mindfulness

John Muir wrote about nature for instance in the Yosemite. Here is a Quote:       Here is calm so deep, grasses cease waving. . . . Wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and; tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love. And here one of his sketches:  You can feel that he is in love with nature.  We all know that nature can heal us.   There is a photographer showing her photos in a museum in Stockholm right now, she is also describing her relation to nature.  Her name is Kirsty Mitchell;  After her mother sudden death in a not so old age, she u

The question of free will is a never ending story. It seems that i can proof free will by raising my arm and say, "I choose to raise my arm, and just see..." But if If I do it to give proof to another person  Im interact with that person. And if we are really aware of it, we always interact with someone or something. We are never in a vacuum. we are always interrelated. So if there are no separate I, the question of free will for the individual will disappear. I the future we will interact with AI, what about freedom then? Well it will not be total; we have to interact with the people who programmed the AI, and if the AI will be really intelligent, with the AI itself. But we are not there yet. We are on the journey towards understanding about our interaction with nature. We have influenced it a lot - but we must understand that nature interact with us too - to a degree where we cannot cannot tell the difference between us and nature. Nature will response wit

We don't know what our universe is made of. But we know that it's a quite violent place. Galaxies collide. Our milky way are going to crash into the Andromeda galaxy. We are literary made of the stoft from an exploding supernova. As we know our planet is a quit violent planet too. Animals eat other animals. Vulcanos have arrut0tioens, Tsunsmis and iceages, and now a coming greenhouse effect. We should be happy to have lived in quite peaceful time. But we humans are not peaceful at all. We are animals that slaughter other animals, and treat them like slaves. We are totally changing the surface of the Earth. Change is maybe the most important word here, everything is changing and in an flux. Can there be some good in this? well, as Heracleit said, War is the mother of everything, change makes new form to arrive. But we should be careful to say to much of the big things. We know just something about 4 % of the universe. The rest is black matter and energy.

XX teaches us not to think about the world as a place of  `things` which are in this or that state but in terms of `processes` instead. A process is the passage from on interaction to another. The properties of  `things` manifest themselves i granular manner only in the moment of interaction....  What's that? Some famous  Buddhist talking about the world? And what is XX. Well the author is Carlo Rovelli, a famous theoretical physicist and XX stands for "Quantum mechanics". So in the tiniest part of the world, there is really nothing before the interaction. Everything is relations. What about in our world? Well, a guess no one of us would have been here it it not have been for  mother and probably  father. so without that interaction, no you and no me. And without food and water?  So it seems that  neither in this world we are nothing without interaction. Before that we are just propabilities.... And when we are born, the best way to describe us is maybe b

If really believe that we have no, or at least very little, free will - how should we treat other beings? If someone is screaming to you - would you scream back? Is it punishment to scream back, or should it be seen as a consequence of the first screamers act. Our intuition says, scream back or hide away from the screamer. Our intuition may say, that screamer has a free will and chose to scream at me. I chose to scream back, to show my free will. But will our response help the first screamer? Will the thief stop his behavior if he will be set in prison for some years? Does suffering do you good? Okey, sometimes society needs to save itself from murderers and terrorists. But will it maybe be better to use preventive measures, as a basic income for everyone. Or maybe more of social help for children that are abused in their homes? Can we make a space for freedom if we meditate and then learn not to follow our impulses and intuitions? In "Crime and Punishment&

In a conversation with Yuval Harari Thomas Friedman, author and journalist, claims this, Is he right? Before his speaks about Mother Nature as made of chemistry etc, he imagines that he has a dialogue with her. You can hear it 13 minutes into the film. But wait a minute; even of nature isn't a person, it's possible that she is more than materia. She may be conscious., Friedman forgets something; we are a part of nature and we are conscious  ( as other animals are), so at least a part of nature is conscious. And that part is beginning to understand more and more about the whole planet. So it's not  wrong to say that the planet is self-conscious. It may repair itself from the harm it has created to itself; global warming, mass destruction o species and so on. But she is in a hurry = we are in a hurry. Actually more we than she. ;nature will go on. About 40 million years ago, there were rainforests in the north of  Canada. Life was flourishing there. Bit the i

Presentism in a philosophical view means that only the present moment exists. That's the view in mindfulness too. We should live in the here end now as much as possible. You can argue that there is no permanent now and maybe no now at all, since time is flowing like a stream. But you can also say that we can reach a kind of eternal state in meditqtion, anyway in the space between the different  feelings and thoughts that always will occur. But of course we cannot stop aging. We will always be a part of the conventional world. Even the Gurus, even Buddha was In presentism the past has gone and the future is not yet here. That seems natural. But Einstein pushed that intuitive view a bit. His idea is is the one of block-time. The future is already there somewhere and the past exist too. This can be explained in different ways. Biu as you know it is proven that time passes faster on a mountain that in the valley beneath. Gravitation slows up time and bends space, or

If we ask what we humans are, we of course have to compare us with something. If we compare us to other animals we can see differences and similarities. If we compare ourselves to rich and beautiful people at the net, we may see our faults. But if we compare us to the cosmos? What are our connection to it? We may think that we are small or nearly nothing. Or we may think that God made us to look like him. Or we may think that the universe  was made to make us, an anthropocentric view. We are made of stardust from an exploding supernova, but put together we are more than the sum of that dust. It seems that the universe was made do create life in some parts of it. In the beginning of the big bang it was really chaos. But after billions of years there more order, at least on our place. Complex lifeforms have evolved here and complex places like big cities There might be that the Universe was made to create intelligent creatures that could help the universe to understand

There were quite many insects at my land when I visited it in the end of July. Bumblebees, beetles and butterflies. But the swallows where few and flew high up in the air, not over the field as they used to do. There  were not many other kind of birds either. Probably had the hot and dry weather made it hard for them. And not any nearby lakes to drink from. The flowers that were there was thistles and other flowers that could stand the drought. But that was enough, for instance, for many butterflies. But mosciotos, that swallows like, were very few.... Gotland, the island at the east of the mainland in Sweden, is a place that probably will have just a little rain in the future, because of the climate change. But the whole of Sweden has this summer had temperatures like in the countries by the Mediterranean sea. Huge forest fires have started and we have had help from water bombing planes from other European countries. Climate change knows no boarders, There are

Meditation may influence  your career: A group of people working in a call center was given the chance to practise mindfulness to stand the stress at work. What happened was that 80 percent of the people in  the group quit the work. So it can be really helpful to quit something.... I guess the 80% saw the meaningless in disturbing people and wanting them to buy things they don't need. As you know, new things make us happy for a while, than we have to buy something new things, or travel somewhere, or find a new loved one or, or boast with your knowledge about something... Is it really craving that causes suffering? Even craving a permanent self? According, for instance, the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger, we have no self.  We are more interacting processes. Metzinger likes to illustrate this with the "Rubber hand experiment". He wants to combine philosophy with science and experiments that can relate to his thesis. The search for one's own soul

Is quantum physics the last chance for mystery n our lives? The fact is that no one knows how it works, the only thing we know is that it works. But is it really important for living beings? Is it not only important in the very small world. It seems not so. According to research, birds can navigate, tadpoles can turn to frogs and we can use smell because of quantum physics. Why is that so special? Well that may mean that chance  may play a role in our lives, and that time may be more complicated than we think. It may be that we can influence our brain because of meditation. And by changing our brain, we can even change our past! How? We all know it; there may be different stories about our past. There may be other perspectives. I have written about my memories about my childhood, and after that and after that my siblings have read it, it changed my view about my childhood a bit. A learned to see from my fathers and my mothers point of view of the time I was born, and

Hardcore scientists, as Richard Dawkins, thinks that we don't need them. But it may depend on what we mean with a myth. If we mean a  story, like the ones about Zeus or Indra, it may seem like fantasy. Even the stories in the Bible may look like fiction. But Christian people don't seesv it that way. Why? Because it gives them meaning. I can guess that science gives meaning to Dawkins. Yuval Harari looks at humanism and capitalism as myths and stories. We have to believe in them to make them true. The idea that all people  has the same value, is also an idea, although a good one. The value of a dollar is also fiction that becomes real because we all have the same idea. Myth helps us to distinguish between god and bad. Science can't do that. So it may be good to believe in some myth. Some say that science and the idea of its progress is a kind of religion, that nowadays seem to promise longer life or even eternal life as Ray Kurzweil seems to wish for. H

Christian de Duve, a Nobel prize winner, speaks about evolution and inevitability. It may be that it's not pure chance that guides evolution. Why did  life and we humans occur here? De Duve opens up for that it was inevitable that we would occur after some billion years of life on earth. In that case, it may be that creatures similar to us lives on other planets far away. But it may also mean that they have destroyed their own civilization. Anyway de Duve tells us that evolution will go on, and disasters as the hurricane Katrina, may push us to go forward. Perhaps will our brains be bigger. Or maybe we will use biotechnology to make us smarter. As de Duve means, evolution has made us smarter in the past, but not more wise.  Maybe we didn't need that in the past. But nowadays phronesis, practical wisdom, is really needed. We are still a quite young race. And we may change a lot. If the brain changes we may see "reality" in very different way. And we for su

Adam Frank in an interesting figure. Professor of physics and astrobiology at the University of Washington. He  has set up a blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture   where he and others write about science and culture phenomena as spirituality. He emphasises that we need things like values, sacredness and mythology to guide us and science. He has practised Buddhist meditation for many years, and maybe because of that he is open for questions a bit outside of mainstream scie He says he is an atheist but interested in spirituality. He has even been an adviser for the film "Doctor Strange".  "You wonder what I see in your future?", asks the woman in Nepal to Dr Strange and she answers; "possibility". of course, that is inspired of the wave function in quantum physics. An electron seems to be real until it is measured.  Before that it's a wave of possibilities. In a way that can is like when you in daily life becomes like the people around you look

What is that? We better ask Jeremy Lent. He has written a book called "The pattern instinct" which has had good reviews. The Western thought, which started with Platon, is the web of meaning that we in west live in now. Plato wrote about the word of ideas. The material world is just a pale copy of the ideal world. Christianity continued on that path: God is above everything, but the immaterial soul connects us with heaven. Descartes described animals as machines. Richard Dawkins does it too, anyway regarding bats. The mind, or our  thought and intellect is the key to humanism and that's what differs us from  nature and animals. We humans with souls are one thing and the nature another, so why not exploit it? Lent want us to understand the age that we are living  in; Anthropocene. An age that search solutions for everything within technology and science: If the bees starts to disappear, why not make robot bies? But of course Lent prefer living bees. (even if they

I read in Wikipedia: "Currently, the Earth is in an icehouse climate state. About 34 million years ago, ice sheets began to form in  Antarctica ; the ice sheets in the  Arctic  did not start forming until 2 million years ago. [5]  Some processes that may have led to our current icehouse may be connected to the development of the Himalayan Mountains and the opening of the  Drake Passage  between  South America  and Antarctica. Scientists have been attempting to compare the past transitions between icehouse and greenhouse, and vice versa to understand where our planet is now heading. Without the human influence on the greenhouse gas concentration, the Earth would be heading toward a  glacial  period. Predicted changes in  orbital forcing  suggest that in absence of human-made  global warming  the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now [  (see  Milankovitch cycles ). But due to the ongoing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth is instead hea

This a is a big question  and of course no one has an answer that suits all of us. Let's start with the problem that some of us see, but the most of us seem to not grip. Climate change may be an existential question. Why? Is it not the solution political and technical? If whe more and more produce energy with solar and wind power and drive electric cars we will stop climate change.... Sustainable development is just a some words without meaning. There no such thing. Yes, people that ate selling things, like Elon Musk, wants it to be true. What will the mining for the ingredients in the batteries mean for nature?  And is the e-cares just an excuse for to go on with economic growth? Some says this is a question how to relate to death. Both the death of the individual and of our civilization How to relate to the fast that everything comes to an end. But the same persons that use to say that we are in real danger also use to say that our world may be very rare. For ex

Have you seen one? Anyway, I haven´t. And in the Diamond Sutra Buddha express that even himself is not enlightened. What, you may be ask. Was Buddha not enlightened? Well that depends if there once was a Buddha walking on this earth. What, is the Buddha just a fantasy figure in a story? Yes, maybe.... Here is what what Buddha asks a monk in the Diamond Sutra:                                             Tell me, Subhuti. Does a monk say to himself 'I have                                            obtained Perfect Enlightenment´ ?                                           No, Lord. There are no such thing as Perfect Enlightenment                                           to obtain. If a Perfectly Enlightened Buddha would say to                                            himself  'I am Enlightened', he would be admitting that there                                           are such a thing as an individual person, a separated self                       

You may have heard of the anthroposophic reason why the universe is shaped the way it is: It's because we are here! The universe wanted us to be here, so it was shaped to make us humans to appear... Why not? If you are religious you may think that God created the laws that in the end created us. "In the beginning God created..." Or it may be that we are created by algorithms that was created by... what? That's anyway a anthroposophic claims. The anthropic reason why we are here is that the universe was created to produce life or maybe consciousness. As somebody has said; even a sun may have some consciousness and maybe a galaxy may have it. (with another relation to time - maybe it takes a year for a galaxy  to say hello.... ;~) The third reason may be chance; there are so many multiverses out there, so one of them must be suited for life. Or we may say; one of them must be suited for complex things as the human brain. We may never know, though some ph

Qualia is an interesting word. Its interpretation is not so clear. But usually its described as the subjective consciousness experience. That is what we all have but what is quite difficult to share. For example the colour blue, how can we explain it for another person? And if we point to a blue dress and the other person says; no, that's a black dress? (that has happened to me...) Actually qualia has never been proven as a fact. But we all now that it exists. On of the Royal academies in Sweden has a big crisis. Its the one that choose the winner of the Nobel prize in literature. Last time it was a surprised Bob Dylan who got the price. Many criticized the  academy to give price to a singer songwriter, while others applauded it. Anyway the head of the academy was a woman, Sarah Danius, until recent days. Now she had leaved the place because of big quarrels in the group. Actually three other members that supported Danius has leaved. And the people left are accused of bei

I know, you shouldn't mix up the quantum world with "our" world. But Rovelli, the theoretical physicists, seems to do it. He anyway describes the quantum world in this way; "Quantum mechanism teaches us not ti think about the world in terms of `things` which are in this or that state but in terms of `processes`instead. A process is the passage from one interaction to another. The properties of  `things`manifest themselves in a granular manner only in the moment of interaction, that is to say, at the edges of the processes and are such only in relation to other things.....an electron is nowhere when it is not interacting" (from the book Reality is not what it seems) Yesterday I met five monastics in the Buddhist tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. They gave us lay people meditations and we shared some questions to them. In the eyes of Rovelli and Buddha, we all interacted, even when we meditated. Maybe some of us lay people meditated in a deeper way than som

Is Roger right? Well he for sure believe he is... " Believe in whatever is good for you". That is a common advice in a postmodern time. It's a very broad view, and a relativistic one. Let people believe in what they want,  don't argue.  Even Buddha had that advice; dont be hooked on a view.  But he even meant; don't stick to anything, not even to yourself. I guess that in the light of reincarnation.  Let's say that there no right view... Anyway no one that we can discover.  It's probably good to have many views or perspectives. Will that not be like schizophrenia?  Well not if you don't have many of them at the same time.  But who would trust you?  Maybe its a view to be compassionate.  It seems that that behavior make you glad.  But will it make you survive?  Is aggression and violence not a part of life, produced by evolution?  Every specie seem to fight each other.  Lets say that you have a very angry boss, is