Category: Thinkers

Quotes from ‘The Dancing Wu Li Masters’ by Gary Zukav

“According to quantum mechanics, there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture.”

“Quantum mechanics views particles as ‘tendencies to exist’ or ‘tendencies to happen’. How strong these tendencies are is expressed in terms of probabilities…

…It may be that the search for the ultimate ‘stuff’ of the universe is a crusade for an illusion. At the subatomic level, mass and energy change unceasingly into each other.”

“By watching time-lapse photography we know that plants often respond to stumlae with human-like reactions. They retreat from pain, advance toward pleasure, and even languish in the absence of affection. The only difference is they do it at a much slower rate than we do. So much slower, in fact, that it appears to the ordinary perception that they do not react at all…

If this is so, then how can we say with certainty that rocks, and even mountain ranges, do not react also as living organisms, but with a reaction time so slow that to catch it with time-lapse photography would require millenia between exposures! Of course, there is no way to prove this, but there is no way of disproving it either. The distinction between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ is not so easy to make.”

“The importance of ‘nonsense’ cannot be overstated. The more clearly we experience something as ‘nonsense’, the more clearly we are experiencing the boundaries of our own self-imposed cognitive structures. Nonsense is that which doesn’t fit into the prearranged patterns which we have super-imposed on reality. There is no such thing as ‘nonsense’ apart from a judgemental intellect which calls it that.”

“According to Buddhist theory, reality is ‘virtual’ in nature. What appear to be ‘real’ objects in it, like trees and people, actually are transient illusions which result from a limited mode of awareness. The illusion is that parts of an overall virtual process are ‘real’ (permanent) ‘things’. Enlightenment is the experience that things, including ‘I’, are transient, virtual states, devoid of separate existences, momentary links between illusions of the past and illusions of the future unfolding in the illusion of time.”

“The appearance of physical reality, according to Mahayana Buddhism, is based upon the interdependence of all things (Indra’s Net).”

“The history of scientific thought, if it teaches us anything at all, teaches us the folly of clutching ideas too closely. To this extent, it is an echo of eastern wisdom, which teaches us the folly of clutching anything at all.”

“The way we pose our questions often illusorily limits our responses… There is always an alternative between every ‘this’ and every ‘that’.”

Quotes from ‘Paradoxical Life’ by Andreas Wagner

“…awareness of paradox returns to humans a great power and responsibility: the power and responsibility of actively participating in the conversation that creates their world. All of the ever-refined perspectives that emerge from science’s conversations depend on a human mind and the meaning this mind creates…
…Each choice depends on a perspective taken, and each will lead the conversation to vastly different places. Humans are central to this conversation. They are not the insignificant cogwheels of a monstrous machinery they have invented themselves to be.”
(Pg 200)

“Humans become human when absolute certainty and truth dissipate. And with the importance of human choice comes the ultimate freedom, the freedom to create one’s world out of conversations with it. Living in the paradox is the ultimate luxury. It is a place where humans are invited to make a difference – every moment until their dying breath; a place where human choices can initiate conversations that can change the world; a place where no human effort could be discussed as quixotic, futile, or crazy.”
(Pg 201)

“Living in the face of paradoxes means power, but it also means a voyage through a heaving bottomless ocean. This is not easy to accept. Our inquiries are driven by the desire for final answers, but the paradox stands forever in the way of final answers, making any human inquiry as unending as the creation it is a part of. In contrast to Sysiphus, however, who pushes a giant boulder up a mountain only to see it tumble down in an endless cycle of tedious toil, human conversations never return to the same place. They continually create new realms of inquiry and wonder.

The role of humans in making the world through their conversations is adventurous and thrilling. This role makes any human endeavour, including science, a most elaborate, colourful, and fantastic drama. It is a drama with an open ending for the paradox makes the world a possibility, not a certainty. In this drama you are not a replaceable stagehand. You are the star of the play. And you are invited to take a role, to become a minute part of the grand conversation. It is the only thing to do, if you choose to do anything at all. To see this possibility, of course, requires a choice. Nobody can take this choice away from you, but neither can anybody make this choice for you. It is the choice behind all choices… it is the choice to choose.”
(Pg 203)

“I have no advice for anybody except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time and how that is beautiful and has poetry inside, even in places you hate.”

Jeff Buckley

Security by Hunter S. Thompson

Security – what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualise the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial and personal security for his goal in life. In general he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realises that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better. What has he done except sit and wait for the tomorrow that never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must be laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn, take their places at the now familiar rut to merely exist through another day. For them the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces death. They lacked the only true courage; the kind which enables men to face the unknown, regardless of the consequences.

As an after thought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer for himself: who is the happier man, he who braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on the shore and merely existed.

Notes & Thoughts Re: ‘The Tao of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra

As modern science has progressed it’s progressed towards a ‘truth’ that’s been evident to Eastern mystics for thousands of years – everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else, and our consciousness shapes the world around us. This idea is consistent with the ‘ecological worldview’ which recognises the interdependence of all phenomena and the embedded ness of individuals and societies in the cyclical processes of nature. Another area of particular interest is quantum field theory. In this theory the classical contrast between solid particles and the space surrounding them is completely overcome. The quantum field is seen as the fundamental physical entity; a continuous medium which is present everywhere in space. Particles are merely local concentrations of the field; concentrations of energy which come and go, thereby losing their individual character and dissolving into the underlying field.

“We may therefore regard matter as being constituted by the regions of space in which the field is extremely intense… There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.” – Albert Einstein

Quoted from the Tao of Physics:

‘Like Einstein, the Eastern Mystics consider the underlying entity as the only reality: all its phenomenal manifestations are seen as transitory and illusory. This reality of the Eastern Mystic cannot be identified with the quantum field of the physicist because it is seen as the essence of all phenomena in this world and consequently, is beyond all concepts and ideas. The quantum field, on the other hand, is a well-defined concept which only accounts for some of the physical phenomena… …In the Eastern view, the reality underlying all phenomena is beyond all forms and defies all description and specification. It is therefore often said to be formless, empty or void. But this emptiness is not to be taken for mere nothingness. It is, on the contrary, the essence of all forms and the source of all life… … Being transient manifestations of the Void, the things in this world do not have a fundamental identity. This is especially emphasised in Buddhist philosophy which denies the existence of any material substance and also holds that the idea of a constant ‘self’ undergoing successive experiences is an illusion.’

TF

The below lyrics from George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” are such an accurate representation of our time, as they were for a previous time when fear reigned over love. These two forces are of course always at play, the prevalence of one over the other oscillates over time. Our world is increasingly driven by fear and I’m not sure there’s any way to reverse that other than fear running its natural course to an extreme that the public can’t help but wake up to, realising what their fear has caused all too late – as happened after the atrocities of World War 2 and has done in less catastrophic fear dips globally since then. Maybe only following these extremes can love once again prevail.

I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you
How to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you

I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps

… The song is a lament for how a universal love for humankind is latent in all individuals yet remains unrealised. Inspiration for the song came to him when he was visiting his parents in Warrington, Cheshire, and he began reading the I Ching, or “The Book of Changes”.

As Harrison put it, “[the book] seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental.” Embracing this idea of relativism, he committed to writing a song based on the first words he saw upon opening a book, which happened to be “gently weeps”. Harrison continued to work on the lyrics after this initial writing session.

LILA

“There is an old Sanskrit word, Lila (Leela), which means play. Richer than our word, it means divine play, the play of creation and destruction and re-creation, the folding and unfolding of the cosmos. Lila, free and deep, is both delight and enjoyment of this moment, and the play of God. It also means love. Lila may be the simplest thing there is—spontaneous, childish, disarming. But as we grow and experience the complexities of life, it may also be the most difficult and hard won achievement imaginable, and it’s coming to fruition is a kind of homecoming to our true selves.”

– Stephen Nachmanovitch