I am still awed that ‘it’ works, although I now know that Nature’s ‘logistics’ is in command. Even so, it also turns out to be a worrisome problem for civilizations’ powers-that-be… that would be all of us, really.

Yep, “Out of the mouths of babes” is no empty saying! It almost seems like we get more stupid in some ways as we age. I guess that has a lot to do with our ability as adults to willfully innovate while ignorant of the constant. Alas too, any adults that  finally understand soon die, so there are few around to redirect younger fools from their ignorant ‘free will’ willful innovations. (Although thankfully, that is changing as the mean age of the population keeps rising.)

Change causes change, ripples through time.

A recent Science News article, Lopped Off, highlights just how profoundly we, as a species, generally have no clue what we are dong. Although, I guess young children and old people may have always had their intuitive doubts. Now, science is forcing more and more of us middle-age know-it-alls to worry.

Chapter 16 of the Tao Te Ching is very prescient on the unintended consequences of our clever and willful behavior. It was writing long before our innovative abilities threatened the entire planet (~500bc). Is it ironic that science both leads to technological innovations that cause the destruction, and now impels us to realize the full range of consequences of our actions. We can only hope the lag time between innovation and realization is timely enough.

Speaking of innovation,
Isn’t our species also a daring evolutionary innovation on the part of Nature? Of course, I assume it’s not a “willful innovation while ignorant of the constant” kind of thing. So, is it just Nature rolling the dice? These are very interesting times; as that old Chinese (?) curse says, “May you live in interesting times“.

All this says to me how blind we become by what we think we know. Knowledge is a two edged sword; it empowers us to overcome many obstacles, yet the arrogance of knowledge simultaneously blind-sides us. Overcoming petty obstacles creates what often turn out to be greater obstacles. Knowledge gives us a false sense of security. Despite being extremely limited, it gives the beholder the illusion that he or she truly knows. This begs the question, “How do we know what we know is truly so?” That is why, To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

We seem to assume we can find solutions that will finally result in a ‘happiness ever after’ land of milk and honey. That fantasy is certainly a hallmark in Western religion. Such wishful thinking doesn’t conform to nature’s reality; it is instead what nature intends for us to perceive (i.e., an emergent property of a bio-hoodwink). Our species can’t afford to indulge in this species-centric fantasy much longer. No worries though… “groan”… circumstance bring us to maturity!

Here now is a pithy excerpt from that article.

“We’re eliminating large predators very quickly around the world,” says wildlife biologist Michael Soulé of the Wildlands Network, who works out of Paonia, Colo. “It’s estimated that 90 percent are already gone.”

These end-of-the-line carnivores, known as “apex consumers,” can influence the lower rungs of their ecological ladders. By keeping the critters they dine on in check, the apex species affect the next rungs down, and so on. The system remains balanced as populations fluctuate in sync.

But sharks aren’t the only predators under siege. A host of carnivores perched atop food webs are being eliminated by humans, the real killing machines. Although marine species such as sharks are primarily caught for food, large terrestrial hunters (think lions, wolves and grizzlies) are often targeted for removal because they threaten humans moving into previously wild spaces.

Chapter 16 with its admonition about willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant fits this sorry situation so perfectly that submitting a comment (below) to Letters at Science News was irresistible. Low and behold, they printed it.  At last, science and religion find common ground. 

Predators inspire poetry and fear
Regarding “Lopped off” (SN: 11/5/11, p. 26): One of the Tao Te Ching’s chapters (excerpt below) is very prescient on the unintended consequences of human behavior. It was written around 500 B.C., long before our innovative abilities threatened the entire planet. It is ironic that science both leads to innovations that cause the destruction, and now allows us to realize the full range of consequences.

Woe to him who willfully innovates
While ignorant of the constant,
But should one act from knowledge of the constant
One’s action will lead to impartiality,
Impartiality to kingliness,
Kingliness to heaven,
Heaven to the way,
The way to perpetuity,
And to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger.
Carl Abbott, Santa Cruz, Calif.

Me, age 3, actually fishing... sort of.

The fish are biting and I’m reeling ‘em in, I’m just not posting ‘em. Posting requires so much clean up to make ‘em fit for reading.

Finishing the last chapter of the Tao Te Ching was the catalyst I guess I needed to reevaluate things. I’ve wondered for a while now why I post in the first place.

I mean, the Taoist point of view has to be among the oddest and most ironic subjects to speak on. After all, he who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know.

So I have to ask myself, if I don’t know, why reveal my ignorance? On the other hand, if I do know, why am I speaking? To be fair, that pithy “He who knows…” statement is not the whole story. On the positive side, trying to write coherently is a fascinating challenge for me, and my observations do appear to benefit a few people. Simply put, I am composing and performing ‘music’, as seen from a mysterious sameness point of view anyway. Now certainly, my ’songs’ are music to nearly no ones ears, but that is just as it should be. Meaning, a Taoist ’song’ seeks to poke through the bio-hoodwink and sing it as ‘it’ is, not as we want ‘it’ to be. Popularity would just be symptomatic of singing it off-key, Taoist-wise.

Tao Te Ching, Word for Word

I just ordered a handful of my just completed translation (see below). We’ll use it here at our monthly meeting along side D.C. Lau’s translation. I think having the nearly literal version to refer to along side D.C. Lau’s version will be helpful. I notice that all translations bear an inherent problem due to relative word meaning. Meaning, when translating the Chinese to English, one must choose one word among several related meanings. Each of these can mean something different in the mind of the beholder – translator and reader alike. On top of this tenuous situation, rest an even fuzzier one for pseudo translations (like Steven Mitchel’s for example), which are actually interpretations of authentic translations. The benefit of correlations is that the process bears none of these problems. The whole responsibility of discerning meaning lies with the bewildered mind of ‘correlator’. Maybe that accounts for its great ‘popularity’.

Next step

I will continue to reevaluate my translation over time to make it more readable when possible, yet with any luck, also more accurate. Still, that may just amount to moving the furniture around the room. Now, with that disclaimer, anyone wishing a copy can buy direct from the printer Lulu. Lulu doesn’t ship abroad, so if anyone outside the USA wants a copy we can work something out. I’d really appreciate any comments, questions and criticisms with an eye to making it better. Great perfection here we come.

Is redundancy the name of the game?

I feel like I’ve said it all before, ad nausium. Still, a constant echo seems to be useful to counteract the bio-hoodwink. Reviewing the view I see in my most balanced moments helps anchor me in my less balanced ones. From what I can tell, that is a common human practice. Forgetting what we truly want of life is all-too-easy!

Adventures of aging

I never remember any old people telling me how fascinating aging was or would be, although if they had, it probably wouldn’t have registered, i.e. one can only understand what one already knows. I seem to be having increasing difficulty remembering things. My mind is becoming blanker. That has some interesting effects; insight seems to flow like water through the void my mind is becoming. This ties into the sleep on it and blind spot issue John Clease spoke about.

On the other hand, I could just be seeing myself more as I actually am rather than the ‘genius’ I once liked to think I was. Yes, that old ‘Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty‘ issue. That offers a twist on the idea of a ’self fulfilling prophecy’. What you think is so prevents you from seeing what is actually so, which make it more like a ’self fulfilling prophecy bubble‘.

Another possibility is that I could be experiencing the beginnings of Alzheimer’s and the hole it produces in memory lead to my final days of insight before the mind’s curtain falls. Speculating is such fun, especially given how life usually turns out differently from anything we think. It is an adventure, that’s for sure!

Humans are naturally (and usually) inclined to take the easy way, go for pleasure and avoid pain. In the wild this bio-hoodwink usually works out well. Human culture has been driven by this primary instinctive drive shared by all animals, from ants to duck to dogs to people. Consider the human highway on the left and the ant highway on the right (photo left). Both species are just trying to make life easier and more efficient. As I pointed out in Ants are Us, the similarities are striking.

Over time (100,000 years +/-) this drive has evolved modern civilization to its present condition through the development of tools and materials to make life easier… more comfortable, secure, and to fatten up whenever possible; who knows when the next famine is coming? That seals feels it has to eat its fill while it can (photo right). The human man is not really any different; his biology does not know the supper markets are always overflowing with food, nor the danger of long term overeating ⁽¹⁾.

So, while we are totally natural in how we live (pursue pleasure, avoid pain), we are not living under the wild conditions for which our instincts evolved over millions of years to live. The instinct to make living easier combined with the cognitive and manual ability to succeed has led us to an unbalance situation. We are increasingly faced with having too much of a good thing. Naturally, letting go of our ‘good thing’ is not easy, and so we remain bogged down in difficulty ⁽²⁾.

Any species that evolves capabilities which bring it beyond essential counterbalancing forces will either evolve in ways that bring it back in balance, or it goes extinct. Of course, external conditions can also change quickly to a degree that brings it lethally out of balance (e.g., the comet and the dinosaurs, the dodo bird and humans).

In my view, we are simply responding to life naturally and like all other creatures, we do so in overall ignorance of the consequences. Like all other life forms, we react to circumstance, and adapt accordingly. The unusual and ironic thing about humans is that human knowledge is a major source of our ignorance. Other animals are just ‘dumb’ and ignorant; we are smart and ignorant. Or as chapter 18 says, when cleverness emerges there is great hypocrisy.

⁽¹⁾ I’ve really noticed the biology as I’ve aged. Toward my late 20’s I found myself gaining weight ‘naturally’. My diet was not really changing, my biology was. When I quit smoking, my weight really shot up. I suppose I was replacing the pleasures from tobacco addiction with pleasure from food. As Buddha’s Second Truth points out, if I had continued to follow pleasure’s bait, the result would be pain—I wound be seriously overweight.

We burn fewer calories as we age. This slow-down prepares us, in the wild, for becoming increasingly less agile in hunting and gathering, and less able to recover from injury. Biology is oblivious to civilized conditions where rich and abundant food is always available, especially now in modern economies.

Interestingly, it took me about 10 years to unlearn the ‘eat today for who knows what lies ahead’ approach to life that years of living abroad in developing countries ingrained in me. It took me that long to psychologically settling down enough to know food was always at hand. It took me even longer to know I needed to rein in pleasure’s drive. Though I understood (in theory) that ‘short term pleasure attracts long term pain‘, it took real time to begin to actually understand and put that into practice.

⁽²⁾ Here are a few passages from Chapter 63 that speaks to the obvious difficulty we face.

Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult;
make something big by starting with it when small.

Difficult things in the world must needs have their beginnings in the easy;
big things must needs have their beginnings in the small.

Therefore, even the sage treats some things as difficult.
That is why in the end no difficulties can get the better of him.

Shishi odoshi ("deer scarer")

Yes, it is true. The reason it may sound ridiculous is that we are biologically set up to respond positively to gain and negatively to loss. A useful trick I’ve found in life is convincing my hoodwinking emotions of the actual benefit of loss and the hidden downside of gain.

Years of evidence, hard-won through personal experience, helps keep me constantly convinced now.  The Tao Te Ching echos this view in chapter 58, It is on disaster that good fortune perches; It is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches. The proverb “be careful what you wish for, it may come true” points in the same direction.

There are countless examples of this ‘open secret’. Just go throughout the day looking for them, although they are mostly fleeting and subtle. Being that these are subtle, such gain and loss doesn’t trigger emotion strongly enough to make the process easy to notice. When major loss (or gain) occurs, the emotions overwhelm reason and so all you see is one side, feeling either euphoric or miserable. Both emotions blind-side rational impartial observation.

Looking for evidence of this is really quite easy, yet the usual response would probably be, “Why bother spending time and energy on this?” Well that’s easy…  Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in. Without a doubt, the better I know myself, the more likely I am to ‘deal with a thing while it is still nothing‘, and looking deeply into ‘gain and loss’ is simply an essential side of getting to know myself.

The photo here is of a Japanese shishi odoshi (”deer scarer”). Every now and then I’d come across one on the grounds of a Japanese temple. I always assumed it was symbolic of the process: loss brings about gain, gain brings about loss (i.e., when it fills, it empties right away, and then begins filling again). Looking for this photo I discovered its practical and perhaps traditional use. But does it really scare deer away? They are probably smarter than that.

When I look around me, I see no evil or ugliness in nature. Nature is just self right as the Chinese ziran (自然) puts it.

Nature includes everything, including the behaviors arising from our biological nature. So surely seeing evil in any human action, no matter how unpleasant, doesn’t really hold up. Therefore, I have to wonder what calling something evil actually means from a symptom’s point of view?

Thinking that something is evil is plainly a projection (reflection) of what one hates ⁽¹⁾. I seem to recall hearing the phrase, “I hate evil” more than a few times. I expect this comes from biblical proverbs 8-13 “To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech”. (My word, what a sharp contrast to chapter two’s view of good and bad, beauty and ugly.) As I see it, ‘hate’ and ‘evil’ share the same side of the coin. Namely, evil actions arise out of hate filled emotion. So, seeing something as evil just means we are seeing something we hate. That begs the question: what does hate actually mean from a symptom’s point of view?

There is another way to see evil

Hate really boils down to that which we find unpleasant and dislike in the extreme. Conversely, love is that which we like. Why then do we love some things and hate other things? I see the survival instinct as work here. Namely, that which we feel beneficial, we love, that which we feel harmful, we hate. This simple process of attraction and aversion, based in survival, is common to all life. The stronger we feel either one, the more active the response. Two factors unique to us—tool use and cognition—greatly influence our response to these universal drives.

Just imagine what would happen if an angry dog had a gun and a finger to pull the trigger.  Clearly, without tools we’d mostly be throwing feces at each other instead of guided missiles. Considering our capability to destroy anything that disturbs us, it is remarkable that we don’t wreak more havoc on the planet.

Next, imagine how tormented that angry dog might be if it could think. All its emotional currents could exist larger-than-life in imagination—it could hate! Clearly, animals (including humans) without thought would mostly experience the moment, ‘up’ or ‘down’, with no cognitive means to magnify and fixate on it. As it is now, we haul around our ‘loves and hates’ like so much extra baggage. A worry-free life remains beyond our reach as long as we hang on ⁽²⁾.

There is another way to deal with evil

Our exceptional ability to think and our ability to devise tools share the same side of the coin, and bring with them unintended negative consequences. Nevertheless, as a species, we are not going to return to the use of the knotted rope nor, know yet think that we do not know anytime soon. Still, it amazes me that a rational view of our predicament is not more widespread ⁽³⁾.

We just seem to go around in circle. The typical approach of ‘fighting evil’ is completely ironic, hypocritical, and futile. Understanding ourselves as animals first and foremost helps brake this cycle. Knowing that our highest ideals are not answers to our problem, but rather symptoms of our problem can truly help one return. Of course seeing our ideals as symptoms rather than as answers may depend on how comfortable we feel being without thought of self. Yep, there’s always a hitch.

⁽¹⁾ Also curious is how one person’s hated and evil is another’s loved and good. The inconsistency and hypocrisy I see in moral outrages are striking (although quite natural, of course). A most obvious  example is how the ‘right to life’ conservative sees abortion as evil, but condones capital punishment. On the other hand, the ‘free to choose’ liberal often see capital punishment as evil, but condones abortion. When it comes to killing, humanity’s line in the sand moves all over the place (except for Jainism I suppose. But even Vegans, like the Jains, are moving that line by judging what is sentient. That reminds me of a post I was considering—Is a Rock Conscious? Maybe that’ll be next up.)

⁽²⁾ Letting go is made all the more difficult because our ‘loves and hates’ are inextricably linked. To paraphrase chapter two, the hates and the loves complement each other. As long as you hold out for one you get the other.

⁽³⁾ It is possible our inability to see ourselves more rationally is tied to our inability to really do anything about it (ourselves). Just as questions demand answers, seeing problems probably evokes an instinctive drive to fix them. Perhaps this limits our ability to seriously consider problems that are truly natural and beyond our ability to fix? I can even imagine our belief in free will, explicit or implied, may be somewhat tied to this limitation.

Inside

Knowing that ‘we are all in this together’ evokes a sense of community and well being. Just a few centuries ago species’ centric myths almost exclusively defined what we and all this meant. Boy is that changing! Science is showing just how deep and vast the ‘we’ really is, as the Science News’ Inside Job reports.

This research offers yet another heads-up on the dangers of willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant. This reminds me of the Science News’ reports on green house gasses and global warming in the mid 80’s. It only took 20 years for this to become ‘popular’. Alas, this popularity hasn’t driven much corrective action yet. I imagine the perceived loss-to-gain ratio (cost/benefit) isn’t compelling enough. How will this effect the biological issues raised here in this report?

I should say immediate loss to immediate gain. The immediate loss is high, like giving up fossil fuel, without any immediate gain. In fact, the only gain is an abstract ideal of ‘the disaster we avoid’. That never worked for getting rid of nuclear weapons; why should it now? Interestingly, the climatic consequences are gradually coming to fruition, as are the biological consequences previewed in Inside Job. How disastrous do circumstances need to get before the gain feels worth the loss? What does it take to see through our blind spot?

Alas, the wisdom of balance has yet to play a major role in human behavior. Instead, the bio-hoodwink impels us to feel ‘the more the better’. Perceived immediate gain drives us. Of course, and naturally so, we’re animals after all! That today’s gain becomes tomorrow’s loss may very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet (ironically) no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice.

On the other hand, science is gradually proving how interconnected everything is. That does bode well for the long term future! Especially considering how naive we were on these matters just a few short centuries ago.

Here are a few excerpts from this report for those whom the link fails to work. I was especially tickled by the comment made by one of the researchers at the end of the article (see last excerpt).

Teeming masses of bacteria are in your mouth, on your skin, up your nose and on the surface of your eye, in your stomach, deep in your bowels and well, just about everywhere. In fact, the number of bacterial cells you harbor exceeds the count of your own body’s cells by 10-to-1.

They are — for the most part — friendly. So friendly that many scientists now view humans as conglomerate superorganisms composed of thousands of species. Scientists have dubbed this internal flora the “microbiome,” a nod to the little ecosystems that have blossomed in the body throughout human evolution.

These microbes are no mere hitch­hikers. They’re hard at work cleaning up your insides and pumping out compounds that have all kinds of effects on health, development and perhaps even some behavior, emerging evidence suggests.

New experiments — mostly with mice — are uncovering secrets about how bacteria beguile, coax and outright manipulate their hosts, including humans.

The thought of microbes controlling the body may tickle Pettersson, but most people are squeamish about even having bacteria around. “Everywhere you look people are trying to make the world germfree,” says Martin Blaser, a micro­biologist at New York University.

But a bacteria-free world is neither practical nor healthy. Blaser and others think that hygienic practices are not only getting rid of pathogens but are also causing populations of helpful bacteria to dwindle, leading to disease. This disappearing-microbiota theory is slightly different from the hygiene hypothesis, which holds that reduced exposure to pathogens leads to a maladjusted immune system, which in turn causes allergies and asthma (SN: 8/26/00, p. 134). Breaking up with the bacterial buddies that humans evolved with could have even more profound effects on health.

“Clean water is great. I wouldn’t choose otherwise, but sometimes there are unforeseen consequences,” Blaser says. In addition to widespread use of antibiotics to battle infections and purposely kill bacteria, humans are changing their microbial makeups in some unexpected ways. For example:

• Clean water = People pick up fewer fecal bacteria
• Bathing= Changes a person’s mix of bacteria on skin ⁽¹⁾
• Reduced breast feeding=Babies get fewer bacteria from contact with mother
• Smaller families=Fewer hand-me-down from siblings
• Increased cesarean sections=Babies get few bacteria from birth canal
• Dental fillings=Changes a person’s mix of bacteria in mouth

It’s been slow in coming, but an awareness is growing that small creatures can wield great influence on the development of the human brain, immune system and other parts of the body. It should come as no great surprise, Mazmanian says. After all, bacteria shape their environments all the time, creating teeming colonies around vents in the ocean floor and helping build coral reefs and rain forests. “I don’t see us as being any different from a coral reef,” he says. “But humans are narcissists by nature, and most of the rest of the world isn’t ready to admit that little, ignorant bacteria could be in charge.”

One of the most trying experiences for social animals (including humans) is isolation and loneliness. Having fewer mainstream cultural ties has lead me to look further a-field for connection. I find my sense of isolation fades as I look deeper and more broadly around me… and as this article shows, inside me as well.

⁽¹⁾ I quit using soap many decades ago, and switched to using brush to simulate the ‘walking through the jungle’ effect of plant brushing against body. I know, it’s a pretty loose simulation, but it seems beneficial from the bacteria sense. Also, just imagine how much I’ve saved on not buying soap. (I do use soap for washing hair though.) When in doubt about most anything, I return to consider how ancestral hominids, or wild animals in general, lived for guidance. This really helps clarify life by counterbalancing the fickle ‘latest greatest answer’ that civilization comes up with.

'He who conquers self...'

The details of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths vary somewhat depending on the source. I recently dug up the source for the version that I found most useful. Why useful? Mostly because it was the most sensible and succinct I’d seen.

Nevertheless, I had a minor problem with how the Third Noble Truth was stated, and long ago changed a word or two. Rereading my original source makes me want to revisit this and ponder why I revised in the first place. Here is the sequence of events:

The original says: “He who conquers self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.“

I changed the “conquers self” to “surrenders self”. I was immersed in the Bhagavad-Gita at the time which preaches surrender, e.g., “no man can be a Yogi who surrenders not his earthly will”. Perhaps the idea of ‘conquering self’ felt to aggressive to me.

A few years ago I thought back on that and changed it back to what I thought was the original, i.e., “He who extinguishes self will be free from lust…” Recently I came across that old book and retrieved the original ‘conquers self‘ phrase.

There is some chicken and the egg irony in this. The Second Noble Truth point out that “the illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. The desire to live for the enjoyment of self … (and so on)” So just how is one suppose to ‘conquer’ an illusion? If something isn’t real, then what does conquer mean, in practice. It certainly is not the same as conquering a physical enemy coming at you with guns a-blazing.

Another peculiarity is the notion that, as the Third Truth say, “…the flames of desire find no material to feed upon thus they are extinguished”. The “material” would seem to be the self, which after being conquered is no more and thus desire has nothing to feed upon. However, as the Second Truth says, the self originates and manifests itself in clinging and desire. Lust creates the illusion of self, yet conquering self frees you from lust. This feels a little chicken and the egg-y.

I get past the chicken and egg dilema by simply keeping actively aware that my sense of self is caused by my desires and fears. The illusion has a hard time withstanding such constant clarity. Conquering self is just maintaining enough perspective to avoid being completely hoodwinked by biology, the bio-hoodwink⁽¹⁾ as I call it. In other words, the more aware I am of how biology is pulling my strings, the less convincing the illusion become. Conquering self is really a matter of seeing how the trick works. Once you clearly know how the trick (magic, illusion) works, it can no long captivate you. When the illusion of self no longer captivates, it has been conquered—or at least you’ve established a truce.

One final thought on Buddha’s Second Truth. I am inclined to rephrase it this way: “He who conquers, surrenders and understands self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.” The conquering comes first as you wage battle with yourself to ‘get your act together’. Next comes the surrendering when you realize that conquering your self is not possible, at least in the normal wage war sense of the word. Finally, seeing what is actually taking place, and understanding how a bio-hoodwink is always pulling strings diminishes the “illusion of self” enough to return to one’s roots and just be who you naturally are.

(1)bio-hoodwink: I coined this term for the trick biology plays on perception. See Peeking in on Nature’s Hoodwink. Chapter 65 says: Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them. The oldest ‘of old’, when it comes to living things in nature, is the biological process of life, ‘hoodwinks’ and all.

For example, a bio-hoodwink tells the brain that the richer the food (and the more you eat) the better. This was the case in the wild before we cleverly devised ways around natural limitations in order to make food as rich and plentiful as we wished. Alas, the bio-hoodwink is inherited and out of sync with human willful innovation. The only counter-measure we have against this is understanding, which explains why Buddha put Right Understanding at the head of his Eight Fold Path.

The other side of enlightenment, as I see it, is sustained knowing. Here impartiality is essential. It might even be the key to sustain knowing in the first place. In any case, without sufficient impartiality, see the “whole” would drive one insane I expect. Impartiality opens the window of awareness wider; the wider the widow the more awe full the view; the more essential impartiality becomes to maintaining sanity.

The awesome overwhelming nature of an enlightened view is described nicely in the chapter eleven of the Bhagavad Gita. This dialog is between two characters, the noble warrior Arjuna, and Krishna (a Hindu equivalent to Jesus Christ).

Arjuna asks, “If thou thinkest, O my Lord, that it can be seen by me, show me, O God of Yoga, the glory of thine own Supreme Being“.

Then Krishna says, “See now the whole universe with all things that move and move not, and whatever thy soul may yearn to see. See it all as One in me.”

After Krishna show Arjuna, Arjuna freaks out a bit and says, “In a vision I have seen what no man has seen before: I rejoice in exultation, and yet my heart trembles with fear. Have mercy upon me, Lord of gods, Refuge of the whole universe: show me again thine own human form.”

Krishna replies, “By my grace and my wondrous power I have shown to thee, Arjuna. this form supreme made of light, which is the Infinite, the All: mine own form from the beginning, never seen by man before.”

After Krishna returns Arjuna to normal vision, Arjuna says, “When I see thy gentle human face, Krishna, I return to my own nature, and my heart has peace“.

As we see, everything has its price, including “enlightenment”. Beliefs help us avoid seeing such full-on “all-powerful Time which destroys all things“, by filtering what we see—believe it or not. We only see what we are looking for; what we are looking for is largely determined by belief. Naturally, this has its price as well; the trade off is ignorance.

How do you feel about enlightenment now?

If ignorance is no longer blissful perhaps you’re still game. The many paths to enlightenment are more cultural hoodwink than not. They offer save harbors of belief that promises enlightenment (or versions of salvation) but deliver safety and sanity. Moving beyond this safety net requires seeing “outside the box”, as they say. The trick is to know the difference between believing what we see, and seeing what we believe. The former is an experience common to all life. Cognition is not required, although we humans do tend to.

For example, when I see the sun rise, I “believe” that experience. I can say I believe the sun rises in the morning because I see it happen every day. If it stopped rising in the morning, then I would “believe” the sun had stopped rising every day. The “belief” follows the experience. When experience changes, it changes. Even calling it a belief is problematic. Thinking is not a prerequisite.

What is uniquely human is the intangible mental world we inhabit along side the concrete physical one. For example, a belief that the Greek sun god, Helios, rises from the ocean at dawn each day in the east and rides in his chariot, pulled by four horses – Pyrois, Eos, Aethon and Phlegon — through the sky, to descend at night in the west is not based on experience. It originates in imagination, hearsay, tradition, “education”, peer pressure, fear, and so on. You need to think to believe it.

So, how can we know whether we are believing what we see, or simply seeing what we believe? If, at the end of pondering anything you end up with a balanced view, if perfection is all you see, then you are probably seeing it as it is, and not just what you want to see. Chapter two spells out nicely what a balanced view can look like:

The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only
the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;
The difficult and the easy complement each other;
The long and the short off-set each other;
Note and sound harmonize with each other;
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and
practices the teaching that uses no words.

The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;
It gives them life yet claims no possession;
It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.

It is because it lays claim to no merit
That its merit never deserts it.

We, like all animals, have an innate difficulty actually seeing life impartially. It’s unnatural. Like all animals, we are biologically set up to notice differences more than similarities—it’s survival 101. Indeed, sensing distinction is how the Nervous system’s neurons function. It is distinction, not similarity, that stimulates neurons. Having perception so skewed to see differences makes us innately biased, partial and, well, un-enlightened. For humans, unlike other animals, this causes us great difficulty (i.e., Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty). This is why we, unlike other animals, need enlightenment!

Mysterious sameness is useful for it helps us transcend this difficulty to a certain extent provided we keep pulling ourselves deeper. I find regarding everything I see as merely a symptom of some deeper underlying forces usually points me in that direction and gives me a better chance of tapping into the thread running through the way.

Finally, in all talk of enlightenment it is important to concede that enlightenment doesn’t make us non-human. It doesn’t change us, not our DNA, nor the emotions than flow from DNA’s instruction sets. Your core emotions, your original nature, is left untouched. Enlightenment essentially neutralizes who you think you are; in doing so, it returns you to your original nature. Chapter 16 describes it beautifully:

I do my utmost to attain emptiness;
I hold firmly to stillness.
The myriad creatures all rise together
And I watch their return.
The teaming creatures
All return to their separate roots.
Returning to one’s roots is known as stillness.
This is what is meant by returning to one’s destiny.
Returning to one’s destiny is known as the constant.
Knowledge of the constant is known as discernment.

Returning to one’s original nature doesn’t mean you arrive at a life of blissful ease. That, like Santa Clause, is a myth, helpful to those who need it. In truth, difficulty and ease are inextricably linked, The difficult and the easy complement each other as chapter 2 puts it. So obviously, even the sage treats some things as difficult.

Indeed, I can see why biology needs to make it difficult for life to perceive anything but what is necessary for survival.  Much of the indistinct and shadowy side of reality exposes the hoodwink for what it is. Obviously, that counteracts the hoodwink. For example, if we all knew deeply that quantum non-locality connected all (I mean ALL) things, the instinctive drives we feel to contend for supremacy and value goods which are hard to come by would be greatly weakened.

Nevertheless, we can perceive more than we are “meant to” as science gradually pries open the lids of our ignorance. By science, I mean that essential curiosity that drives us to look around the next corner. Science led to using stones to crack nuts, to harness fire, to work with clay, to fly to the moon… I suspect we can at least perceive shadows of the big picture, (despite the bio-hoodwink) because we are part-and-parcel of the whole ⁽¹⁾.

Here are the links to the quantum entanglement articles. The first is an overview, Like fate of cat, quantum debate is still unresolved, by the Editor in Chief, Tom Siegfried. I paste this in its entirety below as the links don’t remain active for long.

In the tapestry of 20th century physics, virtually every major thread is entangled with the name of Albert Einstein. He was most famous for the theory of relativity, of course, which rewrote Newton’s laws and set modern theoretical cosmology in motion. But Einstein also played a major role in the origins of quantum theory and in perceiving its weird implications — including entanglement, a mystery named by Erwin Schrödinger in a paper based on an experiment imagined by Einstein.

Entanglement is now one of the hottest research fields in physics. It is pursued not only for insights into the nature of reality, but also for developing new technologies, as Laura Sanders notes in a special section marking the 75th anniversary of Einstein’s entanglement paper (and another quantum legend, Schrödinger’s half-dead, half-alive cat).

Despite his contributions to quantum theory, Einstein didn’t like it. He believed that its weirdness indicated an incomplete theory that accounted for observed phenomena but was silent on invisible elements of reality that produced the weirdness. As I describe in this issue, Einstein clashed with Niels Bohr, who found it meaningless to ascribe reality to anything unobservable. Bohr outdebated Einstein, but adherents to Einstein’s views remain vocal today.

Today’s debate sometimes gets acrimonious. It was not that way with Einstein and Bohr – their disagreement did not erode their deep mutual respect. Their conflicting ideas simply reflected differences in their worldviews, shaped by their personalities and scientific backgrounds. Einstein valued simplicity and clarity; Bohr embraced ambiguity. Einstein was a loner, working for the most part in isolation; Bohr surrounded himself with the brightest physicists of the day at his Copenhagen institute. Einstein’s initial scientific success came from finding unities in phenomena – matter’s identity with energy, for instance. Bohr explained the atom by emphasizing the incompatibility of classical and quantum physics.

For Bohr, quantum mysteries such as the dual wave-and-particle nature of light reflected the richness of a complicated universe. Einstein wanted a simpler, unified theory from which complexity would emerge logically, sans weirdness. Physicists have pursued Einstein’s goal within a quantum framework, without much success. It’s unclear whether future progress will come from avoiding quantum weirdness, or by making it even weirder.

The first article is Clash of the Quantum Titans. I’ll paste here a few choice passages that catches my eye and sparks some commentary:

At the heart of these disputes is the very nature of reality itself, and whether quantum physics is the last word on how to describe it. Zeilinger, of the University of Vienna, advocates the standard quantum view of reality’s fuzziness. “It turns out that the notion of a reality ‘out there’ existing prior to our observation … is not correct in all situations,” he points out.

Yet some physicists cling to the prejudice that cause-and-effect determinism will someday be returned to its privileged status, and physics will restore objectivity to reality.

“I basically understand why people have this position,” Zeilinger responds. “But the evidence is overwhelming that this approach would not succeed.”

The physicists that cling to the cause-and-effect determinism demonstrate the power of nature’s hoodwink. We are neurologically set up to see things that way, obviously, which makes non-locality such a mind blowing view. The Taoist view expressed in chapter one, These two are the same, but diverge in name as they issue forth, and chapter two, Thus Something and Nothing produce each other, would seem to slams the door shut on cause-and-effect. Cause-and-effect offers a more linear view of reality, while “produce each other” gives us a circular one. One, I might add, which is much more consistent with “quantum weirdness”. It is fascinating how  folks many millennia ago, with only their ‘gut senses’ guiding them, could realize back then what modern scientists with high tech instrumentation can now verify. Like I said, seeing through nature’s hoodwink takes time!

“The particles and fields are very, very crude statistical descriptions,” Hooft says. “Those particles and those fields are not true representatives of what’s really going on.”

Zeilinger, on the other hand, does not expect the future to return physics to the past. It is more likely, he suggested at the Turin conference, that an advanced theory going beyond today’s quantum mechanics will be even more counter­intuitive.

“In the end of the day,” he says, “the situation is such that when we ever succeed — and I think we will succeed to build a new theory even beyond quantum physics — when we have the new theory, people who attack quantum theory today … would love to have quantum mechanics back.”

I regard the ‘taoist’ world-view to be one that goes “even beyond quantum physics”. Why? Because it acknowledges the essential role of Nothing and weakness. Up to now, science only allows itself to deal with the ‘something‘ side of reality. This is necessary for now, but eventually it must recognized the other side of the coin.

The other article is Everyday Entanglement:  Physicists take quantum weirdness out of the lab. I’ll paste a few choice excerpts and my comments.

The first revolution peaked when Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger introduced the term entanglement (a translation of the German Verschränkung) in a 1935 paper, inspired by a thought experiment proposed the same year by Albert Einstein and collaborators Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. The thought experiment demonstrated that when two objects interact in a particular way, quantum physics requires them to become connected, or entangled, so that measuring a property of one instantly reveals the value of that property for the other, no matter how far away it is.

“No reasonable definition of reality” could permit two objects to be mysteriously entwined across great distances, Einstein and his collaborators complained in Physical Review (SNL: 5/11/35, p. 300). There must be more to reality, Einstein believed, than quantum theory described. But rather than undermining quantum physics, the EPR paper, as it became known, became fodder for other scientists who showed that this unreasonable connection was in fact real. If quantum rules applied in everyday life, as soon as Peyton saw his quantum coin land in Seattle, he would know the outcome of Eli’s toss — even if Eli’s game were across the country or on the moon.

The mysterious entwining between objects across great distances gives some proof to the Oneness that is spoken of in many religions. I see a parallel with the uncarved block in chapter 32, and why we are advised, only when it is cut are there names. As soon as there are names one ought to know that it is time to stop.

Yet despite all the progress, there remains a deep mystery at the core of entanglement. “I want to be able to tell a story,” Gisin says, “and I cannot tell you a story of how nature manages the trick.”

Perhaps telling that “story” requires using a teaching that uses no words. Heck, I even see the nature of how we think as something standing in the way. It is a fascinating dilemma!

“Most of us, at least in the year 2010, are prepared to live with the weird properties of quantum mechanics at the level of single atoms or electrons,” Leggett says. “Most people are much less happy to live with it at the level of Schrödinger’s cat.”

Like the heft of NFL players, the size of entangled objects is steadily creeping upward. The superconductors entangled by Martinis’ team are large enough to see with the naked eye. And a blob of thousands of photons and a centimeter-long crystal have, in separate experiments, been entangled with a single photon.

The entanglement occurring on a more real world scale really freaks them out. I’m reminded somewhat of how the Catholic Church was freaked out by the notion that the earth revolved around the sun. That was not long ago, even historically speaking. We are just at the dawn of knowing the world as it really may be, rather than as we wish it were.

With all the grand promise that entanglement has for changing the way information is handled, the biggest question around it — why it happens — remains unanswered. It’s easy to explain why an egg changes as it fries and why a car runs, Gisin says. Even though scientists can measure it, at its heart, the disconcerting quantum effect remains a mystery. “There is simply no story in spacetime that can tell us how this happens,” he says

Oh, I beg to differ, at least in principle. The difficulty in modern science is that they require their story to be based in something solid. This is irresolvable if, as I see it,  the true story is based in the image that is without substance. In other words, I see the mystery is the answer; the question is the answer. This entangled way to see it is for me a fine way to resolve it. At the end of the day, when your discernment penetrates the four quarters are you capable of not knowing anything?

⁽¹⁾ How can we have any faith in the possibility of perceiving anything outside-the-box of the biological hoodwink?  My best guess is that quantum entanglement influences consciousness,, perhaps at the synapse level. If so, our most subtle perceptions must be entangled beyond space and time with ALL. Such  ”quantum weirdness” would effect people in numerous ways, and would  account for some of the “weirdness” found in spiritual myths and mysticism. For example, a universal sense of a virtue of the One (quantum non-locality) links up with the instinctive social (hierarchical) need for an ‘Alpha-male’ (or female) leadership. The resultant emergent property is the notion of God, or god-like beings, e.g., Buddha, Krishna, or even Tao (with the sage ideal serving the leadership role).

Once you begin loosing faith in labels (words, names, language), you are in a better position to sense the thread running through the way. In the end, nature’s hoodwink can’t totally conceal from an impartial consciousness the sense we are one; non-locality is reality. Feeling sufficient impartiality is challenge!