Bhagavad Gita Selection Number 285, for Wednesday, April 2, 2008From Chapter XIII: The Yoga of the Division Between the Field and the Knower of the FieldXIII.15. SARVENDRIYAGUNAABHAASAM SARVENDRIYAVIVARJITAM; ASAKTAM SARVABHRICCHAIVA NIRGUNAM GUNABHOKTRU CHA. (Krishna speaking to Arjuna)Shining by the functions of all the senses, yet without thesenses; unattached, yet supporting all; devoid of qualities, yettheir experiencer, XIII.16. BAHIRANTASHCHA BHOOTAANAAM ACHARAM CHARAMEVA CHA; SOOKSHMATWAAT TADAVIJNEYAM DOORASTHAM CHAANTIKE CHA TAT. Without and within (all) beings, the unmoving and also the moving;because of His subtlety, unknowable; and near and far away is That.
///////////////////œHe who knows best knows how little he knowsâ€
//////////////////MWILLETT= have found it. After years of searching in entirely the wrong places I have found the meaning of life.
It was where I should always have looked for it. In that small book with thin pages that I keep by my side, in that wonderful book that I should always treasure. It was there all along.
I long to share it with you.
Here it is, from page 308 of the Collins Little Gem Dictionary, 1985 edition :-
LIFE
noun active principle of existence in animals and plants, animate existence; time of its lasting; history of such existence; way of living; vigour, vivacity. (plural lives)
There it is in all its glory. The meaning of life.
Were you expecting something else? Were you expecting something that makes you feel good? Why? Has there been anything in your life to give you cause to expect there to be more to life than meets the eye?
I am perfectly happy with this as an explanation of the meaning of life. Animate existence. That sums it up splendidly.
To some people though being true is not enough, things have to feel right as well. It is a strange way of looking at the Universe. To me the truth is beautiful, and it feels right because it is the truth. Putting things the other way around is quite simply absurd.
An idea is either right or wrong. If it is wrong that is simply the end of it. It does not matter how many clever people might have believed it in the past, it doesn't matter how good it makes people feel today, it does not matter how much comfort an untruth may give suffering people in the future. Truth is truth, anything else is not.
Our lives are finite. We only have time for a limited number of things. I have heard people say that life is too short to stuff a mushroom or too short to drink poor wine, it is certainly too short to waste believing in things that are wrong.
In 1859 mankind first became aware of the most profound fact of our existence. That revelation was incompatible with all previous ideas about the place of man in the Universe. That was a pity. But lighting every candle on the planet, killing and cremating every goat or flying a billion prayer flags will not change anything. Religions are wrong.
There is no meaning or purpose to your life. To mine, or to the lives of any living thing. We have no spirit. We have no soul. We have no destiny.
We exist because our parents thrived and succeeded in life, at least to the point of our conception or birth. That doesn't seem much of a claim, but that is only one tiny fraction of the story. The same is true of their parents, and theirs, and theirs. Not back to some sheep herder in Babylon 5,000 years ago, but back a million times further, to the first replicating molecules.
That is the meaning of life.
Life is because it can. There is no element of the future in your life. You were formed by the past. Your life-force has survived billions of generations, you may be dead before the day is out. Destiny is the trend that historians view with hindsight.
Look at the lines drawn above. You cannot help your brain from trying to interpret the lines as a shape. But there is more than one shape there, is that bottom right corner at the front of a cube, or at the back? Your brain cannot decide which meaning to give it, and it certainly cannot decide that it has no meaning. Actually it isn't even lines, it is a image drawn from a file containing information about pixels of colour (and most of it is transparent!) Our brains will always find meanings, even where there are none.
life n. (pl. lives)
1 the condition which distinguishes active animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
2 a living things and their activity (insect life; is there life on Mars?).
b human presence or activity (no sign of life).
3 a the period during which life lasts, or the period from birth to the present time or from the present time to death (have done it all my life; will regret it all my life; life membership).
b the duration of a thing's existence or of its ability to function; validity, efficacy, etc. (the battery has a life of two years).
4 a a person's state of existence as a living individual (sacrificed their lives; took many lives).
b a living person (many lives were lost).
5 a an individual's occupation, actions, or fortunes; the manner of one's existence (that would make life easy; start a new life).
b a particular aspect of this (love life; private life).
6 the active part of existence; the business and pleasures of the world (travel is the best way to see life).
7 man's earthly or supposed future existence (this life and the next).
8 a energy, liveliness, animation (full of life; put some life into it!).
b an animating influence (was the life of the party).
9 the living, esp. nude, form or model (taken from the life).
10 a written account of a person's life; a biography.
11 colloq. a sentence of imprisonment for life (they were all serving life).
12 a chance; a fresh start (cats have nine lives; gave the player three lives).
[Old English lif, from Germanic]
//////////////////Good Sex Lasts Minutes, Not Hours
By Mike
Research at Penn State Erie has shown that satisfactory sexual intercourse lasts from 3 to 13 minutes.
In order to determine this, the researchers surveyed 50 full members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, which include psychologists, physicians, social workers, marriage/family therapists, and nurses who have collectively seen thousands of patients over several decades.
///////////////////NUGABE ENDGAME?
///////////////////Wonderful rationalist TV challenge deflates Tantric mystic
Posted by: "Paul Harrison" harrison@dircon.co.uk harrisonpauk
Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:25 pm (PDT)
Hi everyone,I just came across a wonderful new video in which India's top Tantric priest, Surinder Sharma, claims on TV that his spells can kill humans.Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International and of the Indian Rationalist Association,challenges the Tantric to kill him on TV there and then. Naturally, after lots of mumbo-jumbo, he fails to do so. At times Edamaruku must have been wondering whether the Tantric was going to actually physically kill him, with an open knife he waves around and wipes on him.After failing, the Tantric then says that Edamaruku must be protected by powerful gods, Edamaruku explains that he is an atheist.The Tantric then his spells work best at night so Edamaruku says, okay, let's do it tonight.They reconvene after dark to participate in the "Ultimate destruction ritual."The Tantric fails once again.Here's a link to the video in three partshttp://www.rational istinternational .net/Parts two and three contain the attempted killing.There are a few caption pages, I am hoping it can go out with English subtitles.Please visit it and give a rating and pass it on - this should be on mainstream TV across the globe.The Indian Rationalist Association http://www.indianra tionalist. org/do a truly wonderful service, touring India's villages and cities and showing how "Godmen" do their tricks.Best wishes,Paul
//////////////////Do These Scientists Have a Hard-On for Disaster? [The Scientific Activist]
Posted: 01 Apr 2008 06:33 PM CDT
The arguably wacky premise behind a New York Times article this Saturday is that the Large Hadron Collider (LHR)--slated to be the world's most impressive particle accelerator when it's up and running later this year--could inadvertently produce an Earth-destroying black hole. Or, that's at least what a couple of guys in Hawaii think, and they're pursuing a lawsuit in federal court there to stop it. (Note: the LHR is located in CERN... in Switzerland.)
Despite cries of "propaganda" from the plaintiffs, scientists aren't having any of that, and are trying to put all of this to rest with plenty of boring science speak:
The Large Hadron Collider is designed to fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together. Nothing, indeed, will happen in the CERN collider that does not happen 100,000 times a day from cosmic rays in the atmosphere, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
...or it would have been a bunch of boring science speak if the article hadn't originally read "The Large Hardon Collider is designed to fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together."
Hard-ons? Banging? OK, scientists, now you have my attention. So, what is this Large Hardon Collider thing, anyway?
//////////////////..........Beyond that, who knows how serious things might become? Nobody, yet. But that has not prevented a wild boom in speculating about how soon the ‘inevitable’ recession will turn into another great depression. It is an attitude captured by the British TV news reporter who recently informed us that the financial crisis is beyond doubt ‘worse than the 1940s, I mean the 1930s, no the 1920s!’ All that matters, it seems, is that we understand things are worse than ever. The small matter of historical ignorance is no barrier to such ‘hard’ economic reporting today.
Partly this reflects the downbeat miserabilsim that has become the dominant cultural mood of our age. At a time when many have lost faith in the future and feel distanced from the achievements of the past, it has become a knee-jerk reaction for observers to interpet everything as for the worst, in the worst of all possible worlds. We are constantly bombarded with grim messages about the prospects for everything from the planet to our pensions, all of which take the worst-case scenario as the most likely outcome.
//////////////////GUCKING MAN-SPECEIST
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