Living A Life of Illusion 1

MECHANICAL TIME

There are no seconds, no minutes, no hours or days of the week. There are no months of the year, no decades. it is not 2018. It is not 5778. It is not 4716. Day breaks, the sun rises, the sun sets then there is the night. The seasons do not fall into convenient groups. Natures time is not mechanical. Mechanical time is an illusion.

"If victory over nature has been achieved in this age, then thenature over which modern man reigns is a very different nature from that in which man lived before the science revolution. Indeed, the trick that man turned and that enabled the rise of modern science was nothing less than the transformation of nature and of man's perception of reality. The paramount change that took place in the mental life of man, beginning during roughly the 14th Century, was in man's perception of time and consequently of space."

Weizenbaum

"The mechanical clock dates from the 14th Century... The machine that mechanized time did more than regulate the activities of the day: it synchronized human reactions, not with the rising and setting sun but with the indicated movements of the clock's hands: so it brought exact measurement and temporal control into every activity, by setting an independent standard whereby the whole day could be laid out and subdivided.

"The measurement of space and time became an integral part of the system of control that Western man spread over the planet. Karl Marx was one of the first to understand the place of the clock as the archetypal model for all later machines: in a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1863 he observed that 'the clock is the first automatic machine applied to practical purposes; the whole theory of production and regular motion was developed through it'."

Mumford

The World in 2050.

Life On Saturn's Moon, Enceladus?

Aliens, God, Tao and Everything part two

When examining a living human body you discover that a great deal of heat is emitted.  All humankind's body temperature is 98.6F/37C. When the body dies it feels cold to the touch. In fact, it isn't. In reality, it drops to room temperature. The human body is made up of molecules, molecules that generate energy. The heat generated comes from digested food. It is the fuel which drives the human body. The ancient Chinese called this Chi. Chi is but a word yet whatever it is called that energy is what drives life. All life.

When we see images of extraterrestrials that we are led to believe are either living on or visiting planet Earth, you can be certain they are biologically like us. The same natural law would also apply to them. They too would have to comply with the laws of biology. For them to co-exist or just visiting they must have evolved from a planet very much like ours. To breathe our atmosphere they would need lungs, a heart that pumps blood, a liver, spleen and all the other organs that make what is effectively an advanced primate species. 

Would they have to be a form of primates? I guess not. I suppose it is possible they may have evolved from another species of biped - maybe kangaroo's or lizards. Birds too are bipedal. One argument against this would be brain size. Birds and lizards, even kangaroo's, do not possess large brains. In this world, bipedal's rule. That shape offers great mobility.  It enables us to hunt, fish, swim, run, walk etc; It makes perfect sense that the supreme species on Earth not only has the biggest brain but also a body that allows for great diversity of movement.

The aliens portrayed in the many images seen on the internet look remarkably like hominids. Same bipedal shape with arms, legs and an even larger head to fit an even larger brain. Maybe we homo sapiens didn't evolve here. Maybe we were brought here via an armada of spacecraft that arrived here having first located a planet best suited to support living creatures born on a water-based world, a world so like ours that ours is a virtual facsimile. This, of course, is not only speculation but also runs in the face of science. Now, you either believe in television, telephones, satellite dishes, computers, mobile phones, stereo players, videos, hearing aids, the control of diabetes, winning the battle against cancer, space labs, rockets to the moon, submarines, aeroplanes, hovercraft, heart surgery, WiFi, the cure for smallpox, in other words, science as it is has gifted us all these things and many more and even though science is merely a tool by which we understand ourselves and our place within the eternal, it still is a powerful friend when we need it . You cannot cherry pick. You either trust science, when it supports the life you lead or you don't.

If there are aliens constantly travelling from their homeworld to ours, and I am agnostic on that subject, then they have to be related to us. This is pure logic. The physical similarities between aliens and humans are strikingly remarkable given the so-called evidence supplied. However, we cannot proselytise the possibility that one species has mutated or even evolved from another without discounting DNA. Now Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule. It carries genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning and reproduction of all known living organisms, but also a great many viruses. There is a combination of acids, proteins and lipids mixed with some complicated carbohydrates that form the four major types of macromolecules that are vital for all known forms of life. This fact is empirical, unassailable. This suggests that aliens and humans, related for sure, have not originated from a single source unless that source is Earth for human life is linked via DNA to the planet Earth, Which can only mean that aliens are human or that somewhere in deepest space is a planet exactly, or very nearly exactly, the same as our mother world.

If this is the case then the reason for the visits cannot be aggressive. What would be the point? They want to enslave us? Why? For what purpose? It cannot be their desire to mate with us. Millions of years ago we humans could have reproduced with Chimpanzee's or what was the forerunner of the chimpanzee. We couldn't now. Is it being suggested that aliens like a bit of bestiality? That is exactly what a man having sex with a chimp would be. Or could it not be that the aliens, recognising our kinship, simply want to observe and to study a species so alike their own yet woefully less technological, far more primitive, to monitor the growth of humankind? This sounds far more likely. 

Aliens, God, Tao and Everything

This from an old Zen saying...

“Heaven and earth and I are of the same root, 

the ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.”

The ten thousand things is a reference to the universe, to all life, all existence as being of one creation. Historically, Monotheists would have disparaged such a claim suggesting God made everything but the word God is a man-made thing. Once you give something a name it no longer is the thing it was. God is a word as is deity. It is possible to know God without recognizing God the deity. Another word that could easily replace God is Tao. Again, Tao is but a word, another man-made word. 

When you meditate or even when mindful, that which some call God is with you. The eternal and the external are fused as one. You and the nameless, that which is greater than you yet of which you are a part of, a child of the universe, breathe as one, become as one for that is how life is - one.

Life exists within and without us. It exists in a myriad of amazing forms yet, when you look deep into any organism, breaking it down to fundamentals, all existence is made up of the same stuff. Hydrogen, the most plentiful substance in the world, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen and many other elements. Earth and its lifeforms all contain these linked parts. If there was life on Mars many eons ago then that too would have comprised the same basic elements. If  there is a planet or planets out there, and mathematics suggests the likelihood high, then whatever life lives on those planets, be they newly evolved or thousands of years older than ourselves, then they too are part of  the ten thousand things.

Science is nothing more than a tool by which we understand ourselves, our planet, the galaxies where our planet and others spin. The connection once proclaimed by Eastern philosophies is now accepted by Western science, by science in general. All life is linked. Nothing that lives exists without those elements we know of. If there are Aliens visiting our homeworld then they too are part of the ten thousand things.

Humankind likes its labels. As a species, we think in linear terms, we apply convenient names and tags to everything. Life though isn't like that. Life is not linear but rather resembles a Rorschach - a great big splodge. Humankind separates sexual drives. They would have us believe in Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, Asexuals, and a variety of other sexuals. All there is are people with different tastes. Humankind breeds division. Racial, sexual, class, religious, political, national and of course, Extra-Terrestrial. Division is the cause of much hurt, much harm. Wars have been fought over territory, over borders. Borders, like time, are a man-made construct, they don't exist. Simply ask fish or birds or contagions or the tide that rides the humble oceans who lap at our shores.

This planet, this Earth, is not our planet. We are of this planet. This Earth is of the universe therefore so are we, so are Aliens.

The word Alien defines a being, not of this planet, not of this earth but from some far off other-world therefore not like 'us'. As we have learned all life is connected. Aliens are in reality nothing more than another variety of life brought into being by the same energy, the same Chi as the Chinese would suggest, the same force as were we.  There are no aliens only other beings like us, like cetaceans, like millipedes, like crustaceans, like mammals, like grass. 

“Heaven and earth and I are of the same root, 

the ten-thousand things and I and Aliens are of one substance.”

Buddhist Peace Action | Socially Engaged Buddhism

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Buddhist Peace Fellowship

Socially engaged Buddhism is a dharma practice that flows from the understanding of the complete yet complicated interdependence of all life. It is the practice of the bodhisattva vow to save all beings. It is to know that the liberation of ourselves and the liberation of others are inseparable. It is to transform ourselves as we transform all our relationships and our larger society. It is work at times from the inside out and at times from the outside in, depending on the needs and conditions. It is is to see the world through the eye of the Dharma and to respond emphatically and actively with compassion.

- Donald Rothberg and Hozan Alan Senauke, Turning Wheel Magazine/Summer-Fall - 2008

Wholehearted Connection

Buddhist Peace Fellowship is a community of primarily dharma practitioners established to support socially engaged efforts of visionaries of compassionate social justice and dharma-based organizations for social change.

Mutual Liberation

Buddhist Peace Fellowship is a leader in socially engaged Buddhism, cultivating peace through sharing with others decades of experience, providing donors who value peacemaking to other organizations, and educating the public with dharma-centered views of social justice. We are here to assist in implementing projects that work toward ending suffering in the world.

A Voice for Change

Buddhist Peace Fellowship makes an effort to speak without anger and opposition for those who have been silenced by war, poverty, environmental disaster, genocide, and youth whose lives have been impacted by violence.

CYMD 2008 was organized by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Tampa Bay. Each year we bring together the various traditions of Buddhists from around Tampa Bay to share their insights, teachings, and practices with the general public.

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Thich Nhat Hanh: What Is Engaged Buddhism?

see also - whats more: Ram Dass interviews Thicht Nhat Hanh (1995)

One of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, poet, and peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh has led an extraordinary life. Born in central Vietnam in 1926 he joined the monkshood at the age of sixteen. The Vietnam War confronted the monasteries with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and remain meditating in the monasteries, or to help the villagers suffering under bombings and other devastation of the war. Nhat Hanh was one of those who chose to do both, helping to found the 'engaged Buddhism' movement. His life has since been dedicated to the work of inner transformation for the benefit of individuals and society.

• Buddhist Peace Fellowship

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The Zen Peacemakers

A Force for Socially Engaged Buddhism

Inspiring | Teaching | Doing

"When you realize the wholeness and interdependence of life, you have to take care of everyone, and to do that, you have to work with every ingredient of life."

Zen Master Bernie Glassman, Founder

In 1967, Bernie began his Zen studies with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles. He became a Zen teacher--Sensei Glassman--in 1976. In 1980 he founded his own Zen Community of New York in the Bronx, New York. He started the Greyston Bakery, at first staffed by Zen students, as a livelihood for the Community, and then made it a vehicle for social enterprise in Yonkers, 3 miles north (see below). In 1995 Bernie Glassman received inka, or the final seal of approval, from his teacher and became known as Roshi Bernie. During that year and in 1996 he served as Spiritual Head of the White Plum Lineage, comprising hundreds of Zen groups and centers in the US, Latin America and Europe, as well as the first President of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association of America. His Dharma Family includes dharma teachers, zen priests, zen preceptors, zen entrepreneurs, Christian clergy, Rabbis, Sufi Sheiks and multi-faith peacemakers.

The mission of the Zen Peacemakers is to alleviate suffering by:

• developing holistic social service projects that help individuals, families
and communities;
• promoting and supporting Socially Engaged Buddhism throughout the West; and
• inspiring and training a new generation in this way of service as Zen practice.

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About Zen Peacemakers blog

Discussions on articles from Bearing Witness, the free monthly online newsletter of Western Socially Engaged Buddhism
Commentary on Socially Engaged Buddhism
Writings of Zen Peacemakers founder Bernie Glassman, including previously unreleased material
Up-to-date news from the Zen Peacemakers Mother House in Montague, MA including:

Montague Farm Zen House
Zen House Residence Program
Montague Farm Zendo and Shared Stewardship Circle
First major Symposium for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism

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• The Zen Peacemakers

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