2015 « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Nature ... Photo ...

A mourning dove recently decided that the window air conditioner outside my mother’s former bedroom at my brother’s house would be a good place to nest her progeny for the season. My mother passed away about 5 years ago, but the soon-to-be mother bird perhaps sensed some metaphysical traces of Mom’s former presence, and decided that the spot had good feng shui and positive chi. Here we see the bird trying to catch up on some zzz’s in mid-afternoon. If all goes well, she will soon be very busy flying in worms or seeds or other tid-bits for the hungry chicks. I’ll try to post some further pix once that happens.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:09 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Monday, April 20, 2015

◊ A Marked Man

History ... Personal Reflections ... Society ...

A few days ago I was looking for a book in my apartment, and I just happened to brush across an interesting collection of spiritual writings from the late Dag Hammarskjold. This book, called “Markings”, was NOT the book that I was looking for; but in another sense, perhaps it was. Markings is Dr. Hammarskjold’s life-long spiritual diary, a collection of reflections on his inner struggle for truth, meaning and transcendence. I.e., a place where you write stuff like:

Courage and love: equivalent and related expressions for your bargain with Life. You are willing to pay what your heart commands you to give.

Night is drawing nigh – How long the road is. But, for all the time the journey has already taken, how you have needed every second of it in order to learn what the road passes by.

Deep thoughts, indeed. So I moved the book from a bottom shelf in a remote storage area to my bedside nightstand, where I can take in some of Dag’s reflections before retiring. The book itself brings back memories for me. It’s a 1977 printing and is now turning brown and brittle around the edges. I received it in 1978, when I was a young man who himself was not yet turning brown and brittle. It was given to me as a going-away present by some nice people at a social services agency that I volunteered with » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:07 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, April 16, 2015

◊ December 8, a Date That Will Live . . .

History ... Zen ...

My Zen group recently held a “zazen-kai”, which is basically a long day of meditation and other Zen ceremonial accoutrements. Our normal weekly zazen service lasts 2 hours; zazen-kai goes about 6 and 1/2. Most of the extra time goes to sitting quietly in meditation. And that’s a good thing, as far as I am concerned. But some of it goes into more chanting, more walking around (i.e. “kinhin”), breaking for refreshments (in silence, thank goodness), and listening to the wise teacher ruminate on the contrarian glories of the Zen / Buddhist traditions. During our zazen-kai, our sensei talked about the traditional December sesshin commemorating the anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The last day of this week-long ceremony marks the morning when Buddha awoke before dawn, saw the morning star (the planet Venus) shining brightly over the horizon, and decided that he was finally seeing the big picture. I.e., the Buddha realized enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the holy grail of the whole Buddhist enterprise, so the date on which this happened is treated as a holiday in many parts of the East. During his talk, sensei named the date on which the big man supposedly had his great celestial insight — i.e., December 8th. Being a supposedly anti-intellectual tradition, it’s a no-no in Zen to stimulate the mind (or let it be stimulated). But my mind was nonetheless stimulated by this little factoid. December 8th — pretty close to December 7th, the day of infamy, Pearl Harbor Day.

Hold on a minute — Zen is largely a Japanese tradition; it has ancient historical roots in China and India, but Japan is where it all came together during the Middle Ages, where the legendary Zen masters such as Dogen and » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:34 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, April 11, 2015

◊ Homeopathic Earwash or Hogwash?

Health / Nutrition ... Medicine ...

Being a vegetarian, I am also something of a health food nut . . . well, I don’t get too exotic about it, but I try to keep salt and fats and sugary carbs under control. I’ve also been getting more strict on starchy carbs now too, despite the fact that I love to eat them; they’re the last available ‘comfort food’ for people like me who avoid meat, eggs and dairy products. And yes, despite all the anti-vitamin and anti-supplement backlash that has been published of late, I still regularly pop a handful of OTC pills (and liquid drops) every day. I take varying levels of Vitamins B, C, D and E (mixed tocopheral, of course), algae oil (in lieu of fish oil), ginko, alpha lipolic acid, acetyl-carnatine, and MitoQ. But again, all in moderation; no “mega-doses” (except for the B vitamins – can’t get enough of them — and maybe a little bit over the “recommended daily allowance” for D).

As such, I’m something of an alternative-medicine sympathizer. But one area that I never got very involved with was homeopathic medicine. It seems so weird to me, despite the fact that it has a lot of followers; you can find plenty of web sites devoted to it. The problem is that when you go on these web sites and try to find out just what’s in the various potions that are recommended and why they might be effective, you see a lot of hocus-pocus. These remedies always come with a list of what is in the mix, but just what those ingredients are remains rather mysterious. E.g., Calcarea Iodata, which is recommended for “enlarged glands, tonsils . . . thyroid enlargements about time of puberty . . . flabby children subject to colds . . . adenoids . . . uterine fibroids”

Or how about Grindelia Robusta, said to be useful for “asthmatic conditions, chronic bronchitis » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:48 am No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

◊ String Theory — Reality, or Just an Instrument?

Science ...

The other day I was listening to a lecture how philosophy and science relate to each other, and it make me think about string theory. String theory, even though far from being proven and adopted as an established scientific teaching, is nonetheless quite a successful paradigm. It accomplishes a lot (or at least has the potential to, should enough empirical evidence accrue that ensures its widespread acceptance). One of the biggest things that it does involves the unification of gravity with the Standard Particle Model and quantum physics; i.e. the quantization of gravity. This is currently a long-sought holy grail in modern physics, i.e. quantum gravity.

If a solid theory of quantum gravity were developed, the confounding infinities of Einstein’s relativity equations describing gravity would finally be banished; there would be no more worries about singularities and infinite-density black holes. There is a cost, however — the acceptance of super-symmetry (requiring the discovery of a whole family of new and presently never seen sub-atomic particles, although the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is busy looking); and of many extra spatial dimensions (which we don’t see in our daily lives because they are somehow rolled up in ways that are too small to affect us).

The charm of string theory is that one single mathematical paradigm can potentially relate and explain electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the Higgs field, and gravity. It would provide a ‘theory of everything’, or almost anyway. Aside from the need for supersymmetrical particle discovery and lots of extra dimensions, however, the big problem » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 3:38 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Friday, April 3, 2015

◊ Seder Night on Brook Avenue

Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

It’s a Friday night, and I did tonight what I often do on a Friday night — i.e., drive over to my brother’s house to do my wash. But it’s also Good Friday, and as a practicing Roman Catholic, my brother left around 7 for a church service commemorating the death on the cross of Jesus Christ. As someone who is not a practicing Catholic, I stayed to get my washing and drying done.

I left for home at around 8:30pm, an hour after sunset, and took my usual route up Brook Avenue in Passaic, NJ. This street runs through a suburban neighborhood that is unremarkable except for its increasing concentration in recent years of Hassidic Jewish families. On most Friday nights, even in the cold of mid-winter, I see those families in their black coats and hats » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:56 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

◊ Last of Winter, 2015

Photo ... Weather ...

It’s finally April here, and a long winter is just about over. For a while there in February, we had to go almost a week just to get a day where the high was above freezing. Now finally, we’ve probably seen the last day for the season where the low gets below 32. So, one more memory of this memorable winter. This was the last real snowfall in my town, which happened on March 20 (the day before Spring started). It was just barely cold enough to snow, as you can see on the thermometer. This was a winter of old, one that didn’t give in too easily. I’m not sure that I want to see one like this again anytime soon, but it’s nice to look back on and feel good about having survived.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:12 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 28, 2015

◊ On Our Knees: The Grand Design of Humankind

Health / Nutrition ... History ... Spirituality ...

The human body is a wonderful thing, from an engineering perspective. It is amazingly designed, as proven by how much it can do and how adaptable it is to a wide variety of operating conditions. The body is an extremely complicated machine that can perform a whole lot of different functions, and for the most part it does them very well. The brain of course is the crowning peak of complexity, but the rest of the body is pretty incredible too; everything below the eyebrow is still more complex and well-engineered than say the Space Shuttle or an aircraft carrier.

I’m not going to get into the whole thing about whether or to what degree such design reflects an intentional theological authorship. I accept the existence of a natural process of biological evolution, along with the concept that it is driven by random variation and environmental feedback loops stemming from DNA inheritance and natural selection. I further accept that given the right conditions and enough time, such a process can “blindly” author a masterpiece like the human brain and body system. I don’t believe that any sort of divine transcendent power had a pre-packaged blueprint for the human race, and somehow impressed such an “intelligent design” mandate upon the Earth’s biosphere This is not to say that a beneficent deity does not exist; nor that a conceivable deity would have nothing at all to do with the dynamics that allowed our universe and the world we know to come into existence. But I don’t look at such a deity as a master designer with huge rolls of blueprints in arms, specifying every detail of the human body.

Because if you did imagine that, you might have to conclude that this deity isn’t so smart and perfect after all; the human body has some significant flaws in its design. In various ways, you can see that it is a “work in process”, which makes sense » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:08 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Monday, March 23, 2015

◊ ISIS, Jesus and the Power of The Apocalypse

Current Affairs ... History ... Religion ...

I finally got around to reading Graeme Wood’s important article in The Atlantic entitled “What ISIS Really Wants”. In a recent post I discussed Wood’s follow-up note to his article; this note seemed very relevant in and of itself. But now it’s time for a thought or two from me about Wood’s main article.

Actually, I only have one big thought to share here (but yes, it is still a big one, requiring many words). In my previous post regarding Wood’s follow-up note, I embraced his point that ISIS should be considered a “legitimate” interpretation of Islam. After reading the actual article, I reaffirm his contentions. Most Muslims around the world do not embrace this version of Islam; by the same token, very few attempt to reject it on grounds of being inauthentic.

The key players and supporters of the ISIS movement (including clerics, scholars, politicians and military leaders) are very savvy about the Koran and the history of Islam. They make a very detailed and credible effort to justify their policies (however brutal and inhumane) using the words and directives of the Prophet Mohammed himself. Over the past two years, ISIS has managed » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:43 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 14, 2015

◊ We’re On A Mission

Personal Reflections ... Practical Advice ... Zen ...

At the zendo that I regularly sit at (despite my being something of an internal outcast there), they recently held a “practice circle” discussion regarding a chapter from Suzuki Roshi’s book “Not Always So”. The chapter is entitled “Enjoy Your Life where the good Roshi uses the then upcoming (1969) first manned lunar space mission as a point of departure by which to make his point. He says that “to arrive on the moon may be a great historical event, but if we don’t change our understanding of life, it won’t have much meaning or make much sense”. The Rosh concludes that by practicing zazen (meditation), “you can enjoy your life, perhaps even more than taking a trip to the moon”. At the start of his lecture, Suzuki opines that “Instead of seeking a success in the objective world, we [need] to experience the everyday moments in our lives more deeply”. And yet, he also admits that “I want to speak about the moon trip, but I have not had any time to study it”.

Here’s my question: did the Apollo 11 flight and its follow-up moon-landing missions represent a delusion, a sort of false success within the objective world, one that impairs our ability to know more deeply the value of the everyday moments of our life? In 1969, Roshi Suzuki admitted that he didn’t know too much about the moon-bound straw men that he was setting up. But it’s 46 years later, plenty of time to have studied what happened with the Apollo astronauts and the other people and things that made this endeavor possible. Despite the wise Roshi’s diminution of the Apollo program and its achievements, perhaps it is still possible to see that the astronauts of the Space Race days really did have a lesson for us on how to deeply experience and enjoy our lives.

I offered some comments during the zendo discussion about how the Apollo mission might in fact relate to an appreciation of everyday life. I’m not an expert on it, but as a life-long space enthusiast, I watched a lot of documentaries and read some books and went thru a lot of articles on the United States’ efforts to get to the moon in the 1960s (before the decade was out, as per the mandate from President Kennedy). So I think I can offer a bit more on just what those spaceflights actually entailed.

Basically, they were military exercises. The US manned space program was » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:20 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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