I was procrastinating in the library this morning.

Instead of studying, I was staring at a dead mosquito. Usually the sight of a dead mosquito is one smashed flat with legs and wings in disgusting array, unsightly to just be unceremoniously washed or wiped away.

This one had died because it hadn't been able to get out of the library. It fell where it died, starved, all parts where they belonged. It didn't even look like it had fulfilled its mission, it looked quite lean and unladen, with neither blood nor coconuts.

It's just instinct I'm going on now, to believe that beings like mosquitoes, basically saying it was not endowed with the liberty and opportunity to influence its own karmic fate, die and also go through the same death betweens as humans and all living beings. But they shoot through the betweens almost instantaneously.

There's nothing in their karmic fabric to slow them down, to reflect on or experience. Very quickly upon hitting the point of death between, they're zipped through to another round of rebirth as a mosquito. By the time I was staring at this dead mosquito, it might have already been forming in some swamp as a baby mosquito.

Why a mosquito again? Because that's the habituated "being" that it knows. It's all it knows. Which is why Tibetans teach that it is very difficult to obtain a human form (I think they put it that way to urge people to appreciate this human life). From one form to the next, we are drawn to what is most familiar, what is most templated in the basic fabric of our being based on the only thing we know – our past experience.

So once human, it's easy to be re-born as human. It's even just natural if no other karma or thought goes into it. But even as humans, depending on karma, people still might live an existence not far removed from other types of "advanced" sentient being, the most apparent in our physical lives being animals.

And even as other types of beings, many exhibit characteristics of humanity. Basically suggesting that from a human form it's possible to be re-born as a dog, if the template or imprint or affinity to dogs was that strong as a human.

But as a dog, the karma is still human, so the dog would probably be karmically predisposed to a dignified existence, pampered, or living close to humans, even functionally in human society, even to a further extent than some humans. They are dogs with a strong affinity or imprint of their human owners, and they karmically wouldn't have too much trouble being reborn as human.

(This discussion can go on forever. It's also possible that as a dog, with whatever experiences it has, it finds an affinity to its animal nature, and that gets more strongly imprinted into its being. Maybe it kills, maybe it hunts, and the taste of that is exciting and pleasurable, and that is indelibly imprinted. And then stuck as a dog, until some lifetime comes along where the imprint of humanity is strong enough so that in the betweens, there's a sense of some attraction to becoming human, instead of what it naturally is familiar and comfortable – a dog. I'm saying it might pay to cultivate taking left turns and breaking out of habits.)

I was admiring a dog like that this afternoon. The Summer heat has broken and the weather has been pleasantly warm lately. I was sitting at a picnic table on campus with a cup of coffee and this dog was wandering around.

It didn't seem like one of the many random, disgusting strays that roam Taipei. Quasi-wild animals as far as I'm concerned. This one had a beautiful coat and an air of dignity. It neither threatened nor felt threatened by me.

Then I realized I saw this same dog yesterday, and I had thought the same thing about it. But curious, it had just pulled food out of a garbage to eat. It had a bright red collar on, but no indication of an owner. I'm guessing it is a domestic dog that got away and is off on an adventure for a few days before returning home to a worried owner.

And then one answer to the old philosophical chestnut of why we're here occurred to me, and it came to me in the voice of the little girl in "Field of Dreams" when she's explaining why people will come to the field.

And it's so obvious based on what I've written before about the development of consciousness from a cosmological point of view. If consciousness developed out of the fully natural evolution of an energy we haven't identified yet, something like dark energy, then the reason why we're here is because we naturally developed to be here.

Physical sciences have a good running theory of our physical existence, religious extremists of all stripes notwithstanding. And by extremists, in this context I'm covering most of the center mainstream, too. But for some reason, scientists have stayed away from the slippery, tricky question of consciousness – intangible as God or any religious construct.

And that's why it's such a big deal to me to put a purely scientific stamp suggestion on the development of consciousness. It's purely natural, purely a result of the physical universe. It's just portions we aren't able to detect.

Whoops, slippery slope.

Why am I here? It's just natural. It's part of the cycle, part of the evolution, the transformation. But it's different from the scientific formulation that consciousness is just a function of biology, and when the biology stops, so does the consciousness. It's separate, but it's interwoven, inter-being.

And maybe Buddhists think (without wording it this way) that the enlightenment or extinction the Buddha found is a return to that primordial state, that being. Consciousness and physical reality is manifestation of it, and the Buddha got beyond it all and melted back into the universe, became the universe, the basic energy that is everywhere and beyond conception.

Upon his breakthrough, there were no more karmic impressions or templates left. When he died, he died at the death-point between where our existence and consciousness melts into primordial components.

Only we with our strong, clinging attachments and template to exist still exist and in non-corporeal form flow the river of the betweens to be reborn – to cycle through another round of nature, another round of seasons, another round of the the water cycle, another revolution around the sun, another turn around the Milky Way. Those things happen just because it's natural.

And the Buddha isn't gone. When I say extinct, when I say melted into, these are just problems with words and conceptualization. The enlightenment of the Buddha means that he became the energy of the cosmos, no separation, and we are all part of it, he is part of us, no choice in the matter, no religious dogma. Just nature.

Oh hey, I just called him my very definition of God. I guess I don't believe in God after all.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 11:04 a.m. - Coming home after a 45 mile ride up Yangmingshan.

"Why Do Buddhists Not Believe in God?"

Buddhists don't believe in God? I think that's a hard statement to make, even though there are plenty of Buddhists and non-Buddhists who are perfectly comfortable making that statement. For me, it depends on what you call "God".

The question might be loaded with assumptions and preconceptions about God, and quite honestly, I don't think there is even full consensus among the major Western traditions through all of history about the nature of God.

Buddhist might easily believe in God. There are ideas and concepts in Buddhist thought that when described in particular words, match some of the descriptions of God by writers in the Western traditions! It's just that Buddhists might not call it God.

A short while ago I wrote about a discussion I had with a youngster from Berkeley who was over here converting the heathen and made the mistake of approaching me. He got an earful from me. At one point towards the end of our discussion, I think I asked him, "Do you think I believe in God?", and he thought for a few seconds and said, "Yes, I think you do".

I took that as high compliment, as well as a reason to respect him. He had just gotten a barrage of my alternative theological theories, none of which should have led him to think I believed in the Christian formulation of God, and here he was saying that we have this belief, for him a sacred belief, in common.

I think it was enough for him that I had given these ideas so much thought, and though I told him I was coming from a scientific background (I didn't mention Buddhism at all), there was obviously consideration of what he calls "divine" in my formulations.

I am perfectly comfortable with someone taking my formulations and interpreting them in a way that says I believe in God. Because in those interpretations, I do! It might not be my first choice of language, but if they're the ones saying it, then it's their language they're saying it in, and I believe in God! I have no problem with that.

As for Buddhists "who don't believe in God", and I'm trying to be careful as I would encourage them to be careful, I would caution about further believing that people who believe in God are wrong. I think that should be a hard statement for a Buddhist to make. What's wrong, what's right?

Are Buddhist views wrong or right? No, they're just views. If someone thinks you're wrong, fine, maybe they're right. Who knows who's wrong or right? You can only go by what you feel and what you believe. That's something Buddhists should cultivate and know because it is the more compassionate and peaceful approach. It is not compassionate or peaceful to think someone else is wrong.

"Is Buddhism monotheistic?"

In my opinion, no simple answer to this question. There would be a wide range of answers depending upon the person asked and their level of study, aptitude, and understanding, but also the answer goes to what assumptions are made about the question.

Some would say Buddhism is non-theistic, some would say it's polytheistic, and some would say that when it comes right down to it, it is monotheistic, but not monotheistic in the manner of Western traditions.

My personal answer accepts the polytheistic interpretation as metaphor, and to the extent that the divine is everywhere, here and now, yes, poly. It is also non-theistic in that as everything is sacred, nothing is sacred, there's no god or God to worship, everything is worthy of worship and contemplation. The teaching of emptiness.

And I accept Buddhism as monotheistic, the teaching of oneness. There is one God, meaning there is one indestructible reality that is the basis of all being. God, by definition, cannot be any less than the universe, so to envision God as a being or existing in the universe, meaning being smaller than a given space, means that it is not One, not universal.

Of the Buddhist Three Jewels, God is not the Buddha, God is the Dharma. The Dharma encompasses everything. The Buddha is a catalyst, a representative. The Buddha is "smaller" than the universe, smaller than the Dharma. God is the very fabric of the universe, the very essence of anything possibly in existence, and I dare say a whole lot more. Any less, then God is "smaller than the universe". God is the universe. Or specifically, God is the speed of light, but that's a different formulation.

I can't speak of the God in Western traditions, because from what I hear, that God makes no sense, is ridden with human projection, and is, quite frankly, smaller than the universe. But when I read Jewish, Christian, or Muslim works that mention God, I think of this Buddhist idea of God, one as being much bigger and much more incomprehensible than we can ever know cognitively.

Certainly, God is not partisan. When Muslims kill in the name of God, my heart shudders. When Christians refer to the September 11 attacks and say "God bless America", I wish God never blesses anyone like that again.

Dude, whoa. I had this flash of a thought this morning equating consciousness, or the origin of consciousness, or maybe sentience, with dark energy, an as-of-yet unknown and mysterious force hypothesized to comprise almost 75% of the total universe. However, in the bright light of day, the idea is a bit too grandiose and far-fetched.

I must have been such a hippie in the 60's. Deep, man.

The way I figure it, my spiritual investigation into existence needs to delve into the origins of human consciousness. I don't believe in a "God" that is separate from ourselves that arbitrarily created us just to arbitrarily judge us in the end. That concept makes so little sense that I don't even know where to begin about how little sense it makes. It's so fraught with human projection that how it could possibly be regarded as "divine" is beyond me.

Delving into human consciousness in the grand scheme of things runs into the problem that human beings are bit players in the grand scheme of things. Spirituality tries to attach some meaning to our existence in the grand scheme of things, but if the history of the universe was placed on a 12 month calendar, humans occupy hardly a few seconds approaching midnight on December 31st.

There might be spiritual meaning to our existence, but it needs to take into consideration that our individual lives are just not that important.

So I try to trace back human consciousness to its beginning, to its source. Where did it come from? What is it in the grand scheme of things? How did the universe come from a place where human consciousness did not exist to get to a place where it did exist?

I think about how did this planet come from a place where life did not exist to get to a place where life did exist. The current theory is that all the naturally occuring elements required for organic life were present on this planet, as they are suspected of existing on numerous planets throughout the universe. The combination is not uncommon.

We had the "primordial soup", we had an atmosphere, and with all the conditions in place, energy, in the form of naturally occuring lightning, created the first amino acids, which became the building blocks for life. It's so simple and not uncommon that it is hypothesized that the universe is teeming with organic life.

Getting to sentience, much less human sentience and consciousness, is another matter. It may have been a long development of evolution for it to come into being, but what is its source? What is the ground out of which it was able to develop?

So I was just playing with the idea of how little we know. Almost 75% of the universe is completely unknown in what we're arbitrarily calling "dark energy" in affirmative pronouncement, as well as denial, of our ignorance.

Then I think of the theorized 4% of what comprises the observable universe, all we can detect, all that we know about. Much of it is known in various forms of electro-magnetic energy. 75% "dark energy". 4% known energy. My thought came out of thinking that dark energy isn't this one monolithic thing, that there are multiple, multiple, multiple types of "dark energy" as there are electro-magnetic energy, permeating the universe.

And as it may have been lightning that provided the energy to catalyze the formation of life on this arbitrary planet, I'm wondering if something similar might have happened to form sentience or consciousness, or human consciousness out of some refined form of what we're calling dark energy which permeates the universe. It's everywhere, it's here right now, we just can't detect it, just as we can't detect consciousness.

I'm seriously not proposing this at all seriously.

What I am proposing is that human consciousness is a form of something that is naturally formed by natural elements that exist in the universe, albeit exotic to our current scientific understanding. It may be rare. It may be unique in the specific form it has taken on this planet. But in the grand scheme of things it's not something uncommon or mystical.

Even in a spiritual interpretation, what we're deeming "spiritual" is something naturally occuring in the dark energy. Spirituality is the best scientific tool we have to investigate this natural phenomenon. That is what I think spirituality should be, not the garbage organized religions brainwash people to think and believe.

A spiritual investigation into the nature of the self, consciousness, and existence should not lead people to oppress, persecute, or denigrate other people. It should not try to teach people 'what is', implying that other beliefs are 'what is not'.

Now, for Buddhists, that ground of reality, consciousness, and existence is the ultimate reality, referred to as Buddha nature. It is the ultimate, the absolute – non-created, non-destroyed, non-dualistic, all things inextricably interconnected. The form Buddhism took on this planet, with its ideals of compassion and equanimity, was more or less a fabrication by living beings on this planet necessary to promote interest in these teachings of well-being and respect for other beings as a means of striving for enlightenment.

Is the essence of Buddhist teaching naturally formed? That's what I'm suggesting. But then there's a reason why Buddhism is so consonant with science, more so than God-based spiritualities. I'm not suggesting either way is right or wrong. Just what makes sense to me.

soundtrack:
1. Fireplace (REM)
2. The Smartest Monkeys (XTC)
3. Change It (live) (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
4. She (Suede)
5. (Just Like) Starting Over (John Lennon)
6. Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 7 & Edit Piece) (The Beatles)
7. I Can't Imagine the World Without Me (Echobelly)
8. Rudy (live) (Supertramp)
9. One More Day (The Neville Brothers)
10. Tell Him (Lauryn Hill)

Blasphemy: 

I always find it perplexing that there is a perception of Buddhism that there is no God. And I don't think "Buddhists" themselves have given it much thought, and have simply rolled over and agreed with that outside, colonial perception. 

I think it's more accurate to say that Buddhism doesn't actively worship, as a specialized practice, an anthropomorphized version of God. It can even be argued, at the risk of insulting them, that Buddhism practices what the major monotheistic religions preach – that God cannot be known or rendered in human understanding. 

Looking for the concept of God in Buddhism, God is all things, all phenomena experienced by humans, truly universal, truly omni, and worship of God is an every day, every minute, every moment practice. Theoretically, at least, since in all religious constructs there is a break between what humans are supposed to do and what they actually do. 

The logic would involve God being universal, all-knowing, all powerful. That's something everyone can agree upon. So the easiest conception of God is that God is the universe. What can be more universal than the entire universe, and God cannot be less than that. 

As the entire universe, God is all-knowing as the universe knows itself. If God is unknowable to humans, it is reasonable to suggest that the way humans "know" something is not the only way there is to know something. 

Or another way to think about it is to think of my body as the entire universe. I know my body, how it works, how it feels, how it is, as a whole, better than any constituent part of my universe could know it. I am, of course, God, and at this scale, a human being would be smaller than a String Theory string (if an atom were the size of the solar system, a theoretical String Theory string would be as large as a single tree on earth).  

Encompassing all forces in the universe, God is all-powerful. No force in the universe can be greater than the force of the universe itself and all it contains. 

But this is all very big and abstract. I wonder how many religious types delve on the universe as a practical matter. We get images from Hubble Space Telescope from billions of light years away, but they are just photos, snapshots, and viewing them on the internet is different from the stretches of creative imagination necessary to even try to conceive of these things as real. It is the height of arrogance to simply brush off the immensity of the universe, and the extreme forces involved in stellar, interstellar, and intergalactic interactions whose electromagnetic evidence happens to reach our miniscule telescopes. 

What we can do as humans is apply these big concepts to what we do know as a matter of practical course – our lives, and this planet. If God is all the universe, surely God is everything on this planet, every molecule, every quanta of being, every thought and every idea to the very edge of human consciousness and sub-consciousness. How can God be any less? 

And from there is where Buddhism splits from the monotheistic conception of God by not putting a face, personality, or gender on God, i.e., making God concrete and knowable. And distinctively worshipable. You can have a relationship with God and feel holy, but treat your neighbor like shit, even though as God is universal, you should be treating your neighbor with like reverence. 

As an entity with a personality, God can have enemies. There can be human beings that aren't part of the "universal" rubric of God, which is now conveniently redefined not to be strict universality. You have subjectively identified heathen and infidels; you have heaven and hell, all concepts that stray from an objective universality of God. God is partisan. God is political. God is something less than the universe. And only humans do that.

previous post afterthought: Carl Sagan IV
I feel I should thank Carl Sagan for the influence he had on me, as I realize that there is an aspect to my approach to religion and spirituality that relies on an inquiry akin to the scientific method, and not on a blind leap of faith or a superficial attraction to some unknown.

But that's what religion is – faith! And that's true, ultimately we're dealing with intangibles and unprovables that require a leap of faith. But while I do believe in an ultimate dimension that is the source of religious thought, I also think that it's important to consider the cultural, social, and political contexts of the creation and manifestations of any given religion in human societies. After all, they are applied in a cultural, social, and political context.

So it stands to reason that the background – the cultural, social, and political motivations of a religion – ought to be critically examined to contribute why it resonates and why it makes sense. If the doctrine of a certain faith resonates, fine, it's a starting point, but God gave us the power of analytical, critical thinking for a reason.

And with something as important as the foundational belief system on which we base our entire view of the universe, I think it's fair that every little concept, story, belief, teaching, etc. be scrutinized. Of course, even all this isn't infallible, as there are undoubtedly people who do this, or think they do this, and come to the conclusion that the final truth is the belief they started out with and it is immutable and applies to everyone else.

Carl Sagan II:
Let there be no doubt, Carl Sagan was a hardcore agnostic, and his disdain for mysticism and superstition – practically code for "religion" – was very thinly veiled. Point taken. Not mincing niceties about true spirituality being different from how humans have used and abused spirituality for masked secular (ego-driven) or de facto political ends, religion, on the whole, has been disastrous for the progressive development of humankind and scientific inquiry through the ages.

Carl Sagan is probably one of my "heroes" in terms of the influence he had on my thinking, even though he probably would not have been impressed a decade ago when I was tying in parts of "Cosmos" with the Lotus Sutra that I was reading at the time. He was instrumental in impressing upon me the need for critical thinking when sifting through ideas, looking for resonant personal truths.

More importantly, he emphasized a perspective that looked at all of humanity. An alien visiting our planet might be more likely to hone in on our similarities, rather than our differences. So in developing my own spiritual worldview, it was important to have one that didn't exclude, condemn, or discriminate against other worldviews.

So any spirituality that promulgated an "us against them" mentality went immediately out the door, but paradoxically, one that I adopted also needed to be inclusive about worldviews that did exclude, condemn, or discriminate against other worldviews. That is, they couldn't be discounted on their face, but needed to be examined and incorporated in a functional way.

If I'm calling it a "world view", I want it to be expansive as possible, taking into consideration as much of the world as possible. So if I think my belief covers the world, it doesn't do to automatically eliminate huge swaths of representative views just because they don't conform to mine. Other people feel as strongly about their views as I do mine, so their views must have as much validity as I feel mine do.

The working theory is that if I can summarily, in a furry fit of self-righteousness, invalidate their views as wrong, then my views are just as subject to invalidation. If I can somehow incorporate their views into mine, at least take them into consideration, then my views might be that much stronger. But no summary invalidation, and at least respect that they feel strongly about their views.

It's hard, though, in a reality that is based on duality and discrimination – distinguishing between this and that. When it comes to religions or spiritual worldviews, we like to think our beliefs are taking in the big picture, that they are universal. What good is a God that only holds power and sway over one group and not another?

In order to accomplish our limited human perception of a universal God, we imbue ourselves with the right, in God's name of course, to condemn people who don't worship our God to hell. With that kind of discrimination, division is automatic, respect is impossible, and another person's different worldview is an offense, regardless of how harmonizing it tries to be.

Crap, I keep writing about religion, a topic which is blog poison. I, myself, can't get off a blogpage fast enough once I see "Bible study", "church group", or by anyone named Matthew, Mark, Luke and/or John. Folks who, I assume, can't get off a blogpage fast enough once they don't see those things.

I swear to god, I kid you not, I came across someone's page yesterday with pictures of a group of white girls in Oregon washing each other's feet in one of their parents' living rooms in some church related ritual. In gray, Rubber Maid basins! It was so freaky I didn't even get a link. Ran to the bathroom and washed my eyes with soap.

That was mean. I shouldn't have said it. It's growing up non-Christian in this Christian country that made me do it. I really have no problem with Jesus and his teachings, but the vocal American Christians are a scary lot (I realize many, if not most, Christians don't go around spouting it, on blog or otherwise, and I apologize if I offend).

Although I do have serious problems with Pauline Christianity, as it seems much more about Paul than Jesus, and apparently most Pauline Christians don't even really know who St. Paul was or how he re-shaped Jesus's message. If Jesus were resurrected today and said, "What's with all the goyim?", point to Paul. And if you introduce him to the Roman Catholic Church and he asks, "Wasn't Pontius Pilate Roman?", just shrug like you have no idea what he's talking about.

(Here was a good place to end this post, and it's still a good place to stop reading, but noooo, I just had to go on and walk out onto the thin ice.)

But even if you were kind enough to give me that, my issues with Christianity don't bother millions of Christians, why should they bother me? It's about their faith, and if it grounds them and guides them, so be it and respect it.

I did read through one Christian site that cited twisted facts and hateful interpretations trying to debunk Islam – where does that get anyone? Where does that get him? And debunking Christianity will have as much effect on Christians as Christians telling me I'm going to burn in hell has on me. They are going to burn in hell for being so self-righteous and having so little compassion for someone like me who's going to burn in hell (see ya there! I'll bring the hot dogs, you bring the grill, we'll have plenty of fire).

In the end, I think the Qur'an puts it best when it says (interpretation and paraphrased*) it doesn't matter what your faith is or what you do or think you did, God will decide. Emphasis on the "God will decide". Or using non-religious terms, it's not in your hands. But good deeds are good deeds. They don't stop at the borders of religions. And hate is hate. It's ugly in any interpretation of divinity.

Who amongst us is so arrogant as to belittle God so much to say that he or she knows God? Who knows the direct way to God? Show me the path, and it and your life better be pretty perfect and be able to account for the salvation of all humankind, because any less is not God's love. Of course the folks who wrote the "Left Behind" series are going straight to so many levels of hell simultaneously.

*I'll try to find a cite, but don't hold your breath.

Afterthought: So I'm not quite sure . . . alright, I'm no where near sure . . . what I was positing about the nature of enlightenment being different now from what it may have been before. Maybe it's just been attitudes about enlightenment changing. Maybe it's the absolute vs. the relative, and perhaps they both function simultaneously.

That is, perhaps there is an objective absolute, ultimate reality, God if I may, or G-d, that we shouldn't even be bothering with on a functional level because it's just so way beyond that it's ten thousand times more inconceivable than pointing towards a 4th spatial dimension.

puzzle: Point towards the Fourth Dimension now!

An ultimate, objective clarity. Which is fine, I'm totally fine with things that I can't go near. Once when I was trying to get a physics professor to consider "faster than the speed of light", he refused to do it, even hypothetically, it's just impossible, and I was just like, "OK, whatev".

(Imagination dictates that going faster than the speed of light is possible.)

But on the relative level, the realm of our reality, this physical manifestion, maybe enlightenment can and has changed, not just in conception or definition, but in actuality. Relative actuality. After all, our conception of reality changes, too. It's relative. What we thought was reality before Einstein is very different from what we think it is now.

Reality and world view before modern science is very different from after (or is it "world view after modern science is very different from before" – it's relative), and the differences are considered substantive, even though nothing changes the relative experience of reality.

So maybe the manifestation of enlightenment has also changed according to changes in perceived reality. Maybe how it's handled or perceived has changed, which arguably may change its substantive nature. Who knows? It's all relative anyway.

Or am I just complicating things? I wouldn't argue against anyone who says, "If it's relative, it's not enlightenment".

Free Associating in the Free World:
The faster something goes, approaching the speed of light, the slower time moves. Theoretically, time would stop if the speed of light were attained, but nothing can go faster than the speed of light, and light is the only thing that can go the speed of light.

Stopped time may be one way of viewing eternity. Therefore, light, in its state of being, which paradoxically is a velocity, is eternal. "God" is eternal, so God=speed of light. I'm not stating this as conclusion, I'm just free associating. Just something bizarre to consider.

Black holes are super-massive objects whose gravity is so great that not even light can escape. Gravity affects space-time by curving it, and the more massive the object, the greater the curve. Light is unable to escape that extreme curvature of space-time caused by black holes.

An object falling into a black hole is observed to slow down in time, and at the point it hits the event horizon, the point of no return, the object will appear to stop, as if stopped in time, before redshifting and disappearing. I'm not sure I got that right. It's just theory anyway.

Does time stop? Is falling into a black hole eternity? An observer on the object falling into the black hole would observe no slow down in time at all. A theoretical observer who does not have physical integrity to be destroyed would experience being squeezed and stretched into the infinite curvature. No eternity, but an infinity. Curving and curving but never reaching an end. An asymptotic curve. Free association.

Is Pi asymptotic? You calculate Pi out and the number just keeps going and going, never repeating, never showing a pattern. At least so far. But you have the mathematical representation of Pi, and you also have the graphic representation of a circle. Is the further out on the Pi calculation just getting asymptotically closer, but never reaching the point on the circle where the measurement started, or is the reason Pi just keeps going and going because it already passed the point where the measurement started? I'm not losing any sleep.

Everything is relative to the observer. The observer falling into a black hole sees something different than the observer watching something fall into a black hole. Maybe the observer watching the mathematical value of Pi being plotted on a circle sees something different than the observer riding out the mathematical calculation of Pi.

And maybe Stephen Hawking was wrong in conceding that matter in this universe can never be "lost" to another universe, and there are no baby universes springing out from ours through black holes. Maybe observing from our universe, matter falling into a black hole will never be lost to another universe and there are no baby universes springing out from ours through black holes, but maybe observing from another universe (ours?) the Big Bang already happened. Haven't stranger things happened?

Sorry, more on this, I know people's conceptions of God are like assholes – everyone's got one and thinks that everyone else's stinks, but I saw a car sticker that said "God Bless America", with a stars and stripes motif, and a huge Virgin Mary beside the image of the Twin Towers.

I've been taking all this "God bless America" crap since September 11 as ballyhoo, grandstanding, whatever. It's just an expression of whatever, patriotism or whatever bullshit reason to wage war, be xenophobic, or discriminate against Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians. My use of "whatever" three times in row is an indication of how much thought I gave to it.

It didn't really occur to me that people actually believe that God has something to do with all this, and that God specifically "blesses" America over everyone else (whatever that means, if God blessed America on September 11, I hope He doesn't do it again).

That image of the Virgin Mary with the Twin Towers really hammered home that people really do believe that it isn't just political, that there's a twisted theological component to what happened on September 11 and what America has become and done since then, and "God bless America" is meant somehow literally.

I'm appalled speechless. I don't know where to begin. I don't even want to touch the minor fact that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Allah is Arabic for God (although the etymology is more complicated (and rich), which is why it has become custom for Muslims to retain "Allah" even in translation).

The split comes from both sides with Christians separating their "God" from "Allah" by constantly referring to the Muslim God as "Allah" as if it was something foreign to them, and Muslims criticizing the Christian conception and treatment of the One and Only True God. Whose approval do you need to split God into theirs and ours anyway?

But this is what I was getting at in my previous post. We have this twisted notion that "God blesses America", and we have such conviction and faith in it that it has become a rallying cry to wage war against Iraq and create untold suffering with no end to it anywhere in sight.

"God Bless America" and we create these divisions, these separations, this "otherness", this "us and them", and us have no responsibility for them suffering. But only if we could see their suffering first hand, be there and live it. But we can't so we continue to deliver suffering to them, and they try to deliver suffering to us, all in the name of some concept of God, a human-made veil of God.

Believing that there is a theological, "God bless America" component to the aftermath of September 11 is just as bad, and almost the same thing, as the terrorists believing what they did was in the name of God. It never ends when you have a faulty, dualistic conception of God.

I knew I had written before what I wrote about in my previous post. Still not as in depth as it could be, but at least I'm consistent in my descriptions, I think.

I believe in God, but not in a being that is God, nor a higher power that is God. A lot of people might say right there that I, in fact, don't believe in God; I've just twisted and distorted my definition of God to encompass what might really be an agnostic or atheist position.

For me, God starts with us. Or me. Or Me. From there it spreads like a quantum wave encompassing every little, iddy biddy, tiny bit of the fabric of all existence, non-existence, all that can be known plus whatever amount of what can't be known.

In a way, I see cosmology as an ongoing scientific study of or search for God.

In fact, as soon as you say "God", you've already missed it by trying to grasp it, control it, own it, know it, unless your conception of God is such that when you hear the word "God" it blows up like a supernova, and you lose any attached conception of God, especially any "religious" conception of God. It's probably no coincidence that this is more or less the same as enlightenment in Buddhism.

But I digress. The important facet is that it starts with me. Or Me. And no religious doctrine, canon, principle, or belief should stop me from realizing that for everybody else, it starts with them. Or Them. Not that it does, since others have their own conception of God and probably don't want me imposing my conception of God on them.

But it means that no religious doctrine, canon, principle, or belief should ever be exalted over Them. Especially when dealing with Them. Face to face. That is all. And that's only where it starts.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Joel: Hello, O'Connell.
Maggie: What do you want?
Joel: I just wanna talk.
Maggie: So talk.
Joel: Could you put the ax down, please?

Oh, and gmail gets the big donkey shaft from me.

For some reason I always thought of 'eternity' as time ever-lasting; for the rest of time, where ongoing time was part of the equation. Now I'm thinking that the only way that makes sense is by defining 'eternity' as the end of time, or the state where time no longer exists.

That makes me think of the concept in physics related to time travel, where the faster you go, closer to the speed of light, the slower time runs. It is also stated that nothing except light can travel at the speed of light. Hmph, how convenient. But theoretically, if something gets asymptotically closer to the speed of light, does it get correspondently slower in time? Maybe time stops altogether at the speed of light, i.e., eternity?

But I also already carry around the wacky notion that God=the speed of light.

The story so far: 

I had this fantasy: <fantasy> that there was a time when human conscience, the human collective unconscious, spirituality, was a cloud. Amorphous, substanceless, particulate. It was like the cloud of gas that formed our solar system, which then coalesced and spun and started to heat up and burn; spinning, orbiting clumps which avoided becoming part of the sun became planets. It was like the universe after the Big Bang, just extremely hot gas which would in time through the processes of physics, astrophysics, general relativity and quantum mechanics would become the universe as we see today. 

On this planet, Earth, God created life. God IS life. God is not a conscious entity. God is everything that is and isn't through multiple veils and dimensions that no thing in the universe can conceive. God, on this planet, took a form of the primordial human collective unconscious. It was just a cloud, and remained a cloud through billions of years of evolution of life on this planet, but as lifeforms became more animate, the cloud started to form clumps, and it was in the earliest form of humans, with the spark of conscience and primitive analytical and abstract understanding of the world, that the human collective unconscious came into concrete, separate existences. 

The human collective unconscious is in us all, it is God, it is what makes us all the same despite millennia of evolutionary difference and social, cultural, and political distinction. What is in me is also in you on a sublime level, we as humans share a cross-section of consciousness. If you believe in reincarnation, the cycle of birth and death, the law of cause and effect (karma), then Tibetan Buddhism suggests it is fact that every living being at one point was your family member. Start with one average family, and consider the possibility that time is not linear, through generations and generations through history past and future hence, at any given moment in history, every living being at one point was or "will be" your family member. 

That's too heavy for me. I can't conceive it and have no direct feeling or experience or insight into it, but I can't refute it and have no reason to doubt it, and at worst it's a good sentiment, it's a good thing to work with. And the value of "family member" to me in this life is only nominal, so I'm sure I'm missing the profundity anyway. Bringing it down a notch, it's all good and fine if every living being should be treated as one would treat a family member, but families tend not to get along. 

But in the vast amorphous pool of humanity out there who should be treated as family members, there are clumps. People who resonate – friends, loves, companions, teachers, mentors, guides, etc. The people that gravitate towards each other, people who have a magnetic bond, those are the ones that have met each other in multiple lifetimes with multiple relationships between them. Maybe there were promises made to always look for each other in subsequent lifetimes. If time is not linear, it's not always the easiest thing to be reborn in the same historic period, but when they are, they will somehow find each other, as parent-child, siblings, friends, lovers, mentors, etc., etc. 

In 2017, I will be 48. </fantasy>

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day: "It's just a theory." - Dr. Sigmund Freud.