Category Archives: Reality

awareness, Buddhism, consciousness, ego, free will, meditation, self, thoughts

The Order of Time

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“The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but becoming. He says, “The difference between things and events is that things persist in time; events have limited duration.” He gives a rock as an example of a thing, as contrasted with an event. But, he says, “On closer inspection, in fact, even the things that are most ‘thinglike’ are nothing more than long events.” A rock isn’t a rock forever — even though it might seem like that to us humans. It starts off as a bunch of sand, gets compressed and melted, exists as a rock for a while, and eventually wears away into sand again. Even to say it started off as sand is wrong, because the sand wasn’t always sand either. The molecules that make up each grain of sand have their own complicated history. Therefore, any given rock’s existence as a rock is an event within the long, long history of its constituent, parts.”

— The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (quoted in The Other Side of Nothing by Brad Warner)

Bangkok Haunts

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“(You) think the Western mind is some Frankensteinian product of a botched religion and a bunch of ancient Greek pedophiles, the same unholy combination of schoolboy logic, lust for blood and glory, we-know-best, and destroy-to-save that slaughtered three million in Vietnam, most of them women and children, all in the name of freedom and democracy, before we ran away because it got too expensive.”

“Modernism is largely a form of entertainment, and a superficial one at that. It doesn’t survive environmental disasters or oil shortages. It doesn’t even survive terrorist attacks. It certainly doesn’t survive poverty, which is the lot of most of us. One flick of a switch, and the images fade from the screen. […] Confusion seeks relief in bigotry, which leads to conflict. One high-tech war, and we’re back to the Stone Age.”

— Bangkok Haunts (2007) by John Burdett

The world you can perceive

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“The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.”

This bit of wisdom is from I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a Hindu spiritual teacher who lived in Mumbai. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. What is “the world I can perceive?” All perception — every experience — is via the five senses, so my world is what I can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Right here, right now. And it’s constantly changing. So my world is a tiny sphere of sensations that is unique to me. Everything else is conceptual, existing only in my head.

I don’t remember where I read the phrase, “Consciousness creates reality,” but that seems ever more true as I age. If I look closely enough, most of my problems (worries, anxieties, fears) exist outside my tiny reality sphere.

The Kekulé Problem

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“The Kekulé Problem” is a 2017 nonfiction essay by writer Cormac McCarthy for the Santa Fe Institute. It was his first published work of nonfiction. He theorizes about the nature of the unconscious mind and its separation from human language. The unconscious, according to McCarthy, “is a machine for operating an animal” and that “all animals have an unconscious.” McCarthy goes on to postulate that language is purely a human cultural creation, and not a biologically determined phenomenon. (Wikipedia)

“You may have read a thousand books and be able to discuss any one of them without remembering a word of the text.”

“The unconscious wants to give guidance to your life in general but it doesn’t care what toothpaste you use.”

“The unconscious seems to know a great deal. What does it know about itself? Does it know that it’s going to die? What does it think about that?”

The essay checked a lot of my boxes: awareness, consciousness, ego, thoughts.

Slow breathing

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From a study on “The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human“:

“Slow breathing practices have been adopted in the modern world across the globe due to their claimed health benefits. This has piqued the interest of researchers and clinicians who have initiated investigations into the physiological (and psychological) effects of slow breathing techniques and attempted to uncover the underlying mechanisms.”

I spend a hour a day (sometimes 90 min) on the meditation cushion and it’s pretty much just follow the breath. I experience both psychological and physiological benefits. My BP can drop as many as 15 points after a 15 minute session.

“While changes in the cardiovascular system can induce changes in respiration, the influence that respiration has on the cardiovascular system is reportedly stronger. Studies in healthy humans have found that controlled slow breathing, particularly at 6 breaths per min, is associated with an increase in fluctuations of both blood pressure and heart rate, compared to breathing at a typical rate.”

I average about four breaths per minute during a typical session.

Bubbles

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I’m sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon, my feet hanging over the rim. I’m facing the setting sun and the light is painting the canyon walls. Somewhere far below, out of site, someone or some thing is blowing soap bubbles and I’m watching them drift slowly up and out of sight. Sometimes the bubbles are few and far between, other times a continuous stream, too many to count. But they never seem to stop completely.

From a distance, they’re just empty soap bubbles but if I bring my attention to particular bubble, I see it is filled with people, places and things. A tiny world that I recognize. My world.

If I look closely enough and long enough, I’m drawn into the bubble. I’m no long sitting on the canyon rim but part of the story unfolding in the bubble. Unlike most of the bubbles I’ve observed, this one doesn’t pop or float away. The canyon and the other bubbles no longer exist or, perhaps, I am just unaware of them.

Eventually, this bubble bumps into another bubble and the two merge, as bubbles often do. Sometimes these new bubbles are filled with a future world, sometimes the past. The worlds can be wonderful or awful but they’re always completely “real.”

I can spend hours moving from bubble to bubble, having completely forgotten about the view from the canyon rim. Every bubble is small and fragile and can be popped with the slightest touch but, from within, it’s difficult to remember this. Or the Me sitting on the canyon rim.

Ah! There I am. I’m back, watching the bubbles. How long, I wonder, was I trapped inside these shiny little things, drifting up and out of the canyon? How much of the spectacular sunset did I miss?

6,200 thoughts per day

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“A new study from psychologists at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario Canada reports observations of the transition from one thought to another in fMRI brain scans. Though the researchers don’t detect the content of our thoughts, their method allows them to count each one, and they say we have about 6,200 thoughts per day. The researchers refer to them as “thought worms.”

“We had our breakthrough by giving up on trying to understand what a person is thinking about, and instead focusing on when they have moved on. Our methods help us detect when a person is thinking something new, without regard to what the new thought is.”

“Don’t do anything”

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An explanation of meditation by S. N. Goenka:

“Don’t try to control the breath or to breathe in any particular way. Just observe the reality of the present moment, whatever it may be. When the breath comes in, you are just aware — now the breath is coming in. When the breath goes out, you are just aware — now the breath is going out. And when you lose your focus and your mind starts wandering in memories and fantasies, just remain aware — now my mind has wandered away from the breath.”