True Nature of Reality (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Four Elements Meditation

Venerable sir, what is the true nature of existence? American Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi (Chaung Yen Monastery, Carmel, Upstate New York, BAUS.org) explains from a set of ten lectures called The Buddha's Teaching: As It Is, which he recorded while residing at the Washington DC Buddhist Vihara.

• The Buddha’s Teaching As It Is @ The Open Buddhist University
• Material particles in kalapas (atoms) in Buddhism
• Bhikkhu Bodhi; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Love before Zionism: Jew, Muslim agree

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, Neturei Karta (nkusa.com), Dr. Safiyyah Ally (Let the Quran Speak, 10/13/23); Sheldon S., CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"We cry for the Palestinians" | Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss

I stand with Gaza b/c I'm human

(Let the Quran Speak) Oct. 13, 2023: Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss is a Jewish activist and spokesperson for Neturei Karta (nkusa.com), a Jewish group that vocally OPPOSES the state of Israel and Zionism.

Irrespective of whether or not the Palestinian people were affected, or the land were uninhabited, Neturei Karta says the Jewish people did not have a right to self-determination.

Why does Bibi Netanyahu poison peace?

[The corrupt CIA-groomed Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is an arm of the American military doing the CIA's bidding in the Middle East.]

The establishment of a state of Israel prior to the coming of the Messiah, according to the Bible (Torah), is sinful and an act of rebellion against God.

I'm NOT Ultra-Orthodox yet I support Palestine

Rabbi Weiss says Jews yearn to return to the "Promised Land" and pray to God to bring about that end day, but in the meantime, they are tasked with patiently waiting, serving God, being loyal citizens in any country they are living in, and upholding the Torah (Jewish law from Old Testament sources) in every land in which they live.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Safiyyah Ally at Reviving the Islamic Spirit Convention in Toronto, Canada, in December 2022.

• Neturei Karta (nkusa.com)
• Jewish Voice for Peace (jvp.org)

We are here: Jewish Voice for Peace (jvp.org)

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Ram Dass loves you: Be Here Now

Dr. Richard Alpert (RamDass.org); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"No Death No Fear" FREE to stream until June 15, 2018 at ramdass.org.

Science: TIME may just NOT EXIST (audio)

Carlo Rovelli, Ira Flatow (Sci Fri); Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

How do you think about time? Most people experience it as Newton described it -- as something that passes independent of other events, that’s the same for everyone everywhere, and moves in a straight line. Still, others have come to embrace Einstein’s view that time instead forms a matrix with space and acts like a substance in which we are submerged. But author and physicist Carlo Rovelli has an even different approach to time. He’s working on a way to quantify gravity in which time doesn’t exist. He joins Science Friday's Ira Flatow to discuss his theories detailed in his book, The Order of Time. Read excerpt: The Order of Time.

• AUDIO: Benedict Cumberbatch reads The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
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Buddhist "perception" and that dress (video)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Hank Green (SciShow)

(SciShow) The science of the multicolored dress, as explained by science and psychology.

Buddhist "perception" (saññā)

The round of samsara, cycling existence

"I am the color I see this dress," one may feel or think. This self-view would derive from the fact that who we feel we are falls under what the Buddha called the "Five Aggregates."

Ultimately, there is no self. But conventionally most of us most of the time cling to one or more of these five groups as self:

1. form (body)
2. feeling
3. perception
4. mental formations
5. consciousness.

We may say that we have these, or stand apart from these, as they belong to us, or we manifest these, or we experience these coming in from the outside. Whatever the case, many of us actually feel we "are" these:

I am my body, this body. I am this feeling (sensation). I am this perception, and that dress is clearly blue and black and can't be anything else to normal eyes! I am my impulses, volitions, (and/or 49 other discrete mental processes). No, but that's silly, clearly all "I" am is the watcher, the experiencer of experience, the feeler of feelings, perceiver of perceptions, thinker of thoughts and generator of will, which is to say I AM consciousness.

"Self" is like a patchwork of crumbling replaceable parts.

All of these common sense, fundamental, everyday, Cartesian views are in error.

We are caught up in an all-embracing nets of views which will be very difficult to break free from to see things as they really are, which would be enlightenment and a glimpse of nirvana. Escape to reality! But all we do all day long, and most of the night, is try to escape from reality, or at least what we think and fear is reality.

It's like transformational comedian and guru Kyle Cease says, "What is fear? We think a thought, it scares us, and we seem to forget that we created it. Taking it as real, we continue to be afraid of it." That's a very good explanation of what is going on, so good that we bet Eckhart Tolle and Pema Chodron are slapping their foreheads wondering, "Why didn't I say that?"!

 

Size matters but is easy to misperceive. In our minds the Statue of Liberty is bigger than the Buddha. China has the largest Buddha figure at Leshan, the size of mountain. India will have the largest when the Relics Tour completes its goal in Kushinagar. (telegraph.co.uk)

 
The Buddha said many things like that, specifically on one occasion giving the example of a length of rope laying on the road. In dim light one comes upon it and (mis-)perceives it as a "snake," and due to one's knowledge, bias, or opinions of snakes (all those mental formations associated with what we think we recognize or perceive, our prejudiced reactions, the primed pump), one is gripped with fear and dread. This is usually how we treat life, fearing death, fearing life, fearing loss but somehow failing to fear the actually dreadful things like unskillful karma, rebirth, lost wandering in samsara, greed, aversion/fear, delusion, and so on.

What did the Buddha define as "perception"? The greatest German Buddhist scholar-monk Ven. Nyanaponika Thera gives examines the ancient texts:

What color is dress that broke the Internet, what actual, objective color? (m2woman.co.nz)

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"Perception" (saññā) is one of the Five Aggregates (khandha) and one of the seven mental factors (cetasika) that are inseparably bound up with all consciousness (cetanā). 

Perception is sixfold: perceiving (apperception) associated with the five sense-objects and mental-objects. It is the awareness of an object's distinctive marks ("one perceives blue, yellow, etc.," S. XXII, 79).

If, in repeated perception of an object, these marks are recognized, saññā functions as "memory" (see the Higher Teachings, Abhidhamma Studies, by Nyanaponika Thera (BPS), p. 68-forward).

2. Saññā sometimes stands for "consciousness" (vinanna) in its entirety, for example, when describing a very rarefied world beyond the sensual and fine-material worlds known paradoxically as n'eva-saññā-n'āsaññāyatana, "the realm of neither-perception-nor-non-perception." [The paradox is resolved by the Commentaries and is verifiable as a sphere of consciousness, with a corresponding objective space world, that is so refined that perception there can neither quite be defined as "perception" nor, however, can it be called "non-perception" because one is definitely conscious.]

There are countless worlds in 31 categories.

Furthermore, in another world [as described in early Buddhist cosmology, the 31 Planes of Existence, there are beings without perception called] asaññā-satta, "unconscious beings" [classified within the Fine Material Sphere or Rupa Loka.] In both cases, reference is not to "perception" alone, but also to all of the other constituents of consciousness. Compare with the ninth sutra in the Longer Discourses (Digha Nikaya 9).

 

3. Saññā may also refer to the "ideas," which are objects of meditation, for example, in a group of seven ideas of impermanence (anicca-saññā), and so on (AN VII, 46); of ten: impurity (asubha-saññā), etc. (AN X, 56), and another set of ten in AN X. 60; or to wrong notions, as in nicca-, subha-saññā ("the notion of permanence, beauty"), and so on.

While the good monk, the teacher of our teacher (Bhikkhu Bodhi), is definitive here, he goes into the nitty gritty, the Higher Teachings only in Abhidhamma Studies. Why? The Buddha taught in a way we describe as "packed." The the Dharma or Buddha's Teachings, often need to be "unpacked" or accusations of tautology and/or misunderstandings are likely to occur.

Who am I if not my perceptions?

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily... (Valerie_Sauve_in_Vancouver)

 

What color is this dress? Wrong!

The Five Aggregates of Clinging, the elements of separate or conditioned existence, all hang together and with very few exceptions are always coordinated together.

(What exceptions? For example, that there exists an Immaterial Sphere means there is a portion of the universe that is not physical; for another, the realm or plane of unconscious beings means there is a world without perception/consciousness where the beings seem to be asleep but have bodies and other mental functions). Body and mind are interdependent and rarely independent. They are conditioned phenomena.

Native American dress

That is, they are not really solid things but only composite and temporary phenomena. The Five Aggregates are called "aggregates," "heaps," or "groups" not because there are five of them but because there are uncountable numbers of them: countless feelings constantly falling away (a heap of them, nearly identical from one moment to the next, like a roll of film from a movie where each frame looks no different until it is rolled at high speed and then gives the illusion of continuity of motion).

This non-identity means we cannot possibly be our feelings, nor can we be these disintegrating bodies, nor these flickering perceptions, nor these mental formations, such as volition/will, and certainly not the impersonal process of "consciousness" we take so very  personally. But that is the Higher Teaching (Abhidharma), and conventionally, in Buddhist psychology, has explained physical and mental processes in exquisite detail for personal verification.
 

Kalapas and cittas as concepts (nature.com)

Otherwise, it's just theory liable to inspire doubt and argument. There is nothing to argue. Sit. Calm down. Concentrate (collect the mind to the level of absorption), which temporarily purifies it. This will intensify perception. Now look. Look down to the level of particles (kalapas) and mind-moments (cittas), as detailed in Buddhist physics and Buddhist psychology, and note how both in physical terms and more so in perceptual terms, the elements are radically impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal.
 
They are not subject to our "will" but come and go according to their own nature. What is their nature? It has three characteristics. Why would we ever cling to things if we always saw them as they truly are? We would not; the mind/heart would immediately let go. But there's the rub! We do not see things as they really are. We see them almost exactly as they are not: we take for granted that they are, of course, lasting over time, able to satisfy us, and actually what they seem so as to be able to be possessed.

The magician creates reality like the mind.

But really they are more like dreams, like a magician's tricks, like foam bubbles on the Ganges river, like sand particles formed into a body with sand falling away like that scene in "Altered States." Say it with us, say it with the great sages of the past and future, say it with the arhats (the fully enlightened), "Things are not what they seem." Perception is not what it seems. Whatever color that dress is, it really isn't. For an object is a color, we have heard, because it is every color but that color.
 

What color are my Asian eyes? Wrong! Blue.

Light waves getting absorbed fail to absorb that frequency and so reflect it back for us to see/perceive it as "red," "blue," "yellow," or whatever. (Is this certain? We better ask a physicist at one of our regularly scheduled weekly meetings). For many this may be bad news. Ah, the world is not what it seems! But for attentive auditors of the Buddha's Teachings, it is just possible to see an escape, liberation, emancipation, a means of waking up from this dream-like state of ignorance. Enlightenment and nirvana are possible...in this very life.

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A Year to Live (Dharma Punx course)

Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Mary Stancavage, Shannon Fowler (AgainstTheStream)

REVIEW: A Year To Live (sevenponds)

Ready to die? What if you only had a year to live out the rest of your life? What would you do? What would you avoid doing?

This year-long group, based on the book by the Buddhist author Stephen Levine, is a spiritual practice of  waking up to the life we are living by facing death rather than habitually fearing and avoiding the subject.

 

We will LIVE the next year as though it were our last. Meeting monthly, we will look back at our lives exploring joys, fears, regrets, and hopes. Then we will look forward to examine our relationships to death and dying.

 

A profound existence (DSSF/flickr)

Can we do what needs to be done and die with nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone, no regrets? Ultimately, this is a practice in forgiveness, gratitude, letting go, and living now!

 

We will utilize the book A Year to Live as a guide and other meditations, readings, optional field trips and practices to support your journey. Although this is a group practice, it is also very personal and powerful.

 

"It was one of the best practices I have ever done -- a real turning point in my spiritual life."

-Noah Levine (Dharma Punx founder and son of author Stephen Levine)

• INFO: class, dates, registration
• Against the Stream: 1001a Colorado Ave.
• Santa Monica, CA 90401 (323) 665-4300

To Vaccha on Fire (sutra)

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly translation (Aggi Vacchagotta Sutra, MN 72)

Buddha as modern museum art, Singapore (Angloitalianfollowus/flickr.com)

 

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Buddha was staying in Savatthi, at Jeta's Grove, in Anathapindika's park. 

 

Then the wanderer Vacchagotta came, exchanged courtesies, sat respectfully to one side, and asked:

1. "How is it, Master Gautama, does Master Gautama hold the view: 'The cosmos is eternal; only this is true, anything else false'?"
 

Composite art echoes doctrine of Dependent Origination

The Buddha answered: "...No."

[In sutras, which were originally memorized by making them into chants, there is a great deal of repetition: Each answer repeats the question in its entirety. While this is an excellent device to aid chanters, memorizers, and listeners, it is needlessly cumbersome and may even be misleading to readers. Nor is it likely that it would have been spoken this way in the first place.]

2. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'The cosmos is not eternal; only this is true, anything else false'?" "...No."
 
3. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'The cosmos is finite...'?" "...No."
 
4. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'The cosmos is infinite...'?" "...No."
 
5. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'The self [atta/atman, essence, ego, soul, or animating principle] and the body are the same...'?" "...No."
 
6. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'The self is one thing and the body another...'?" "...No."
 
7. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'After death the Wayfarer [Tathagata, one who like you has attained the goal you teach in your Doctrine and Discipline] exists...'?" "...No."
 
8. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'After death the Wayfarer does not exist...'?" "...No."
 
9. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'After death the Wayfarer both exists and does not exist...'?" "...No."
 
10. "Then does Master Gautama hold the view: 'After death the Wayfarer neither exists nor does not exist...'?" "...No."

"How is it, Master Gautama, that when Master Gautama is asked if he holds the view 'The cosmos is eternal...' ... 'After death the Wayfarer neither exists nor does not exist; only this is true, anything else false,' he answers '...No' in each case?"

 "Seeing what drawback does Master Gautama entirely shrink away from each and every one of these ten positions?" 

A Thicket of Views

"Vaccha, the position 'The cosmos is eternal' is a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing [eel-wriggling] of views, a fetter [bond] of views. It is accompanied by dissatisfaction, distress, despair, and fever. It does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, to calm, direct knowledge, full enlightenment, or nirvana.

"The position 'The cosmos is not eternal' is a thicket of views... [and so on for each of the ten views].
 
"Vaccha, the position 'After death the Wayfarer neither exists nor does not exist' is a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by dissatisfaction, distress, despair, and fever, and it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, to calm, direct knowledge, full enlightenment, or nirvana."
 

"Does Master Gautama have any position at all?"
 

"A 'position,' Vaccha, is something that the Wayfarer has done away with. What the Wayfarer sees is this: 
 
"'Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is perception... such are formations... such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance.' Because of this, I say: The Wayfarer -- with the ending, extinguishing, cessation, renunciation, and abandoning of all views, all speculations, all I-making and mine-making and obsession with conceit -- is freed through the abandoning of clinging."

"But, Master Gautama, the ascetic whose mind/heart is thus released, where does one reappear?"
 
"'Reappear,' Vaccha, does not apply."
 

"In that case, Master Gautama, one does not reappear."

"'Does not reappear,' Vaccha, does not apply."
 

"...Both does and does not reappear."
 

"...Does not apply."
 

"...Neither does nor does not reappear."

"...Does not apply."
 
"How is it, Master Gautama, when Master Gautama is asked if the ascetic reappears... does not reappear... both does and does not reappear... neither does nor does not reappear, he says, '[This]  does not apply' in each case?

"At this point, Master Gautama, I am baffled and confused. The small amount of clarity from our earlier conversation goes out now."

"Of course you are baffled, Vaccha. Of course you are confused. Deep, Vaccha, is this Dharma [this Doctrine concerning existential phenomena like the Five Aggregates, which leads to enlightenment and complete freedom], hard to see, hard to realize, tranquil, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise.
  

"For those of other teachings, other disciplines, other practices, other aims, other teachers, it is difficult to know-and-see. Such being the case, permit me to question you. Answer as you see fit. 

"How do you see this, Vaccha: If a fire were burning in front of you, would you know, 'This fire is burning in front of me'?"
 
[Vaccha repeats the question then answers] "...Yes."
 
"Now suppose someone were to ask you, Vaccha, 'This fire burning in front of you, dependent on what is it burning?' So asked, how would you answer?"

"...I would reply, 'This fire burning in front of me is burning dependent on grass and wood as its sustenance.'" 

"Vaccha, if the fire burning in front of you were to go out, would you know, 'This fire burning in front of me has gone out'?" "...Yes."

Which way did the flame go? (yaymicro)

"Now suppose someone were to ask you, 'This fire that has gone out in front of you, which direction has it gone? East? West? North? South?' So asked, Vaccha, how would you answer?" 

"That does not apply, Master Gautama. Any fire burning dependent on and sustained by grass and wood, being unnourished -- from having consumed its fuel and not being offered more fuel -- is simply classified as 'gone out.'" 
 
"Even so, Vaccha, any physical form used to describe the Wayfarer, that has the Wayfarer abandoned, its root destroyed, like an uprooted palm tree, deprived of the causes-and-conditions of existence, is not destined for future arising [reappearing].

"Freed from the classification of form, Vaccha, the Wayfarer is deep, unbound, hard to fathom, like the sea. 'Reappears' does not apply. 'Does not reappear' does not apply. 'Both does and does not reappear' does not apply. 'Neither reappears nor does not reappear' does not apply.

"Any feeling... Any perception... Any formation...
 
"Any consciousness [these are the Five Aggregates of  Existence and Clinging] by which one describing the Wayfarer would describe him, that has the Wayfarer abandoned, its root destroyed, like an uprooted palm tree, deprived of the causes-and-conditions of existence, not destined for future arising. 

 
"Freed from the classification of consciousness, Vaccha, the Wayfarer is deep, unbounded, hard to fathom, like the sea. 'Reappears' does not apply. 'Does not reappear' does not apply. 'Both does and does not reappear' does not apply. 'Neither reappears nor does not reappear' does not apply."

Reaction

Wandering Indian ascetic (saiva tantra)

When this was said, the wanderer Vacchagotta said to the Buddha: 
 
"Master Gautama, it is as if there were a great sal tree not far from a village or town, and its branches and leaves were stripped away, its bark stripped away, its sapwood stripped away, so that -- divested of branches, leaves, bark, and sapwood -- it stood as pure heartwood. In just the same way, Master Gautama's words are freed of branches, leaves, bark, and sapwood and stand as pure heartwood.
 
"Excellent, Master Gautama, excellent! It is as if one were to set upright what was overturned, to reveal what was hidden, to show the way to one who was lost, or were to carry a lamp into the dark so that those with eyes could see what was there. In just the same way has Master Gautama -- through many lines of reasoning -- clarified the Dharma. I go to [the Buddha] for guidance, to the Dharma for guidance, and to the [enlightened] Sangha for guidance. May Master Gautama remember me as a lay follower who has gone to him for guidance from this day forward."

We Are All One... or are we? (video)

What does it mean to say "We are all one"? A very spiritual girl I knew scoffed at the notion. Even after becoming an expert Buddhist meditator, she did not speak of nonduality, Oneness, or unity. She could see through the delusion of separation, yet she would not make the claim of all being one. She asked, "Do you think we're all one? What does that even mean?"

"Of course," I answered emphatically. "It's not even that hard to understand." One needn't be St. Francis or Thich Nhat Hanh (or "Nitch Natch Hans Christian Anderson" as we would refer to him, never being able to get our Vietnamese or Thai lessons to stick) to understand the unity (nonduality) concept.

It was not by direct mystical experience that I understood it. But there's almost no one I know who hasn't had intimations of sensing how we are all interconnected.

Official trailer for Tom Shadyac's film, "I AM" now in theaters: iamthedoc.com

• On a subatomic level, we're all constantly exchanging ions (and not just the living beings, but rocks, streams, blades of grass...unseen emanations of energy).
• On a social level, we're all going through the same thing -- even as we experience it differently according to our attention, intention, and habitual reaction patterns).
• On a physiological level, we are all more or less the same: subject to the same follies, mortal, morbid (when we get a boo boo, we instinctively exclaim ouch).
• On a psychological level, we have the same neurotic tendencies and stumble into the same thought traps.
• On an emotional level, we can empathize with one another (by force of our mirror neurons being triggered before we're even consciously aware of it).
• On a biological level, we're all built up out of DNA, cellular material, the Four Great Elements, subatomic particles, properties, name-and-form (nama-rupa)
• On a spiritual level, we all have the same potential (enlightenment, buddhahood, basic goodness, Buddha Nature, humanity, self-actualization, altruism)

It might be better to ask, In what way are we actually different? Take a set of building blocks and build something. Everything tangible is the same. Everything intangible (the arrangement of all the tangible things) is within the potential of others.

When we're in love, we love connecting, merging, losing our burdensome ego (our sense of separateness or isolation). But even when we hate someone or something, we are bonding with it by our attention/intention, and so we run into it again and again. How great, then, to cleanse the heart of bias and partiality and accept everything with the same equanimity and peace of mind that still allows us to act and respond appropriately without getting snared and entangled.

Our main separation -- and our main problem -- is the delusion that we are apart, independent actors, isolated, alone, abandoned, forgotten, or left behind. We are not.

We are united (whether we like it or not at any given moment), we are together, we are in the same boat (Earth as our own Easter Island, and we all know what happened there -- and if not, we can all get on the same Network and find out), we are inter-dependent, we are All One in this sense and probably many others.

And it is possible to glimpse in a mystical/shamanic/DMT (the spirit molecule)-fueled state that this is literally true at all times and in all situations even though we now look back and feel we were alone a lot of the time. We were never alone. She agreed.

It's easy to forget this growing up in our competitive society watching "Survivor" and wondering why Donald Trump seems to get off firing people and feeding a scarcity mentality. But even Christians have an easy reference to this universal truth in theistic terms: There's that poster in the bathrooms of footprints in the sand; when we felt most alone and look back to prove it, we were actually being carried.

Discovery could explain why we exist

Discovery could explain why we exist

New results from an experiment may show how matter exists in the universe. "Many of us felt goose bumps."

• Matter vs. Antimatter
• New exploding star type
• Spacewalk "superhero"

Einstein and Tagore

SchoolofWisdom.com

Famed scientist Albert Einstein and legendary mystic Rabindranath Tagore. They met through a common friend, Dr. Mendel. Tagore visited Einstein at his residence at Kaputh in the suburbs of Berlin on July 14, 1930. Einstein returned the call and visited Tagore at the Mendel home. Both conversations were recorded and this photograph was taken. The July 14 conversation, originally published in The Religion of Man (George, Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, Appendix II, pp. 222-225) is reproduced here.

Albert Einstein once said: "Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal god, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual; and it is based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

• Einstein on Buddhism: SciForums, TriCycle

Furthermore, according to Einstein, "If this being (God) is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also his work; how it is possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an Almighty Being?

"In giving out punishments and rewards, He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to him?" Buddhism is relevant to our everyday lives.

"Einstein's E=MC2 Stands the Tests of New Times"

Albert Einstein's most famous equation, expressing the relationship between mass and energy, passes the best test of accuracy scientists have yet devised, according to a report in the journal Nature (2006).

E=MC2 was confirmed in two tests according to the report. Measured quantities of energy came within 0.00004% of the amounts predicted by Einstein. The energy in any object can be quantified by multiplying its mass by the square of the speed of light, according to the equation. The formula, part of the theory of special relativity that Einstein published in 1905, shows that matter and energy are equivalent.

"The pile of bones left by one person
who has alone one aeon (kalpa) lived,
would make a mountain's height --

So said the mighty seer" (Itivuttaka)

CONVERSATION

(July 14, 1930)

TAGORE: I was discussing with Dr. Mendel today the new mathematical discoveries which tell us that in the realm of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character.

EINSTEIN: The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say good-bye to causality.

TAGORE: Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organized universe.

EINSTEIN: One tries to understand in the higher plane how the order is. The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence, but in the minute elements this order is not perceptible.

TAGORE: Thus duality is in the depths of existence, the contradiction of free impulse and the directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly scheme of things.

EINSTEIN: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds look as one from a distance, but if you see them nearby, they show themselves as disorderly drops of water.

TAGORE: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?

EINSTEIN: Even the elements are not without statistical order; elements of radium will always maintain their specific order, now and ever onward, just as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the elements.

TAGORE: Otherwise, the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living.

EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.

EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition in music to guide the people's mind. In Europe, music has come too far away from popular art and popular feeling and has become something like a secret art with conventions and traditions of its own.

TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated music. In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret.

EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.

EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?

TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is fixed. In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but not with melody.

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?

TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the imposition of harmony?

EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony swallows up the melody altogether.

TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours. Japanese music also seems to be so.

TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that it is great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its composition. Our own music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical appeal. European music is epic in character; it has a broad background and is Gothic in its structure.

EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer, we are so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance and dissonance is natural, or a convention which we accept.

TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.

EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.

TAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some classical music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the piece.

EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.

• Excerpted from: A Tagore Reader (edited by Amiya Chakravarty)