08-11-2018, 10:22 PM
08-11-2018, 10:25 PM
Buddha then asked, “What do you think, Subhuti? Does one who has entered the stream which flows to enlightenment say "I have entered the stream"?”
“No, Buddha.” Subhuti replied. “A true disciple entering the stream would not think of themselves as a separate person that could be entering anything. Only that disciple who does not differentiate themselves from others, who has no regard for name, shape, sound, odor, taste, touch or for any quality, can truly be called a disciple who has entered the stream.”
Buddha continued, “Does a disciple who is subject to only one more rebirth say to himself "I am entitled to the honors and rewards of a once-to-be-reborn."?”
“No, Lord. "Once-to-be-reborn" is only a name. There is no passing away, or coming into, existence. Only one who realizes this can really be called a disciple.”
“Subhuti, how can one explain this Sutra to others without holding in mind any arbitrary conception of forms or phenomena or spiritual truths? It can only be done, Subhuti, by keeping the mind in perfect tranquility and free from any attachment to appearances. So I say to you, this is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Thus spoke Buddha.
“No, Buddha.” Subhuti replied. “A true disciple entering the stream would not think of themselves as a separate person that could be entering anything. Only that disciple who does not differentiate themselves from others, who has no regard for name, shape, sound, odor, taste, touch or for any quality, can truly be called a disciple who has entered the stream.”
Buddha continued, “Does a disciple who is subject to only one more rebirth say to himself "I am entitled to the honors and rewards of a once-to-be-reborn."?”
“No, Lord. "Once-to-be-reborn" is only a name. There is no passing away, or coming into, existence. Only one who realizes this can really be called a disciple.”
“Subhuti, how can one explain this Sutra to others without holding in mind any arbitrary conception of forms or phenomena or spiritual truths? It can only be done, Subhuti, by keeping the mind in perfect tranquility and free from any attachment to appearances. So I say to you, this is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, a dream
So is all conditioned existence to be seen”
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, a dream
So is all conditioned existence to be seen”
Thus spoke Buddha.
~The Diamond Sutra, Chapters 9 and 32 (200-400 A.D)
10-31-2018, 03:48 PM
Instead of taking my usual route along the promenade, I strolled into the adjacent park to stand beside one of the bonfires that were lit every now and then. Zion's CO2 levels had again dropped enough to stifle the enormous bio-dome’s plant growth, so the dead and surplus biomass was burnt to return it to the artificial atmosphere. The smell of burning wood was a welcome change from the sterile office environment I was in all day.
“Hello, professor Zelman! Enjoying the fire?”
One of my female students, who had been disconcertingly friendly throughout the semester, stepped into the light and gave me a flirtatious wink of the eye.
“Good evening, Ms Figuera. It's quite pleasant, yes.”
“I simply love the heat.” She stretched her body into a pose that accentuated her physical assets. “I wish I didn't have to go back to learning for that exam, so I could stay here...” she said and added “with you.” with a smile. Awkward.
“If you payed attention during the lectures, you shouldn't have to study too hard now.”
“But it's so much material! Do you have any advice about which part could be the most important? Maybe we could go over it briefly over a glass of Chardonnay? I have some at my place.” I noticed how close she was now standing.
“I really couldn't say. It's all important. I should go home now. My wife will be waiting. Have a productive evening.” I lied and walked away a bit disgusted. The gender board never talks about this sort of thing when they lecture the staff on harassment.
10-31-2018, 08:18 PM
While I took the elevator, my mind wandered to the events that lay ahead. The Coalition surprise attack on Encheladus would occur in five weeks. My role as adviser in the sleeper ship construction project had already granted my family a place on the Liberty, but what if we or the Order had caused a deviation from this part of Kara's future memory that makes her escape go wrong? Such breeches had happened before, but the Solomon Kara had always managed to mend them.
I knew the body with which I roamed this spacetime had received more knowledge of future and past events than most Nomads, in particular many of Kara's direct memories. I acted as guardian Angel to Kara, observed her behavior and knowledge in the Solomon Kara reality, and surveyed the conformity towards Kara's timeline as she remembered. As long as we kept human history the way Kara knew it, the Solomon Kara would still know the relative future, giving us the edge we needed to bend other parts of history to our advantage. But I didn't have continuous access to the mindshare, which would risk discovery of my hyper-crystal, due to the Alliance's desperate and paranoid security measures they enforced after the cloaked attack on Kennedy Station. The times where humans wouldn't understand the special nature of the crystal had been over for several centuries now.
After I left the elevator walked along the corridor to the apartment, wondering how things would have been if Kara hadn't possessed extensive knowledge of human history, archaeology, and religious texts. Would she have been able to manipulate the ancient kings and prophets by locating historic stones like Hamurabi's Stele, which channeled the visions sent to those that would have the actual means to build what we needed? The Stele, made from the stone that the scribe Enki fell upon as a child, onto which the law of the land was then etched, and through which the Babylonian kings later received Kara's visions, had already been stolen from the Louvre, and brought to Nibiru. From there, backward from a time of thousands of years in the future, among the ashes of Sol, Kara's nomads sent the instructions to create Solomon Kara.
I arrived at our apartment's door and unlocked it with the entry code. As soon as I entered, I heard a voice I didn't recognize.
10-31-2018, 10:18 PM
"In the form of Harihara, Vishnu and Shiva are one. They preserve and destroy as a single manifestation. The Maya, the great illusion, is what sometimes makes us believe they are different when they are in fact not. It is the illusion of a difference between cause and effect, of the flow of time, that is created by the Santana-Dharma, the Cosmic Order, the laws that constitute our physical universe. Hari, or Vishnu the creator, creates and regulates the Dharma as he preserves it, while Shiva destroys that which requires removal to preserve the Santana-Dharma, or that which needs eternal renewal in the cycle of life and death. Death also implies taking away sorrow, grief, ignorance, and worldly attachment, in order to liberate the soul. Here, Shiva the destroyer is represented by the name of Hara."
Realizing that Kara was listening to an audio recording of someone speaking about Hinduism, I quietly walked to the open door of her room and stuck in my head. Sure enough, she was lying on her back, holding a pad with some sort of video game she held above her, surrounded by empty peanut shells on the bed.
"May I trouble the mighty K'Hara, destroyer of many peanuts, with the suggestion to clean up her room once in a while?"
"I'm too busy studying, dad." She answered as she quickly tapped away the video game. "Just because it's not your precious physics doesn't mean it's not more important than cleaning up the mess you always have on your own desk."
"But even your audiobook thinks physics are vewy importaaant" I said playfully mimicking her snotty tone of voice. "Or what else is this Santana-Dharma?"
“It encompasses more than just physics. It includes things like the metaphysics of the human mind, life and death, re-incarnation, and everything.”
"And how would you explain our physical universe, the metaphysics of the human mind, life and death, and everything, to someone as ignorant as the professor testing you in the exam? Imagine he's an alien from another dimension and has no idea what all of this is. "
Kara put down her pad and looked at the ceiling for a while, then rolled her eyes at the challenge I had opened.
11-01-2018, 12:59 AM
"Aliens who know nothing about the universe humans live in and how hey see it? Well for me to explain anything they'd first have to understand about how humans use language. About how they can invoke and communicate new ideas, using words. How they create virtual objects in our minds, set boundaries, reveal facts, can deceive, tell about the past, present, and future, and how we can create entire make-believe worlds in our thoughts, using words. Who knows if aliens even have anything similar to that. Most animals on earth don't, even some of those we consider somewhat intelligent."
"Good point. Go on."
"They may not even perceive the dimensions the same way we do, as length, width, depth, and time, or what we call “movement in space” as time progresses. They may see that as something completely different, or not even be aware of it at all. Didn't Einstein say that time is a particularly persistent illusion, and that one person's distance is another one's time?"
"Not sure it was Einstein in the last part, or if he was quoting someone, but who said it shouldn't matter to aliens."
11-01-2018, 12:22 PM
"So after that's established, one could begin to describe the laws of physics, or what we know of them. Gravity, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics. And of course the fact that we're not totally sure how it all works yet. Like... mention that there are more dimensions that we know exist from experiments, but we can't see them."
She put a peanut in her mouth and chewed for a while.
"And then there's infinitely more stuff that just results as a consequence of these laws. Evolution, and how we came to be the way we are because of where we evolved. You know... our dear old mother earth, its gravitational pull that pushed us down to it, its atmosphere, its magnetic field which shields us from extra-terrestrial high energy particles. Oh... and that we live in a “right handed” universe, in the part about electromagnetism. Maybe theirs is a lefty."
"That all?"
11-01-2018, 03:55 PM
"Depending on how different they are, it may make sense to explain our concept of life and death, and the necessity of death for natural selection and life to evolve. And that from our perspective, or the way we perceive the flow of time, entropy always increases. I mean we can lower it for a thermodynamic sub-system, but forcibly raise it in total. The more we try to order or control things, the more chaos we create. I wonder if maybe they have that problem too."
"And what more should you tell them about us humans, specifically?"
Kara thought for a while. "They should probably be told that we -kinda- think we have a free will, even if it's kinda funny to think that we should have one, all things considered. Don't ask me to explain “free will”. They may be little more than..." She stopped in mod sentence and suddenly sat up.
"Dad, could you do me a favor and let Schroedi out of the fridge? I locked him in to teach him to stay out."
"How long has he been in there?"
"Only a few s... uhm... minutes."