I wrote most this awhile ago, and I still consider it a work in progress...especially the last two sections..which are a little embarrassing. At the time, I used religions as a basis, because a lot of the thoughts came from insight while debating in ED: M&R, so that's the kind of language I got stuck with... as well as combination of books I had read at the time. I feel like it needs critiquing, though...so feel free to tell me I'm full of it. My apologies in advance for wasting your precious time. crying
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Forward
What is written here is a combination of my thoughts and observations on the nature of life and the universe. While the influences have been a lifelong experience, I feel I may finally have an antiquate vocabulary to explain my observations in detail. I will write of both Western and Eastern cultures and their differences in philosophy in terms of comparison, but understand it's not a favoring of one or the other. I will be stressing Eastern thought, particularly Zen not so much as a bias, but as an awareness of the foreign quality this sort of thinking has on Western cultures.
I will also back my thoughts with scientific knowledge of the present day universe. I highly regard the importance of empirical evidence and repeated experimentation. However, being not a scientist myself (and with rather a lot that is written coming straight from my memory), I will do my best to explain the concepts with enough detail to have a proper understanding.
Word about Words
Spoken language has been one of the more remarkable achievements of human development. Much advancement has been made in the study of human evolution and especially with the human brain. One of the more interesting findings to note is a discovery from about 15 years ago of "mirror neurons". These neurons have been found in the Broca's area (language processing) and parietal lobe (sensory information) of the brain. These specific types of neurons are believed to be associated with the learning of language, empathy, imitation, and even in how to read the intentions of others. In short, the study of these mirror neurons have the potential to do for neurology what the discovery of DNA ultimately has done for genetics.
What is most fascinating about the mirror neurons, however, is really in how they behave. When observing another person(1) act out a behavior, the neurons of the observer(2) reflect the behavior and run the functions through the brain and signals to the muscles as if the observer where the one acting. The sequence of behavior can also be played out by the mirror neurons when the observer physically acts out the behavior.
It's important to point this out as a way to show just how much influence the outer world has on the human brain and it's behaviors. While so much about individuals can be found in the DNA, from the day we are born, our culture and language help to make up a great deal of who we are and how we feel.
Names have always been a very important feature of communication, and no doubt have a very practical dimension in every day life. So much so that it's very difficult for many to imagine a world without names for everything and words to describe everything else. However, it should be important to note that words are not an inherent part of nature, and unlike the written word found in books, the world is constantly changing and cultures and languages are constantly evolving with it. It's because of this I caution that words be taken with a grain of salt and not always so literally. Especially so when describing potentially vague concepts, as philosophy is often wanting to do.
In the West, we have a particularly fundamental attachment to names. It was written in the Bible, after all...
(2:19) The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
And science has been more than happy to oblige in the name game. We've still not named all the animals. How could we? Much less the zoo of cosmological bodies in the universe, and down to the tiniest sub-particles. So it's important to note the value names have in our culture, and with that a tendency to not recognize that something really exists until it has a name. Once named however, the object, even abstract ones, become things we can control.
For an example, consider the term "Sexual Harassment", which did not appear in the general lexicon until the 1970's. Thanks to hind sight now, we know when we look back that despite not having a name prior to the 1970's, people did indeed experience the feelings and events now associated with sexual harassment. However, it was not until the experience was legally named and causes legally identified did Sexual Harassment become a thing we could control and enforce laws on.
Again, there are practical reasons for wanting specific names in governmental law. It would be ridiculously arbitrary to outlaw "suffering". So long as it's understood that this system of words is symptomatic of the human mind, and not a system of the universe itself.
Casusality
"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake
Cause and effect is the most fundamental feature of the universe we live in. There is nothing in science that can be explained without causality, and nothing logically can exist outside cause and effect and still exert an influence. That it is so basic is perhaps why it goes largely unnoticed in every day life.
To better appreciate the sheer magnitude of causality, it may be helpful to have some passing knowledge of Chaos Theory. The popular analogy to Chaos Theory is the "butterfly effect" which suggest that a butterfly flapping it's wings could cause just enough disturbance in the atmosphere to create a storm on the other side of the world.
While it's paints an interesting picture, it's not generally helpful in seeing the whole thing. It's not the butterfly specifically which causes the storm, rather it's involvement in the long line of cause and effect that ultimately create the storm. The butterfly really is only a very small factor, indeed... but then so is everything else. Put all together, they made the storm.
This is why we're not counting on metrologist to make specific weather predictions, rather they can only predict the percentage of likelihood. It may have been a butterfly in China which helped to trigger the storm today, but tomorrow it could very well be a wasp in Peru.
Presumably, if one was able to track down all the possible direct and indirect causes to an event, we'd know how to predict it the next time around, right? Not quite. The second law of thermodynamics, entropy (that over time the energy of an organized system dissipates into disorder), cannot be used accurately unless all variables are accounted for and we know the original state of what is "organized". Especially on a universal scale whereas we would have to know about the existence of every particle in order to count back to the beginning that we know as the "Big Bang".
However, it has been suggested for quite some time now that the universe did not begin as a Big Bang, rather it was always there. The thinking goes that perhaps another universe crossing into ours caused a reaction that ultimately resulted in what we know today. Since we cannot know what the original state of the universe was prior to the Big Bang event, it's difficult to imagine our study of particles would make it any clearer.
Quantum mechanics (or particle physics) have been incredibly useful to the development of technology and may ultimately help in better understanding the nature of the universe we live in. There is, though, a built in nature to particle physics that keeps us from predicting the exact actions of all particles, and it's called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Give ten people in the room a coin and tell them to flip for heads or tails. Now without knowing how they will throw their coin or how it will land, guess which of the people will get heads and which will get tails.
It's a high likelihood you'd get at least a few of the guesses right, but it's also difficult to assume anyone could guess them all. If you can appreciate the difficulty here, you're already on your way to understanding the nature of quantum mechanics.
According to the uncertainty principle, we cannot know the velocity and position of a particle at the same time. If we try to observe one we will disturb the other, and therefore our ability to make accurate predictions. However, given the sheer number of particles, and the 50/50 chance of getting it right, we can still make practical used of quantum physics in technology. But again, if one can only guess right half the time for a single particle, trying to guess the original positions of all particles in the universe would be asking quite a lot.
Despite having an apparently deterministic system of physics on the larger scale, and a built in indeterminacy on the particle scale, the laws of cause and effect thread the two systems together into one. Determinism on a universal scale, much less a human one may very well be a false notion in that given the combination of Chaos Theory, entropy and the uncertainty principle, there's nothing that can really be determined.
Duality
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
- Newton's Third Law of Motion
This basic understanding of opposites extends into the very core of humanity, whether it be psychological opposites (good and evil) or physical opposites (big and small). Yet, despite the obvious need for both sides to exist, we tend to assert as conscious beings the idea of one side overpowering the other in a war of extremes. That we must "pick a side" and hang on for dear life is almost certainly the root cause of so much psychological suffering in this world. We need to better understand that the very notion of "opposites" itself is also a fallacy of humans, and not true to the universe.
No matter how much one may wish it so, nature does not grow "good trees" and "bad trees". It just grows trees. It can't even really be said that nature "grows trees" as growing is not separable from trees, nor are trees separable from nature. That I can even divide nouns from verbs, like this, is only an illusion of language.
Nor is nature bias to life. There is no favoring of bacteria over humans or anything in between. That any number of biological entities exist at the same time in the history of the planet, is proof enough of their equality to each other. There are no true inferiorities or superiorities.
That any life from the past may have gone extinct is a symptom of multiple factors such as natural disasters and of course, evolution. (Evolution in itself has multiple causes, such as natural selection, sexual selection and genetic drift.) Given all the variables that go into making universe as it is today, it's highly unlikely that it would repeat itself should the clock be set back and allowed to play again.
Mind
"The world is not beauitful; And in that way, lends it a sort of beauty."
- Kino no Tabi
The social sciences assert that when we are born, by default as human beings we have human nature. That thing that supposedly makes us different from animals. And in a way, it does. Humans have evolved self-awareness to such a degree that we no longer need to operate as many other animals in that rather than having to adapt our genetics and bodies to survive, we can adapt our minds.
What makes human nature so human is our awareness of existence. There is a duality to this in that human nature gave us the ability to perceive the future and invent things like tools and art. But it also means that we are aware that we are aware, and therefore feel a need to judge ourselves and others. Also, it means we have hind sight and can remember grudges.
The difference in East and West in their general interpretation of human nature is that from Adam & Eve, the West has gain the notion that humans are inherently sinful. I don't think this should be the case, as it's not the whole picture. There is a duality here in the concept of "freewill". It would be expected if God granted humans freewill that sooner or later humans would make "mistakes". In a way, freewill needed sin to make humans complete.
The competing force to sin from the East is karma. In Hindu thought, karma is the essence of life which makes it "sticky" to this world, and so beings filled with karma are doomed to reincarnation over and over again. What goes around, comes around. Karma, unlike sin, however is not truly good or bad, but a neutral force.
One Zen interpretation is that the only truth is what is in the mind. If you believe in sin, sin is your reality. If you believe in karma, karma is your reality. That you may project your sin or karma on another is also your reality. In other words, you create your own reality by the beliefs you hold in the mind. So if you wish to cleanse yourself of human nature, sin or karma, simply take it out of your mind.
The point here isn't so much whether something exists either objectively or subjectively, but traces the way in which we understand the world back to our personal perceptions, bias, and interpretations about the world in which we live. If you understand what your perceptions are, ideally, you would be able to exclude them from your interpretations about the objective world. As far as I can tell... it's impossible. Hence the fetish for "if you don't understand, you understand" style phrases in Zen philosophy.
Relativity
"What is essential is invisible to the eye..."
- The Little Prince
In the way grammar is taught, there are "full words" and "empty words". Full words being nouns, verbs, etc. Empty words are the particles, which show the relationship of the words to each other. In the way the syntax goes, a full word becomes a noun or a verb only when it's empty word is present. (This shows up better in Eastern languages, as in Chinese or Japanese.)
It's from this idea that I've gained from insight from this word the Buddhist monks call "emptiness", which in English, of course implies nothing. Though, it can be interpreted that way, what they really ought to mean is relationship. It's the thing between the verbs and nouns that make them act as one. Just as we need space in order to have stuff to put it in.
The world is very altruistic. Yet, in a way that is often hard to reconciled with, especially with our normal notion of altruism. The nature of our being is to survive, and it's this egotism our culture tends to stress, but without always seeing it for what it is. When people get together in groups, they take on an altruistic quality that is difficult to explain at first glance.
Take the Ultimatum Game, for example. This game is a social experiment often used by economic and social sciences in order to better explain "human nature", and it's often cited in books.
It basically goes like this:
Person A is given money that they must split with Person B. Person A can split it any amount they wish, but if Person B doesn't instantly agree, both of them lose all the money.
Theoretically, Person B should agree to any amount that Person A offers, as logically, it's better to have something rather than nothing. However, most of the time, if Person A's offer is ever less than 20% of the money, Person B won't agree to it at all.
This has been shown to happen in all cultures. It does rather point to a kind of impulsive sense of fairness in that a person is willing to gain nothing just for the sake of justice. They've done similar games with capuchin monkeys and it'd ended in similar results. If all monkeys aren't rewarded with the same type of fruit reward, the monkeys stop cooperating, even though any reward should be better than nothing.
This works the same in government, and is particularly transparent in democracy, only on a larger, more chaotic scale. Despite everyone acting out on their own personal interest, or in the interest of their candidate or party platform, and despite all the problems that often arise... we always end up with a result one way or another. (And we must admit to ourselves that we need adversaries in order for there to be any kind of "battle" to begin with.)
Ego
"I wish they would only take me as I am."
- Vincent Van Gogh
Frequently asked, but seldom answered is the question of "who am I?" The easiest way to reply, of course, is by using the words given to you by your culture and reply with your name or with "me"... which is only slightly more vague. This is very natural as conscious beings, as we constantly perceive the world as something that goes on around us and we're in the middle. What is recognized, but not always thought out thoroughly, is that all people everywhere see their lives as being in the middle of the universe. It was mistake the philosopher Aristotle was more than happy to apply to the actual world itself in geocentric theory.
It should also be interesting to note that when astronomers look out their telescopes and have a good look around this gleaming universe of ours, that there is still the curious illusion of the our being in the middle of it all. The universe seems to be expanding in all directions around us. Yet we know we're not in the middle anymore, we can't be. Can we?
It's a strange notion that for all our tendencies to judge and take sides in the various goings-on in life, we feel very uncomfortable with the idea of not physically being in the middle of our own life. That we must get into arguments, demand attention and get upset when we're forgotten is only more evidence to this psychological flaw in human beings. There is absolutely no need to feel this way all the time.
Now to answer the question, "Who am I?", one way to do it is to consider a cliche koan (riddle):
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one's around, does it make a sound?
There are many ways to answer this question. Some ways more helpful than others. But it's designed to make one to consider for a moment, without thinking in terms of positive and negative, what exactly makes a sound a sound. Without ears to hear it, a sound does not exist. Yet, it does exist in the presence of ears. So what is sound without ears? A wave.
Another way to ask the question is this:
Who were you before you were born?
A vibration? What else could we be. This may, of course seem a bizarre idea, that we solid beings would be something as immaterial as vibration. And of all the other stuff in the world? Vibrations too. That we feel solid, and that we can feel, hear and even see the world around us is an illusion. And why not?
The gist of the first law of thermodynamics (Conservation of Energy), is that energy can be converted from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The law also applies in the Conservation of Matter, being that all matter is suggested to be a form of energy. (This meaning was further illustrated in Einstein's infamous equation "E=MC^2")
So, all right. We may get the point now that we're all bundles of energy. Is that really all it is? Yes and no. It depends on what one wishes to believe.
Enlightenment
"Nothing in the cry of the cicada suggest they are about to die."
- Basho
Humans are highly visual people by their nature, so it's very difficult for them to imagine a world without black and white, light and dark, colors, etc. But what isn't always understood is that their eyes are fooling them into believing that this is the way the world really is, and without eyes... like in blind people, the world must be a very horrible place, indeed.
When you are born without certain senses, like seeing... you don't think in "light" and "dark", and they don't think in color in the same way. More often than not, the brain adapts its way around missing senses and develops it's own way of detecting and understanding these ranges. The only reason they may know they exist is because the people around them say so, and so in this way our society gets people to behave in a funny way.
Because we built this world, around the idea that all people can see (consider our road signs and the like), and so we created for ourselves the problem that if you don't see, you are missing out. And we tell the blind people that... and we might feel a little guilty for being able to see when they can't... and so the blind people internalize this and worry about it... and it goes in a cycle.
We can use animals for examples too. Consider a snake... specifically those of the viper family with those pits on their snouts for sensing heat. Snakes don't see very well and they don't hear... so they're very dependant on their taste and their sense of heat to find food. We could imagine the way they "see" heat is like those satellite maps with all the colors... but that's not really how the snake is seeing. It doesn't see anything... it just has the sensation of heat.
Another amusing creature (gotta thing for animals) is the mantis shrimp. The thing sees in sixteen different light spectrum. Goodness knows how or what their relatively small brains make of all that, but humans who can only see really well on the one light spectrum would have tremendous difficultly seeing the world as a shrimp.
We could make tools, and we do... for picking up all the different kinds of light waves. But our tools are designed to translate the light waves into something we can see.
So maybe you can see... or not see, now... that the senses we are born with make up so much of who we are and how we experience the world... and our experiences trick us into thinking that is the way the world really is, and other people have it wrong. And the other people are thinking the same thing.
What all the sensations have in common though, is that they're all vibrations. And we are physically vibrations too. (Think sub-particles on particles on atoms on molecules on matter on organelle on cell on organs on nerves on brain on you.) In a way we can think about it... we are basically the vibrations of the universe that have somehow tricked ourselves into becoming self-aware. And with all that came all this.
Now what the Buddhist mean by Buddha Nature... and the Hindu mean by Brahman... and what the Western interpretation may believe as God... is the vibration that goes on around us all the time without all these senses going on that confuse ourselves into thinking what we see is reality.
Of course, one doesn't have to believe all that. But that in of itself can be very amusing. So there's no real reason to get all worked up about things. It's just vibrations, after all.
By rebirth, Buddhist mean that when we die our senses turn off and we go back to being vibrations and no longer tricking ourselves into awareness. And all the stuff that made us keeps going on without our having to think about it.
I suppose... if one really wanted to believe in something like a soul as Christians do... you could say that you can exist two places at once with your soul where ever you want it to go... and your vibrations... body.. continuing the cycle here. So in a funny way... everybody wins.
This is why Zen people can, sometimes, afford to be so silly about everything... they've got the joke. And ya know, when you hear a good joke... it's hard not to want to share it with other people. The different religions and sects of Buddhist disagree on how to go about telling the joke... but they know deep down that everybody already knows how it ends anyway.
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