Eggs or soup

I want to continue with the ideas in yesterday's post. Moment by moment I face choice; eggs or soup (for lunch), read, listen to the radio, join the conversation or not, express a view or not, etc., etc. What about hold a view or not? What are my views? What are my values? What do I hold important? What do I desire? My view and my desires affect the choices I make. I am talking about the map I hold to guide me through, no, make my life. I hold up my frames through which I make meaning, compare what I see with the yardstick of my views and choose. My views, values and desires are in relationship. And I am not always aware of the complex precess which is driving all this. I have my compass; I might watch my emotions, look out for attachments as best I can but I can't see all the map and bits of it keep getting redrawn. Not to get stuck with a fixed view, to avoid dogma is a very challenging goal. And of course, it's the goal bit that needs to be dropped, or at least the attachment to it, if one is to avoid getting stuck. To really be awake to every option and to be awake to choosing and the reasons for that choice, not to sleepwalk through it, that is to expand ones life

I think this a very different position from someone who accepts a dogma and is devastated when life crashes through it showing the limitations of the frames, the emptiness of the forms. But such a person is unlikely to be aware of their frames and will probably view forms as absolute. Views and values which are based on belief in forms as absolute will always run up against conflicting values because we don't all have the same frames. We each must make our own meaning. What's this, solipsism? No! We make our meaning in relation to others, we exist in relation to others. Which brings focus around to the ego, the extent to which our relations are selfish. And it can take a lot to know when we are selfish, because our values can get in the way. Dogma? And as if this were not enough, we need remember that life is much bigger than us; it makes us moment after moment and we need to remember not to get stuck.

I need to remember not to get stuck and not to get too idealistic.

Eggs are the new celery

I spoke with DC today by phone and later we e-mailed each other. Lovely exchange and great to speak with each other. Then off I went to the shops for food. One has to adjust to buying for one not two. I bought eggs only to get back and find a load in the fridge. Years ago it was always celery I seemed to end up with too much of. DC coined the expression '---is/are the new celery' for my buying food I had failed to remember we had.

So lunch settled; boiled eggs. I've added a photo of the egg cup, a classic; 1960's, stainless steel. Beautiful. To use DC's words I am just an old fashioned modernist. Form follows function. Except of course that the reverse also holds. And here is my segue, it's form I want to write about.

We have two of these egg cups and I think they are DC's, but they could be mine. I recall that we had such at home when I was a kid and so a bit like the sweets you have at that age, they seem like they always were and any new type that one remembers being introduced, well, they are some newfangled thing. Readers of a certain age will recall Marathon chocolate bars. But I digress. Or do I? We live in the realm of form. Form shapes us and we shape the forms we see. I think that there is a complex symbiosis at work here. Consider the eggcup, it has had a useful input to my day. This gives it meaning to me. Now I could spend time writing about interconnectedness; everything that needed to come together to make the eggcup, that I create the image I perceive with my senses, etc. but that would be an exploration of the emptiness of form. That's not quite where I am going with this. I am thinking about the slightly more subtle aspects of form; our approach to our being.

By now you will have a bit of picture of my day. STOP. Recall your day. What shaped it? Did it need to be that way. What way could any day be for you, for me? Here we are faced with choice. What has meaning for us? What state (of mind) do we feel comfortable with? What is feeling? What is thought? What is what? Is what thought? I think so. to ask 'what?' is a thought. And we think in forms. And that let's us cross the road, go shopping and boil eggs. Oh, and develop huge bodies of technical, scientific and cultural knowledge. Amazing. But not the whole of reality. No? No. So we need consider our beliefs because our beliefs affect how we live; the form of our lives. All forms are empty but I do not think that takes away our choice, our responsibilities, our joys. It is probably what generates them. Which is a nice way to start to consider the difficult question of free will but that's an other post. What I am driving at here is the extent to which our lives are the forms and choices we make. Eggs or soup?

Dukkha?

I try to make each post reflect what seems to be important to me at the time.
Here's what I am with just now:

I work with some great people - let's hope we make it through the tough times and stay charitable.

I am troubled by an old problem which has a lot of attachments around it. Too personal to share whilst not face to face. I know it well but that's not enough to just drop it.

I am still not over this winter virus thing.

It's ok but quiet without DC here. Two more weeks until he is due back.

Friends are the best investment.

My brother and his family are visiting our parents this weekend. Let's hope it goes well.

I feel a bit de-centred. I don't like giving in to being off colour. Umm.

All is well, I am ok just tired.

Contradictions

I have been feeling a few contradictions lately. I am a bit tired and under the weather. I want to stay at home in the warm and nurse my self a bit. Except I wouldn't , I would push myself to make the most of the time and that would place a limit on the nursing bit. Any way I am not that unwell and need to be at work; we have a major deadline coming up and this is not the time to slack. Other contradictions are present too, they probably always are; it's not easy to just do the right thing. Ego and lack of wisdom pop up.

I was in two minds about going to Tai Chi this evening as I was so tired but I decided to go, I never miss the class if at all possible. A brief exchange between myself, a classmate and our teacher (Dominic) at the end of class about the Horizon program earlier in the week prompted us to agree that Western thought could do with looking towards the East to gain an understanding of connectedness. (See yesterday's post.) From this we moved to contradiction and Dominic offered this; 'in Chinese medicine they say if you want to be well accept contradiction'. Yes I though, I am a bit contradicted just now. It's right just to sit with it watching it gently. Thanks Dominic.

Time

Last night I watched Horizon on TV. Brian Cox who is without doubt very charismatic, was talking about time. 'What time is it?' he asked. I found the first half of the program slow and to be honest a bit irritating and I missed having DC here to bounce comments off. The second half got in to it a bit more; Einstein and space time and where this model runs into problems with particle physics which is Cox's area. There was a bit about membranes or branes. What I found didn't come over was the relation between time and objects.

Cox must understand this relationship but I guess if he hasn't thought about interdependence then it might not seem to be a valuable element in a program made for a TV audience. At this point I could digress to talk about the whole media machine which must be behind the program, Cox's appeal and how the mass media hugely affects the way people live their lives. Point made I'll return.

Time, what is our relationship to it. Ah, to it. Time is not an it, time is relation. We perceive things only because of change. No object exist in its own right and without objects what would we understand of time? Miles per hour, gallons per hour, unit per time interval, unit defined in relation to other units and objects per unit defined in relation to other units and objects. I recall school physics resolving formulas down to fundamental units of mass, length and time. All these units have standard definitions which of course involve objects. But the thing easily overlooked is that none of these objects exist in their own right; they are interdependent. They only exist in relation to other objects. We are bounded by our condition; our provisional knowledge, our technology, our bodies, our culture, our needs arising from our being. What we know of objects is a function of our being. There is no Archimedean point. Yet we need to know. It is in our nature. We went to the moon that's how strong it is. Desire. And we never get there, there is always more. Why? Is it because investigating reality from the limits imposed by the separation essentially part of the realm of form is like trying to work out what it is that's trying to work out what it is that is? Bits of the totality trying to see the whole whilst remaining separate.

I sometimes think of totality like a sort of blanket rumpled up. The rumples look out onto the landscape formed by the rumples. So it seems to rumples that they are separate but they are just blanket. The view that a rumple gets of the blanket is always limited to a relatively short distance and the view never seems stationary; it seems to keeps moving. But is it the view that moves or the blanket? I need to think more about the meaning of view and blanket here and the relation between stillness and movement; Yin and Yang.

There were moments in the program when a hint of the spiritual come over. Why? Because thoughts of time make us face our mortality? Because we somehow feel that it is about being? Because such investigations always seem to involve space and looking at the 'heavens'? The big questions make us reflect upon what we are. Maybe it's the nature of what that needs to be thought about. What is what?

Moods

Nice e-mails from the two people I sent apologies to after yesterday's meeting. They didn't feel there was too much need to apologise. That's good; to keep playing together not against.

I've sort of realised that I am a bit tired and fed up. Nothing major and it will pass of course. Maybe I am a bit low, no that's too strong, a bit under par, as I detect the wind of uncharitable change in the times. It comes around and then blows off and I shouldn't meet it half way. Sorry about the mixed metaphors but hey, I am under par!

I would like to write about dualism, change, constancy, interdependence, cause and effect, our relation to knowledge our needs and desires and ways of being. Evolutionary biology, physics, cultural theory and philosophy seen through the eyes formed by my karma. A kind of engineer's approach to Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. No that's not quite right, it's more like a multi-view of what appears. Playing with the frames and seeing what pictures they make. I'll have to condense it down a bit and theme it for blogging. But it holds some interest for me and I feel I am not giving it enough time. Still, I might be better served by spending the time sitting zazen. I think one needs to take care how and what energy one puts out. Reading this paragraph it sounds a bit too trite and that's not what I mean. Umm. I am going to leave this; it's saying enough.

Stroppy

Some old trigger caused me to be a bit stroppy at a local residents meeting this evening. Nothing major but not good. I find that it can take a lot of work to remember to keep an open mind and an open heart. (If only I had sat in meditation before the meeting, that may well have given me a more spacious mind but time was too tight.) I've said sorry and will need to remember the lesson. It's easy to be cool at a distance, it's when things have to be shoehorned in to the time available and it doesn't seem too important anyway that I can fall into old ways. Umm.