Periodically my brain comes up with Profound Cosmic Observations. This weekend it is... (drum roll please)...
Everything is equally important.
Meaning, whatever we experience at any given moment possesses the same existential value. This applies both to me and other people.
In other words, whatever I'm doing, it's equally worthy of my awareness and attention. Ditto for what anyone else is doing. The experience of an Indian rickshaw driver is equal to that of a Wall Street options trader.
I got to pondering this oh-so-ponderable notion yesterday as I was putting together some replacement bar stools for our kitchen counter.
Now, it hadn't occurred to me that we even needed new bar stools. But my wife is far more knowledgeable in the home decorating arena than I am. So almost always I bow to her judgement in such matters. Which led to me sitting on the living room rug, surrounded by pieces of two bar stools that Laurel had ordered from Cost Plus World Market, and I'd picked up.
When the World Market guy was loading the large box into our SUV, I told him, "Is it OK if I phone you at midnight with a question about how the hell these stools go together? They don't come with IKEA-like instructions, do they?"
He laughted and replied, "Call my boss. She's in charge of things like that. You shouldn't have any trouble assembling them, though."
Sort of true.
However, the instructions were in Chinese English. Pretty clear, though with a few puzzling aspects. Such as the fact that the instructions referred to four long bolts and four short bolts. Yet each stool came with eight long bolts.
Which ended up fitting. After a bunch of fiddling.
My theory is that underpaid and overworked Chinese workers who make furniture express frustration with their working conditions by drilling some holes just a tiny bit off-center. Not enough to attract attention. Just enough to give the eventual buyer fits when he or she tries to get the last bolt holding a chair leg on to thread properly.
Midway through the bar stool assembling process, after I'd spent ten minutes or so working on a recalcitrant bolt, I began to think, Is this how I should be spending my precious time in what almost surely is my one and only precious life?
Sitting on a rug. Allen wrench in hand. Fiddling with bolts on bar stools that, until recently, I didn't even know were needed to replace the stools that I'd been satisfactorially sitting on for many years.
But then I realized that whatever I could have been doing instead wouldn't be any different. After all, every moment I'm alive and conscious, I'm experiencing something. If I started to divide these moments into worthy and unworthy, important and unimportant, significant and non-significant -- that way lies madness.
So to speak. Not clinical madness. Just the illogical frustration of believing that what I am doing now isn't what I should be doing.
That the present moment has gone awry; an existential error has occurred; I have been cast into a life experience that shouldn't be happening, and a more desirable one has been lost in an alternative potential reality.
The absurdity of this manner of thinking became obvious to me even as I continued to assemble the bar stools.
It is natural to look some experiences as more pleasant than others. Or as more satisfying than others. I can't equate getting a root canal with lying on a warm tropical beach. However, each is equally important in the cosmic scheme of things.
Each is an experience that, um, I am experiencing. Each is part of what exists in a space-time continuum. Each is what I am aware of during a limited lifetime that has only so many awarenesses.
At the end of the day I felt good seeing the bar stools all assembled. I guess I could have worked on a novel, composed a symphony, sought a cure for cancer, or tutored low-income children. Instead, I put together two bar stools.
There's a peace of mind that comes with accepting whatever happens as what is happening. And accepting that whatever happens to other people, this is what is happening to them.
I've talked about this before in some other blog posts. Such as, "Meaning of life: one damn thing after another" and "How 'nothing' is the key to a meaningful life."
I don't know if what I've said here is more or less significant than what I've said before. It's just another of those damn things that happen, one after the other. All equally meaningful.
Brian
"At the end of the day I felt good seeing the bar stools all assembled. I guess I could have worked on a novel, composed a symphony, sought a cure for cancer, or tutored low-income children. Instead, I put together two bar stools. "
2 minutes of PROFOND meditation*
is more than a life full of that, like eradicating AIDS
Even a day full of SIMRAN*
signefies more
As said in the last post
The difference is in DARSHAN
outer or inner
and Darshan comes from **
plus modesty
Have a nice repetition - of of something fruitful
777
Posted by: 777 | March 17, 2014 at 03:03 AM
777, you're a good example of why I don't like it when people like you feel superior about their purported "special" experiences.
Hey, I've done about 45 years of meditating. Almost certainly I've done way more minutes of mantra meditation than you have. I've had my own "profound" experiences in meditation.
But I don't feel like preaching to the world why what I've experienced in my life is superior to what other people have experienced. Everybody is different. Everybody has different experiences.
Do you really believe that you know what is "fruitful" for everybody else? What gives you the right, or ability, to assume that what you personally find meaningful and important should be done by everybody?
Posted by: Brian Hines | March 17, 2014 at 09:57 AM
"There's a peace of mind that comes with accepting whatever happens as what is happening. And accepting that whatever happens to other people, this is what is happening to them."
Quite so, with no 'self' and no 'will' all that arises is just happening. If we find ourselves helping or not helping, that is also just what is happening.
"Darshan", I had to look this word up - "in Hindu worship, the beholding of a deity (especially in image form), revered person, or sacred object."
I'm reminded of a saying (Zen I believe) re states and visions - "If one continues meditating such things eventually go away."
Posted by: Turan | March 17, 2014 at 10:48 AM
"If one continues meditating such things eventually go away."
---The "continues" to meditate would indicate a practicing routine. Nothing wrong with practicing. However, why would meditating continuously, allow states and visions to go away? Do they go to another part of the brain and hibernate? If I stop meditating, do the states and visions simply come back?
Posted by: Roger | March 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM
If I couldn't think about where I could-would-should-be, doing what could-should-would-be more engaging and gratifying, I wouldn't be human. If I couldn't have vexatious thoughts, I'd be as content and compliant as a cow. Reflective consciousness is vexing because reflecting is distracting. But not reflecting is not human...unless you're as docile and dumb as a cow.
If the mind isn't taking its measure, it's a cow. And if the measure the mind takes isn't determined by what could-would-should-be, by what measure is a mind more human?
Posted by: cc | March 17, 2014 at 11:44 AM
Quite so, with no 'self' and no 'will' all that arises is just happening. If we find ourselves helping or not helping, that is also just what is happening.
With all due respect, this is delusional, magical thinking. If you're capable of ascertaining your selflessness and absence of will, you're perfectly selfish and willful. If you really were without self and will, you'd have no way of knowing it and nothing to say. You can't be a talking cow.
Posted by: cc | March 17, 2014 at 11:49 AM
Turan wrote
"Darshan", I had to look this word up - "in Hindu worship, the beholding of a deity (especially in image form), revered person, or sacred object."
I do not exactly know the semantics of "behold"
but perhaps it means the following like in Augustinus confessiones:
The while looking to that person :
lose normal consciousness
of the world
like everything around you goes, becomes
blossom and bloom
and you behold a kind of brilliant stream
of sound and light coming from that person
which opens a feeling of Love
as you never had
like orgasm but it almost doesn't stop
and above your eyes
while this happens you are kind of bewitched
or hypnotized and you become really ONE with that person
en stay in that mood until the following 'happening'
which is not necessary the next happening meditation
there are cycles in that experience
and it can happen the next time
while reading the newspaper
as in Guru Nanak's case
when somebody uttered the figure 13
Definitely around this phenomenon there are strange syncronicities° like
phenomenon s happening in somebodies live
as I have described often in this blog
A special is that you -even at the start-
become sure that you ARE that Sound
which is the moment that for you death is a non happening
just asttronautes coat that you no longer need
exempt for temporary doings
BRIAN
At what right you start a worldwide journal
accusing such persons, I love
to be lyers, thieves, hypocrites and more
next forbidding me to defend Them
Who is the arrogant here?
I m not after collecting souls
recently wrote to the Houston boy here that this path is only
if you cannot put out of your head
like:
Recently we met a girl saying
"who is that man on the portrait , .. I cannot put Him
out of my head."
So I try in a subtle way without offending you
to give thes persons credit
with f i my story
google : hinessight+777+vivaldi
which is the only check-able account og a miracle
in the known history of mankind
and on which
you even don't react seriously which undermines
every other article here
When I stated that any actuarian gives this mathematically
a chance of happening of ZERO
you just accuse me
of trying to preach here.
777
Also I don't think ( after a year now )
that members are not EX RSSB INITIATES
THEY ARE LESS THAN 8
AND THE REST SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH you r slowing down
and many "disciples " from the 100 s of advaita , zen, rosecrusian
theosophian, new age-ers , satanists, and of course
collateral carbon_copy Sound & Light movements
to many to mention
and you give them 'space'
next accuse me of superiority
What I experience is shared with millions of people
on this planet
I'm just a messenger telling you that everything is true
and that nothing on this planet
has changed since Jesus.
ps2
cc
"If the mind isn't taking its measure, it's a cow"
Would be nice if it was a cow
but it is a Dragon full of sound and fury, specially when it's ignored .....
Posted by: 777 | March 17, 2014 at 04:34 PM
cc,
I don't think what Brian is talking about is like reducing ourselves to something like Pavlov's dogs, although in the end that may be all that we are...matter reacting in relation to matter or consciousness reacting to itself.
It is just an attitude of mind that allows one to be fully present and accepting of what is rather than in a state of resistance and discontent, a state of "what if" which generally only creates tension and anxiety.
I have found that when a situation needs to change, it does so of its own accord even within that attitude of acceptance of what is here and now. "Self" and "will" are paradoxically an apparent factor and at the same time nothing at all. Mere figments if you like..or not.
I mean, when the trash starts to stink you will find yourself taking it outside to the trash can. It all just goes along just as should. War, pestilence, a picnic in the park on a sunny day. All just fine. Life being life, if we have peace in our hearts or not.
Posted by: tucson | March 17, 2014 at 06:23 PM
Peace on you, tucson.
Posted by: cc | March 17, 2014 at 08:04 PM
Roger. I think the Zen master’s point on states was to stop the student dwelling on states.
cc. The self is an illusion; a construct comprised of information accrued during a lifetime – the self then is not a thing but a process. Selfishness and wilfulness can arise but there is ‘no one’ being selfish and wilful. All that is happening is information arising in the brain in response to its environment. This information is seen in consciousness – and the jury’s still out on that issue.
Posted by: Turan | March 18, 2014 at 05:17 AM
The self is an illusion; a construct comprised of information accrued during a lifetime – the self then is not a thing but a process.
We know that the self is an illusion, the mental equivalent of your reflection in a mirror, but if you were without this illusion, you wouldn't have any reason to talk about it because, not only would you have no idea of who's talking or why, you wouldn't know how to speak.
Posted by: cc | March 18, 2014 at 09:20 AM
cc, nicely said. If the illusion of the self wasn't positive and productive for humans, natural selection wouldn't have selected for it.
Feeling all one with the cosmos doesn't work well, reproduction-wise, if you embrace a cave bear or saber-toothed tiger with loving arms.
So the self-preserving survive. Which is common to all animals and other living beings. With humans, our sense of self-awareness brings additional benefits.
But just because evolution has selected for some trait doesn't mean it points to an aspect of objective reality that is true.
Natural selection rewards living long enough to pass on genes, not finding truths about the universe that aren't related to reproductive success.
Posted by: Brian Hines | March 18, 2014 at 11:20 AM
Everything is equally important.
If this was true, the word "important" would be meaningless, without import.
Posted by: cc | March 18, 2014 at 01:44 PM
cc and Brian. Glad we agree that the self is an illusion. I did not say we could operate without it but pointed out that as there is no ‘self’ things, situations etc., simply arise and happen and get acted upon – without an ‘I’ choosing and directing. So Brian working on the bar stools instead of finding a cure for cancer is what happened – he couldn’t have done other.
It’s good of you to elucidate the evolved function of the self complex – an observable natural phenomenon – but it does not detract from the fact that the sense of self is an illusion (not what it seems). This also means that free will is part of that illusion. There are good survival reasons for the sense of free will also.
Many belief systems elevate the concepts of free will and self to a lofty level (souls and the like) but for those who are interested in discovering the truth of things, knowing the self to be a composite of ad hoc (but useful) information may render us less likely to believe the often divisive religious, national and cultural identities (and others) we have been programmed with.
Posted by: Turan | March 18, 2014 at 04:36 PM
I did not say we could operate without it but pointed out that as there is no ‘self’ things, situations etc., simply arise and happen and get acted upon – without an ‘I’ choosing and directing.
Who says there's no "I" choosing, or that there's any choosing at all, for that matter? Can I know there's no I, no choosing? What is knowing if it not the illusion of I, the knower?
Posted by: cc | March 18, 2014 at 07:07 PM
Brian said :
"But just because evolution has selected for some trait doesn't mean it points to an aspect of objective reality that is true. "
Evolution has already ended the human species by measures of the climate.
COMPASSION ( and among that : vegetarism ) is the "target" of evolution and the 6 ex-satsangis here are in the know
like :
Love is COMPASSION without agenda.
-WORKS THE BEST WITH ANIMALS
No planet is more useful for compassion than this one
and conditions develop to open the 7 chakra tunnels of the jeeva
Without that the third eye can't function
and rotate fast enough
When that happens a love-powerstation will join the jeeva by means of Repetition and dhyan
Next submission / absorbtion to the Sound is possible when there not to much of self-importance
( another natural selection )
Killing, torturing : The consumption of meat ( uric acid ) which blocks chakras
is a FIREWALL of God against evil
Evolution doesn't target comfortable planets but Love
What else than Love would be of interest for someone
who has already everything
777
-
Posted by: 777 | March 19, 2014 at 02:22 AM
"Who says there's no "I" choosing, or that there's any choosing at all, for that matter? Can I know there's no I, no choosing? What is knowing if it not the illusion of I, the knower?"
There is choosing, choosing happens, but there is no ‘entity’, no separate ‘me’ doing the choosing – and we can know this.
When it comes to knowing who/what we are, understanding the processes that create a sense of ‘I’ can be a somewhat enlightening and freeing undertaking.
The reason I feel this to be important is that the information (culture, religion etc.) which constitute our identities, our sense of self is probably one of the main causes of conflict and suffering.
Posted by: Turan | March 19, 2014 at 03:54 AM
There can be confusion between 1: The organism as an instrument for action/choice and 2: The organism as the originator of action/choice.
I feel as if I am acting because this organism is the locus of actions - actions take place here. That action occurs here gives rise to the sense that the organism is the actor. But this is true only in the sense that the organism is the instrument/engine from which action takes place. It is not the originator of action. In a healthy, intelligent, aware human there is no reason why a sense that I am the originator of urges, feelings and thoughts should be present.
And so it feels as if I am thinking - but there is not the added sense that I originated (willed) these thoughts. It feels as if I have a headache - but there is not the added feeling that I originated (willed) the pain. It feels as if I am responding to a comment - but there is not the added sense that I originated (willed) the urge to respond.
Posted by: Jon | March 19, 2014 at 07:07 AM
the information (culture, religion etc.) which constitute our identities, our sense of self is probably one of the main causes of conflict and suffering.
It feels as if I am responding to a comment - but there is not the added sense that I originated (willed) the urge to respond.
An urge is involuntary, and the mind's response to it may be also, but it seems willed, chosen, because it is preceded by previous responses less informed by experience.
Free will may be illusion, but the ability to learn is real. If life is entirely deterministic, "I" am a learning mechanism, but no less I.
Posted by: cc | March 19, 2014 at 09:41 AM
Jon, I like your distinction between "instrument" and "originator" of action/choice. Hadn't thought of free will, or the lack thereof, in this way before.
Posted by: Brian Hines | March 19, 2014 at 11:41 AM
[Note: Roger, I don't see any unpublished comments from you. Nothing in the spam section either. Let's blame the TypePad blogging system. Or God. Or karma. Or.... you can choose -- Blogger Brian]
Did my comment get lost again?
Posted by: Roger | March 20, 2014 at 09:57 AM
I have made the decision to blame Almighty God and the spam section Devil. True, the TypePad blogging system is no Angel, therefore blame is in order there too.
Jon,
You mentioned,
" It feels as if I am responding to a comment - but there is not the added sense that I originated (willed) the urge to respond."
---What would be the mechanism of how a response is created? If you received a question, how does your response make an appearance?
Posted by: Roger | March 20, 2014 at 03:35 PM
What would be the mechanism of how a response is created? If you received a question, how does your response make an appearance?
I'm not sure what the actual mechanism is apart from it being a type of causality.
When the sun appears a plant orients its leaves to catch photons - there's no free will involved. If the plant was self-aware it might conclude that it chose to catch the photons.
Posted by: Jon | March 21, 2014 at 12:56 PM
Thanks Jon,
How do you define Free Will? This is for interesting conversation purposes.
Posted by: Roger | March 22, 2014 at 10:41 AM
Roger, I'm the wrong person to ask since I think it's an incoherent concept.
But the sort of common definitions that I'm familiar with are along the lines of: "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate" or "freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes."
Posted by: Jon | March 23, 2014 at 12:45 PM
If the way I respond to stimuli and situations is determined by "prior causes" and not by reason, choice, free will, then when the prior causes are unknown or unacknowledged, a plausible explanation rushes in to fill the vacuum of information.
Posted by: cc | March 23, 2014 at 06:23 PM
Thanks Jon,
"the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate"
---The supposed non-power of not acting with the absence of constraints of necessity or possible fate.
"cc" person
---the "prior" causes, you mentioned, would require someone to reason through what prior means. Your personal "prior" causes are probably known, but not acknowledged by you. That said, how does a plausible explanation rush in to fill a vacuum of information?
Posted by: Roger | March 24, 2014 at 10:50 AM
...how does a plausible explanation rush in to fill a vacuum of information?
You don't always know why you do what you do, so you come up with an explanation that comports with your notion of who you are.
Posted by: cc | March 24, 2014 at 10:16 PM