Rondom Thoughts

Random bits of things that pop into my head from time to time:

• If you can wonder if you're alive you're alive.
• Every sunset is someone else's sunrise.
• Hell is this world but without love. (as sappy as that sounds it feels right)
• I care about people more than I care about what they think (because what they think changes all the time, but who they are tends not to change so much and if it does then they probably don't know who they are either).
• Music is emotion you can hear; music that you like is emotion you can relate to (in the moment).
• Music is more important than lyrics.
• Never think about what you're going to say for so long that the opportunity to say it is lost.
• Zen tries to convince us all that reality doesn't exist because Zen has no idea what reality is. :)
• Buddha was a kewl dude - but he was still just a dude.
• Israel probably wouldn't exist if Christianity wasn't so popular.
• The need for religion in people may stem from two different motivations - the need of a child for a parent figure and the need for a person to not feel all alone (even when they are).
• If a Diety is all powerful what does it need angels for? (I hope my friends who feel strongly about religion will let me think my own thoughts without judgment... )
• "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a universal rule of fairness; to do otherwise is hypocrisy; most parents are hypocrites...
• Misery is easier alone; comfort is easier with others.
• Fortune cookies should not be taken seriously - they are as personal as the bowl your rice came in.

Perhaps life is just 1 moment which we're constantly experiencing.

Our life experience (sans certain blank spots of un- or altered- consciousness) is continuous and ever changing, but not randomly so - every experienced-moment (e-m) is a minor variation of the previous e-m. In fact you could define "consciousness" as being aware of the series of e-ms. unconsciousness is certainly a lack of e-ms (from a certain point of view - unconsciousness is mostly relative to the observer - do unconscious people think they're unconscious?) :) altered consciousness is experiencing personal e-ms that seem to be contrary with the shared physical environment (which normally produces similar e-ms for everyone in the same area) - if you're experiencing something no one else around you is experiencing that doesn't make it less "real" - it just makes it unshared and, from a less flexible POV, something "bad", "scary", or "crazy". to each their own...

To deal with this constant flow of e-ms we really only need a context (the first e-m of the day) and a series of changes (diffs) from which we can maintain a personal reality-model. Certainly dealing with a sequence of e-m diffs is easier than dealing with a full snap-shot of reality at any point in time. the diffs do have to be in sequence, tho - otherwise we loose context and have to start with a new "root" e-m from which to build our personal model of reality.

In meditation one goal can be to stop the flow of diffs - to hold the "now" e-m for as long as possible so that we can concentrate on it fully, viewing it either subjectively (from our own POV) or objectively (tho viewing something without any POV at all might be impossible - even out-of-body experiences have a POV - it's just not the in-body POV).

or perhaps in meditation we want to loose the root e-m and release all the diffs since then and reach a context-less point of "nothing" - basically existing out of a time-context - the closest one could be to being alone with one's true self.

Clocks and calendars are tools for us to put our "now" e-m into a time context. Does it really matter that it's November 29th 2009 7:27pm in this timezone? It certainly doesn't change the e-m - only how it relates to the time-context so that it can be placed relative to other elements on the same time-context (both large - calendar, and small - clock).

Thanks for reading - hope you don't feel this was a wasted series of e-ms. :)