Math Goddess: 'Man Who Knew Infinity'

Tridevi: Sarasvati, Lakshmi (aka Namagiri Thayar), and Parvati (Divine Feminine)

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The Man Who Knew Infinity (Free w/ads PG-13)

(YouTube Movies & TV) Based on a true story, Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel star in this inspirational film about an obscure Indian mathematician whose groundbreaking theories changed mathematics forever.

The Goddess told me these secrets.

• If the genius author (the modern rishi Srinivasa Ramanujan) is to be taken at his word, it is not his genius but that of his Hindu Goddess Namagiri Thayar who imparted pure math knowledge and insights. She is said to be an avatar or incarnation of Lakshmi Narayana, though the titular goddess of knowledge and learning in the Hindu pantheon is said to be the great Saraswati (who together with Parvati and Lakshmi form a trinity known as Tridevi).

Indian math genius Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar[a] (Dec. 22, 1887–April 26, 1920) was an Indian mathematician often regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. He had almost no formal training in pure mathematics. Yet, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation. According to Hans Eysenck, "he tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered." More

• The Man Who Knew Infinity is a 2015 British biographical dramatic film about the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, based on the 1991 book of the same name by Robert Kanigel. The film stars Dev Patel as the real-life mathematician who, after growing up poor in Madras, India, earns admittance to England's Cambridge University during World War I, where he becomes a pioneer in mathematical theories with the guidance of his professor, G. H. Hardy, portrayed by Jeremy Irons.
• [The Westernized] history of mathematics
• Why when I search best mathematicians, it's always Europeans and maybe one or two Indians or Persians? Ethnocentrism?
• Indian mathematics
• Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
• Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world

What drives evolution, climate or competition?

Wallace, Darwin's forgotten "frenemy"

(SciShow) June 29, 2017: Everyone knows the name Charles Darwin, but his lesser known frenemy, Alfred Russel Wallace, was developing a lot of the same ideas around the same time. Hosted by: Hank Green. For 10% off Squarespace: http://squarespace.com/scishow  ---------- Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: scishow

Homo Floresiensis skull, hominin species analyzed in the study (The Duckworth Laboratory)

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It's bizarre: humans are competitive like animals

(University of Cambridge via Newsweek) Human evolution might be more "bizarre" than we once thought, according to a new study.

In the past, scientists (anthropologists) believed that hominin evolution was largely driven by changes in climate. But now, research from the University of Cambridge has suggested that competition was, in fact, fundamental to hominin evolution.

Wallace, you were right. - I know, Darwin.

"We have been ignoring the way competition between species has shaped our own evolutionary tree," said lead author Dr. Laura van Holstein, a University of Cambridge biological anthropologist from Clare College.

"The effect of climate on hominin species is only part of the story." Interspecies [not to be confused with intraspecies or between humans] competition is common among most other vertebrates: in any new environment there is an explosion of species evolution as each species adapts to fill a particular niche.

I shoulda killed that Wallace to evolve.

However, once all the niches are filled, competition kicks in and this explosive evolution flatlines. "The pattern we see across many early hominins is similar to all other mammals," van Holstein said. "Speciation rates increase and then flatline, at which point extinction rates start to increase. This suggests that interspecies competition was a major evolutionary factor."

However, when van Holstein studied the evolution of our own genus, Homo, things started to get much more peculiar.

(Biographics) Alfred Russel Wallace: The Forgotten Father of Evolution

"The more species of Homo there were, the higher the rate of speciation," she said. "So when those niches got filled, something drove even more species to emerge. This is almost unparalleled in evolutionary science."

In other words, it appears as if competition between different Homo species actually drove the evolution of even more Homo species — a complete reversal of what we would expect to see based on the evolution of most other vertebrates.

Here's what would happen if ALL humans completely disappeared (Aperture)

COMMENTARY

So Long, Thanks for All Fish

(WQ) Given this breakthrough, we should start having competitive games not (intra) between humans and humans but (inter) between humans and animals. The all-female chicken league can go up against Missourians in worm finding. Bull teams can go up against matadors with horn helmets instead of swords. We can launch Iditarod II, a race where hungry dogs or wolves chase humans across the ice and snow to see who crosses the line first. There can be a surfer versus shark competition in the summers to see who can exclude the other from more waves. Fisherpersons can get out of boats and into the water to have it out with schools of sportfish. We can film a "Survivor Congo" mixed gender social strategy game between bonobos and humans. And we can have an international dolphin versus nerds test of intellect, where we will insist on a handicap for having smaller brains than the sea mammals.

• Pandora Dewan [pronounced dawn?], Newsweek.com via MSN.com, June 11, 2024 ('Bizarre' finding changes the way we think about human evolution); Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Mindfulness, Bliss, Beyond: Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahm (author), Jack Kornfield (foreword), 8/11/06; BU Yogi, Wisdom Quarterly

Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook

Ajahn Brahm and other Theravadin monastics

This handbook is now in paperback, having received 4.7 stars out of 5 with 373 ratings. Buddhist meditation: it's not just a way to relax or to deal with life's problems. Done correctly, it can be a way to radically encounter bliss and to begin -- and sustain -- real transformation in ourselves.

In Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, self-described meditation junkie Ajahn Brahm [a British monk from Cambridge University in the Theravada Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah] shares his knowledge and experience of the meditative absorptions or jhanas -- a core part of the historical Buddha's original meditation teaching.

Never before has this material been approached in such an empowering way, by a teacher of such authority and popularity. Full of surprises, delightfully goofy humor, and entertaining stories that inspire, instruct, and illuminate, Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond will encourage those new to meditation and give a shot in the arm to more experienced practitioners as well. AUDIO CLIP: Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook (amazon.com)

Science rules all things. Hail Science! (TED)

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (TEDx Whitechapel via After Skool, 1/17/23); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Exposing scientific dogmas | banned TEDxTalk

(After Skool) Jan. 17, 2023. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance.

Do science and Eastern religions mesh?

At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a fellow of Clare College. He was principal plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India.

From 2005 to 2010 he was director of the Perrott-Warrick Fund project for research on (parapsychology) unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge. Dr. Sheldrake has written many books:

• A New Science of Life (1981)
• The Presence of the Past (1988)
• The Rebirth of Nature (1991)
• Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (1994)
• Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home (1999)
• The Sense of Being Stared At (2003)
• The Science Delusion (Science Set Free) (2012)
• Science and Spiritual Practices (2017)
• Ways of Going Beyond and Why They Work (2019)

Banned for questioning science?

Banned by gatekeepers for telling it like it is.

Dr. Sheldrake gave a talk entitled "The Science Delusion" at TEDx Whitechapel on Jan. 12, 2013.

The theme that night was "Visions for Transition: Challenging existing paradigms and redefining values (for a more beautiful world)."

Not good at math yet I'm its poster boy

In response to protests from two materialists in the US, the talk was taken out of circulation by TED, relegated to a corner of their website and stamped with a warning label.

• More about Dr. Sheldrake and his research: sheldrake.org
• Subscribe to After Skool for more insightful videos

March Guided Meditation w/ Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahmavamso, BWSA, March 11, 2023; Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Who's this guy? Where does he come off meditating? He's already a rich and famous dad.

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Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

(Buddhist Society of Western Australia) Streamed live March 11, 2023. Recorded at Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre, Perth, Western Australia.

Copyright Buddhist Society of Western Australia (bswa.org). Buddhist Society of Western Australia’s teaching's page: bswa.org/teachings. 

Support the BSWA in making teachings available for free online via Patreon.com/BuddhistSociety... To find the full playlist, visit: buddhistsocietywa or click on "Playlists" in the top menu bar.

Weight loss scientist: "Calories don't count"

The weight loss scientist: We've been LIED to about calories, dieting, and losing weight: Dr. Giles Yeo

(The Diary of a CEO) Feb. 2, 2023. Dr. Giles Yeo is a professor at Cambridge University in England, whose research focuses on the genetics of obesity. He is the author of two books, Gene Eating: The Story of Human Appetite Eating and Why Calories Don't Count: How We Got the Science of Weight Loss Wrong. See ALL episodes of The Diary of a CEO. Old commercial via Carmenhahn.

TOPICS

• 0:00 Intro
• 02:43 Professional bio
• 06:36 Why did you decide to focus on food?
• 10:41 How has our perspective on food changed since you started?
• 19:18 Genes and the link between obesity
• 23:59 Our brain hates us losing weight
• 33:05 How to burn fat
• 44:40 Calorie counting
• 54:29 Is gluten bad for us?
• 59:52 Lactose intolerance
• 1:02:17 Genetic components
• 1:06:07 Veganism
• 1:16:36 Juicing is bad!
• 1:19:25 Alkaline water is a scam!
• 1:22:34 The link between ageing and gaining weight
• 1:34:08 Does exercise help us lose weight?
• 1:37:06 Body positivity
• 1:44:05 The last guest question

Dr. Giles Yeo:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• BOOKS: Why Calories Don’t Count, Gene Eating

Diary of a CEO:

• Join channel to get access to perks: bit.ly/3Dpmgx5
• Listen on: Apple podcast - apple.co/3TTvxDf
• Spotify - spoti.fi/3VX3yEw
• Follow: Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Telegram
• Sponsors: Bluejeans - Huel - Intel

Banned TED Talk: The Science Delusion (video)

Sheldrake at TEDx via Tom Huston; Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Banned TEDx Talk: The Science Delusion: Rupert Sheldrake

The Science Delusion (US)

(TEDx Whitechapel) TED's Chris Anderson censored Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., along with Graham Hancock, and removed this video and Hancock's talk from the TEDx YouTube channel. Why? They dared question scientific orthodoxy. For that they have been publicly castigated and defamed. Follow this link for TED's dubious statement on the matter (and the many comments appropriately critical of TED's rationale). Presumably TED disavows any copyright claim, as they've disavowed association with the videos.

THE "BIG BANG" IS A LIE

(London Real) Science's faith: Give us one free miracle, and we'll explain the rest.

BIO: RUPERT SHELDRAKE, Ph.D. (born June 28, 1942) is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books. A former research fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honors degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize. He then studied philosophy and history of science at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox fellow, before returning to Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry. As a fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, he was director of studies in biochemistry and cell biology. As the Rosenheim research fellow of the Royal Society, he carried out research on the development of plants and the aging of cells in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University.

While at Cambridge, together with Philip Rubery, he discovered the mechanism of polar auxin transport, the process by which the plant hormone auxin is carried from the shoots towards the roots.

From 1968 to 1969, based in the Botany Department of the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, he studied rainforest plants. From 1974 to 1985 he was principal plant physiologist and consultant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India, where he helped develop new cropping systems now widely used by farmers. While in India, he also lived for a year and a half at the ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths in Tamil Nadu, where he wrote his first book, A New Science of Life.

From 2005-2010 he was the director of the Perrott-Warrick Project funded by Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a fellow of Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon, a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences near San Francisco, and a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut.

He lives in London with his wife, Jill Purce, and two sons. He has appeared on many TV programs in Britain and abroad, and was one of the participants (along with Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Dennett, Oliver Sacks, Freeman Dyson, and Stephen Toulmin) on a TV series called "A Glorious Accident," shown on PBS channels throughout the USA. He has often taken part in BBC and other radio programs. He has written for newspapers such as The Guardian, where he had a regular monthly column, The Times, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Times Educational Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement, and Times Literary Supplement, and has contributed to a variety of magazines, including New Scientist, Resurgence, The Ecologist, and The Spectator.

Books by Rupert Sheldrake:

• A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (1981). New edition 2009 (in the US published as Morphic Resonance)
• The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988)
• The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (1992)
• Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (1994) (winner of the Book of the Year Award from the British Institute for Social Inventions)
• Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (1999) (winner of the Book of the Year Award from the British Scientific and Medical Network)
• The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (2003)
• The Science Delusion (2012, published in the U.S. as Science Set Free)

Ajahn Brahm: The Method for "Zen" (Jhana)

Ajahn Brahm (BSWA.org) via LoRdRaV; Aloka, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


The Method for Meditative Absorption

Brit Ajahn Brahm, Australia

Cambridge-educated Brit Ajahn Brahm trained in the Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah. He is now the spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. In this talk from a 9-day meditation retreat he conducted in 1997, Ajahn Brahm gives an introduction to letting go and experiencing jhana -- zen, "absorption," dhyana, ch'an, seon, thien -- in our meditation practices. Video © 2012 Third Road Publishing.

Math genius from India, Cambridge U. (video)

IFLScience.com; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Bhikkhu Dipa (video)

(Bhikkhu Dipa) Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan (Dec. 22, 1887-April 26, 1920) was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who lived during the time of the British Raj. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

 

Srinivasa Ramanujan (wiki)

The movie The Man Who Knew Infinity is about the Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, who is generally viewed by mathematicians as one of the two most romantic figures in the discipline.

Ramanujan (1887-1920) was born and died in Southern India, passing away at the age of 32. [Suicide?] But in one of the most extraordinary events in mathematical history, he spent World War I at Trinity College Cambridge at the invitation of the leading British mathematician Godfrey Harold (G. H.) Hardy (1877-1947) and his great collaborator John E. Littlewood.

 

Brahmin wisdom comes from space

As a boy he refused to learn anything but mathematics, almost entirely self-taught, and his pre-Cambridge work is contained in a series of notebooks. 

 

The work he did after returning to India in 1919 is contained in the misleadingly named Lost Notebook. It was lost and later found in the Wren library of the leading college for mathematics of the leading University in England. While in England Ramanujan became the first Indian Fellow both of Trinity and of the Royal Society.

• REVIEW: This story deserves more attention (Cynical Historian)

A Man of Numbers

Ramanujan had an extraordinary ability to see patterns. While he rarely proved his results, he left a host of evaluations of sums and integrals. He was especially expert in a part of number theory called modular forms which is of even more interest today than when he died.

 

The lost notebook initiated the study of mock theta functions that are only now being fully understood. Fleshing out his notebooks has only recently been completed principally by American mathematicians Prof. Bruce Berndt and Prof. George Andrews. It comprises thousands of printed pages.

 

An old Indian friend, Swami Swaminathan, oversaw the Ramanujan Library in Madras (modern Mumbai, India) over half a century ago. He commented that had Ramanujan been born ten years earlier, he would not have been able to receive the education and financial assistance that made his pre-Cambridge work possible.

 

Swaminathan went on to say that had Ramanujan been born just ten years later, he would probably have received a more robust and more ordinary education. In either case, this version of Ramanujan would not exist.

 

Ramanujan and Me

 

Ramanujan has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father David was a student of one of Hardy’s students. In our house “the Bible” referred to Hardy’s masterpiece Divergent Series.

 

In 1962 on the 75th anniversary of Ramanujan’s birth the envelope (below) arrived at my parents' home. A kind stranger had put the franked stamps on the back.

  

In 1987 I was fortunate enough to speak with my brother at the major centennial conference on Ramanujan, held at the University of Illinois. We had become experts on and had extended Ramanujan’s work on Pi.

 

Highlights at the conference included the Nobel prize winning astronomer Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who described how important Ramanujan’s success in England had been to the self-confidence of himself and the co-founders (along with Mahatma Gandhi) of modern India including Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the first prime minister of independent India in 1947.

 

In 2008 David Leavitt published a novelized version of Ramanujan’s life entitled the Indian Clerk. While Leavitt captures much beautifully, as a novelist, he takes some considerable liberties. I prefer my novels as fables and my biographies straight.

 

In 2012 on the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan’s birth the Notices of the American Mathematical Society published eight articles on his work. This suite forcibly showed how Ramanujan’s reputation and impact continue to grow.
 
Gifted with Numbers

There is one famous anecdote about Ramanujan that even a non-mathematician can appreciate. In 1917 Ramanujan was hospitalized in London. He was said to have tuberculosis, but it is more likely this was to cover a failed suicide attempt.

 

Hardy took a cab to visit him. Not being very good at small talk, all Hardy could think to say was that the number of his cab, 1729, was uninteresting.

 

Ramanujan replied that quite to the contrary it was the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two distinct ways:

1,729 = 12³ + 1³ = 10³ + 9³

This is now known as Ramanujan’s taxi-cab number.

 

Mathematicians in the Movies

There has been a recent spate of books, plays, movies, and TV series about mathematicians and theoretical physicists: A Beautiful Mind (2001), Copenhagen (2002), Proof (2005) and last year’s Oscar winning movies The Imitation Game about Alan Turing, and The Theory of Everything on Stephen Hawking. More

• More on the genius Ramanujan (history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk)

"There are no Black Holes" - Stephen Hawking

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Heather Saul, Independent.co.uk; Krista Tippett (Teilhard de Chardin on The "Planetary Mind" and Our Spiritual Evolution, Jan. 23, 2014)

What do a fiction writer and an astrophysicist have in common? Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser connect the dots between the cosmos, our minds, and all the ways we discover the story of where we came from (onbeing).

  

Stephen Hawking has produced a “mind-bending” new theory that argues black holes do not actually exist -- at least not in the way we currently perceive them.

Instead, in his paper, Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes, Hawking proposes that black holes can exist without “event horizons,” the invisible cover believed to surround every black hole.

Rude Prof. Hawking gets proof of black holes - Trisha Takanawa, Quahog News ("Family Guy")

During a previous lecture, “Into the Black Hole,” Hawkins described an event horizon as the boundary of a black hole, “where gravity is just strong enough to drag light back, and prevent it escaping.”

 

“Falling through the event horizon, is a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe,” he said. “If you are above the falls, you can get away if you paddle fast enough, but once you are over the edge, you are lost. There's no way back.

 

Fake Buddha quote (H.koppdelaney/flickr)

“As you get nearer the falls, the current gets faster. This means it pulls harder on the front of the canoe, than the back. There's a danger that the canoe will be pulled apart. It is the same with black holes.”
 
But now Hawking is proposing “apparent horizons” could exist instead, which would only hold light and information temporarily before releasing them back into space in “garbled form,” Nature has reported.
 
The internationally-renowned theoretical physicist suggests that quantum mechanics and general relativity remain intact, but black holes do not have an event horizon to catch fire. More

Sex with Stephen Hawking with wheelchairs ("Family Guy")

• Hawking wants to be a hedonist and SEX maniac According to a source who has been a member of Freedom Acres swingers club for nearly half a decade, Hawking, 70, shows up to the club with a bevy of nurses and assistants and has naked woman grind on him.
• Stephen Hawking: There are no black holes (space.com) Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking declares "there are no black holes" in a new preprint paper, but what does he really mean. Find out the... 
• Stephen Hawking: "There are no black holes" (Nature News) Notion of an "event horizon," from which nothing can escape, is incompatible with quantum theory, physicist claims. 
• Stephen Hawking declares: "There are no black holes" Consternation and angst reign after the famed physicist suggests there are no black holes from which light can't escape to infinity. 
• Black holes should be redefined, says Stephen Hawking... 
• Black hole theory my "biggest blunder" (Fox News) Doing an about-face on the objects that helped cement his reputation as the world's... 
• Stephen Hawking: There are no black holes (Christian Post)
• Hawking: Space aliens should stay away from Earth
• Stephen Hawking: We must move to space! Asking Big Questions about the universe at TEDtalks. In keeping with the theme of TED, Prof. Hawking asks questions like: How did the universe begin? How did life...
• Stephen Hawking on Religion: "Science will win"

Evolution of Human Consciousness

Krista Tippett (onbeing.org)

The coming stage of [our spiritual and cultural] evolution, Teilhard de Chardin said, won't be driven by physical adaptation but by human consciousness, creativity, and spirit. "On Being" visits with de Chardin's biographer Ursula King and experience his ideas energizing New York Times' Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. LISTEN

• Will "liberal" Obama stop nominating pro-corporate judges?

When does SEX end? Stephen Hawking

RadarOnline via The Mirror; Wisdom Quarterly

WARNING: R-rated cartoon depiction of the wheelchair-bound science hero ("Family Guy")

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is somewhat of a regular at a Devore [a trucker's paradise in the boondocks of San Bernardino], California sex club.

According to a source who has been a member of Freedom Acres swingers club for nearly half a decade, Hawking, 70, shows up to the club with a bevy of nurses and assistants and has naked woman grind on him.

"I have seen Steven Hawking at the club more than a handful of times," the source revealed.

"He arrives with an entourage of nurses and assistants. Last time I saw him he was in the back 'play area' laying on a bed fully clothed with two naked women gyrating all over him."

The source notes that Hawking, who is wheelchair-bound due to a long-time battle with Lou Gehrig's disease, has his staff stand nearby watching while he's with the women. More

When does sex end?

When and under what circumstances does our overpowering human sex drive -- exacerbated and exploited by out exploitative capitalist society that sees no taboo when it comes to generating profit at the expense of the "human" -- taper off?

"The world's smartest man," Lucy's father, Dr. Hawking

For a healthy individual not suffering from chronic inflammation and degenerative oxidation due to diet (most of what we eat is garbage because we eat so far from the field, a plant on untainted ground being the best choice), chronic stress, and uncleared environmental toxins, sexual response will continue for a century.

However, one hopes the mind will not remain obsessed that long. Teenagers under the strain of unfamiliar hormonal spurts may, assuming they have not been molested or otherwise traumatized and had their boundaries erased by such trauma, manage to get it under control.

Marriage was instituted primarily to contain and channel the expression of this habit. Sex is not a necessity; countless celibates prove that. But sex does tend to be an overwhelming obsession many of us cannot even imagine living without.

• The root of all evil: Men's sex drive?
• Sex Addiction: An Intimacy-Disabling Disorder
• Greed is the root of all evil [vice]?

But 70 and suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, the ego that often accompanies money and fame, and the conviction that there is nothing beyond this life -- no other friendly worlds, no higher dimensions, no shamanic states -- all add up to visits to sleazy, seedy "gentleman's" clubs.

"See ya, b*tch!" shouts a shocking Dr. Hawking

So is Christian fundamentalism, American puritanism, or Islamo-Catholic moral policing the answer? Blame [the love of] money. Blame [boundary bending] parents. Blame our genes. But it is often the case that

"The root of all evil is the desire to root out all evil."

It's nice to have sex; it's not so nice to have to have sex. The Buddha spoke of overcoming our craving for sensual pleasures for the sake of much more lasting, reliable, and enjoyable pleasures.

Absorption

But what happiness transcends sensual happiness? The meditative absorptions are far more pleasurable than sex. They are full of rapture, joy, zest, buoyancy, and exquisite bliss. And they evolve into happiness and equanimity. The same cannot be said for sex. But bliss and sex are as nothing compared to the vision of nirvana, which is brought about by continuing through the bliss to equanimity to the development of insight. It does not happen organically and effortlessly.

Nirvana

Most of the world's meditation traditions never get beyond the supersensual bliss to something permanently beyond time to be unending. Heavens last for aeons and then end. Only nirvana actually gets beyond time to timelessness.

Why is nirvana any different than just another heavenly state or realm? Nirvana is the unconditioned element. Heavens, humans, hot tubs, all "things" are conditioned with nirvana being the sole exception. It is therefore said to be inconceivable by the conditioned mind living in a conditioned universe surrounded by conditioned elements.

But for all its inconceivability it is experiential. Nirvana can be experienced in this very life, not after death, but while one is yet alive and striving on the quest.

Hawking in his own words: likes The Simpsons [Family Guy, not so much]

Harvard Zen

Wisdom Quarterly visits Harvard University and the Cambridge Zen Center

The way to Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center is as colorful as it offerings.

We went to see the scene at the Cambridge Zen Center, where Harvard elites can gather in silence. Until the questions start and life advice is sought.

Cambridge is the penultimate college town. And Harvard Square is its epicenter. MIT geniuses walk by remembering to chew, step, chew, step -- caught up in daydreams of ultimate reality and material sciences.

Garden Buddha at the Cambridge Zen Center (cambridgezen.com)

Modica Way in on the path to Cambridge Zen (Kwan Um school). And its array of heady graffiti is good preparation for the blank wall one will soon be staring at in zazen: Daydreams are as vivid as the imaginations of street artists.

The subway underground, art, Harvard Square, nascent nerd overlords... Mass. is an amazing place. But the jewel in the center of the lotus is surely the Mahindra Humanities Center. Its offering are potent and academic, rivaling UCLA's Mindfulness Awareness Research Center and Berkeley's Buddhist Institute, Dept. of Buddhist Studies, and Buddhist monastery.

Ah, to be bicoastal! Flying east and west, merging cultures, and watching Woody Allen movies in between would be the best of both worlds. The Midwest is the great divide, as most of Wisdom Quarterly's American readers hail from east of the Mississippi as our editors sit staring at the Pacific from under the Hollywood sign.

• The Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum provides an opportunity for faculty, students, and participants to discuss approaches to Buddhist studies that are as diverse as philology, intellectual history, anthropology, art history, literary studies, and religious studies. In addition to being interdisciplinary, lectures discuss Buddhism within a variety of geographic contexts, including South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. More