One question is not solvable. It is not polite. It leads to necessary deconstruction of one's idea of fairness as it applies directly to oneself. That is, where we were born and into what situation. In the confrontation of privileged one to degraded one, the tourist and the vagabond we never leave with a satisfactory sense of our humanity. Shall we blame God for the unequal chances we are born into? Chances are part of the universe, but we humans are enjoined with the responsibity for the range of chances available to our own. How can we blame God, when humans - you and I - are complicit in creating the vastness and degree of inequity in the chances of who is born today, the choices available. The more fortunate are not so just by their bad luck as the charitable believe, but by the moral failures of humanity's previous generations. Their current choices are shaped by ours. Like an alcoholic, we may be poised to break the generational cycle. What do you think? What's your stand in this one life?
Yet for a young child, the chance at birth given, is conditions they find themselves born to, and completely at the mercy of. A young girl in a country our history made poor, is someone we most frequently fail to protect. Who is most immediately responsible? Being responsible is not the same as having the means to protect and nourish. A mother's burden is as immense as the joy of a child, it is never easy, none can do it alone. Who surrounds a mother? What is that community up against? Is it similar to when the greedy raze a forest and ruin the soil. What lives fights for life, it is not the lush vegetation of a nourished ground. The elements have been degraded. You can water, and a plant will survive, but it is not vibrant life as it was meant to be. Water land that has been razed, as charity while enjoying the high end furniture, the cheap electronics, the stuff of pleasure. No, this land must be renewed. The foundation of societies impoverished by our arrangements must be restored. The people shall build it themselves, so long as ones like you and me respect it, hold and pass the tools, share the knowledge and stand out of the way.
What is given to chance in life is the reason life is unfair. What is given to people in life, is the chance to be fair to each other. In order to be fair to one another, we cannot assume that life is fair, we must be able to understand the way in which life is unfair. Then, our humanity rests in acting fairly on that understanding. It does not rest in the tourist becoming a vagabond on purpose, or the tourist out to change vagabonds into tourist.
At the end of the day, when we are fair, those we encounter have dignity. It may be a dignity that have not known, but they will recongize it. It is part of human nature. Freedom is thought of as many things, all of which are transient and can be taken away. Without dignity, the mind is lost and the heart broken. What freedoms have meaning where dignity is lost.
I am speaking of myself too. And dignity is something that can become vacant within me, head down, without worth, in embarassment or humiliation. None of us are the steel and poise, competence and shine we show the world. Some of us are not able to keep that up day by day, we shake, we hide, we get through the day. All of us search for a way to be free.
In this book, we will move on from the history of the universe. We will introduce you, my audience, as a character. I can guess that you've had a hard time to decide something, you've been irritated, perhaps you are now at this writing. You shower daily, and perhaps you read on the toilet. Your life is fairly ordinary, even though events in it, at times, maybe now, shake and challenge you. You're a reader, there's no way I have you down. You're mysterious to me, yet I'm talking directly to you. As a character in my book, I've kidnapped you. Perhaps I'll reveal you in ways that are profound, even difficult. If you are to 'read the book of your own life', as Rumi said, I shall try to write it. But to read it in a way that you regain consciousness, your own consiousness, you cannot follow yourself as a character for which you have hopes for. You're in the book, it's not about you. That in itself can be a new cliche for the masses. 'You're in the book of your life, but it's not about you.' It's about life.
A world so rich, deep, powerful, sometimes painfully beautiful because delights and enlightenments, the moment one falls in love or discovers and experiences the depth of beauty are fleeting. We resist that direct connection because it may be gone now, there is no 'evidence' for it but the memory, and the disenchantment of drudgery is where the vast majority of time is spent so that we can survive through money and other entitlements. Duty calls.
The great global depression is all about our sense that this Majesty is either an illusion, a disappointment, a romanticism. Or, more heartwrenching is that it is real, but it is being lost, it is leaving us, we are too drowned in its sorrows to say that the Beautiful is the Real, the sorrows are its confusion and the tragedy is how very long we go on with brutalities and pain, and ignorance, and how many times we turn away from some spark of that Majesty. Being lost to artificial life. So many buildings, none of them beautiful, all of them functional and modern, and necessary, and our thanks to the developers who drive our bountious economy. Blocking the full moon.
So you the reader, are my first character in this book, and I will call my friend. Under tonight's full moon, you walk home. Sweet raindrops gently fall from the bright yellow maple, a leaf brushes the lapel of your fall coat. The temperature neither makes you feel too hot or cold. The reflection of the town hall buildings has a perfect clarity like a mirror in the river below. The wind is calm and the rain has stopped save a light the breeze carrying droplets from wet branches.
There is no war. There is no flood. There is no bread shortage or lack of fuel. You and I are blessed, I am grateful for your safety and comfort. World's survived another day. World's seen many things it regrets. It does not regret this just being. It's forces will drive us to labour again tomorrow, and perhaps our work will surprise the world in lessening its burden and regrets. You know what it takes. A random act of kindness perhaps, an act of courage, a friendly and open gesture, lifting your head from your desk and suggesting a lunch together with colleagues, a mere breaking up the illusion that people's worth is what they can put on paper, on time. The world will not regret you and I, our friendship. It is the because we can recall the majesty, and realize it never left us. The war, the strikes, the solidarity, the faith in God, the marches so black and white could be authentic friends at work, at school, full recognition of status as equals, not living in a society based on a false permise. Many accepted death, the did not chose it, but they knew surviving such battles would not be possible for all who fought them. They fought. Each one of us are meek and our existence, our life, is not as we sometimes feel in these times of peace and modern medicine, gauranteed by anyone, nor are we a cog that if destroyed the entire machine would fall apart. These things do not distinguish us, we are not entitled just because we live. The right to life is not about our bodily functions, it is the right to be alive when we live. We cannot feel anything but grateful for this that we have now, for each other my friend. The moon, the maple, your people.
We are going to write a story, maybe other characters will join soon. There will be conflict and desperation in the road ahead. I do not think there is anything to fear. It's only a book. You are not afraid, because this is a book about life, which you are a character, but it is not about you as some kind of worried and self-examining neurotic. It's time to stop worrying about what people like to worry about, what will happen to their reputation, money, ability to provide, their responsibilities towards others.
I feel the same way. Is this the way we become warriors? We resign. We live with our agency, intention, free will and risks to ourselves. What if we encounter disaster? We sink with our characters, when we read, we drown with them and hold our breath, the book is not in danger. The book's only danger is if it is only writing, separate from its authenticity. What is important if our lives our lost, if we die. The book, and you and I will not be the same, if we are to be at all.
What can reconcile human tragedy. We don't know. This is an effort to do so, and that is the book. It may be long. We can do it.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Chapter 5: Expanse
When do we have space? When do we have time? These seem scarce. In this society, one is made to feel irresponsible and unproductive for seeking time for its sake. I was, and still am someone who has chosen a path that restricts this time, and someone who used to be, but to a lesser degree now, worried about it.
One night after weeks of tensions and worries, tasks and demands, projects to finish and new ideas to pursue, people to agrravate and be aggravated by, my mind intent on getting to the bottom of something and turning over in such a way as to knot the stomach. I had a dream. In this dream, a very clear voice, clearer than I've ever heard, said 'Just Be.'
This is not as hard as I thought it would be. Not hard to do, easy to lose and forget.Just Be. I'm not going to lie and say it was very challenging hard work to implement this advice. In fact if you approach this advice as a project, you are already breaking the advice. Just Be.
Writing is enormously fun for me, do that which is enormously fun for you. But this is not a self-help course. There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. That's Rumi, who nonetheless I have found to be more self-helping than any self-proclaimed help. Anyway, like I said, this is time to relax. Do your really think this is the time to worry about the cruel world? The world is not so cruel when you have a moment to breathe. You must honour that gift.
When the clock ticks from one moment to the next, does that moment become the past, extinguished forever? Does the world and universe of that moment no longer exist except in memory or historical record?
Or did the last moment simple become this one? Is the past still here? Does everything that exists contain the sigularity at the beginning? Is energy ever destroyed? Does any moment ever pass, can time be broken? Everything is as it was. And it always was changing. That's how we remember it, as happening.
In a conversation, one can stop time and we call that intimacy. In a meditation the same. It is seeing it from inside, rather than viewing the world as an observer. From the inside, time is a field. Moments do not pass, moment is. This is not to ask one to see only what is happening now as important. This is to see what is happening now part of the past unbroken. It is not to forget the past, it is to see today as its becoming - all of it. We are shaped by history. In the very precise timeline, we can say that what we see is the past. The time it takes for light to travel through space. When we look to the stars, we see a past of long, long ago. Or should we say that what we are seeing as a star, is not a pin, but light that has travelled. Seeing things for what they are means travelling backward through time, things in the current moment are composed of the past. Nothing is extinguished except in minds.
Minds can be inside or outside the universe. When inside, they experience time as a field. When outside, the experience time as a line. Coming inside and outside is experienced as a circle, cycles of waking and sleeping, objective positive tasks, reflections and daydreams, time pressure and free space. Agency, that is action that affects the timeline, is experienced as a spiral, a returning way. What happens after death is similar to time experienced as a field. This is the expanse, the eternity, unchanging sense of home and belonging in the universe. This is as the world is busy with agency and pattens, a freedom. If there is somewhere to go or be, that is where you go. The universe moves, you move, yet peace returns to you and it is the overwhelming embrace. It is not that you drop your job, or even change outward habits. There is simply a freedom and peace that follows you wherever you go. It is that ever-presence. You go away, but it does not. When the religions call the faithul to remembrance, the faithful call themselves to openness, trust, faith, expanse, unwavering presence inside the Friend. The world can bring pain, that pain rests in this presence. It is truly not time in the end, but home.
We have arrived at the start of this story.
One night after weeks of tensions and worries, tasks and demands, projects to finish and new ideas to pursue, people to agrravate and be aggravated by, my mind intent on getting to the bottom of something and turning over in such a way as to knot the stomach. I had a dream. In this dream, a very clear voice, clearer than I've ever heard, said 'Just Be.'
This is not as hard as I thought it would be. Not hard to do, easy to lose and forget.Just Be. I'm not going to lie and say it was very challenging hard work to implement this advice. In fact if you approach this advice as a project, you are already breaking the advice. Just Be.
Writing is enormously fun for me, do that which is enormously fun for you. But this is not a self-help course. There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. That's Rumi, who nonetheless I have found to be more self-helping than any self-proclaimed help. Anyway, like I said, this is time to relax. Do your really think this is the time to worry about the cruel world? The world is not so cruel when you have a moment to breathe. You must honour that gift.
When the clock ticks from one moment to the next, does that moment become the past, extinguished forever? Does the world and universe of that moment no longer exist except in memory or historical record?
Or did the last moment simple become this one? Is the past still here? Does everything that exists contain the sigularity at the beginning? Is energy ever destroyed? Does any moment ever pass, can time be broken? Everything is as it was. And it always was changing. That's how we remember it, as happening.
In a conversation, one can stop time and we call that intimacy. In a meditation the same. It is seeing it from inside, rather than viewing the world as an observer. From the inside, time is a field. Moments do not pass, moment is. This is not to ask one to see only what is happening now as important. This is to see what is happening now part of the past unbroken. It is not to forget the past, it is to see today as its becoming - all of it. We are shaped by history. In the very precise timeline, we can say that what we see is the past. The time it takes for light to travel through space. When we look to the stars, we see a past of long, long ago. Or should we say that what we are seeing as a star, is not a pin, but light that has travelled. Seeing things for what they are means travelling backward through time, things in the current moment are composed of the past. Nothing is extinguished except in minds.
Minds can be inside or outside the universe. When inside, they experience time as a field. When outside, the experience time as a line. Coming inside and outside is experienced as a circle, cycles of waking and sleeping, objective positive tasks, reflections and daydreams, time pressure and free space. Agency, that is action that affects the timeline, is experienced as a spiral, a returning way. What happens after death is similar to time experienced as a field. This is the expanse, the eternity, unchanging sense of home and belonging in the universe. This is as the world is busy with agency and pattens, a freedom. If there is somewhere to go or be, that is where you go. The universe moves, you move, yet peace returns to you and it is the overwhelming embrace. It is not that you drop your job, or even change outward habits. There is simply a freedom and peace that follows you wherever you go. It is that ever-presence. You go away, but it does not. When the religions call the faithul to remembrance, the faithful call themselves to openness, trust, faith, expanse, unwavering presence inside the Friend. The world can bring pain, that pain rests in this presence. It is truly not time in the end, but home.
We have arrived at the start of this story.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Chapter 4: Returning Way
Time is both a line and circle, it returns and it has a direction - like a spiral.
The sun set again. There is a new govenrment in the province. A speech to gather all the peoples together under the king. Three other factions that sought the throne together were greater than that of the king. Each by itself was weaker than the king's faction so they were defeated and stripped of all power except that of honourable criticism in the court. The citizens themselves turned down a proposal that would have all the factions fairly represented. Another day's labour.
Now we are travelling near the end of 2007. Globalization has set in officially. The world is one but is not as one, but set upon a heirarchy. This heirarchy is based mostly on wealth, and the wealth based mostly on historical accident. The heirarchy is like a long curve. The low part rises very slowly as it moves along a population axis, encompassing most at the lower end of the wealth heirarchy. The curve shifts rapidly at 80% of the axis, then dramatically, exponentially at 1%. Wars of national defence and security are fought between nations encompassing the 80% wealth gap and those at the lowest end. The armies of the rich are endowed with the highest technology of warfare and the nations have enjoyed peace and security within for half a century, save the 911 attacks. Yet the wars have raged since the beginning of the millenium and have no expiry date.
The sun set again. There is a new govenrment in the province. A speech to gather all the peoples together under the king. Three other factions that sought the throne together were greater than that of the king. Each by itself was weaker than the king's faction so they were defeated and stripped of all power except that of honourable criticism in the court. The citizens themselves turned down a proposal that would have all the factions fairly represented. Another day's labour.
Now we are travelling near the end of 2007. Globalization has set in officially. The world is one but is not as one, but set upon a heirarchy. This heirarchy is based mostly on wealth, and the wealth based mostly on historical accident. The heirarchy is like a long curve. The low part rises very slowly as it moves along a population axis, encompassing most at the lower end of the wealth heirarchy. The curve shifts rapidly at 80% of the axis, then dramatically, exponentially at 1%. Wars of national defence and security are fought between nations encompassing the 80% wealth gap and those at the lowest end. The armies of the rich are endowed with the highest technology of warfare and the nations have enjoyed peace and security within for half a century, save the 911 attacks. Yet the wars have raged since the beginning of the millenium and have no expiry date.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Chapter 3: Cycles
Here we are again.
The sun rose again. History repeated herself. We are talking again.
This is an utterly magnificent fall day. The fall always brings nostalgia. I never felt more uprooted than when I was away from the Ottawa Valley during the fall season, never felt more at home when I returned.
Time returns and revolves. Another government to be elected. Same issues. Speculators become rich while farmers lose their land. The government spends more on weapons than cures. The upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn. Robbery and chaos, just as it was written before Christ in the Tao Te Ching. Yet because it is out of balance now, time pulls us towards balance again.
Back again tomorrow. Be well.
aej
The sun rose again. History repeated herself. We are talking again.
This is an utterly magnificent fall day. The fall always brings nostalgia. I never felt more uprooted than when I was away from the Ottawa Valley during the fall season, never felt more at home when I returned.
Time returns and revolves. Another government to be elected. Same issues. Speculators become rich while farmers lose their land. The government spends more on weapons than cures. The upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn. Robbery and chaos, just as it was written before Christ in the Tao Te Ching. Yet because it is out of balance now, time pulls us towards balance again.
Back again tomorrow. Be well.
aej
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Chapter 2: Timeline
Time is fourfold.
There is a line
There is a circle
There is a spiral
There is a field.
Time is one thing after another. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Every moment in line behind the next. Every passing moment ordered precisely, once gone never to be retrieved, once ordered, frozen. The present inching forward by minutes, speeding forwad by nanosecond.
Just a minute...
There is a line
There is a circle
There is a spiral
There is a field.
Time is one thing after another. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Every moment in line behind the next. Every passing moment ordered precisely, once gone never to be retrieved, once ordered, frozen. The present inching forward by minutes, speeding forwad by nanosecond.
Just a minute...
Chapter 1:The Big Bang
First of all, this book is not about the Big Bang, astronomy, any particular science or academic subjects. You will find subject matter that has been studied academically, and scientists and scholars play a large role in this book.
Beginning with the Big Bang seems an awfully good place to start, though remote from today, which is also a good place to start. Perhaps this is the ultimate way to overcome writer's block. Start with the Big Bang, or Revelations if you believe that to be literal, or start with today - or both.
First off, I will not debate Creationism and reject it as literal truth. I told you this would be from my perspective.
I will start with today and the Big Bang, I will argue for the moment, and this will be a thread throughout the book that the Big Bang and today are an inseparable present.
We start with a singularity, an ultimate unity - an ultimate binary translation from nothing to one thing. We shall say that this one becomes all things. We shall say the linear measurement of time as one thing after another is layered by a phenomenon of time as always being here never separated. We shall say that the centre of the universe is everywhere. We shall argue that mathematically time is continuous, divisions of time being aspects of the mind.
Today, each particle of every existing thing emanates from singularity. Each has uniqueness, yet each has category.
Plato said that Forms were eternal and unchaning and these represented the true reality, illusion was in that which was impermanent. Heraclitus said that you can't step into the same stream twice, that what was permanent was change.
I shall say that the universe is as wine pouring into a glass. The glass represents those Forms, those immutable structural laws of the universe. The pouring wine is Heraclitus' flow, and this wine is always being poured, it is being poured now for you. It takes an overall shape, but is always in flux, where each particle lands up has randomness, and in the case of people, as an aspect of free will.
This book is not entirely philosophical. There is time to throw the glass into the fire, to make love by the flames and to sleep.
Good night. Sweet Dreams.
aej
Beginning with the Big Bang seems an awfully good place to start, though remote from today, which is also a good place to start. Perhaps this is the ultimate way to overcome writer's block. Start with the Big Bang, or Revelations if you believe that to be literal, or start with today - or both.
First off, I will not debate Creationism and reject it as literal truth. I told you this would be from my perspective.
I will start with today and the Big Bang, I will argue for the moment, and this will be a thread throughout the book that the Big Bang and today are an inseparable present.
We start with a singularity, an ultimate unity - an ultimate binary translation from nothing to one thing. We shall say that this one becomes all things. We shall say the linear measurement of time as one thing after another is layered by a phenomenon of time as always being here never separated. We shall say that the centre of the universe is everywhere. We shall argue that mathematically time is continuous, divisions of time being aspects of the mind.
Today, each particle of every existing thing emanates from singularity. Each has uniqueness, yet each has category.
Plato said that Forms were eternal and unchaning and these represented the true reality, illusion was in that which was impermanent. Heraclitus said that you can't step into the same stream twice, that what was permanent was change.
I shall say that the universe is as wine pouring into a glass. The glass represents those Forms, those immutable structural laws of the universe. The pouring wine is Heraclitus' flow, and this wine is always being poured, it is being poured now for you. It takes an overall shape, but is always in flux, where each particle lands up has randomness, and in the case of people, as an aspect of free will.
This book is not entirely philosophical. There is time to throw the glass into the fire, to make love by the flames and to sleep.
Good night. Sweet Dreams.
aej
Friday, October 5, 2007
This is a book in progress, with a beginning but no end
For a long time I've wanted to write a book.
For every conversation has it's limits in time, and each is interrupted, ultimately. And there is a yearning to continue to deepen, include other conversations that you missed, ultimately to satisfy a need to communicate.
Selfishly, I need to take your thoughts, desires, fascinations, anger, ideas and laments and to make them my own, and reflect them back to you in larger integrities, and ambitiously within a whole. I need to include my ear for the voices of the world, but also those solitary ruminations, my own creative syntheses, where all these conversations have been drawn out in my mind. The selfish part is to be the appropriator of a mountain of human experiences, with honesty that I delve to be fair to perspectives, but without offering as sacrficice my perspective as a subject, without offering a promise of objectivity. As such, there is at heart an attempt at truth as far as I am able of that which is recorded fact, yet the deeper truths are in the meanings. Subjectivity is often derided and things which are deemed subjective all to weigh the same, next to nothing. Yet subjectivity that arises out of a yearning to understand reality, a tortuous and uncompromising yielding to truth, an an identification of subject as a container of truths only found through this bouyancy of striving and yielding, and finally arriving at way-stations, disappearing, being broken apart, returning, recollecting, creating, listening and telling and yet imagining and contemplating, using and experiencing, working and resting, taking apart and building and giving up and giving back and relenting to humour, returning to humility and silence - therein lies truth. This is not fiction or non-fiction precisely, yours is the task to take it for what it is, judge for yourself, use what you need, find pleasure, find your tension between mystery and discovery, ground and sky.
This book does not have an end. It has a beginning. This is a Dunia Sutra, a thread of the world. It begins as the world does. Today, with the Big Bang, everything in between, it starts tomorrow.
As I write in the blog a date will appear with the post. Do not assume historical accuracy of the time of writing. It will be edited, parts will be shifted, dates arranged in terms of the composition. Accuracy will be there when needed. I need artistic license to tell this story. The dates will remain part of the composition, and part of the story.
I am writing it as a blog, partly so you can find an unfolding drama, mystery and ideas you need as we go, you can comment and offer me suggestions. I do not care about publishers, all this work is copyright as my own. The other reason is my impatience. I would find it onerous to work away at this book on my own word processor waiting for the improbable day of finishing before revealing it. This way the task is divided up, day by day, and each day I publish.
thank you for reading, don't steal my work, and see you tomorrow.
be good.
For every conversation has it's limits in time, and each is interrupted, ultimately. And there is a yearning to continue to deepen, include other conversations that you missed, ultimately to satisfy a need to communicate.
Selfishly, I need to take your thoughts, desires, fascinations, anger, ideas and laments and to make them my own, and reflect them back to you in larger integrities, and ambitiously within a whole. I need to include my ear for the voices of the world, but also those solitary ruminations, my own creative syntheses, where all these conversations have been drawn out in my mind. The selfish part is to be the appropriator of a mountain of human experiences, with honesty that I delve to be fair to perspectives, but without offering as sacrficice my perspective as a subject, without offering a promise of objectivity. As such, there is at heart an attempt at truth as far as I am able of that which is recorded fact, yet the deeper truths are in the meanings. Subjectivity is often derided and things which are deemed subjective all to weigh the same, next to nothing. Yet subjectivity that arises out of a yearning to understand reality, a tortuous and uncompromising yielding to truth, an an identification of subject as a container of truths only found through this bouyancy of striving and yielding, and finally arriving at way-stations, disappearing, being broken apart, returning, recollecting, creating, listening and telling and yet imagining and contemplating, using and experiencing, working and resting, taking apart and building and giving up and giving back and relenting to humour, returning to humility and silence - therein lies truth. This is not fiction or non-fiction precisely, yours is the task to take it for what it is, judge for yourself, use what you need, find pleasure, find your tension between mystery and discovery, ground and sky.
This book does not have an end. It has a beginning. This is a Dunia Sutra, a thread of the world. It begins as the world does. Today, with the Big Bang, everything in between, it starts tomorrow.
As I write in the blog a date will appear with the post. Do not assume historical accuracy of the time of writing. It will be edited, parts will be shifted, dates arranged in terms of the composition. Accuracy will be there when needed. I need artistic license to tell this story. The dates will remain part of the composition, and part of the story.
I am writing it as a blog, partly so you can find an unfolding drama, mystery and ideas you need as we go, you can comment and offer me suggestions. I do not care about publishers, all this work is copyright as my own. The other reason is my impatience. I would find it onerous to work away at this book on my own word processor waiting for the improbable day of finishing before revealing it. This way the task is divided up, day by day, and each day I publish.
thank you for reading, don't steal my work, and see you tomorrow.
be good.
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