Entangled with Karma

“Can there be a completely different set of laws of physics in a different universe, or do the laws of physics as we understand them hold true in all possible universes? If the answer is that a different set of laws can operate in a different universe system, this would suggest (from a Buddhist perspective) that even the laws of physics are entangled with the karma of the sentient beings that will arise in that universe.”

- Dalai Lama XIV, (1935 - )

The Universe in a Single Atom

Passage of Time

“Time goes forward because energy itself is always moving from an available to an unavailable state. Our consciousness is continually recording the entropy change in the world around us. We watch our friends get old and die. We sit next to a fire and watch it's red-hot embers turn slowly into cold white ashes. We experience the world always changing around us, and that experience is the unfolding of the second law. It is the irreversible process of dissipation of energy in the world. What does it mean to say, 'The world is running out of time'? Simply this: we experience the passage of time by the succession of one event after another. And every time an event occurs anywhere in this world energy is expended and the overall entropy is increased. To say the world is running out of time then, to say the world is running out of usable energy. In the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, 'Entropy is time's arrow'.” 

- Jeremy Rifkin

(1945 - )

Vast Compass of the Ocean

“People travel to wonder 

at the height of the mountains, 

at the huge waves of the seas,

at the long course of the rivers,

at the vast compass of the ocean,

at the circular motion of the stars,

and yet they pass by themselves 

without wondering. ”

- Augustine of Hippo

(354 - 430)

Time, Process, and Eternity

"Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.

Thus ought man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it."

- James Clerk Maxwell

(1831 - 1879)

A Participatory Universe

"Spacetime in the prequantum dispensation was a great record parchment. This sheet, this continuum, this carrier of all that is, was and shall be, had its definite structure with its curves, waves and ripples; and on this great page every event, like a glued down grain of sand, had its determinate place. In this frozen picture a far-reaching modification is forced by the quantum. What we have the right to say of past spacetime, and past events, is decided by choices – of what measurements to carry out – made in the near past and now. The phenomena called into being by these decisions reach backward in time in their consequences ... back even to the earliest days of the universe. Registering equipment operating in the here and now has an undeniable part in bringing about that which appears to have happened. Useful as it is under everyday circumstances to say that the world exists “out there” independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld. There is a strange sense in which this is a 'participatory universe'."

- John Archibald Wheeler

(1911 - 2008)

Light

"I almost never set out

to photograph a landscape,

nor do I think of my camera

as a means of recording a mountain

or an animal unless I absolutely

need a 'record shot'.

My first thought

is always of light."

- Galen Rowell

(1940 - 2002)

Description of Reality

"Words and ideas

are a description of reality,

silence is a negation of reality.

What is the reality itself?"

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

Temporarily Identifiable Wiggles

“A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.”

- Alan Watts

(1915 - 1973)

Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils

"Big whorls have little whorls

Which feed on their velocity,

And little whorls have lesser whorls

And so on to viscosity."

- Lewis Fry Richardson (1881 - 1953)

Weather Prediction by Numerical Process

Postscript: additional images from this series

Aeons of Creation

"The dawn wind in the High Sierra is not just a passage of cool air through forest conifers, but within the labyrinth of human consciousness becomes a stirring of some world-magic of most delicate persuasion. The grand lift of the Tetons is more than a mechanistic fold and faulting of the earth's crust; it becomes a primal gesture of the earth beneath a greater sky. And on the ancient Acadian coast an even more ancient Atlantic surge disputes the granite headlands with more than the slow, crumbling erosion of the seas. Here are forces familiar with the aeons of creation, and with the aeons of the ending of the world."

- Ansel Adams

(1902 - 1984)

Mystery and Awe

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.” 

- Richard Feynman

(1918-1988)

Continuity in Space

"We go all the way back to the first universal sensation that our spirit can already perceive thanks to the extremely intense synthesis of all the senses in a universal whole which will make us return through and beyond our millennial complexity, to primordial simplicity."

"It is achieved through

the intuitive search

for the one single form

which produces continuity in space."

- Umberto Boccioni

(1882 - 1916)

Pictures of the Soul

"At different moments you 

see with different eyes. 

You see differently in the morning 

than you do in the evening. 

In addition, how you see is also 

dependent on your emotional state. 

Because of this, a motif can be seen 

in many different ways,

 and this is what makes art interesting." 

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye —

it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."

- Edvard Munch

(1863 - 1944)

Your Own Self

"Whether you are going or staying

or sitting or lying down, 

the whole world is your own self. 

You must find out

whether the mountains, rivers,

grass, and forests 

exist in your own mind

or exist outside it. 

Analyze the ten thousand things, 

dissect them minutely, 

and when you take this to the limit 

you will come to the limitless, 

when you search into it you come

to the end of search, 

where thinking goes no further

and distinctions vanish. 

When you smash the citadel of doubt, 

then the Buddha is simply yourself." 

- Lanxi Daolong 

(c. 1213-1278)

Nothing is as it Appears

"Know all things to be like this:

A mirage, a cloud castle,

A dream, an apparition,

Without essence, but with

qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:

As the moon in a bright sky

In some clear lake reflected,

Though to that lake

the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:

As an echo that derives

From music, sounds, and weeping,

Yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:

As a magician makes illusions

Of horses, oxen,

carts and other things,

Nothing is as it appears." 

- Samadhiraja Sutra

(2nd century CE)

Spiritual Wings

 

"... thus music brings into view the form of movement of celestial bodies, the pure form, freed from object and matter, as its very rhythm and harmony. Music is that art which has shed physicalness the most, by presenting pure movement as such, removed from any object, and by being carried by invisible, almost spiritual wings." 

– F. W. J. Schelling (1775 - 1854)

Philosophy of Art

Sometimes the Image is the Thing

“Abstraction is idea

without body.

The object photographed may

have nothing to do with

the subject though the

object may be subject.

The photograph may be an

objective document of pure subjectivity.

There are things in the world

that are unseen to the unaided.

There are seens that are not.

If all language is ultimately metaphor,

then don't talk to me of first principles.

It is wrong to assume that in a

photograph there must always have been

something - some thing.

Sometimes the image is the thing.” 

- Roger Newton (1960 - )

Op Tics

Interbeing

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. 'Interbeing' is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix 'inter-' with the verb 'to be,' we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. 'To be' is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.” 

- Hanh Nhat Thich (1926 - )

Quoted from Sourcebook of the World's Religions

Ring of Brodgar, Stenness

"There, on a little hill near to the lake, in a tomb, was found the bones of a man, which indeed were connected together, in length fourteen feet as the author affirmed, and money was found under the head of the dead man; and indeed I viewed the tomb...There at the lake are stones high and broad, in height equal to a spear, and in an equal circle of half a mile."

- Jo Ben (c.16th Century)

 Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum