Monthly Archive for February, 2010
First, consider this quote from “Slime Mold as Master Engineer” on research reported in Science News:
“The slime mold has no central brain or indeed any awareness of the overall problem it is trying to solve, but manages to produce a structure with similar properties to the real rail network…” [This behavior] “is really difficult to capture by words,”
This exemplifies the impetus to maintain self integrity I discussed in my last post on Extinguishing Self. I see this impetus as extending throughout creation; it is the driving force to be, do, and succeed, and results in feats of engineering in humans and slime molds alike. Continue reading ‘Self Integrity, Slime, and Karma’
One of the main themes in Buddhism is the ‘extinguishing of self’ through ‘enlightenment’… or is it the other way around? They seem to go hand in hand; are they are the same thing? I find that asking such basic questions on word meaning beforehand helps me when pondering life. So, I must ask, “What is self in the first place?” The idea here is that understanding a problem more deeply can help solve it.
Continue reading ‘A How-To for Extinguishing Self’
Eligible bachelors
There is a curious thing I notice in the life of my two sons. They are not chasing girls like I was at their age. They aren’t gay either, so what gives? I look back on my youthful lust and see a disconnected lad looking for companionship that my ‘independent’ upbringing (plus innate nature, I suppose) never provided. All I ever really wanted was intimacy and acceptance. And the only path to that deeper sense of connection was through a boy-girl relationship. That was true of my wife and most everyone I know (especially in Western cultures). Ironically, our culture’s love of ‘independence and self reliance’ actually leave its people with just the opposite, deep down anyway. Continue reading ‘Significant Others’
Leaving Meiji park after yoga
After settling down in Tokyo, I began going the humungous Meiji park to do yoga in the morning before work. While standing on my head and watching people walking off in the distance, I noticed something very odd. The people had an obvious bob in their gate as they walked. Initially I wondered if they were walking that way on purpose for I’d never seen such a sight before. Then I realized I’d never actually watched people walking while doing the headstand.
All it took for me to see our human way of walking as it actually occurs was a 180 degree (upside down) change of perspective. These days it is difficult for me to notice this ‘bob’ in people, when I do yoga down at the beach. The novelty wore off; I guess familiarity breeds blindness.
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