One of the models of the universe that emerged out of M theory, which I think is the most updated version of String Theory, is that our universe is or is like a flat-ish membrane floating in a higher dimensional space along with other "branes" like slices of bread in a loaf. This is consistent with the latest "evidence" suggesting the "geometry" of our universe is "flat". The other branes may be other universes in an inconceivably large multi-verse or mega-verse (as if the size of our own universe is conceivable in our limited minds).

In sitting, my mind became a brane. Like a brane floating in a higher dimensional space with our entire universe in it. Like a strip of film with a movie on it. Information on a medium. My mind was the medium, what I call reality is the information. All the sights that I see, all the images in my mind, everything that has registered through my senses as perception are containable on this medium I call mind. They aren’t an inherent reality "out there".

In sitting, thoughts and images come and go. Past, present, future. Identity, ego, I, me, mine. But they are just information on a medium. Even my thinking they are just information on a medium is part of that information on a medium, and I watch my mind as it slips through various states of perceptions and conceptions of reality, which is just a brane, lacking inherent reality.

The recently published fourth translation of the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead is the first translation of the complete cycle of works that make it up. The first three translations popularized in the modern, liberal world have only been Chapter Eleven and a few stray sections. Chapter Four of the complete cycle is entitled "The Introduction to Awareness: Natural Liberation through Naked Perception". Naked perception.

Just meditating on those words and what they could possibly mean, while also envisioning my mind as a medium and reality just information on the medium. Naked perception, that’s what Chapter Four is cutting to. It’s easy to just blow by those words, thinking an intuitive idea of naked perception is enough, but it’s the heart of it, the point of meditation, the point of practice. Zen describes it as when mind and body fall away. Naked perception is when all perception of forms disappear, and all there is is perception. No mind, no observer, no meditator.

Or not.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Indian Song (Elastica)
2. Dumb Fun (Versus)
3. You Really Got Me (live) (The Kinks)
4. Stone the Crows ("Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat")
5. Spoon (Cibo Matto)
6. Fugue in G Minor "The Greater" (J.S. Bach)
7. Symphony No. 6, II. Andante molto mosso (Beethoven)
8. I'll Wait (Van Halen)
9. Mestra Tata (Charlie Hunter Quintet)
10. Play My Music (Exodus Steel Orchestra)