It may grind on with us, but how do you know it will without us, if we’re not here?
With a graduate degree in geophysics I am well aware of plate tectonics, the physical mechanism responsible for earthquakes. But, when I went to college in the 60’s, we didn’t have a good idea of plate tectonics that we now have. Geologists talked more about “continental drift”, and the whole subject was controversial. We needed to have the research from drilling in the oceans before we were able to see what was actually taking place.
Of course, I didn’t mean to imply that “spirits” have anything to do with earthquakes. This, by the way, has nothing to do with whether there may be a Spirit of the Earth. I think of the idea of Spirit of the Earth as an organizational intelligence, a field of awareness, if you will. Like I said before, this currently is not in the realm of science. Some idea of the relevance of this can be glimpsed in meditation, however
That is an excellent question. It gets right to the nub of the matter.
If we are not here it doesn’t matter.
That’s the long and the short of it. Sorry if I seem blunt. Wondering and worrying about what might happen if we not here seems to me a great waste of time and energy. Inventing fantasies about what we cannot know also seems to me a waste of time. Better to concentrate on the now … and maybe the immediate future. 
Not so far off, it seems. I watched a news item a while ago on the Discovery channel. Over the last several years a group of scientists have placed these little electronic devices all over the world that randomly switch from one state to another and back again. They monitor these little boxes via the internet. Since the boxes are switching back and forth aimlessly, one would expect a totally random pattern of switch states at any time, or over a period of time.
Not so, per the report. Anytime there was a major catastrophe that elicited a large scale emotional response from people, these little boxes started flipping like crazy. It would then take a day or two for them to return to their normal state. Incidents cited were the death of Princess Diana and some major natural disasters that were in the world news. Obviously this is poor science, since no mechanism or direct causitive agent was identified, but its still pretty intriguing IMHO.
djm
If the Earth has a spirit I hope I never meet it
in a dark alley.
My father died of a coronary at 42, a result of rheumatic
fever as a child. My mother died of cancer at 48.
One sister died as a baby; the other had a stroke
due to an aneurism at 28–left her permanently
quadriplegic.
I have no inclination to be romantic about nature.
It’s very beautiful and very interesting but
it’s murderous–the whole evolutionary process
runs on agony. By all means care for it,
preserve it, but more important still, learn how to
control it.
Oh yeah, my retina nearly was torn off my eye
last week–the gel in the eye contracted. Aging.
Just received news that a young friend of ours
has Huntington’s disease–will reduce him to
a psychotic imbecile in a decade or two.
He’s 38.
Thanks, Mom!
Even though I am “only” 20, I feel your pain. Sometimes I wonder, “Am I not too young to feel like my body is falling apart?” And apparently the answer I get from mother nature is “No! Hahaha!”
And I’m praying/well-wishing/hoping for your eyeball.
Jim and Cran, I am sorry for your difficulties, but I think that tomorrow will bring a better day for you. I am an optimist, I suppose. Look outside your window. Across the street from where I live, the pee wee soccer kids are having a great time. The high school students walk by my house completely obvious of any national problems, whatsoever. Regardless of how long you or anyone else may live on this remarkable planet, it is a blessing to be cherished.
That’s really true. And it reminds me of today when I was in the post office–there was this girl my age who had two little boys with her about 6 and 3 years old. They were jumping up and down on chairs and pulling paper off the bulletin boards on the wall and playing tag and running around having the most wonderful (and loud) time in the world while their adult stood at the counter and bought stamps all melancholily.
At one point the older boy was running away from the younger one and he tripped and fell flat down onto his knees on the hard floor. Instead of crying about it, he got right back up and kept running around the post office with his brother playing their fun imaginary game. It was so cool to watch how they were obviously having so much fun, and so oblivious to all the problems in the world. Moments like that, even when you’re just a bystander, as I was, are to be treasured, I think.
Thanks Cran and Doug. All well taken.
If the world just sucked or was just delightful
it would be easier to cope with.
It’s this constant shifting between the
delightful and the horrible that
is so maddening.
The Buddha said that human beings have the right
balance of pleasure and pain to practice.
The gods live in celestial realms so pleasant
that they lack motivation. Animals are too miserable
and lack comprehension. We are optimally
positioned to become enlightened, motivated by
the pain to seek a way out of suffering, but
not so victimized by it that we can’t.
But there is in the Buddha’s original teaching, no
romanticism about nature. It is the realm of the
conditioned, of causation, samsara (the realm of
suffering), attaching to things in it takes one
to despair–because their nature is to go.
It is constituted by the play of impersonal forces
that make things arise and pass away; there
is no refuge in it anywhere.
So the goal of practice is to become enlightened to
all of this, and to find Nibbana, a transcendent state in which one
no longer attaches to transient things. As a Buddhist
teacher in Thailand once told me, emphatically:
‘Not even this body is yours.’ Ain’t it the truth!
When Buddhism reached China it mixed with
Taoism, which has a much more kindly and
beneficent view of nature than you find in
Indian thought. That’s where Zen comes from,
and lovely ink drawings of animals and
craggy mountains. And, while I appreciate the
art, that’s where I get off the bus.
A couple of months ago somebody I loved dearly
died, and I felt that I had died too. It was, interestingly,
a good feeling. I was free. The mind/body went on
and I watched it with interest but without concern.
It was like a corpse that hadn’t realized it was dead
and nobody had gotten around to burying it yet.
I took off my ring and other jewelry; why put
jewelry on such a thing?
Then slowly, over a month or two, I fell asleep again,
back into the dream of life, I became again
‘the self-cherishing I,’ and once again I began
to suffer.
Buddha means awakened. The best and hardest thing
in human life, IMO, is to remain awake. There is the
possibility of liberation in things happening to us
that we would never choose.
That was nicely done, Jim.
Thank you,
Denny
Absolutely. I envy your ability to express that as you did, Jim.
Which always struck me as similar to Albert Camus’s outlook as expressed in the Myth of Sisyphus.
Sisyphus in full here. Please read it if you haven’t done so before. I so wish I could justify posting the whole thing here.
Camus’s writing had a profound effect on me when I first discovered existentialism and absurdism. Especially Sisyphus and ‘Reflections on the Guillotine’.
edited for typos
I absolutely agree. Life is what you choose to make of it. If you choose to be unhappy and miserable, then you will be unhappy and miserable. And you have every right to make your own choice.
We can see life as bright and hopeful, or we can see it as darkness and despair. We can see our purpose in life as something noble, or we can revel in feeling sorry for ourselves. We can devote our lives to the betterment of others, or we can devote it to being a pain in the as. We can even devote it to being a pain in our own as.
You can call on all sorts of philosophies to support a need to feel miserable, and a need to avoid service, and a need to be a pain in the a*s, but it just keeps you in the dark longer.
Never imagine that you are the only person to have been unloved, abused, rejected, in debt, sick, injured, homeless, or jobless with 3 kids and a spouse who deserted you. Never imagine that you are in any way singled out by the universe for torment. Never imagine that there is nobody in worse shape than you are. Never imagine that you are exempt from life.
And, you know what? If you think you are falling apart, you need some perspective. You need to have a chat with some of the people who were FAR worse off than you, yet managed to become an inspiration to others. Try Scott Hamilton and Lance Armstrong.
Or just come to work with me one day and see all the people who were blown half to kingdom come and still show up to work every day 40 years later, walking on two artificial legs, typing with a hook, with hepatitis, prostate cancer, a glass eye and a plate in their head.
Start doing some volunteer work at a place where people ARE f’ing falling apart. It’ll help you get perspective, develop some compassion, and stop feeling sorry for your lot in life.
EVERYBODY DIES. But you have a choice as to what you are going to do along the way.
And do not reply to this by saying I do not know from whence I speak. You have no idea.
While I agree with a lot of what you say Lamby,I do think you are being a shade harsh in this matter.
I know two people with Bipolar disorders who cannot just “think” themselves out of a depression when it comes on them,much as they would like to.Nor can any amount of charity work lift their spirits when they get down.
Not everybody has been blessed with your resolve and intellect.
Just a thought…
Slan,
D.
Sorry, but that’s “a$$”. Its important to get these things right in order to find true fulfilment as a complete pain in the a$$. Like me! 
djm
Thanks Denny and Buddhu.
This is very interesting to me, as I have always felt there is a
real commonality between the Buddha’s teaching and
existentialism.
The quotation ‘Impermanent are all created
things. Strive on with earnestness’ are his last words, said
to the monks and nuns as he was dying. Another translation
is ‘Things made of parts come apart again sooner or later.
Strive with earnestness.’ That’s a pretty enlightened
way of seeing one’s own death, isn’t it?
A few months earlier, when contemplating his impending
death (he was 80) he told his people that each of them
must be ‘a lamp unto himself.’ He meant, in part, that
each must remind mindful and awake, observing the
mind/body in each moment; but also he probably
was advising a quality of intellectual independence.
He taught, in the Dhammapada:
By ourselves is evil done
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.
No one saves us but oursleves,
No one can and no one may.
We alone must tread the path,
Buddhas only show the way.
There is a point to life in Buddhism, liberation,
and there is a refuge, for Buddhism is
a religion, with a long tradition. One becomes
a Buddhist by formally taking refuge in
the Buddha, his teaching, and in the
community of practitioners. It promises a
way out of suffering. So I guess Camus would
have considered this a form of ‘intellectual
suicide,’ and ‘inauthenticity,’ though probably
one of the more benign varieties.
Also there is no revolt, which is a personal attitude.
Ultimately, in Buddhism one is supposed to see practically
that there is nobody to revolt. There’s no self
in the mind/body, it’s just empty phenomena
rolling on, nobody in it. This isn’t just philosophy, by
the way–it’s insight: the result of meditation practice
sustained over many years.
I take some comfort in the odd idea that even though
the world involves terrific pain, at least it isn’t happening
to anybody. This, in Buddhism, is called equanimity,
but it is balanced by a powerful compassion.
In seeing the emptiness of things and losing
selfishness, a great compassion dawns for all
these traansient mind/bodies that think they contain
persisting people. One comes to cherish people
one knows don’t exist. The Buddha spent much of
his life bringing to people he knew didn’t exist
the liberating news that they never were.
He did this from compassion for them.
Compassion creates its own object–
it enters into the delusion that causes suffering, and
it loves the illusory selves that if finds there as if they were real.
Discovering that my brother is a bag of bones
I love the bag of bones as my brother. So compassion
keeps one involved in the world,
while wisdom and equanimity protect
the compassionate heart from being
broken.
Both Camus and Buddha agree that living
awake is a kind of happiness, if not quite
what we mean by happiness, a kind of joy.
And I expect they find joy in the same clarity
and lucidity, the same unflinching realism.
A sign of progress in buddhism is good cheer.
But where Camus sees the enlightened person
as an heroic figure, very much an individual,
the Buddha sees him/her as selfless, a kind
of saint, and motivated by a boundless
compassion.
So, in the Mahayana, the bodhisatva vows to be
reborn repeatedly to help other beings become
free–‘Yea, until the last blade of grass is liberated!’
Well, that’s a kind of heroism an existentialist
might appreciate.
I really like the way you said that. I am stealing it and adding it to my quote collection. I will give you credit. I can’t wait until our date in the future (no, I haven’t forgotten).
Nor have I! It’s the single thought that reconciles me
to my death.
In case anybody has forgotten, Cranberry
and I have a date for my next life, on the doubtful
proposition that I won’t be reborn as a frog.
He will be an older fellow when I’m about
20; it will be one of those Winter/summer
relationships.
Let’s do what we can, old Berry, to make sure
that I precede you. As ever, Jim
That’s different; it’s an illness. They don’t choose to be that way, but they can choose to seek professional assistance.
I wasn’t referring to getting one’s spirits lifted, but to getting a better perspective on one’s own life circumstances by seeing the struggle of others.
Not everybody has been blessed with your resolve and intellect.
Don’t try to pass this off as some kind of intrinsic advantage on my part.
I wasn’t blessed with resolve–nobody ever was. And I don’t have the intellect I started out with.
Further, you are assuming that I’m some kind of perfect person. Ha! That’s not even close.
You’re also assuming I’m describing myself, and that’s not even close, either. For the most part, I’m describing others.
Jim,
I hope you (and everyone else) don’t mind but I have started a spin-off thread at:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=427505#427505 .
I became aware that 1) I was threadjacking, and 2) some of the religious aspects of the current exchange might more properly reside in the forum that is set aside for sensitive topics.
What do you think?
What we think doesn’t matter, unless Dale agrees with us.