mysterious sameness

Refreshing Redundancy

This research, That familiar feeling comes from deep in the brain, sheds light on a cognitive problem for anyone who wants to remember their life priorities. “The research suggests that novelty and familiarity are two sides of the same brain cells. Turn them down, and even the new is boring and old. Turn them up […]

We All Know We Don’t Know

I enjoy doing yoga on the beach because I can easily pause to look seaward and skyward to soak in eternity, or glance closer in to bond with my friends, the sand flies and the seagulls around me. Today I got to thinking how small and insignificant we — they and me — are. Then […]

Fear & Need Born in Nothing

Fear and need are the underlying principle for most of my observations. I know this rationale often raises more questions than it answers, so more clarification is in order. Not that I haven’t tried before… see Fear is the Bottom Line and One who speaks does not know? Well, third time’s the charm, right? On […]

Taoist secrets

Over the years, I’ve come across references to life secrets in general, and occasionally Taoist secrets in particular. A few decades ago a woman inquired about our Sunday Taoist meetings, held weekly back then. I told her we mainly shared our reflections on the Tao Te Ching. She said she already had the Tao Te […]

Naturally Racist

The online matchmaking site Okcupid ran a survey of its members. When they first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, they say it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. That offers some proof to what has long been obvious to me: homo sapiens are naturally […]

Profound Connections Enlighten

Profound sameness is a continually enlightening perceptual process, in my view. Thus, any research that supports profound sameness, even tangentially, warrants review. Listen to this short talk on NPR by Dr. Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory: Memory Pinball And Other Reasons You Need A Nap. (For a little more detail, […]

Religion… an Opiate?

Marx famously said, “Religion is the opium of the people“. He went on to identify “religious distress” as the symptom of a social “condition which needs illusions”.(1) Blaming cultural conditions for the dysfunction he saw is putting the cart before the horse. Doing this is as common as it is mistaken. Among other things, he […]

You are Immortal!

Yes you are… I am… we are! That bold claim needs proof, which I can give you, and you will probably accept if you buy Buddha’s view of what ‘you, I and we‘ truly are. In other words, if you don’t accept Buddha’s Four Noble Truths as being true, at least in principle, this post […]

Just like Us, Just like Them

Have you noticed how much we tend to compare ourselves to other animals and see to what extent they are like us? That’s all quite normal, of course. All animals judge other animals to some extent, although I should say size up, gauge, or perceive, rather than judge. Judging is intimately tied to thinking and […]

Ponder Between the Lines

First, watch this short video of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos interviewing NBA star Dennis Rodman about his visit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. George and Dennis exemplify two profoundly different ways of seeing the world. In this case, each is personifying somewhat the extreme, which really helps highlight the models: One is more idealistic […]

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mysterious sameness