Seed Unfolding

"The One, perfect in seeking nothing, possessing nothing and needing nothing, overflows and creates a new reality by its superabundance. [...] The process is like the unfolding of a seed, moving from simple origin to termination in the world of sense, the prior always remaining in its place, while begetting its successor from a store of indescribable power - power that must not halt within the higher realm [...] but continue to expand until the universe of things reaches the limit of its possibility, lavishing its vast resources on all its creatures, intolerant that any one should have no share in it. Nothing is debarred from participation in the Good, to the extent of its receptivity. "

- Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270 CE)
The Enneads

Luminous Forms

"Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician."

- Le Corbusier (1887 - 1965)

Spiritual Facts

"Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. [...] Nature is the symbol of spirit. [...] Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. [...] By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Nature

Rhythmic Measures

"The same stream of life that runs
through my veins night and day runs through
the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle
of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world
of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment."

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

Possible Worlds

 "As there are an infinity of possible worlds,
there are also an infinity of laws,
certain ones appropriate to one; others,
to another, and each possible individual
of any world involves in its concept
the laws of its world."

- G.W. Leibniz (1646 - 1716)

Spirit World

"...As with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called 'visions,' the whole so-called 'spirit-world,' death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God."

- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Letters to a Young Poet (Letter 8)

Fleeting Vortices

"[Physicists and naturalists cannot] look down from a great height upon a world which their consciousness could penetrate without being submitted to it or changing it. [...] a more complete study of the movements of the world will oblige us ... to discover that if things hold and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above.

...

Hence we find our minds instinctively tending to represent energy as a kind of homogeneous, primordial flux in which all that has shape in the world is but a series of fleeting 'vortices'. [...] each new being has and must have a cosmic embryogenesis ...

...

Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge ...
but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end,
to assail the real from different angles
and on different planes."

- Teilhard De Chardin (1881- 1955)
The Phenomenon of Man

More is Diferent

"At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. That is, it seems to me that one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy, according to the idea: The elementary entities of science X obey the laws of science Y. But this does not at all imply that science X is 'just' science Y. At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one."

- Philip W. Anderson (1923 - 2020)
More is Different

Plural Monism

"Monism allows for no such things as 'other occasions' in reality—in real or absolute reality, that is. The difference I try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more than the difference between what I formerly called the each−form and the all−form of reality. Pluralism lets things really exist in the each−form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all−form or collective−unit form is the only form that is rational. The all−form allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the parts are essentially and eternally co−implicated. In the each−form, on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not necessarily actualized at the moment.

...

Here, then, you have the plain alternative, and the full mystery of the difference between pluralism and monism, as clearly as I can set it forth on this occasion. It packs up into a nutshell:—Is the manyness in oneness that indubitably characterizes the world we inhabit, a property only of the absolute whole of things, so that you must postulate that one−enormous−whole indivisibly as the prius of there being any many at all—in other words, start with the rationalistic block−universe, entire, unmitigated, and complete?—or can the finite elements have their own aboriginal forms of manyness in oneness, and where they have no immediate oneness still be continued into one another by intermediary terms—each one of these terms being one with its next neighbors, and yet the total 'oneness' never getting absolutely complete?

...

Whatever I may say, each of you will be sure to take pluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and inclines. The only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it is a fully co−ordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block−universe; but on the other hand it may be a universe only strung−along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that possibility I do insist."

- William James (1842 - 1910)
A Pluralistic Universe

Unfolding Forms

"The essential order of movement is not that of an object translating itself from one place to another, but rather, it is a folding and unfolding, in which the object is continually being created again, in a form generally similar to what it was, though different in detail. The explicate order of movement of the object is thus not independent, substantial, and self-existent. We suggest instead that it is an appearance, abstracted from the implicate order, on which it depends and from which it derives its whole form and set of characteristic relationships.

...

What all this means is that the flux of the holomovement is the implicate source of all forms, both physical and mental. That is to say, the whole of existence, including inanimate matter, living organisms, and ‘mind,’ arises in a single ground, in which these are all enfolded, or contained implicitly. 

...

It is clear that, in this view, living organisms are to be regarded as particular manifestations of what is ultimately enfolded in the inward depths of the holomovement. We are suggesting here that a living organism has a more direct contact with what is thus enfolded in the holomovement than does inanimate matter. [...] One can appropriately call the holomovement the life energy, which is the ground that ultimately creates and sustains all matter and all mind, as two relatively autonomous and independent streams that may move in parallel."

 - David Bohm (1917 - 1992)
The Implicate or Enfolded Order
Quoted from Chapter 1 in Mind in Nature: the Interface of Science and Philosophy

Forces Eternal

 "Here doth Nature close the ring of her forces eternal;
Yet doth a new one, at once, cling to the one gone before,
So that the chain be prolonged for ever through all generations,

And that the whole may have life, e'en as enjoyed by each part.
Now, my beloved one, turn thy gaze on the many-hued thousands
Which, confusing no more, gladden the mind as they wave.
Every plant unto thee proclaimeth the laws everlasting.
Every floweret speaks louder and louder to thee."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
 The Metamorphosis of Plants

Unreal Things

 "Unreal things have a reality of
their own, in poetry as elsewhere.
We do not hesitate, in poetry,
to yield ourselves to the unreal,
when it is possible to
yield ourselves."

- Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

Photographer's note. There is an amusing story behind this image, which I took with my iPhone yesterday after my wife, our eldest son, and I finished dinner at a local Nepalese restaurant. As we were waiting for the bill to arrive, I was transfixed by what looked like - to my eye, anyway - a mountainous dune-like vista (such as we had recently seen during our visit to Death Valley, CA). In "reality" this is nothing but a three foot section of wall near the ceiling, with the play of light owing itself to some light fixtures on the ceiling itself (which I cropped out of the image you see above). The "amusing" part is that while I was transfixed by the real-but-unreal dunes (and took a few loooong moments, as I usually do, to get the composition just right), our waiter was politely waiting by our table, equally transfixed by my fascination with what - to him - was nothing but peeling paint on a wall that needed repair! Indeed, when I was finished and approached our table to sit back down, I heard the tail end of a conversation that ensued behind my back between our waiter and my wife. My wife was explaining (as she has done countless times before in similar scenarios) that I "see the world a bit differently," even as our waiter kept apologizing for not having yet "fixed" the wall. Light, shadow, texture, reflection, paint, wall in need of repair, or dunes in the desert, ... which of these are "real" and which imagined? And what of the infinite other Borgesian worlds left unperceived and unexplored? Seeing the world differently, indeed 😊

Thoughtful Imbibing

"Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light -- with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing in its blue flood -- the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it -- but more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk, and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance. -- Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world.

...

Aside I turn to the holy,
unspeakable, mysterious Night.

...

In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents."

- Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772 - 1801)
Hymns to the Night 

Luminous Eddy

"The birth and death of the leaves are the
rapid whirls of the eddy whose
wider circles move slowly
among stars."

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

Another Vision

"We must close our eyes and
invoke a new manner of seeing, a
wakefulness that is the birthright of us all,
though few put it to use.

...

What then is our course, what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birthright of all, which few turn to use.

...

Never did eye see the sun unless
it had first become sun-like,
and never can the soul have vision of
the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful."

- Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270 CE)

Scenery of Spring

 "In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are

of themselves, some short,
some long."

- Ryōkan (1758 - 1831)

Cosmic Soul

"I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labor and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.

...

It did not seem impossible that man himself was the germ of the world-soul, which, we still hope, is destined to awake for a while before the universal decline, and to crown the eternal cosmos with its due of knowledge and admiration, fleeting yet eternal. [...] It is even conceivable that every creative advance that any mind has ever made involves unwitting co-operation with the cosmic mind which, perhaps, will awake at some date before the End.

...

The cosmos exploded, actualizing its potentiality of space and time. The centers of power, like fragments of a bursting bomb, were hurled apart. But each one retained in itself, as a memory and a longing, the single spirit of the whole; and each mirrored in itself aspects of all the others throughout all the cosmical space and time."

- Olaf Stapledon (1886 - 1950)
Last and First Men and Star Maker

Shitao's Yihua

"On a windy, rainy, spring day, I am happy I have no visitors; my hand is free, my mind relaxed and cleansed. The ancients called it yihua, the 'single stroke': a thousand hills, ten thousand valleys, people, bamboo, trees, a single brushstroke and all is completed. On one level, yihua constitutes a very practical concept: a complete design begins and finishes with the single brushstroke. On a metaphysical level, it suggests that 'myriad strokes are reunited in oneness' through the mind and hand of the artist and through the artist's spiritual communion with nature."

- Shitao (642–1707)

Movements of Mind

"The life of forms is not the result of chance. Nor is it a great cyclorama neatly fitted into the theater of history and called into being by historical necessities. No. Forms obey their own rules - rules that are inherent in the forms themselves, or better, in the regions of the mind where they are located and centered - and there is no reason why we should not undertake an investigation of how these great ensembles, united by close reasoning and by coherent experiment, behave throughout the phases that we call their life. The successive states through which they pass are more or less lengthy, more or less intense, according to the style itself. [...] We must never think of forms, in their different states, as simply suspended in some remote, abstract zone, above the earth and above man. They mingle with life, whence they come; they translate into space certain movements of the mind. [...] We must, in the truest sense of the word, follow closely at its heels; we must take careful note of how it lives its life."

- Henri Focillon (1881 - 1943)
The Life of Forms in Art

Unknown Worlds

"Without a living subject,
there can be neither space nor time.

...

[This is] "...what one might call the description of a walk into unknown worlds. These worlds are not only unknown; they are also invisible. Furthermore, the justification for their existence is denied by many zoologists and physiologists. [...] While this assertion will sound odd to anyone familiar with those worlds, it can be explained by the fact that not everyone has access to those worlds. Certain convictions are able to bar the entrance to those worlds so securely that not even one ray of all the splendor that spreads over them can penetrate it. Whoever wants to hold on to the conviction that all living things are only machines should abandon all hope of glimpsing their environments. [...] Every subject spins out, like the spider's threads, its relations to certain qualities of things and weaves them into a solid web, which carries its existence.

...

Each subject lives in a world where there is
only of subjective realities and where the
same environments represent
only subjective realities."

- Jakob von Uexküll (1864 - 1944)
 A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans:
With a Theory of Meaning

Infinite Garden

"The Author of nature has been able to employ this divine and infinitely wonderful power of art, because each portion of matter is not only infinitely divisible, as the ancients observed, but is also actually subdivided without end, each part into further parts, of which each has some motion of its own; otherwise it would be impossible for each portion of matter to express the whole universe. [...] Each portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond full of fishes. But each branch of every plant, each member of every animal, each drop of its liquid parts is also some such garden or pond. [...] And although the earth and the air interspersed between the plants in the garden, or the water interspersed between the fish in the pond, are not themselves plant or fish, yet they still contain them, though more often than not of a subtlety imperceptible to us. [...] Therefore there is nothing uncultivated, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe, no chaos, no confusion, except in appearance."

- G.W. Leibniz (1646 - 1716)
Monadology

Mycomagicians

"Mushrooms hold the secrets to the universe,

to life on our planet, and
 the core of our being.

...

There are more species of fungi, bacteria, and protozoa in a single scoop of soil than there are species of plants and vertebrate animals in all of North America. And of these, fungi are the grand recyclers of our planet, the mycomagicians disassembling large organic molecules into simpler forms, which in turn nourish other members of the ecological community. Fungi are the interface organisms between life and death. [...] Biological systems are influenced by the laws of physics, and it may be that mycelium exploits the natural momentum of matter, just like salmon take advantage of the tides.

...

Mushrooms are the key to unlocking the
mysteries of the natural world."

- Paul Stamets (1955 - )
Mycelium Running:
How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

Vast Similitude

"On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining,
I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,

All distances of place however wide,

All distances of time, all inanimate forms,

All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,

All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them."

- Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
"On the Beach at Night Alone" in Leaves of Grass

Former World

"Geologists, dealing always with deep time, find that it seeps into their beings and affects them in various ways.  They see the unbelievable swiftness with which one evolving species on the earth has learned to reach into the dirt of some tropical island and fling 747s into the sky. They see the thin band in which are the all but indiscernible stratifications of Cro-Magnon, Moses, Leonardo and now. Seeing a race unaware of its own instantaneousness in time, they can reel off all the species that have come and gone, with emphasis on those that have specialized themselves to death. [...] Consider the earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the king’s nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history."

- John McPhee (1931 - )
Basin and Range

A Kind of Gravitas

"Stones possess a kind of gravitas, something ultimate and unchanging, something that will never perish or else has already done so. They attract through intrinsic, infallible, immediate beauty, answerable to no one, necessarily perfect yet excluding the idea of perfection in order to exclude approximation, error, and excess. This spontaneous beauty thus precedes and goes beyond the actual notion of beauty, of which it is at once the promise and the foundation.

...

I speak about stones that have always lain outside or that sleep in their deposits, in veins, at night. They have not aroused the interest of the archeologist, nor the artist or the diamond merchant. No palace, statue, jewel, no dyke, embankment or tombstone was built from them. They are neither useful nor famous. Their facets decorate no ring or diadem. They do not bear lists of victories, or state laws, in indelible numerals. They are not boundary markers or steel, and do not earn credit or deference from bearing with bad weather. They only attest to their own presence.

...

I speak about stones as algebra, vertigo and order; stones as hymns and quincunxes; stones as stings and corollas, on the brink of dreams, catalyst and image. [...] As one speaks about flowers, leaving botany, gardening and flower arranging aside, still having a lot to discuss, so will I overlook mineralogy, ignoring the arts that give stones a purpose. I speak of bare stones - fascination and glory! - that both hide and yield up a mystery, slower, more immense and more profound than the fate of a short-lived species."

- Roger Caillois (1913 - 1978)

Materializing Reverie

"My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village...Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. ...The stream doesn’t have to be ours; the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring. [...] Water becomes heavier, darker, deeper; it becomes matter. And it is then that materializing reverie, uniting dreams of water with less mobile, more sensual matter, finds the full weight of its repose."

- Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962)
Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter 

Consciousness and Memory

"We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself. [...] The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory. [...] But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity."

- Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941)

Repetition of Sensations

"Everything which we observe in nature imprints itself uncomprehended and unanalyzed in our percepts and ideas which then, in their turn, mimic the processes of nature in their most general and most striking features.

...

It is a well-known fact that some objects please us, while others do not. Generally speaking, anything that is constructed according to fixed and logically followed rules, is a product of tolerable beauty. We see thus nature herself, who always acts according to fixed rules, constantly producing such pretty things.

...

A rule always presupposes a repetition. Repetitions, therefore, will probably be found to play some important part in the production of agreeable effects. Of course, the nature of agreeable effects is not exhausted by this. Furthermore, the repetition of a physical event becomes the source of agreeable effects only when it is connected with a repetition of sensations."

- Ernst Mach (1838 - 1916)
Popular Scientific Lectures

Terrestrial Gaze

"Seeing. One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing - if not ultimately, at least essentially. To be more is to be more united - and this sums up and is the very conclusion of the work to follow. But unity grows, and we will affirm this again, only if it is supported by an increase of consciousness, of vision. That is probably why the history of the living world can be reduced to the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes at the heart of a cosmos where it is always possible to discern more. Are not the perfection of an animal and the supremacy of the thinking being measured by the penetration and power of synthesis of their glance? To try to see more and to see better is not, therefore, just a fantasy, curiosity, or a luxury. See or perish. This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence. And thus, to a higher degree, this is the human condition."

- Teilhard De Chardin (1881- 1955)
The Phenomenon of Man

Between Nothingness

"The beauty of wabi-sabi is an 'event,' a turn of mind, not an intrinsic property of things. In other words, the beauty of wabi-sabi 'happens,' it does not reside in objects and/or environments. [...] On a metaphysical level, wabi-sabi is a beauty at the edge of nothingness. That is, a beauty that occurs as things devolve into, or evolve out of, nothingness. Consequently, things wabi-sabi are subtle and nuanced. [...] The beauty of wabi-sabi is rooted in modesty—even poverty—that is elegantly perceived. The aesthetic pleasures of wabi-sabi depend on attitude and practice as much, or more, than on the materiality itself. Subtlety and nuance are at wabi-sabi's heart. Wabi-sabi resides in the inconspicuous and overlooked details, in the minor and the hidden, in the tentative and ephemeral. But in order to appreciate these qualities, certain habits of mind are required: calmness, attentiveness, and thoughtfulness. If these are not present, wabi-sabi is invisible."

- Leonard Koren (1948 - )
Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

Unintended Reflections

"Whenever a thought occurs, be aware of it,
as soon as you are aware of it, it will vanish.
If you remain for a long period forgetful
of objects, you will naturally
become unified. This is the
essential art of zazen."

- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)
Cultivating the Empty Field:
The Silent Illumination of Zen Buddhist Master Hongzhi

Maya's Veil

"Space-time-causation, or name-and-form, is what is called Maya. [...] Maya is neither existence nor non-existence. Both the Niagara Falls and the rainbow are eternally changeable. [...] Nature is Maya. Maya means name and form, into which everything is cast. Maya is not real. We could not destroy it or change it if it were real. The substance is the noumenon, Maya is phenomena. There is the real “me” which nothing can destroy, and there is the phenomenal “me” which is continually changing and disappearing.

...

Maya is not illusion as it is popularly interpreted. Maya is real, yet it is not real. It is real in that the Real is behind it and gives it its appearance of reality. That which is real in Maya is the Reality in and through Maya. Yet the Reality is never seen; and hence that which is seen is unreal, and it has no real independent existence of itself, but is dependent upon the Real for its existence. Maya then is a paradox - real, yet not real, an illusion, yet not an illusion. He who knows the Real sees in Maya not illusion, but reality. He who knows not the Real sees in Maya illusion and thinks it real."

- Swami Vivekananda (1863 - 1902)

Below Above

"Healer and psychopomp, the shaman is these because he commands the techniques of ecstasy - that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there."

- Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Gentle Pulsing

"Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Walden

Present Memories

"We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time."

- David Deutsch (1953 - )
The Fabric of Reality

View Nowhere

"Powerful as it has proven to be, this bleached-out physical conception of objectivity encounters difficulties if it is put forward as the method for seeking a complete understanding of reality. For the process began when we noticed that how things appear to us depends on the interaction of our bodies with the rest of the world. But this leaves us with no account of the perceptions and specific viewpoints which were left behind as irrelevant to physics but which seem to exist nevertheless, along with those of other creatures. Not to mention the mental activity of forming an objective conception of the physical world, which seems not itself capable of physical analysis. Faced with these facts one might think the only conceivable conclusion would be that there is more to reality what can be accommodated by the physical conception of objectivity. But to remarkable numbers of people this has not been obvious. The physical has been so irresistibly attractive, and has so dominated ideas of what there is, that attempts have been made to beat everything into its shape and deny the reality of anything that cannot be so reduced. As a result, the philosophy of mind is populated with extremely implausible positions."

- Thomas Nagel (1937 - )
The View From Nowhere

Original Face

"The Sixth Ancestor was pursued by Ming the head monk as far as Ta-yü Peak. The teacher, seeing Ming coming, laid the robe and bowl on a rock and said, 'This robe represents the Dharma. There should be no fighting over it. You may take it back with you.' Ming tried to lift it up, but it was as immovable as a mountain. Shivering and trembling, he said, 'I came for the Dharma, not for the robe. I beg you, lay brother, please open the Way for me.' The teacher said, 'Don’t think good; don’t think evil. At this very moment, what is the original face of Ming the head monk?' In that instant Ming had great satori. Sweat ran from his entire body. In tears he made his bows saying, 'Beside these secret words and secret meanings, is there anything of further significance?' The teacher said, 'What I have just conveyed to you is not secret. If you reflect on your own face, whatever is secret will be right there with you.' Ming said, 'Though I practiced at Huang-mei with the assembly, I could not truly realize my original face. Now, thanks to your pointed instruction, I am like someone who drinks water and knows personally whether it is cold or warm. Lay brother, you are now my teacher.' The teacher said, 'If you can say that, then let us both call Huang-mei our teacher. Maintain your realization carefully.'"

 - Dajian Huineng (638 - 713)
Case 23 of Mumonkan

Nameless Thicket

"Tangled thickets of wiry bushes, without fruit and without a name, springing up among deep fissures of calcined rock, and treacherously masking them; or a parched growth of distorted cactus trees. [...] change never comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows. [...] Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky."

- Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
The Encantadas

Nature's Tapestry

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns,
so that each small piece of her fabric reveals
the organization of the entire tapestry."

- Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)
The Character of Physical Law

Postscript/For readers of my blog who have an interest in physics. I will use this image as a backdrop to segue my way to linking to a truly remarkable history of physics that has recently been made fully open access under a Creative Commons license through the OAPEN Library and Taylor & Francis: Károly Simonyi's A Cultural History of Physics; Amazon and Google have Kindle and eBook versions available, respectively. Before getting to the book itself, what made me think of using this image (which I captured earlier today while on a walk in a local park)? For me, the leaf is a microcosm of nature's fabric, in which the whole is encoded in every part, as Feynman describes. Simonyi's book is essentially an attempt to unweave the tapestry of physics from its individual threads strewn across history. 

I first came across (and eagerly purchased) a hard copy of this book when it was published in the United States in 2012; it is still available for purchase for about $174 in USD. IMHO (as a Ph.D. physicist) this is by far the best single-volume technical and cultural history of physics, emphasizing the interplay between physics and the humanities, but also never shying away from the irreducibly technical nature of the material. It is a rare fortune to have free access to such a treasure! I urge any and all of my readers with even a passing interest in physics to download a copy to savor, read, and study. 

The book includes technical passages, quotations, biographical information, and color plates to enrich the reader's experience. It originated from Simonyi's lecture series, which he began after political circumstances in Hungary forced him out of his academic career. ​Over decades, he revised and expanded the work, which was published in multiple Hungarian and German editions.

Additional note about Simonyi's book. I resonate on a personal level with the story behind how this book came to be (before it was originally published), as described in the book's forward and preface. Much like my mom and I spent the better part of a decade putting together the biography of my dad, the artist (as I've discussed elsewhere on my blog), it was through the efforts of Károly's son, Charles Simonyi (who is also a luminary: Charles led the development of Microsoft's first application software, including early versions of Microsoft Office) that A Cultural History of Physics was published outside of Hungary; indeed, it was Károly Simonyi's long-held dream that this would eventually happen. After his dad passed away in 2001, Charles collaborated with A K Peters (now part of CRC Press) to oversee the translation and publication process. He ensured the English edition was carefully compared to the original Hungarian text to restore its conversational tone and authenticity, provided additional material and support for the project and to the publishers, translators, editors, and family members who contributed to the book's release in the United States. ​

Sunyata

"All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.

...

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

...

So we say, 'True nothingness, true emptiness -- from true emptiness the wondrous being appears (shin ku myo mu).' Shin is true, ku is emptiness, myo is wondrous, mu is being. From true emptiness wondrous being - shin ku myo mu. So without nothingness there is no naturalness - no true being. True being comes out from nothingness, moment after moment. So nothingness is always there. From nothingness everything comes out."

- Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971)

Suspended Time

"One reality, many names.
The nature was born before heaven and earth.
It spans both the past and present, it is constantly here.
Its essence is wonderfully and profoundly empty,
perfectly brilliant and serene,
unfathomably vast
and great. "

- Imakita Kōsen (1816-1892)

Beyond Knowing

"If you want to be free, get to know your real self. It has no form, no appearance, no root, no basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant. It responds with versatile facility, but its function cannot be located. Therefore when you look for it you become further from it, when you seek it you turn away from it all the more."

- Linji Yixuan (618-907)
The Record of Linji

Ceasing to Stir

"Just let your minds become void and
environmental phenomena will void themselves;
let principles cease to stir and events
will cease stirring of themselves.
...
Ordinary people look to their surroundings,
while followers of the Way look to Mind,
but the true Dharma is to forget them both.
...
I assure you that one who comprehends
the truth of 'nothing to be attained' is
already seated in the sanctuary where
he will gain his Enlightenment."

- Huang Po (? - 850)
The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po:
On the Transmission of Mind

Immaculate Liberation

"Seeing mountains and rivers differs according to the type of being seeing them. There are beings who see what we call water as a jeweled necklace. This does not mean, however, that they see a jeweled necklace as water. How, then, do we see what they consider water? Their jeweled necklace is what we see as water. Or, again some see water as wondrous flowers, though it does not follow that they use flowers as water. Hungry ghosts see water as raging flames or as pus and blood. Dragons and fish see water as a palace or a pavilion, or as the seven treasures or jewels. Others see water as woods and walls, or as the dharma nature of immaculate liberation, or as the true human body, or as the physical form and essence of mind. Men see these as water. And these different ways of seeing are the conditions under which water is dead or alive. Thus, what different types of beings see is different; and we should reflect on this fact. Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object?

...

It is not the case simply that there is water in the world; within the realm of water there are worlds. And this is true not only within water: within clouds as well there are worlds of sentient beings, within wind, within fire, within earth there are worlds of sentient beings. Within the dharma realm there are worlds of sentient beings, within a single blade of grass, within a single staff there are worlds of sentient beings. And wherever there are worlds of sentient beings, there, inevitably, is the world of buddhas and ancestors."

- Dogen (1200 - 1253)
"Mountains and Water Sutra" in Shobogenzo

Punctum

"Occasionally (but alas all too rarely) a 'detail' attracts me. I feel that its mere presence changes my reading, that I am looking a new photograph, marked in my eyes with a higher value. This 'detail' is the punctum. [...] Very often the punctum is a 'detail,' i.e., a partial object.[which] is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole-and also a cast of the dice. A photograph's punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me). [...] A detail overwhelms the entirety of my reading; it is an intense mutation of my interest, a fulguration. By the mark of something, the photograph is no longer 'anything whatever.' This something has triggered me, has provoked a tiny shock, a satori, the passage of a void (it is of no importance that its referent is insignificant). A strange thing: the virtuous gesture which seizes upon 'docile' photographs (those invested by a simple studium) is an idle gesture (to leaf through, to glance quickly and desultorily, to linger, then to hurry on); on the contrary, the reading of the punctum (of the pricked photograph, so to speak) is at once brief and active [...] The studium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not ... However lightning-like it may be, the punctum has, more or less potentially, a power of expansion. [...] There is another (less Proustian) expansion of the punctum: when, paradoxically, while remaining a 'detail,' it fills the whole picture. [...] Last thing about the punctum: whether or not it is triggered, it is an addition: it is what I add to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there.

- Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980)
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

Entangled Paths

 "At quite uncertain times and places,

The atoms left their heavenly path,

And by fortuitous embraces,

Engendered all that being hath.

And though they seem to cling together,

And form 'associations' here,

Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether,

And through the depths of space career."

- James Clerk Maxwell (1831 - 1879)

Liminal

 "New pond.
No sound of a frog
Jumping in.
...
Past has passed away.
Future has not arrived.
Present does not remain.
...
I don’t tell the murky world
to turn pure.
I purify myself
and check my reflection in
the water of the valley brook."

- Ryōkan (1758 - 1831)

Wintery Mists

"In darkness it is most bright,
while hidden all the more manifest.
The crane dreams in the wintery mists.
The autumn waters flow far in the distance."

- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)
Cultivating the Empty Field:
The Silent Illumination of Zen Buddhist Master Hongzhi

Dissolving Mirror

"The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection,
and the water has no mind to retain their image."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

There is a Cause

"To return to the difficulty which has been stated with respect both to definitions and to numbers, what is the cause of their unity? In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something beside the parts, there is a cause."

 - Aristotle (384–322 BC)