portraits of our presidents long ago? Think about a dollar bill. Don't look at one, close your eyes and try to see everything on it. Do you see where this motto is along with George Washington's face? Many can't. It seems that the value of our currency has nothing to do with where we place our trust. Maybe, it was supposed to be a play on words and its in money we trust. If thats the case then money is simply replacing the word God. Is a destitute family less trustworthy because they don't have as much 'God' in their house? Sadly, this seems the be the case in many individuals eyes'. Money has become our God and the vaults buried deep beneath our banks is where we now place our trust. Trust yourself. Follow your God. Only then will you see that the trust is in you.

Waking Vision

I had a waking vision many years ago. I was sitting in my rocking chair. Closed my eyes. Had a conversation with a force, a power greater than myself. I was standing on the edge of a cliff. A voice spoke, “Jump off. Trust me. You’ll be okay.” So I did. Suddenly I was floating in space, as if swimming in an atmosphere with a lovely warm pink quality to it. Perhaps like living in my mother’s womb.

Word of God

Many of us can’t believe in God. 

The word of God is not 

what we “think” it is. 

God’s “words” are felt directly. 

If we use human words, 

the meaning is lost

 in human thoughts. 

In truth there are no words,

only a feeling of presence.

Be silent and know.

3 x 3 Meditation Practice

3 x 3 Meditation Practice

It's not in the books. It's in our hearts.

Spend 3 minutes, 3 times a day, in stillness. 

A total of nine minutes.

Doing this practice connects you back to 

being more-here-now as you live your whole life.

Pay attention to the "in and out breaths".

Watch the mind for three minutes without judgement.

Morning, early afternoon, and early evening;

or, just whenever. There are no fixed rules here.

Do this practice without judging how well you did;

a subtle and beautiful transformation will dawn.

Water's Way

As a child, I watched water slowly dripping from a leaky faucet. Waiting between drops, wondering how much a single drop would swell before falling into the white porcelain abyss, crashing onto the brown rust stain formed by countless past drops, finally followed by a hollow drip sound within the sink pipe's chambers. Water became a life metaphor during my senior year high school "Great Books" course which included Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching; on a hot lazy Spring afternoon I read these words from chapter 8:

That which is best is similar to water. Water profits ten thousand things and does not oppose them. It is always at rest in humble places that people dislike. Thus, it is close to Tao [the Way].

One day, I wanted to feel really rich. I decided on taking a hot bath; to soak my body and slow down the mind, finally feeling limp and relaxed all over. The water washed away my drive, my concerns, my worry, my thoughts. A gentle joyful bliss filled with simple appreciation overwhelmed me. An ocean in a bath tub. Water is so passive, so soft; it passes through the fingers. Yet, it can destroy mountains and cities. It's power is in its softness. Every dew drop mirrors the garden around it. We are like water, too; reflecting everything that is.

Feeling God's Presence

Feeling God is easy, once we recognize what it is; it's everything and nothing. God is simply all-in-all as-it-is. God is so obvious that we mostly don't notice God's presence; like the air all around and within our lunges. You don't notice air until you feel the absence of air; you don't notice God until you feel absence and separation from God. Sometimes if feels like God talks to us - be sure that its a divine message beyond you - and not the voice of your ego. The best part of learning to feel God's presence is that it provides good company. 

Root of the Golden Rule

"The world's religions are rooted in experiences of cosmic consciousness. Often these experiences came after long periods of isolation and fasting. By looking at this common root, we can come to greater understanding of the unity within the diversity of religions."
Americ Azevedo - Voice & Thoughts 
Josh Williams  - drum programming, sounds, electric guitars, synths

Greatest Illusion

The greatest illusion
is that this moment
is static -
even the deepest
silence is pregnant
with dynamic power.

So our given
situation is transforming
even as we feel
totally frozen and
trapped.

What Do I Know?

One of those moments when reality humbles. 

Recorded while walking around in the early morning.

Stillness

Stillness is like an old friend at the core of our deepest Self. My first glimpses of deep stillness happened during childhood and adolescence. Those moments seemed more important than the rest of life. Perhaps everyone encounters stillness but few talk about and share its power and beauty. Among places and situations where I found deep stillness:

• A freshly painted room in my parents house. I was maybe 4 or 5 years old.
• Walking home from school looking and feeling each step along the way.
• In my room, as an adolescent, slowly watching the twilight turn to night.
• By the ocean shore looking toward the horizon.
• First formal meditations sitting on the floor.

Cultivating stillness, which is also called "meditation" or "mindfulness" is an important medicine for the ills of our times. Why not take a few minutes, now, to be still? Mind quiet, body motionless, breath steady. Neither grasping nor rejecting what is happening all around, just let it all "pass through you". Stillness. Stillness. Upon returning to activity - one may be blessed with a sense of greater ease in life.

Unreleased poem written by Americ and Diane

Diane: "We wrote this poem jointly (the parts are labeled with our initial), and he really liked the idea of a collaborative effort. He came home one day from a short walk and had written the first part and I responded in poem. The last part, which I mostly wrote, tells of our meeting/relationship."

Flickers and Reflections

a poem at first sight

a spider web of words

catching beams of memories

and feelings from somewheres

far and close flickers.

-A

far & close

feelings flicker

long forgotten

yet so near

the eyes cannot

focus to see

but the poem

reflects

more accurately

than any memory

could possibly

be.

-D

a lake is full

of water and light

below flickers of heaven

the ores pushing waves

into sounding resounding

splashes of memory.

-A

our memory:

what was that beautiful day we first met

in the reception area of that loosely-run office?

ah, but that was gradual--

a glimpse

turning to a word

turning to gazing

but what about that first day

we sat on the park bench

and kissed

as minutes rolled by

our work day

opened

by the stoppage of time

where love lives

in eternity

yet managing to return back to the desk

in time to keep our jobs in tact

so our meetings would continue

until the crises that life often brings

broke in

and

shattered eternity

back into time

and our lives

split

now returning again

after decades 

that never happened

slipping back into love

eternally 

… and flowing in the window 

from the backyard oak

the birds sing

“yes…

yes, yes.”

  -D, with A

Facing the Future

Facing the future demands that we stand firm on this spot. We begin from where we are. I am here and now in this particular place and time. For most of us, that seems too simple. Try it. It always begins and ends here and now. To go forward, just be here. Don’t be afraid of stillness. Change will happen no matter how hard you fight it.  ∆

Just Words

WORDS ARE MAPS of reality and dreams. Words are not reality, not dreams. Better to stop now. Sit, walk around and breathe. Later, come back to the words. Perhaps, the world would not exit without words; the "world" is a story we tell each other. Take away the story. What do you have left over? Just this, just that. Engaging directly with what is; like a new born. Of words, we don't need many. Just a phrase, a sound, can be enough
to suggest reality.

∆

Backing Off

LIFE IS NOT ALWAYS a straight path. We go forward and back off. Often I would try to make a speech in front of class. I would feel extremely nervous before beginning the talk. I wanted to be “relaxed”. Eventually discovering that being nervous was a positive sign - it meant that the energy was there for a good talk. I started to tell myself, “Just get started and you will feel better after you forget yourself”. So true! Just get started.  

∆

Words

poets say

more with

fewer words

philosophers

say less

with many, many

words

saints don't

need words

at all

Consciousness

Consciousness is obvious, mysterious, unthinkable, and infinitely deep.  Scientists and philosophers often write convoluted exhausting boring explanations of consciousness; but that is not consciousness.

Consciousness' luminous reality is to be intuited directly and effortlessly. Consider the Dzogchen[1] teachings. Tsoknyi Rinpoche sums it up brilliantly: “Let the display of thoughts, emotions, and perceptions unfold naturally and without clinging, like clouds passing through an open sky.”[2] Consciousness is like the sky – open to everything passing through it but ultimately unaffected. Like a mirror – it reflects everything that passes by while staying clear and empty.

We live mostly in separation consciousness; feeling-thinking "this or that" in a world of distinct, somewhat unrelated objects. Me and you. Us and them. Light and dark - and shades in-between.

  

The universe is infused with consciousness. But it is unfocused and not self-aware. Life becomes progressively more intelligent until it become self-aware, self-conscious. Feeding back on itself. Learning from its own successes and mistakes.

Unitive, union, or cosmic consciousness is a state of alive luminous oneness. This state is more likely to persist while discursive dualistic thought is suspended.

At one extreme it a bath of bliss. And, we care little for the “details” of maintaining the body.

In a more ordinary functional life, we feel love and unity with others while still aware of separate persons and objects.

---

[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen.

[2] “Dzogchen: The Sky of Wisdom”, Shambhala Sun, July 2014, page 60.

Holographic Nature of Reality

Cosmos defines everything including the indefinable. Music of the spheres plays on and on. Every point of space is packed with an image of the entire cosmos. That's the holographic nature of reality. We contain the entire cosmos within us, but always looking outwardly for the answers. Now look and listen within.

Physics-Astronomy.com/

Meditate Anytime Anywhere

Realizing True Wealth

(This article, written by Americ Azevedo, originally published in What is True Wealth & How Do We Create it? Edited by Verna Allee & Dinesh Chandra. Indigo Press, New Delhi, India. 2004. Pages 124-130. Note: Book was inspired by the His Holiness the Dalai Lama; an interview with him on true wealth is included.) 

We are born with true wealth, but constantly forget to realize the wealth we already have.  Failing to acknowledge our true wealth we keep grasping for more, like hungry ghosts who are never satisfied while constantly eating!  Thus, we go about despoiling the earth, corrupting relationships, and twisting societies into grotesque forms that promote needless suffering for ourselves, others, and the earth-at-large.   Realizing true wealth leads to personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal fulfillment.  Furthermore, the long term survival of life on earth depends upon true wealth realization.

We need deep psychological and spiritual healing of individuals, groups, communities, nations and the earth at large. The bedrock of this healing is a return to this present moment, not in a selfish, narrow way, but in a way that includes the totality of what is here-there as well as past-present-future.  It is nothing less then the ancient ideal of enlightenment of all sentient beings. 

The Paradox of Wealth

We may have money but little time.  We may have time but no money.  We may have love but neither time nor money.  Coming to a point of balance between these factors is mastery of the art of living which is true wealth.

It’s been said, "He who dies with the most toys, wins!"  This is both true and not-true.  Some say, “money does not matter" -- but quietly and privately we fear poverty.  Fear of homelessness, hunger, and a drop in social status drives many to insane focus on money at any cost. If you are poor with a positive state of mind, you may still suffer a sense of emotion degradation just from the social stigma of poverty.  Such fears are well founded in societies that fail to attain true wealth, since the members of those societies know they can and do fall into poverty.  A world based on fear cannot be wealthy in any real sense.

Our possessions can own us.  Attach ourselves to our possessions and we immediately loose our sense of true wealth.  The very desire for possessions not yet owned breeds greed and lust.  We suffer endless rounds of grasping for the goods that will make us “happy and full”.  We get “more”, but immediately need to get “more” again.  There is no end in sight.

“Business as usual” means a life filled with urgency, running to keep up, and without time. “Oh! If only I had more money, I would do the work I love.”  Or, “If I had that big new house on the hill, people would respect and love me.  My wife would stay with me.”   Such conceptions of wealth are very childish. 

Many of the “richest” people in the world are always “hungry”.   Much shopping is for useless trinkets which act as displacements for lack of meaning and love in life.  Many a parent, for example, who has no time for talking with their children, will just buy toys.   Most people identify with the stuff that they own as an extension of their personal ego.  Consider automobiles and houses which function as symbols of wealth, but are also destructive to the natural capital of nature.  

True wealth goes beyond the concerns of the skin encapsulated ego.  True wealth includes the social, political, and transpersonal levels.  What about a friend or relative who needs help?  What about broader environmental concerns?   True wealth goes beyond the individual, and even national, egos.  What you spend your money on, changes, impacts society.  Buy an SUV because you like personal leg room, but consume the air and warm the environment for everyone else as well as yourself.

Time, Love, and Money

  

An old man asked me, “With what do you buy your money?”

I said, “With your life.”

He said,“Right!  I wish I had known that when I was young. I spent my life working for money instead of living.”

Time, love and money are the three legs of truth wealth’s stool. The time allotted to your life is utterly fundamental; a finite constantly depleting resource.  Have you loved enough?  Have you made money, invested money, and spent money in a way that sustains life on this earth for seven generations to come?  Most don’t think we have time for these questions.  We can be occupied working for money that we buy cars, drive to places, buy food from thousands of miles away, thus depleting earth’s natural capital without noticing it. 

Many people will say that they are making good money, but have no sense of free time.  They hope that someday in the future they will have time for the things they really enjoy like family and nature.  Often that day never comes.  I once worked at the headquarters of Standard Oil.  My life had become the company. When I went home, my mind was preoccupied with Standard Oil.  One day I awoke to realize that I worked in an environment that was loveless.  I had money, but love and time where in short supply.

What is money?  It’s a symbol for value, it is information; it is abstract.  Humans are driven by symbols to go to war and fight for abstract causes.  Money, being utterly abstract, is often valued more for itself than for what it actually buys – it is the ultimate “field of dreams”.  Individuals and societies measure self-worth by financial net-worth, but this devalues the deeper qualities of awareness and soul that are the true source of all value.

 

Walking by a beautiful garden filled with iris flowers, someone might think: “I don’t own it, how unfortunate!”  So they miss the simple of joy of the experience.  You don’t need to own things in order to enjoy them. To really “have” something we must be present to it. Taking time to appreciate the existence of an object, a friend, or a place is really having that object before us.    

Wealth is transpersonal because it is “beyond the personal”.   Everything that we do to accumulate wealth depends on past human efforts; as well as the Earth, the solar system, and the cosmos at large.  You are not your own source of supply.  Companies create private wealth by extracting resources from nature as if nature is "free" and unlimited.  Water, for example, was always free.  Industrial pollution turns water into another commodity with price barriers for the poor and helpless.  This situation creates transpersonal poverty. 

 

There can be a wealth of time.  Societies can make time for living, for singing, for family, for just sitting and watching.  This wealth is greater than the focus on consuming goods and working to pump up the "gross domestic product".

A man can become homeless and starve to death in a big city filled with apartments, hotels, and food.  It is not just lack of money that brings us to the homeless state.  Depression, lack of faith in life, lack of friends, and lack of family ties can bring one to this place.  Call it lack of love. 

We cannot be truly wealthy in such societies with extremes of poverty and riches. The expansive homes of the few wealthy are beautiful, but the society is really poor and ugly. So many become restless and debased is such a society.  I cannot relax in a mansion without security systems and insensitivity to the disparity around me. Just like the Buddhists who say they cannot become enlightened until everyone is enlightened, you and I cannot be truly wealthy until all are “wealthy”.  Clearly, a new meaning of wealth needs to emerge for the culture at large. 

Balanced Wealth Portfolio

An investor will diversify her assets into different categories of assets so as to balance out risk with the changing tides of market fortunes.  The seeker of true wealth balances the assets of time, love and money across the dimensions of personal, interpersonal and transpersonal – thus optimizing abundant life for themselves, neighbors, future generations, and Earth.

A balanced wealth portfolio can be attained by disciplining the ego and personal pride.  This spiritual practice has ramifications for self, society, and life on earth.  Portfolios are lists of assets by categories.  We could begin by playing with lists of “assets”.  One simple list of categories for grouping our assets would look like this:

1.     Personal-money

2.     Personal-time

3.     Personal-love

4.     Interpersonal-money

5.     Interpersonal-time

6.     Interpersonal-love

7.     Transpersonal-money

8.     Transpersonal-time

9.     Transpersonal-love

These categories are not absolute; they are starting points to help us on the road to true wealth realization.  Make up your own categories and lists.  Begin from where you are, and expand to include larger dimensions of wealth.    

True Wealth Realization Practice

Wealth is usually defined by external measures: affluence, millionaire money levels, ownership and control of companies, and influence over people. Look deeper; and, there is the feeling of being wealthy or poor more or less independent of external wealth measures.  Work with that feeling so as to become more independent of the strictly personal illusions of money-wealth and poverty.

Remember who you really are.  This means giving yourself the time to contact your own ultimate wealth:  the soul.  Your own soul is your own ultimate wealth.  As you begin to be wealthy in yourself, you will be able to extend your sense of wealth to include others and reality at large.  Every soul is the same soul – only covered by different personality, history and circumstances.  I could have been any one of the other people that I see everyday.   

To awaken to this very moment is truth wealth.  This moment is in truth all we really have and own.  Everything else is just on loan; we must give it all back in the end.  

Stillness, Creation, and Annihilation

Stillness, creation, annihilation, stillness ... over and over. A cosmic cycle reflected in daily life. The ancient forest dwellers of the Indus Valley understood this better than us. ● Within deep stillness is a source of life and light;  a  "quantum stillness" singing a silent song, waiting for a hearing. Listen, listen, listen to your heart's song. ● You're here now. Stay a while.

Being, Doing, Having, and Giving

Awareness of being, doing, having and giving transforms life. Discover being - and all else follows. Being is the ground of all that is. We reflect being within ourselves. Doing follows naturally once being is established in our minds, hearts, and bodies. In that doing, comes our having, and the capacity for giving. The path back to being is in our capacity for discovering and sustaining stillness within, even while "in the world".

Heaven On Earth

Even on a loud street - we can find "heaven on earth" 

in a still quiet place within ourselves.

Right Now

Right now
In this moment
There is nothing at all
Except a sense of "is-ness"
Of nothing "but-ness"
Leading nowhere at all
Except this exact
Place and time
Right now
Right here
As if forever

Stillness

Stillness is like an old friend within our deepest Self. My first glimpses of deep stillness happened during childhood and adolescence. Those moments seemed more important than the rest of life. Perhaps everyone encounters stillness but few talk about and share its power and beauty. Among places and situations where I found deep stillness:

• A freshly painted room in my parents house. I was maybe 4 or 5 years old.

• Walking home from school looking and feeling each step along the way.

• In my room, as an adolescent, slowly watching the twilight turn to night.

• By the ocean shore looking toward the horizon.

• First formal meditations sitting on the floor.

Cultivating stillness, which is also called "meditation" or "mindfulness" is an important medicine for the ills of our times. Why not take a few minutes, now, to be still? Mind quiet, body motionless, breath steady. Neither grasping nor rejecting what is happening all around, just let it all "pass through you". Stillness. Stillness. Upon returning to activity - one may be blessed with a sense of greater ease in life.

Meditation, Nonviolence, Peace

To sit, to meditate is 

already making a statement

for nonviolence and peace. 

It's inside-out; as within, so without. 

Peace begins right here 

as the inner knots are untied; 

and, love unfolds.

Money and God

For several years I gave an annual talk for The Applied Philosophy Institute in Sunnyvale, California. One year the topic was "Money and God." Almost everyone in the audience had deep feelings about the subject. I struggled to bring God and money together in the same breath. One businessman wanted to make it simple. He said, "Money is God. Anything you can say about God, you can also say about money."

"What do you mean?" I responded. "Well, think of the traditional statements about God," he said. "Okay. God is love. God is everywhere. God is infinite. God is all-powerful," I remarked.

"That's it!" he said with delight. "Money is love. Money is everywhere. Money is infinite. Money is all-powerful. People treat you as if they love you when you have lots of money. Everywhere I go there's money -- an ATM machine or bank in every part of the world. Money is so powerful we go to war and give up our lives for it. And, since money is abstract, we can create infinite numbers out of it. Therefore Money is like God, Money is God."

This businessman was serious. He was also deeply disturbed by his position. He was admitting an awesome truth that most people would not take seriously.

Ultimately, all investments start with how we use time. Some say "Time is money." Time is more fundamental then money, and a little closer to God and life. Life is the time we have, so use time well.

Today. Today. Today.

Today. Today. Today.

What is today?

A passing moment in "our" universe.

A travelling point in space-time

wrapped up with our

individual lives

always moving on to

a future. Hello today!

I am here now. 

New Beginnings

New Beginnings

are often

disguised as

painful endings.

    ~ attributed to Lao Tzu ~ 

Quantum Strangers

Sliding into spacetime
Again quite lost
Feeling okay with uncertainty
Of nonlocality 
Knowing that it's all entangled 
Like an Argentine tango 
Between two strangers 

Trapped in a Back Room

SOMETIMES A FLY GETS TRAPPED in a back room, attracted to the glass windows. Eventually it dies, not seeing the way out through a darker hallway to an open window. Humans get attached to the bright lights, big billboards, loud sounds, and media distractions. Eventually they can't change of direction back to the quiet voice of truth. They die unfulfilled. ∆

Dawn Breaks

A day of darkness
Lost, lost in worry dreams
Until dawn breaks
Across the night skys

Whispers Of Eternity

Live in Direct Relationship to Reality

Turn away from

books, ideas, and theories. 

Enlightenment can only be realized

by living in direct relationship to reality.

Books, ideas, and theories 

don't go deep enough.

Hold the Morning

Hold the morning in your hand

Lift your eyes up to the sky

Timeless void surrounds our days

Being Lost

Who are We

Who are we? Golden rays of light moving around on the Earth's surface. Mostly, we forget how wonderful and wondrous we are. Sometimes we act in the worst of ways. But most of the time it is loving kindness. Don't forget that. Don't believe the news. We are creatures born of love, born to share millions of moments of kindness with one another. This is so. If not, we would not be here today.

(Haku’s personal note: I apologize for such a long delay but quarantine is warping my sense of time)

Stop, start

Think of all
of it as One
thing that is
not a thing.
Stop, start.
You don’t
know anything
in completeness.
You just are.

Spontaneity

Spontaneity as a result of meditation practice. Meditation class talk.

Going Toward the Light

Eternal life belongs to those who live in the present

"Death is not an event in 

life: we do not live to 

experience death. If we take 

eternity to mean not 

infinite temporal duration 

but timelessness, then 

eternal life belongs to those 

who live in the present." 

~ ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~~

Face reality

Face reality 

Live in truth 

Be honest with yourself 

Integrity deepens

Alignment with Being

Most people live in a fog - moving between tasks, situations, and pleasures. Often in a mental fog of remembrances and fantasies. Live life fully. This could just be the only life you know. Pre-life and after-life are matters of speculation and faith. A full life is not measured in number of years, but by depth of understanding and experience. Some die young but had rich lives. Others live long but accomplish little. It's not how long we live, but how we live that counts. We become happy, wealthy and wise in proportion to our alignment with being.

What a World

WHAT A WORLD we created! So much technological progress. I see glitter at the expense of much noise and endless distraction. Teaching meditation becomes a noble calling. Some say this is the bottom of the Kali Yuga - the darkest moment of the darkest age. It’s exactly at such extreme moments that things begin to turnaround.

A thought, thought several times!

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

— Henry David Thoreau

(Suggested by Marianne Henry)

Keep It Simple

Wuhans Message to the World (Stand Together)

I felt everyone should see this right now. Incredibly powerful.

-Haku

Doing Not Doing

"Doing not doing" one possible translation of the Chinese phrase "wei wu wei". It suggests a state of effortless being and action. This is one of the most important ideas within the Tao te Ching.

Still Point of the Turning World

Meditation talk at Berkeley City College, June 24, 2014. Title of talk comes from a line in T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" within the Four Quartets.

Existential Crisis is Real

1% Rule

Work for a 1% improvement each day. 
This seems modest.
But after 100 days that is a 
100% improvement 
from where you started.

Not Knowing

Young people in competitive universities often find "not knowing" to be utterly frightening. For them, it feels like life depends on "getting it right". That lesson learned in school often extends into the rest of life. This is unfortunate. Embracing not knowing is "divine ignorance" - it opens us to the possibilities of all that can be. Learning to live with the unknown and knowing that we don't know - may well be the beginning of true wisdom. It is absolutely humbling how little we do know about anything - including our deepest selves. Coming to knowing that we don't know is the cutting edge of wisdom. 

Contradiction and Reconciliation

Every contradiction is a reconciliation.
We live in time while abiding in eternity.
Happy are they who surrender to Being.  

Dark nights; bright days

There are dark nights of the soul, when all looks doomed.

Don't believe it.

Such views are born of fatigue.

There are moments when it seems all can be done with brilliance and ease.

Don't believe it.

Such views are born of excess energy.

Wake Up to Who You Really Are

Wake up to who
you really are.
Being anything
else comes at
too high a cost.
"Who you really
are" is love.
Perhaps you
forgot that you
are love; if
you did forget, go
visit or see
someone with a
new infant child.
The teaching will
be clear.

This and That

Years ago there was a bohemian group that held parties at the ramshackle home of an old painter in Canyon, far back in the Oakland Hills.  His son and I used to hold long discussions on all sorts of subjects, including physics, math, philosophy, music, literature…  One night, both of us having consumed a fair amount of wine, the subject of Zen came up.  We wondered if we could make our own contribution to Zen enlightenment.  The result was the following.

 “In a Zen monastery, a monk was given the opportunity to ask the Master one and only question, with the promise that the Master would answer it.  When the appointed day arrived, the monk was presented to the Master.  ‘You may state your question,’ said the Master.  The monk replied,  ‘My question is this: What is the most important question I can ask you, and what is the answer?’  To which the Master replied, ‘That is the most important question you can ask, and this is the answer.’”

Contributed by John Franklin 

What's it all about?

(In mid-2008, I had a compelling dialogue on The WELL with people I never met in person on the topic of "What's It All About?" Here are my own posts. All the other responses are deleted, following the rule that "you own your own words" applies to posts on The WELL. It's the unquoted writers who took me to deeper levels of understanding - they drove these notes into being!)

Life has taken me into many phases and experiences. I'm sixty years old now. Long enough to know what little I know; long enough to feel that I have lived. I am thankful for that.

What's it all about? Each day the answer to this question could be different. Death and limitation have been the most powerful teachers. As we age, people around us get sick and die. I was thinking about some of those people this morning. One was 20 years older and like a father to me. He came to memory. I realized that in a way - this was how he "lives on" - in the memory of friends and relatives. His motto was, "Life is good!" I try to remember that one.

Last year, two people that I work with lost their children (one was eight and the other thirty years old). It was unspeakable. I was deeply affected. Death pushes us out of abstraction. (Wow! and this statement is an abstraction). A big problem with philosophy is that philosophy "wants" to abstract. But, reality is not abstract - reality is real. :) Death must be painful because we love.

I think "it's all about love". I remember an opera with a song that goes, "Love is the heartbeat of the Universe." I think so. Without love, we have nothing, nothing at all. Even all the jewels and gold hardly make it worth it. Is not the meaning of life Love? And, yes, I have been hurt in love; and have grieved because of love - through death and separation. Love comes in all forms: with job, God, children, mate, etc....etc.

It's like this: Love to be love that is real love is love that sees the self in the other. Thus, the Golden Rule follows. But, love that is conditional to "me being more important than you" as fundamental - that is love perverted. Even bankers can be loved, once we see them as they really are - as, perhaps, misguided. In ancient days, it was something to have dinner with tax collectors. Yet, they, too, could be loved. Anyway, I believe there is a high path of love that holds the universe and the human world together. A love that is even stronger in the long run than hate. Mundane matters, yes! Love is totally mundane - it is what holds the world together. Our mundane work is tangible love. Deep nature is a dynamic balance of attractive and repulsive forces; so, suggest the laws of physics. This balance of forces sustains our everyday macro world - that we mostly take for granted. I come to this conference because I love philosophy; and, I love to run into other people (YOU) who struggle with difficult, hard to pin down ideas. Is it not love that brings us together?

Perhaps, this question "What's it all about?" cannot be answered. But, it is in the "answering" that love is. Love is like the background, like the air that we take for granted. Most mundane, most divine it is. I have seen many wish to be transported and transcending. This is not much better than taking drugs or alcohol. The real thing, I believe, is to be-here-now. It takes real love to really be-here-now with what-there-is."Attentiveness" is as close as possible to being honest with the experience of being human in our world in all its dimensions as possible. That's why I am not comfortable with the idea that we "are just evolved mechanisms that are useful to the replication of our genes". I have no problem with the genes being part of what we are attentive to, but genes are only part of the show on one of the many levels of reality which we live in. I don't have a conflict with the genetic explanation as long as it is not a reductionist program that makes the experience of being-human "nothing but" the play of genes. The genetic is deeper level below the subconscious mind of the human; and, of course, the quantum level is deeper than genetic. That does not mean, however, that these levels are more real than human. But, I am not sure that the human experience is fundamentally real. It is, however, our experience - the experience that we start with as we grope for what is beyond human.

You know, to live without a narrative might just be total freedom, total enlightenment. Narratives are either internal monologues or "polylogues" among people. For example, we could have a narrative that explains everything (yes, "what's it all about?") in terms of genes. And, why not? We can "reduce" everything (i.e. map it) to any level of another or reality. The main advantage of not reducing everything to genes is to keep the narratives simple for humans to understand human life in human-terms not genetic terms.

Poetry reduced to genetic relationships would require a lot of decoding to be meaning to one living an ordinary life. Daily life requires a narrative. Without narratives we would slip either into the absurd & schizoid or cosmic consciousness. You know it's interesting that recent cosmology talks about the "sound of creation" - that ripples in the early Universe produced a sound, a kind of music. This accords with mystical Hindu concepts of the universe beginning with a sound; like God in the Bible speaking the Word. Vibration, sound, light. Even before there are genes.

What's it all about? What do we know, anyway? :) Even if it is just chaos or actually intelligent design - it might just come down to interaction. There's no "final answer" - it's a journey that takes us beyond questions and answers. I believe that everything by change or by law is totally interrelated, so everything must be interacting.

I love interaction. That's one of the reason I love The WELL. I've the greatest respect for "logo therapy" as developed by Viktor Frankl in his book *Man's Search for Meaning*. It taught me that I am my own meaning maker; and, also to respect other people's ways of finding/making meaning. If memory is right, he discovered in a German concentration camp during WWII that those who found a specific meaning had a greater chance of making it out alive. I figure that may be true for all of us: with meaning we have a greater chance of getting out alive!

When I started this topic, I had no idea where this question would lead. to me it is a matter of mystery and wonder. human beings appear to have evolved out of the soup of matter and life. it's a wonder we are gifted with reflective consciousness. it's worth asking such questions just for the pleasure of expanding reflective consciousness and solving problems and much more.....

I mix God and consciousness into the strew here. Suppose God as some kind of pure Source Energy did utter a Sound, a vibration that caused the Big Bang. If so, the whole of creation is infused with consciousness seeking to organize itself itself here and there. That self-organizing here and there leads to all kinds of practical results - until consciousness seems to have holographic capacities for resonating with the whole universe back to the time of the Big Bang.