the popular literature saying is that the history repeats itself; the folk version is: what goes around, comes around. this going round and round somehow seems connected with the circular cosmic motion. little children, barely able to stand on their unsteady feet turn round and round untold, and fall down, perhaps, inspiring the child rhyme: ”the ring around the roses… and we fall down.” grownups, too, have the circles in their consciousness: ‘the friends’ circle’, the shape of arena, the gathering around whatever the cause, and the circular motions of the dance; the horse race and human runners’ tracks.
the moon going around the earth that is circling around the sun, which moves around the center of the milky way, which… it is an endless circle circling; motions not unlike the household moving around the head of the house, who is moving around his employer, who moves around the city ordinance, which around the state, the state around the nation and the nation around the u. n. o., which circles around the ideology of the time. and the concept of time itself is not static; it’s all turtles to the infinity. all elements, whether cosmic or thought out move in a great cosmic round, as does a waltzing couple circling around each other while moving in circle formed of all couples in a great dancehall of cosmic expanse.
times before the printing press was invented all knowledge was mostly conveyed from mouth to ear, and in rare instances written in longhand. monks copied scriptures of their faiths and professional copywriters copied the manuscripts of professional thinkers and writers. they were read by the people in small circles of people of means. but these monks and professional thinkers borrowed ideas and even retold the matter in their own words rarely acknowledged that, nor were the original thinkers alive to question their authorship. it is thus, that much of the knowledge regarding the third world’s thinkers has been freely taken or stolen, or even denied its existence. and it was easy to plagiarize since most of the people did not know if such thinkers and even their languages ever existed.
so until his recent death the theorist stephen hawking was improvising the theory of the creation of universe of the past thinkers into his contemporary format. both in science and classical music the improvisation of the previous works is the norm.
in the illustration above there is the space both as an object as well as any sense of absence including the thought of nothingness. space as nothingness of objects and thought was perceived – or received as in relay race from earlier thinkers, and improvised --by both the vedic seers and the buddha. in the vedic observation thought is still a matter (object) that is perceived mentally, as are other matters perceived by the other four sense organs, the eyes, ears, nose and the skin. the buddha further observed these matters and their sensations to be empty in themselves. they are not material or mental objects that may exist on their own. they are the intermediary processes arising between the sensory organs and the sense, the knowing.
likewise, being raised in the materially manifested living einstein’s godlike formidable equation: e = mc2 misses out the purpose as the cause for the motivation factor. then there have to be at least two other elements in opposite motions or one static to create friction or resistance. like the zen koen: the sound of one hand clapping, the very word suggests an act requiring two hands of one person. it’s only in description that the two hands are separate; for by itself a limb called hand does not exist on its own. and without the function what are hands, if not like the supposed uselessness of a body part called appendix? in the evolutionary process of the human biology, either there was a function of this limb, and which has ceased, or the science has not yet understood its function, or it is on its way out as are the modern, western humans’ separated toes that cannot even individually wiggle, being constantly confined in the shoes, making the wearers to wish them to be in the contemporary notion of the shapeliness befitting the latest design of the footwear, enabling the wearer not to develop the bunions and varicose veins in legs.
take the form of the shoes, especially in case of women. knowingly or unawares, the modern man has been attempting to shape nature to suit the purpose of the commercial enterprise, whether to make the foot to fit the footwear, or in confusion whether to increase the population with viagra and fertility procedures or decrease with the weapons of war and abortion clinics.
the modern trend seems to prefer a human form in the imperial mode, in which his majesty’s biological shape is heading to match the likes of the science fiction movie version beings of large egghead with the dissolving other limbs and organs. and it is not just a fantasy. in the imperial mode of existence in the pecking order, everyone desires the persons of the lower ranks to exist for one’s sake, in form and function. the poet/philosopher rabindranath tagore had written a play called: ‘the kingdom of cards’ on this theme a hundred years ago, observing the futility of replacing the laws of nature with the rule of the english laws. for a rule to be there needs to have the ruler and ruled. further still, this rule requires the ruled to be a people programmed to be herded wherever the herder leads them to. all leaders have been leading humans towards the “green field” in every walk of life; and their abstract paths unwittingly obstruct each other, with their leaders blaming each other for not being able to keep going on the designated path. energy is within the mass to justify its existential motions. all elements in nature move with each one’s own energy. only the capitalist man uses other’s energy, unknowing his own energy would be enough not only serve the purpose, but also would spare unnecessary conflict.
there is no knower as the creator of the knowledge, since even the knowledge not being a thing in itself but the act of knowing motivated by the purpose, and the purpose by the sense of lack, both real and imagined. in the first instance, the purpose of knowing is necessitated by the substance of life that experiences a sense of lack that can be as immediate as needing to close the eyelids sensing the particles of dust that can obstruct the function of eyes to see clearly. or it may be any of things lacking of which may make life miserable. but when this sense of lack is motivated by the thought arising in the form of the “what if”, it creates the knower. since existence is marked by the motion, and all elements are on the move, there is the endless instant awareness and instantaneous response. the fear of ’what if’ is possible only when the sense perception is somehow interrupted and not forming into a response. the ‘what if’ also happens when the lack of motion is formed from a living in which there is no justification felt for having natural function for the physical limbs and organs or they are impaired, as it was the case with stephen hawking’s degenerative disease.
when looking into the life that was lived by the bright brains, who were not physically disabled, their lack of the normal biological motions is caused by the way of life of the imperialism. There is the origin of the word: rich which is derived from reich >rich: regal. it’s all as one is raised to do to find one’s niche in the pecking order pecking on those below one, and somehow blunting the blow of being pecked. in the imperial mode it is done by making a name for oneself, be somebody. be a saint or satan, or amass wealth, impress the royalty with knowhow of things material or imagined; create wordy image of the creator and its worldly minding, including a lifelong ritual to appease to win his/ its favours.
but description or explanation of an object does not materialize it, much the same as eating a hearty meal in dream does not satisfy the hunger for food. the theoretical physics thus did not satisfy the quest of any of the thinkers of the past -- lao tsu and socrates and jesus, or the present, einstein and stephen including. regarding a question of what happens after death, buddha’s answer was: ”i have not died yet. so i do not know.” but then, even this statement of these persons itself being only verbal description of themselves in books is not what they were in person, nor what they actually experienced but could not put it in words.
it is what zen of buddha felt when trying to know ‘what is’ with the words of wisdom of teachers. it cost him the self imposed suffering while trying to see what the teachers told him what they thought what was/is. and anyone who plays teacher is doing just that. unless he makes his student feel the sense of lack that the teacher can quench, the teacher cannot play the teacher. and all teachers live at least a notch higher on the material plain. in thought the u.s.a. is said to be the ideal democracy, where the nation’s leader is addressed as just “mister.” but this mister’s appearance even behind the curtain on the world stage is demanding more attention than most kings receive for their performance on the world stage.
the buddha of the story had had the firsthand experience of the living on both sides of the curtain, first as the royalty, and then as the seeker of truth to be had from the teachers. and he had found neither of the two quenching his thirst, and further, that this thirst itself was an imaginary path leading to equally imaginary place. without first existentially evolving to match the speed of the cosmic motion and be able to be in a surrounding that is not earthlike, all space travels will be similar to only stepping into the space suit, inhaling the bottled air from earth and seeing from the rectangle glass in the space helmet; eating the food packed from home, and shitting in the diaper like an invalid. it makes no difference whether this going out in search for what is, is original or a borrowed thought from book or a teacher in person. It only makes one’s head spin round and round around the …
a centipede was happy – quite!
until a toad in fun
said, "pray, which leg moves after which?"
this raised her doubts to such a pitch,
she fell exhausted in the ditch
not knowing how to run.
-- a poem by katherine craster (1841–1874) (from wikipedia)
