Sunday, November 07, 2004

I am God!

I see it perfectly clearly. Consider the laws of physics. Everything in the universe holds to them. I certainly do. BUT! What defines the laws of physics? It is clearly what I do that defines them. It is what everything does but me included. So then I am God! So is everyone else of course but really its ME! I've put this into words before but I've never actually felt it until now. I was reading about how I am nothing and how the karmic laws just act through me. This is also undoubtedly true. It really means the same thing. They sound like total opposites but they are both totally true! This is the purpose of the koans such as "What is the Buddha? Three chin of flax." These opposites. Rabbi Heschel says that god is in man and that man comes from dust. It establishes the same paradox as the koan. When one closely examines things they are both entirely true. My actions are clearly based on the laws of physics, but also I clearly act. So my actions are essentially the actions of god. My actions define the laws of physics, just as the laws of physics define me. This is the man as god side. But at the same time so what? Even the dust swirls in the wind. Even the dust defines the laws of physics. Even the dust is God! I do not intend to sound egocentric in the least. There is no I that is separate from the laws. I IS the laws. There is nothing left to be egocentric. It's just that the laws are I too.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Yin and Yang

You can not remove things from the universe. Any one thing necessitates the existence of everything else. I look at the black bored. If it wasn't there all the information about it would still exist in the universe. If it was removed, its reflection would still exist on my eyes. Conversely, if everything in the universe was removed except the black board, the changing state of it would give all of the information about the rest of the universe. They imply each other. This is true of anything in the universe. If one little thing was removed, the universe as we know it could not exist.


Paranoia while listening to Terry Riley

I was listening to a Terry Riley recording called Across the Lake of the Ancient Word. Now Terry Riley is an amazing minimalist composer and keyboardist who incorporate the music theory of the great sitar players of India into his music, but they sound nothing alike. He just has a way of expanding your consciousness like great sitar does. So I was listening to this recording with big headphones on, and I was listening really loudly. This is pretty soft music normally so this was a different experience. I was on my bed, staring up at the ceiling listening to this music and I started getting really paranoid. I'm not really sure about what, maybe that somebody would walk in the door but I don't know why I would be worried about that, I wasn't on any drugs of any kind. I was just generally really freaked out. It was like I was overloaded by the music, because it was so loud and I was so engulfed by it because of the headphones. It had a feeling like the paranoia that comes from weed sometimes. I had to stop listening because it was so scary.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Letting things be

A friend said an interesting thing to me. "Raking leaves is pointless," he said, "because why should we judge the leaves as bad, and decide we must move them." I think its an interesting point, but I think its a self defeating one, that none the less leads to good insight.

If picking up leaves is judged to be pointless, isn't that judgment itself pointless? Is there really any distinction? But then I am judging his judgment to be pointless, so obviously that judgment is pointless as well. So what can one do? You try to let things be, but then you realize that your attempt to let things be, is in actuality an attempt to control your own mind, and thus not letting things be. So then you decide not to control things at all, but of course that too is an attempt to keep your mind from trying not to control things. There is no escape. But as William Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise." After someone tries to let things be for a while, they realize how futile it is, and are finally able to just give up, and realize that there is no ME separate from everything else, so there is nothing that can control anything else. At this point they give up, and become enlightened.