Andrew Furst's Blog, page 51

Close To Nature – Tiny Drops (Photography)

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Horrible plantlighted branchesSeed pod

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Making a Waterfall Meditation Video – Soundtracks

This is the fourth of several articles on the topic of making waterfall meditations.I’ve been traveling around New England for several years now shooting video of waterfalls for my meditation series.

In my previous articles I talked about finding the waterfalls, the photo equipment, and the audio & video editors I use. This article talks about where I find the soundtrack music I use.

Soundtrack Music

. The Free Music Archive is my go to site for soundtrack music available with creative commons licensing. The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet. It was launched in 2009.

Some of my favorite artists at FMA are:

Kai Engel
Chris Zabriskie
Josh_Woodward
Fabrizio Paterlini
Kevin MacLeod
Gillicuddy
Yusuke Tsutsumi

If you use any of this music, please make sure you adhere to the license.  Most of them simply ask for attribution. I also contribute to artists I use frequently.

Other Articles

This is the fourth of several articles on making waterfall meditation videos.  Stay tuned for more

Finding Waterfalls
Photo Equipment
Audio & Video Editors

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Where Do Mind and Matter Come From? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 9 minute(s)

Question: What Is The Ground From Which Mind and Matter Come?

Response: This is a pretty rich and potentially confusing question. The question and the answer requires knowledge of the particularly Buddhist concepts being bantered around. Words like ground and mind have distinct meanings in Buddhism and they are in a certain context.

I think we should strip away a lot of the fancy dressing and talk about this in simpler terms. To that end I’ll rephrase the question:

Where do mind and matter come from?

I’ll also place a constraint around my answer. I’ll pass on the dualism.

Despite constraining myself to avoid dualism, I will approach this from two different perspectives. First there is the individual’s experience and second is the scientific and historical record.

From an individual’s perspective everything we experience happens behind the windows of perception. We can make inferences about the so-called “real world”, some better than others. But all of this is happening in mind. To be concrete about this, it all happens between the nerves, the brain, and something called consciousness.

Everything we experience happens behind the windows of perception
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I want to pause here and stress a point about the insights that meditation can and can’t offer.  Meditation can give you a mature understanding of the nature of our thoughts and our reactions to them. This all happens in consciousness and these insights are life changing. But, meditation cannot give you any insight into the inner workings of the brain.

Meditation cannot give you any insight into the inner workings of the brain.
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Introspection cannot observe the mechanical brain, the nervous system, or its complex neurochemical machinery. Everything we’ve learned about these processes has been through medical research and artificial intelligence. There are also pretty good models of how consciousness works as a function of these physical mechanisms.

So when we wax philosophical about the ground of mind and matter, we are speaking at the level of the individual and our perceptions.  What constitutes mind and matter to our conscious selves is a very abstract thing and it guides to our thinking relationship to the world.  These observations have real and important effects on how we go about carrying out our relationships, worship, and so on.

Science – the method of forming hypothesis, making observations that confirm or reject them, and then adjusting – offers another perspective. The fields of neurology, cognitive sciences, and artificial intelligence have converged to offer some pretty reliable models about how the brain works to oversee the body and provide neat features like memory and consciousness.

These materialist models offer a compelling link between matter and mind, without relying on dualistic speculation.  These models are also pretty consistent and predictive.  So much so that in the mere 60 years since Alan Turing created his code breaking device – in many ways the first computer – we are witness to bots on Twitter and robots that can learn, think, and act like humans.

in the mere 60 years since Alan Turing created his computer ...robots can learn, think, and act like…
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To answer the question in two parts, science tells us that mind comes out of matter. The story of matter is an historical one leading back to the big bang, by way of planets, stars, and a singularity.

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio

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Into What – Verse Us (Poems by Me)

A Ten Word Story

Verse Us - Poems I write: haiku, senryu, mesostics, free verse, random word constructions, I might even use rhyme or meter once and a while.

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Excess? – Say What?

Say What?  is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip. 

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Do We Just Stop Existing After Death? – Modern Koans

Question: I have a hard time comprehending impermanence. I can’t believe that we just stop existing after death?

My response: I think you’re thinking about it too hard. You’re body and your brain are perfectly comfortable with impermanence. Everything changes. You witness dying all the time. Bugs, trees, family, roadkill, etc.

If you’re wondering if something about a person continues on after death, there is no experiment to be done to clarify. Actually, your question offers the answer in the colloquialism you used. If you dig further, the phrase “it doesn’t make sense” is telling. The question goes beyond the boundaries of what your senses can perceive. We are impotent in these circumstances.

I think you’ll have to be content with incomprehension on this front. I’d suggest something even better. Put it out of your mind. The answer to the question will constantly elude you, and so the answer can have no bearing on your life. Pascal offered a solution to this quandary, be good for goodness sake.

What do you think?  Is there something that continues on after death?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton

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The Problems of Knowledge? – Quotes

Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.

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Knowledge

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Wahconah Falls – A Two Minute Meditation

This is the second from a series of waterfall shoots I made the first weekend in March. This stop was Wahconah Falls. Third on my trip.

One of the things that I played with over the weekend was my new Olloclip telephoto lens. It gives me the chance to get a little closer with better quality.  In my opinion, not bad for $99.

The falls are named from a young girl of legend whose fate was decided at these falls.  Wahconah was to be married to one of two men, depending on the course of a canoe set adrift at the falls.  One course would be discerned as the Great Spirit’s election for her to marry an elderly Mohawk and the other a young noble soldier of King Philip.

Choices are funny things.  Our sense of free will and autonomy drive us to make choices carefully. But what control have we over the outcomes of our choices?  No more important to our modern sensibilities is our choice of a mate.  Marrying for love is something that most of us in the west intuit as a natural right. I’m very much in that camp. But it’s not hard to imagine many of the practical benefits of having someone help you decide.

As with everything there is a balance.  With decision making we balance our knowledge, experience, and preferences with the unpredictable nature of karma. Often times the decisions are much less important than how we decide to live with them.

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Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation.  Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute.

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These videos are produced for those of us who spend an inordinately large amount of time in the cyber-world.  They are not a substitute for unplugging from your devices and taking a stroll near trees, water, or a patch of unkempt grass.  Getting out into the world - touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing nature is the best way to reconnect with our prime purpose.  

What is our prime purpose? We are feeling and sensing machines.  We are the universe looking back on itself. We are witness to the wonders and dangers of living in this corner of the cosmos.  We are the seekers looking for connection a little further beyond yesterday's borders and boundaries.

But sitting and staring at the screen robs us of the sustenance that we rely upon for wonder and sanity.  These videos are an opportunity to bring the sensations of nature to you, while you're in the cyber-world. Its an opportunity to relax your gaze, resettle your posture,  and regain some depth in your breath.  Listen and watch the video and allow your self to open up and recharge.

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Nature- Tiny Drops (Photography)

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firebushLighted Tree at Salsseed pad whole

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What #BlackLivesMatter Needs to Succeed

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There have been some strong accusations leveled at #BlackLivesMatter in the last few days. Sheriff David Clarke interview on CNN epitomizes these criticisms. He calls it a hateful ideology that has fueled the rage against the American cop.

I struggle on how to unpack this perspective. Of course part of the problem is that movements rarely deliver a consistent and clear message.  With the internet as a microphone, well-meaning but inarticulate people (including many public leaders) provide fodder for those trying to discredit the movement.  You can find examples of #blacklivesmatter and #bluelivesmatter advocates who are blatant racist. You can find examples of people on both sides of the argument advocating violence.  If we can’t filter these people out as being just plain wrong, then we’ll see no resolution soon.

There was a brief period of sanity and unity after the Dallas shootings. We saw a glimmer of clarity from both sides and some common ground.  The message I saw floating to the top is the common sense notion that #blacklivesmatter (and this has seemed obvious to me for some time) does not mean blue lives don’t matter.

#BlackCrimeMatters

Sheriff Clarke has pointed to the fact that black crime is worse than police violence. He argues that this undermines the validity of #blacklivesmatter.  It is true that blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of white victims killed by whites, and 93% of black victims killed by blacks..

I think this data is also directly challenging the notion that black people aren’t more violent.  The data shows that the offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites. I think the nuance #BlackLivesMatter is offering is that black people aren’t inherently violent and that circumstances like poverty are the cause, That’s a complaint, not a solution.  But the point is not lost on me that if justice is not available to some black communities, there is room for improvement in how the system works.

If #blacklivesmatter were to say that black crime wasn’t a concern , I would not take them seriously.
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Move Beyond The Hype

I guess I would say this.  If someone from the #blacklivesmatter group were to say that black on black crime wasn’t a concern for their movement, I would not take them seriously. A big part of the problem lies in there. There should be accountability. But, the same goes for anyone who interprets the phrase #blacklivesmatter to mean that cop lives don’t matter, white lives don’t matter, or to further extend the absurdity that adorable little weepy-eyed orphan children’s lives don’t matter. They cannot be taken seriously either.  They are not part of the conversation.

It’s important to note that I’m not just leveling accusations at the #bluelivesmatter group. If #blacklivesmatter activist think that their only problem is cops, they are scapegoating, and perpetuating the problem. But if those arguing against #blacklivesmatter because they police violence is not a problem, then they are also mistaken.

The powers that be must demonstrate that the justice system is blind to color
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How To Suceed

To me, it’s pretty obvious that there are several issues the #blacklivesmatter movement should be addressing to be credible.  Two of them have to be in partnership with the justice system.

First and foremost, Black Crime – If we are living in Dr. King’s dream, then the content of the black community’s character is in question here. There is much violence there. It must be addressed. To their credit, they are touting organizations like Violence Interrupters, but I think that it needs to be more at the forefront of the message.
Second, Police Violence – this is still a problem which plays in to the next one.
Injustice – this has always been a slow barrier to come down. Providing a fair judicial system is probably the only way that this country can effectively support the black community. The powers that be must demonstrate that the justice system is blind to color.  Let’s not forget that this has only recently come to fruition, after a 400 year battle for civil rights. It’s ironic to note, that despite coming so far, the presidential candidate for the Party of Lincoln has been described as someone who shares values with the KKK.

There’s a problem here folks.  Don’t deny it, don’t distract from it.  Get together and do your part.

 Wikipedia

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton

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