mindfulness

Prospero's speech at the end of The Tempest could be Shakespeare's own view. It is said that he was a melancholy man. At least he was influenced by of the very violent time he was born into He wrote The Tempest at his hometown He had returned to Stratford-upon-Avon for the last years of his life. And Prospero is said to be his Alter Ego. Carlo  Rovelli ends another speech in England, but nearer in time, with Prosperos's words. Rovelli  reveals, in this iaitv speech, that time is not a straight arrow to the future, instead we are living, not in dream, but it in the web of spacetime. The structure of reality is like a fabric that makes waves and bends. Here's Rovelli at iaitv And when you can hear Shakespeare's words at YouTube  in a new video, it's a kind of bending of time, isn't it? Time goes a little bit slower at the surface of the Earth than one meter above it, because  spacetime is bending toward our planet. As you can see Rovelli wou...

The EPR paradox was a thought experiment by Einstein and two other scientist. They wanted to proof that the Copenhagen interpretation of quanta mechanics was wrong. There can be no chance involved in the normal world and not even in the really small world of atoms and photons. The paradox showed that the outcome of the quanta mechanics was that two atoms or photons that are entangled and then separated could react to each other with no time in between in the quantum world according to the thought experiment - and that would be impossible, said Einstein. Some information must sent between the particles - and that takes time... But experiment done later have shown that it is so. If you measure  one atom/photon the other will react immediately to the measurement. John Wheelers solution to the paradox was that the human thought creates reality. If we decide that a book is something to read it will be like that. If someone decides to build a house of books, they become "brick...

View from my meditation place

Its' not a foolish question. I have seen two films who one more time send this question to us. As we are animals made to survive as individual and as a specie, we seldom ask this kind of questions. We have no use or them in our strive on earth. We want too feed our selves, make children and look or enemies, to fight or to flee from. We want some status, we want to improve our reputation and so on. One man working in a cool mine i Germany said to some demonstration who wanted to put down the mine; "Why - it's going to and i disaster anyway.." As he meant that it was too late... Maybe evolution is the director of our drama; it´s good for a specie to have some fights, so the strongest ones will survive and have children. But I guess the director hadst calculated with  technology. Now we can destroy most life on Earth very fast. So we have to evolve very fast, and we can evolve through culture and ideas. The way we have behaved have changed a lot because of...

Love and freedom. To give of yourself to another person is great thing. When I help mentally retarded people they help me too - and often I feel great love for them. Often I admire their sensibility and innocence. I guess it's an act of agape, but without a god. Just loving one person seems to me very childish or futile. But it may be me that is childish. And love without freedom can be dangerous; to not give the other one space to do her own moves and maybe mistakes. We must try to love other people as they are, even if it can be hard. In Dostoevsky's The Karamasov Brothers, he let's one of them say; it's only possible to love people from a distance... It may be so, but maybe it's also only possible to love oneself from a distant and humble view... To have a look at our feelings and thoughts without judging or condemning them. In meditation its possible to do that... And it may also be possible to understand where the feelings and thoughts co...

I'm not sure there is a path in ones life. And if it is, it must be crossed by other paths. It's impossible to have a path totally for oneself. Other people or animals, for sure, have had the same experiences like you; the same joy, same anger and the same longing. Even if we go to the other side of the continent, we will meet the same needs. When I stayed with a Vietnamese family  for a week, I soon understood that we had much in common. Just different languages made it difficult to communicate. Maybe it's about the weather, but the way to act was a little bit more relaxed than in Scandinavia. And of course the culture and the experiences differ. The older people that have gone through the war may have invisible scares. But we share many problems, as the pollution of the air and the sea and too much drugs and so on. And if I drive a car here i Sweden I will contribute a little to the rising see level that can threaten cities like Saigon. J Krishnamurt...

In a former blog post Asma had a conversation with Robert Wright in a video. Now I'm reading a book by Asma where he explains why he is a Buddhist. The subtitle goes; "No-Nonsense Buddhism for Modern Living". Asma is a professor of philosophy at Columbia University in Chicago and author of several books. In the book he shows us his interpretation of western Buddhism today. He has lived, for instance, in Cambodia and is familiar with the traditions there. In the video he explains that the traditions in Asia often is mixed with animism. That's why you can find holy Coke blessed by the deities in the temples in Vietnam and other eastern countries. Pure and very original Buddhism only exists in some temples in Sri Lanka, and is only practiced by a few monks, according to Asma. But he means that you don´t have to believe in karma or reincarnation to be a Buddhist. Since we have no permanent soul we cannot go on after death. And our actions doesn't seem to com...