Monkey See, Monkey Do

l.a. airport is using randomization to detect terrorists. people should consider randomization as an approach more often, because we get lulled by consistency. or rather, increasing chaos and diversity intentionally in a large system is a good way to ensure you get a full range of coverage and possibilities. this might be counter-intuitive for discrete reasoning, but is how nature does things really.

i’m increasingly wondering if our analytic reasoning tends to leave us thinking in terms of discrete, competing forms when really life is much more variable and rich. not just complex, but life is beyond our tendency to categorize and sort altogether. therefore, appreciating our own limitation and tendency to pigeon hole will open us up to more ways of thinking about the world and eco-system and systems in general. even while analytic analysis and ontologies are quite helpful.

the peacemaker institute has been hosting a group meditation in second life, where over 800 people have attended from 25 countries. these virtual characters (and presumably their owners in the real world) gather virtually and sit together.

i guess in some sense, when you sit in the same room with other meditators. it’s really your mind that tells you there are other people in the room. so to have your mind aware of 800 people in the room with you is not that different. but i find it quite interesting that these virtual environments would become a way for people to meditate together.

the buddhist view of egolessness is perhaps the most esoteric and hard to convey concept. it sounds nihilistic. one way to contemplate it is to consider that the decision where your body ends and the rest of the world ends is simply a concept and the inference of mind. there is nothing inherent that makes the atoms of your arm part of “you” and the atoms of the air around your arm part of the “world”. it is merely the mind that decides which is which. therefore, to say that we exist as inherent, separate from the world, is quite questionable. yet, the result is not nihilism. it is quite the opposite. this quote was just sent to me along those lines from chogyam trungpa rinpoche:

The term for awareness in Tibetan means “the knowledge that realizes egolessness through awareness.” Awareness brings egolessness because there is no object of awareness. You are aware of the whole thing completely, of you and other and of the activities of you and other at the same time. So everything is open. There is no particular object of awareness. If you’re smart enough, you might ask the question,” Who is being aware of the whole thing?” That’s a very interesting question, the sixty-four-dollar question. And the answer is, nobody is being aware of anything but itself. The razor blade cuts itself. The sun shines by itself. Fire burns by itself. Water flows by itself. Nobody watches — and that is the very primitive level of egolessness.

from “the path is the goal: a basic handbook of buddhist meditation”, pages 21 to 22.

tsoknyi rinpoche’s sangha posted a very interesting trip to eastern tibet and a visit to the nuns there in his lineage. worth watching, especially the interviews with women hermits who live in the caves over the monasteries. they talk about the effect of meditation on their mind, if you listen closely.

friend Barnaby penned a wonderful essay recently about the early burning of the man. he is allowing me to repost it here (though this doesn’t fall under my creative commons copyright, please contact me for requests to repost it.) Barnaby writes:

Dear friends,

A print of Salvador Dali’s “Christ of Saint John of the Cross” hung on my wall for many years. The painting depicts an oblique-angle view of the crucifixion, suspended in a great darkness over a prosaic scene of a fisherman by the shores of a lake. In 1961, a man with a knife attacked the painting where it hung in a gallery and tore the canvas.

A reproduction Michelangelo’s exquisite marble “Pieta” sits on my altar. It is a sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the reclining body of the crucified Christ in a posture of infinite compassion. In 1972, Laszlo Toth entered the chapel that houses the sculpture, shouted “I am Jesus Christ,” and struck the sculpture repeatedly with a hammer.

I have been to Burning Man five times now, and I always love the great Anthropos presiding over the dynamic, luminous carnival until he burns in the refining fires. Last Tuesday morning during the lunar eclipse, Paul Addis scaled the guide wires of the Man and set it on fire.

How strange that three of the most powerful works of the creative imagination that I have experienced have inspired an ungovernable impulse toward their destruction, despite obvious and unavoidable consequences. What drives people to attack a work of art?

It is impossible not to notice that all three works depict death and resurrection. In the language of depth psychology to which I subscribe, this archetype expresses a fundamental truth of the ego - that the Self is an ephemeral and transitory apparition, continually born, continually dying, evolving in an ongoing, passionate mystery.

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here’s a time lapse movie taken from burning man, from the vantage point of the solar array that was powering the art pavilion. right around 3:56 in movie time you can see the man burn prematurely and the fire trucks put him out.

alabama has at least one prison with a successful meditation program, but not without some interfaith controversy and soon a documentary about it. the new york times reported about this recently.

at the burn this year, i finally was able to join the monkey chanting folks both for a lesson in this form of balinese chanting and then in center camp for a performance. the chant was depicted in the 1992 film baraka, here’s a clip from it.

i’m speculating, but the base line is a mantra that to me sounds like “Bo dhi si dhi” which in sanskrit might be bodhi (awake / enlightenment / seeing things as they are) and siddhi (power or realization). the chant is supposed to depict a hindu battle between rama and demons, in which monkeys rallied to rama’s aid. not sure if my mantra interpretation is correct though.

doing this chant felt like a shamanic purification ritual, the chanting caused me to move my shoulders and chest a lot, releasing tension and causing a trance like state. i can see how this would be valuable for overcoming all kinds of emotional and group obstacles, both by creating a sense of group accomplishment but also by getting the emotional juices moving and unstuck.

unfortunately the glacier project melted before our eyes, though my trip to the desert was completely salvaged by the wonderful people, art, and fun nonetheless. it was risky to join a camp of folks i didn’t know, building a large art project that was perhaps too ambitious for the community trying to build it, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. yet i fell in love with the people on the project, one and all.

and i met amazing neighbors, saw most of my friends at least once, was awe struck by the art projects, was even asked to officiate a wedding, and deployed my moroccan tent yet again.

as for what could have gone better: i didn’t eat very well, somewhat a consequence of a meal plan that didn’t completely materialize and my own laziness failing to set up a personal kitchen. i also typically over packed. brought too many clothes and too much food. but i was happy and healthy.

and i now have a budding interest in lichens. who knew they were actually a fungus and an algae or bacteria working in concert? when i did a two week long retreat on vancouver island, in british columbia, the trees had long beards. they looked primeval and magical; gnomes and ents would live there. i wonder if those were lichens in the trees. and last week i found structures completely covering the rocks in the desert. like a mossy skin, the resulting formation sometimes broke off revealing the original rock beneath. but otherwise an odd shell covered every rock like coral.