Wholeness
How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up?
One of my biggest fears..
Is the Internet. I remember, a day, when our college first got a connection to the internet. It was a 9600 baud connection shared by all students and staff to the net. Do you even know know what a 9600 baud connection is? By today’s standards it would take a single person with a dedicated 9600 baud connection close to 1.5 hours to download a single song or 30 minutes to download a picture taken by your old school 4.3MP camera. And, at our college, we all had to share that small anorexic straw. There were no fancy complicated online games with sound and graphics, there was no Facebook/youtube/ebay/winamp/torrents/wikipedia/blogs, there weren’t even any real browsers.. it was mostly all old school text based junk that you had to know how to operate and how to work the tools and protocols to get what you needed. You had to learn, on your own, how to do what you needed to do to get that small sip of what you wanted to sample. The same text based junk which works behind to scenes to do what you now do today with your browsers and all, without you even knowing it. That’s how you check your email, how you message your mates, how you upload your memories, download your desires and get connected with a world that is much much bigger than your own.
And this world that is much bigger than you is watching, tracking, memorizing everything that you do; where you go, what you like, don’t like, what your friends like.. what your friends are like without you even having had to do anything other than care about your own cares, want to purchase something for yourself, look up an odd interest that you have. And one day, this big big internet will learn your likes and your dislikes, and your hidden curiosities; it will learn more than who you think you are and start giving you what it thinks you like, or may like, or could like. And so it becomes a feedback loop. You engaged it, and now it engages you.
And what about reality? Reality is for those of us who program this stuff and can trap you into this world.
On association…
Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
~ John Muir ~
On Contemplation
Better than a hundred years lived in ignorance,
without contemplation,
is one single day of life
lived in wisdom and in deep contemplation.
~ Dhammapada ~
Pain and Suffering
What is the difference between pain and suffering?
Pain is when you hurt, it’s the physical sensation. Suffering is when you hate the pain.
Love and meditiation..
Love is a natural kind of meditation.
And meditation is a supernatural kind of love.
~ Chandra ~
Avoiding what is…
When we use time as a means of acquiring a quality, a virtue or a state of being, we are merely postponing or avoiding what is; and I think it is important to understand this point.
~ J. Krishnamurti ~
Origins..
If the Big Bang was the start of the universe, if that event created all that exists in this vast cosmos and what we have and experience today, what was before that event? What was before that event that caused that Big Bang to occur? Something must have triggered it. Some cause must have lead to the event of the Big Bang and to the creation of the universe, the existence that we have today.
The confusion I have in my head.. is that, everything in this universe exists by definition as a part of this universe. Everything is made up of the same building blocks the same basic principles that constructs the nature of the universe. The universe is the framework from which its parts are formed from. The parts enclosed can not be made up of anything which exists outside or is foreign to the nature of the universe. As a result, because the fabric of this universe is that of space-time, space-time was created due to the Big Bang. The creation of the universe created space and also created time. Without space there can be no time, and without time there can be no space. To get from point A to point B requires time. The confusion is.. if space and time were given birth to by the Big Bang, what then was before the Big Bang?
Does that mean then, that a cause which lead to the effect of the creation of the universe, and with it, space-time that transcends the nature of space-time? Is space-time a subset of something greater? Did time even exist before the Big Bang? If time did not exist before the Big Bang and the creation of the universe how then, did the Big Bang occur?
Life and Belief
In order to live, man must believe in that for which he lives.
~ Huston Smith ~
On long life..
Why do people want to live longer? Would you want to live longer? Would you want to live longer so you can indulge in the finer things that life has to offer, or so you can help others find happiness and help them diffuse their suffering?
Do you want to live longer for you? Or for others?
The intent is important.