Lucid Dreaming and Children Living in the Now

Lucid Dreaming

   

Living in the "Now" and Children

     


[edit!!] I'm not sure why my post turned into boxes and deleted all the words... I'll re-write it this evening...

grrrrr

I had a blog all typed out... and then I went to submit it and it didn't go through.. and it didn't save either!
So this one will be short because I don't feel like typing it all over again.
Basically I just talked about how I find it interesting that people's minds can be programed to experience a "mystical experience" or some sort of lucid sleep.
I also talked about the "God Machine" mentioned in the reading. Here's a video that I found that sort of explains what happens >
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPOTaUyvA0

Acatalepsia and Ataraxia

Acatalepsia and Ataraxia

Pyrrho

(thoughts from Chapter 6: The Sheep Who Became A Goat, Rational Mysticism)

This chapter uses "randomness" as a proof. It also uses other proofs, just as unprovable as "randomness" but I'll just concentrate on "randomness". It is good to be skeptical, but that skepticism must be applied to all things, and not only to one in favor of another. One must also be skeptical of science.

After all, as I have mentioned before, pi is an abomination of the mind that does not exist. But there are many more things in science that do not exist. In fact, the entire science of geometry does not exist. We have found that there are no such things in nature as a line or a plane. Everything is fractal, and therefore neither a line nor a plane -- but something inbetween. Without lines and planes there are no geometric shapes, only fractal shapes. No Geometry . . . how random is that!?

Don't believe me, read for yourself: Fractal Dimension

Enough of that. Let's talk about randomness.

"When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable." -- John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

Or, as I say:

"1% is 100% when it happens."

Randomness. What is it? Is it compartmentable? Can it be segregated? Is it distinct, one random bit from another random bit? How infinitesimal is randomness? How huge is randomness? How ordinary is randomness? How extra-ordinary is randomness? Is there no connection anywhere, at any level, between one random bit and another random bit? Is every new second of time a bit of randomness never before seen in exactly that manifestation? How does one calculate randomness? If a thing has a 50% chance of happening -- how is that calculated? Forget coins, what about real life?

A baseball batter with a career of 20 years comes to the plate. Over those 20 years he has gotten a hit 30% of the time (he has a career batting average of .300). Does he have a 30% chance to get a hit? Does he have a 50% chance to get a hit? Does he have some other chance to get a hit? Or is it random -- without any reference at all to anything that has come before or will come after? No connections? None? A totally random chance to get a hit every at bat? Even the tiniest, teeniest bit of a connection utterly dissipates randomness.

Any player of baseball will tell you that each at bat in the player's career is connected in the mind of the batter to the moment at hand, and has an influence over the outcome of the present moment. Further still, each and every previous moment of the pitcher's career is connected in the pitcher's mind to the present moment. And the runner at first base, as well as the first baseman and all the fielders, and the umpires, and the coaches, and the trainers and general managers . . . and on and on. There is a complex web of intricate and ethereal connections that is so interwoven the pattern is hard to see -- and we call that randomness. The present moment is not, nor is it ever, distinct and wholly separate from every other moment. There is no such thing as a random moment, nor is there anything that exists that is random.

Go ahead, name me a random creature. A creature that exists randomly, a creature without any predecessors. Too difficult? OK, how about a random word. Tell me a random word, any word, a word not connected to any other words through thought or utterance or ink, a word that is a thought in and of itself and has random definitions each time it randomly appears in random conversations with random people on a random world in a random universe.

Randominity demands randomness at every level or it is not random. Can there be such a thing as a random anything? Or is randomness just another pipe dream like circles, triangles and squares?

Absurd? Yes. OK, how about flipping a coin? Can a coin flip be random? Or is it influenced by the muscles of the hand that flips it and the molecules of air that surround it? Make a machine to flip the coin, and the machine will wear out a little with every flip thus creating a building influence from the first flip to the last flip -- none being random.

Computers? Random number generating programs? Don't wear out, simply electrons . . . Funny thing, that. Computers cannot generate random numbers. There is always a pattern. A repeatable pattern. Programs that generate random numbers all fudge it, trying for enough of a complicated pattern that it appears random -- but it never is. Computers, those things that think in either-or, on or off, zero or one . . . those things that are utterly without deception, they say randomness is simply impossible.

If a moment cannot be random, what then can we say about randomness? How can randomness exist when there is no environment for it to survive within?

I found the skepticism of this chapter misplaced, vindictive, childish, and not at all random. Skeptics assert nothing, announcing only opinion. The protagonists in this chapter are not skeptics, they are zealots of cause.

Viruses are a pain

In The Meme Machine, she called religions "memeplexes", intellectual viruses that have survived not because they are true but because they excel at replication and infection. To put it another way, religions are just extremely successful chain letters.

I love this statement. Religion as a virus I think is a perfect analogy. Religion has its ups and downs, I being an agnostic tend to see the down sides to most religions. I could always find faults in religions theories and teachings, I usually got scolded for pointing them out too (hence why I'm an agnostic, I can't find a religion that I can agree with enough to live by). So I personally have taken a little bit of every religion that I have come across and sort of made my own belief system. For some people this isn't an option. Religion has been so ingrained in their minds that it is impossible for them to see outside or the bigger picture. A virus affects people on different levels, affects them more than others. So does Religion. Some people are blinded by religion but if it makes them happy then let me be blind. Natural selection will take over eventually and kick our asses, its been long over-do. Religion does have its up, just like a virus. Once you have gotten rid of a specific virus, you build up an immunity to some parts and don't have much trouble from it again. You become stronger because of it, Religion is the same in some aspects. It can blind some people but it can also make them stronger in the right doses.

SheepGoat

To start, I enjoyed the first sentence of "The Sheep Who Became A Goat". It was a fun way to begin a chapter.
In relation to what Blackmore and the author discussed on page 111, in my Intro to Challenge Course class there are roughly 14 students. Out of the 14 of us I share the same month and day birth date with two others. Not that I'm saying that's more than coincidence, but it beats the norm. Maybe I'm a sheep.

What drew my attention and pulled a reaction out of me was the talk of "no self" on page 114. Am I to understand that when the author writes: "This view echoes the suggestion of some cognitive scientists that there is no unified self at the core of each individual;...he's saying that no self means no soul? On second thought I'm beginning to understand that the idea of no self is much larger than I've been imagining. According to this concept there is not only no body and mind but also no soul...nothing at all but everything combined. This is confusing and leaves me with questions like "Then where do concepts like "the soul" and "morality" go to?"

Then farther down the page Blackmore theorizes that life is just a bunch of ideas and beliefs passed from people to people. Clearly ideas and beliefs are what life seems to revolve around for the most part, but even if you strip all cognitive abilities away from humans you still find instincts..no?

About being mindful in the moment, is there a difference from being mindful and obeying impulses? When Blackmore says that she yelled at her kids because they yelled at her all I can imagine is a lack of inhibition and a completely natural reaction to one's environment. Does that make sense? If this obeying of impulses is "true and right" then murdering a neighbor would be completely "justifiable" wouldn't it? (To be completely extreme.) Blackmore walks down that path as well on page 119 when she says that rather than becoming selfish she is more at peace and feeling selfless through the "no self" teaching. "On the surface, she said, this doctrine might seem to be 'a recipe for immorality and disaster,' but the outcome is just the opposite. When you stop living for your self, 'guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure fade away' and you become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbor.'" But what if-in accepting that you are not unique because you do not exist-you then in turn decided to embrace the illusion full force and completely oppositely chose to live entirely for the illusion of reality that is you? Why not?
I need to think about this a little more, but it doesn't sit right with me. Maybe I'm a goat.

Also, if you read the little asterisk section at the bottom of page 115 you may have noticed that the Dali Lama didn't give the man a very helpful answer (in my eyes) to his question. I get the feeling that people tend to take whatever comes out of the Dali Lama's mouth to be wonderful because he's "enlightened", when really it seems like bull to me. If by being enlightened the D.L. knows that there is and isn't an afterlife at the same time then he could have just said that. Maybe it's just annoying to me. Maybe I'm a Sheepgoat.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Since I was ill, I didn't receive this reading, so it took me a little while to get my hands on it. As I read it, though, my head kept getting filled with songs that related somehow to the reading. (I.E. Pocahontas: "We are all connected to each other in a circle, in a hoop that never ends.")

The song that stuck with me throughout the whole reading, though, was Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, a folk song written by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson.



The song is a cycle that starts with flowers and ends with flowers. The flowers are picked by young girls. The young girls marry young men. The young men turn into soldiers. The soldiers go to graveyards, and the graveyards turn into flowers once again. It's a circle that seems to have no birth or death because everything else is formed from what already existed. It really reminded me of the reading.

Also, a few things that stuck out to me:

1) You are a continuation of yourself even if you aren't the same person you were yesterday.

2) Time is what changes things, and you can see the changes even before time changes them. Everything is there just waiting for their time.

3) You are what you are looking for.

I like the symbolism

What struck me most about this reading was the clear and helpfull symbolism used. I thought that the ideas of the match and the quater were usefull to my understanding of the reading. I saw a relationship between the match and the Zen circle becasue the match has the ptoential for fire and that fire can comsume the whole match. I not sure if I am streching it here but that is what I came to mind as I read. Also the quarter idea seemed alot to me like a ying yang, the two sides oppposing each other but both essential for the quarter to be a quarter.

Am I Yesterday's Me?

What kind of question is this? The boy was you and you would not be yourself with out that boy. No matter how much you change and become unlike that boy you can still relate to him and remember what it was like to be him. A person can only grow; if they forget who they were how can they grow? they are you and you are they, Please comment and share you view on this.

An equal and opposite reaction

“To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction”. There is a duality in all things, which if you look at a yin-yang you can kind of picture. For every dark there is a light, wrong there is a right, Beauty and the Beast. Duality, when I think about it, I can see in most things. This simple duality reminds me of Li. There is a natural order to things, and the duality of things could be seen as another piece of this order. In relating duality to myself and thinking about where I have found these patterns of two separate and opposite halves balancing each other, I began to think of lichens. A simple pairing of two separate organisms, a fungus and an alga, that strangely harmonize and dwell together. These separate entities combine to make the whole that is the greenish brown growth we see on trees when we’re in the woods. The reading discussed the two sides to a coin; I bring up the mutualistic relationship of lichens, to each their own I suppose. I guess what I’m really trying to get at is that I find this idea and examination of duality to be a very important thing. I don’t feel that many people take the time to examine both sides of things. These principles stress to me a need for this connection of the whole, to continue on the path of enlightenment towards Nirvana. Because by reaching an acceptance of the whole is to be a step closer to a larger connection, and brings yourself into a harmony of sorts with the universe.

The Manifestation of God

This reading struck me as intruiging, then compelling, then contradictory, and ultimately (as usual) difficult to digest.

I felt the wave metaphor was an effective way of conveying the idea that by understanding our existence as one of many waves made of water we can come to terms with the interrelatedness of our self with all of the elements in our environment and shed individual fears about our isolated existence.

When the author states that "to speak about and distribute ideas is not the study or practice of buddhism", I find contradiction in the fact that this is precisely what the author is doing, but that seems only natural since speaking is essential for others to learn about these viewpoints.

I think there is a great deal of validity to the idea that much of the fear and anxiety that people face every day is the result of a yearning to be closer to a spiritual dimension that all humans desire. Faced with percieved realities of death, isolation, meaning, and loss, people experience anxiety and seek answers, it is natural, and by achieving a keen awareness of their own place and role in this world, they can substantially reduce these anxieties. However, I beleive that the human condition is unique from other beings on this planet, and that our capability for thoughts and feelings and choice make us both unable to escape the real limits of our existence (something that buddhist enlightenment seeks to achieve) and subsequently the fears and anxieties that accompany that reality.

For example, even though my dead wife has transitioned into a new form, I will still miss the old form. Which is not to say that there isn't something to be gained by coming to terms with that grief, but it will not erase the grief. In the same way, regardless of where my human form ends up in the cycle, I have no way of being sure that I will ever regain the consciousness and feeling that I experience today, and that creates an anxiousness that I find hard to extinguish using the thinking in this reading.

I don't want to sound negative, I think that an awareness of our extremely interconnected role in our world is crucial to a healthy understanding of the effect we have on people and things around us, but I don't beleive it is possible for a conscious mind to escape the anxieties that accompany our limited existence.

Confusion

I don't understand.... Every time I think that I'm starting to understand pieces of these Buddhist or Taoist ideas I am struck with the realization that if I truly am simply pointing my finger at the moon then I am learning almost nothing. If we cannot understand these Eastern philosophies by speaking about them, criticizing them, researching and confirming them, then there's only one other option, right? It comes down to faith. Either you are interested enough in it or you or believe that what the Buddha or other important figures in these philosophies have to say is true, which inspires you to live it. This constantly paradoxical or circular reasoning is pointing me in the direction of faith.

Example: Yin and Yang. Opposite, equal. But ideas such as existence and non-existence are not opposite and equal, because there is something beyond them, a lack of either but also a combination of the two? That's what I'm reading from the handout on the reading "No Death, No Fear". So what does this tell me other than my inability to understand it until I let go and accept it? Is it telling me that yin and yang are also part of something bigger than the two and that there is no such thing as good and evil? If this is all true then the world as we see it is fake. Why is it this way? Why do we not simply live the truth..why do we not already understand nirvana or the Tao? What is this blind world we are a part of? MOST importantly, how or why did we get to be this way? ....If any of this is true then there must have been someone or something to mold life and us in this way. No?
And if our non-existence is true, then why do we still exist physically? Why don't people just go "poof!", "disappear", and become part of the ultimate dimension when they achieve enlightenment?

The waves. I would agree with this analogy if it were speaking of accepting the fact that we will die some day. But it goes further than that to say that we are simply going to become part of the greater picture, of all living and non living things. It says that we are nirvana. What I used to think of when I heard "Nirvana" was an idea similar to "heaven"; ultimate peace and joy and a lack of any fear, pain, and suffering. But Thich Nhat Hanh says that "...we do not have to look for our ultimate dimension or nirvana, because we are nirvana..." If we are nirvana, then we either don't realize it, or nirvana isn't anything close to heaven. And if we simply don't realize it, then why don't we? Are we not supposed to? Are we supposed to undergo this critical thinking and acceptance in faith? Why? Did someone make it that way?

There are alot of concepts in this handout.

Where were you before you were born and Am I yesturday's Me?

These pictures I found help demonstrate what I really found interesting in this reading. The whole idea of "Where were you before you were born?" also kind of answers the questions of where do I go when I die? I say this because in that chapter it uses a cloud as an example and explains how it was never made out of nothing but instead lots of things like the rain, wind and sun, that they transform to make something new. That something new will then continue to transform into other things such as the rain, grass, cow, milk and ice cream. Even though the cloud is no longer technically a cloud is a part of everything else and is living in everything else. Therefore it never technically dies and is never technically ever born just transformed. This can also be taken into consideration with atoms the basis of all things. In my bio class we were told to read two stories about atom x and atom y. In each of these stories the atom started off in a inanimate object (according to westeners) and went through multiple cycles both liviving animate and inanimate. For instance x was in a rouck that broke apart due to the erosion of rain and became soil that fed the grass. When the animals ate the grass they consumed x that was in it and when the hunter ate the animal he consumed x. When the hunter died x returned to the soil and fed a beaver whoes feces went into the water. X then traveled down stream into the ocean. X fed fich until he evaporated in the sun and became a cloud and fell down in the rain. The cycle can continue on and on like it did in the story of Y and how it was caught in the cycle of fertilizing a farmers plants until something came along and it wound up in a stream that was polluted and sat in muck until something else came along. The same goes for us and everyother thing out there whether we say its alive or dead. It's always alive in something. The atoms in everything will break down and transform into something else like the cloud did and in that case then we can never technically die or be born we are just tranforming.

At the same time this answered the question to "Am I yesturday's me?". This is because yes when you look into that picture of you ten years ago you are a different person but that person ten years ago is still a part of you. So in a sense you are that person you where ten years ago because that person is still a part of you. It helped make you who you are today. So even when you are 100 years old you can be a 1 year old, a 20 year old etc at the same time. It is because of this that we do not have to fear death, life, ageing etc. No matter what we are transforming into something new everyday, everysecond, every time time is moving past us. As long as we live in the now we continue transform, but everything that comes into and leaves the now becomes a part of us. From this as we look at everything we see it for what it is. It is the whole and the ten thousand things, it is our ancestors, loved ones, plants, rocks, wind, water, our nature. It exists in us and all around us. For we are apart of it just as much as it is apart of us.

No Death, No Fear

(Ancient Temples in Patan, Kathmandu.)

I found a lot of things I could talk about in this reading, but the first thing that struck me is in the first section--the thing about ideas and notions. Thich Nhat Hanh says we must be free of ideas and notions to achieve enlightment, and I can't wrap my head around this. How do you be without ideas?

In western culture, ideas are the foundations of....well, everything. Ideas lead to innovations. Ideas are what gives a person individuality. Ideas engender progress. As Americans, our whole cultural history is built on ideas; the idea of freedom, the idealistic pioneer spirit, inventiveness. How can a culture exist, develop, and grow without ideas?

No, seriously, I'm asking you.

My best guess--and feel free to argue this with me, because like I said, I don't inderstand--is that the eastern philosophy term 'idea' might be very much akin to the term 'preconcieved notion.' I think maybe the philosophy "Don't have ideas" is more thoroughly stated "Don't have preconcieved notions and ideas which you are unable to let go of, and which prevent you from acknowledging and understanding different ideas." In other words, I wonder if they mean to say that we should have openmindedness. This I can embrace and understand. It would also be a nod back to the concept of impermenance--being willing to accept that your point of view can change.

What do you think?

"Death is nothing to us."

Death. I've gone 'round and 'round with death, arguing (post-mortem) with the great existentialists as well as many other dead philosophers, prophets and saints of all stripes. The only definition of Death I am satisfied with is: Life. Death is defined by Life. Death by itself is nothing.

I think Thich Nhat Hanh is saying the same thing, just in different words. When he talks about "our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death" (pg.24), I think he is just being a tad confusing. There is a lot easier way to say that, a non-ambiguous way, a way that has already been said: death is nothing to us, life is everything to us. The nature of no-birth and no-death is life. Life is the experience between the points of birth and death. The times before birth and after death do not hold any experiences for this manifestation of life we call our Self.

Death is nothing to us.

That sentence is so stark, so unequivocal, so definite that we revolt against accepting it. But if one quiets the mind, gets rid of all those mindful and mindless notions just as Thich Nhat Hanh says, and takes stock of what experiences we know death bestows upon a person . . . well then, there is absolutely nothing.

It is silly to fear nothing. -- and the original meaning of silly meant "blessed", so that sentence is like a paradox in itself, meaning opposite things at the same time: it is silly to fear nothing (be afraid) but it is a blessed state to fear nothing (fear no thing). But that's just a silly, nonsensical, tangent anyway. The important point is: losing the fear of death frees us from fearing life.

"Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live." -- Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Similarly, we should regard the time before we were born as nothing to us, as well. Life, the experience of life is all there is to us. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, "You are what you are looking for."

And in that he said it beautifully. That is all there is, there does not need to be more: "You are what you are looking for."

Flowers and Fire

There were several aspects to this reading that I connected to. First of all was the part where it says that nothing really dies, it just becomes something else. Your body disintegrates and fertilizes the soil, which helps produce grass and flowers. When I die, I could become grass and lilies, a lotus or a rose. It's a nice thought. But what happens to your soul? Does my soul also become the lily, lotus grass or rose? Do we entirely become something, a part of the universe that is in a way connected to everything else? When we mourn someones death should we really be mourning them then? I do, I mourn someone because I can never meet them again in that form. Is this telling us that we have no reason to mourn because they are not really gone, that they have just been made into something different? Is it the form that they were that we are really mourning then?

The other part I liked was Burning Our Notions. "No self is the match; it helps to give rise to the fire of the insight of no self. It is the awakened understanding of no self that will burn up the match of no self." We have to see beyond our ideas to understand the real thing. The analogy I thought was perfect and helped me to understand it better.