The perfect quote

The tide will turn

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Happiness doesn't actually exist. And neither does nirvana. They are both red herrings. 

Alan Watts defines zen

Zen has been summed up in four statements:

- a direct transmission outside scriptures and apart from tradition

- no dependence on words and letters

- direct pointing to the human mind

- and seeing into one's own nature and becoming Buddha, that is, becoming enlightened - awakened - from the normal hypnosis under which almost all of us go round like somnambules

Comedy is enlightening

Because it shows us nothing is sacred

All the religion you need

Is yin/yang for perspective and the golden rule for morals.

And because it's so important i will repeat it explicitly - don't force your ideologies onto others.

Nondual awarness put in simple terms

We classify other animals and living beings as nature, acting as if we ourselves are not part of it. Then we pose the question ‘How should we deal with Nature?’ We should deal with nature the way we should deal with ourselves! We should not harm ourselves; we should not harm nature... Human beings and nature are inseparable.

-- Thích Nhất Hạnh

Morality has evolutionary benefits

At the personal level having morals constrains the ego and results in group benefit by facilitating cooperation. Of course like everything else morals are relative.

Thus Spake Zarathustra

"On my honour, friend," Zarathustra answered, "what thou speakest of doth not exist: there is no devil nor hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: henceforward fear nothing."

The man looked up suspiciously : "If thou speakest truth," he said, "losing my life I lose nothing. Then I am not much more than an animal which by means of blows and titbits hath been taught to dance."

"In the absolute we are forgiven, in the relative we are responsible"

Everything i do matters and does not matter simultaneously. It matters because everything in the universe is interconnected. It doesn't matter because the universe itself doesn't matter.

The entire sequence of events starting with the beginning of the universe culminated in me writing these words now. That is my fundamental nature - a manifestation of the universe.

My morals, like everything else, are dictated at least by the sum of all my experiences.

Does it matter if i chose to be good or bad?

Ancestors

There is no separate me to whom life happens, i am life happening.

Everything is interconnected and interdependent, nothing exists by itself.

Reincarnation, or perhaps a better word would be recycling, is real.

It's easy to understand these things now with our knowledge of physics, thermodynamics, psychology but to arrive at these conclusions thousands of years ago is simply amazing.

The funny thing about ego

The shattering of the ego - the understanding that i am truly unimportant, nothing special, no different than anyone or anything else, seeing through the illusion that there is no distinct i and realizing i am the universe - should automatically result in lack of all desires, including the desire to live because fear of death is ego.

Why doesn't it then?

The simple answer is that i have not yet reached the point i'm describing above. But if self preservation is directly proportionate with the size of the ego, why should i even want to?

On a more abstract level, the ego is as natural as anything else, so all the points of view about it are equally valid, be that egofullness or egolessness and anything in between. What is then the buddhist middle way good for i wonder? Is it simply follow the "everything in moderation" rule of thumb? But to what end? To live a mediocre life for as long as possible? Both egofull and egoless men die and nothing really matters in the end but isn't one more fun than the other? Fun being pleasure*, isn't hedonism the only thing i'm really doing in this life?

* by pleasure i mean any kind of self-satisfaction (and not just immediate), no matter how altruistic or noble the actions they still ultimately give me pleasure thus feeding my ego (even suffering can fit in this category like if by it you can save someone's life or if you sacrifice yourself for gains in the future)

Compassion is

the extension of your nervous system to things outside your body

Universal Truth?

What if there is no such thing as truth (in science) much less universal truth (in philosophy)? For one, it would render all religious pursuits worthless. For another it would challenge us to not think in absolutes anymore.

Good morals

I don't have to figure out what a good moral code is myself. I can use humanity's cumulative wisdom gathered over millennia.

If you can only see 14 rocks

The famous Ryoanji temple in Kyoto has 15 stones in its rock garden that are arranged such that you can only see 14 of them from any given angle. That is to remind us that one mind can never understand everything.

One mind cannot understand everything, including the fact that it cannot understand everything. A long time ago i asked myself how am i supposed to understand this world with imperfect senses. There is no such thing as absolute understanding, something i've mistakenly thought of as enlightenment. All i can hope for is to do my best with the limited information i have. 

The "why" is not important. The "how" might be.

One answer to all our questions

Why do we think there is only one answer to all our questions? Only one correct religion? Only one correct meaning of life? Each of us need to find our own answers and meanings and ways. Enlightenment, materialism, they're all fine choices, just don't impose yours onto others.

Karma and Reincarnation

Karma is nothing but the phenomenon of cause and effect and reincarnation is just the laws of conservation of matter and energy.

This too shall pass

Persian: این نیز بگذرد‎
Translit: īn nīz bogzarad

Now

Look even a moment into the future and you'll miss the present. Sorry Monica...

Lonely

I've known the theory of this for a long time but only now i'm coming to truly feel it. Friends is what's most important. Having somebody to share your experiences and life with. I'm realizing that is what i'm lacking most in my life - having an intimate group of friends. I've had that in the past and i miss it so much...

Why is it so hard for me to make new friends? Why is it hard to keep the current ones?

How to enjoy life and have fun?

It's becoming apparent once again that i am lacking the critical skill of being able to simply have fun. To enjoy life. Maybe i missed class that day, or maybe i'm lacking that organ. Can it be learned i wonder...

Fuck you love

FUCK. YOU.

Progress

This nostalgic tendency to think that things were better in the past and that everything is devolving as we go on is a very counterproductive idea. Humanity as a species is most evolved right at this moment in our history. A corollary to that is that things are best at this exact moment and will only get better in the future. We needed a lot of time to sort society out in a way that was conducive to the scientific process, the industrial revolution, the information age through which we're currently living. We are at our best now, despite any one else's claims (self, religious people, old people, republicans, etc.)

"Better" of course is a very interesting thing to define ...

Spontaneous symmetry breaking

Perfect beauty is destined to fall apart. That is essentially what the spontaneous symmetry breaking theory of physicist Yoichiro Nambu tells us. The world would not have mass if it were perfectly symmetrical (that's how it was in the beginning when the big bang happened) and only by breaking that constraint (thanks to the Higgs boson) it gives rise to existence.

We live in an age where physics is intersecting philosophy. Those revelations that thinkers, philosophers and enlightened people knew about for millennia, the unifying field that connects everything. The fact that there's is no such thing as an isolated event, the realization that time and space are in fact the same thing, egolessness and the lack of self-importance. All that was discovered by physics and science in general when we started looking at the smaller (bacteria, molecules, atoms, elementary particles, quantum physics) and bigger (the solar system, our galaxy and the universe) scales.

Seeking answers is perhaps the greatest virtue humanity possesses.