A Dream Within a Dream

The Philosophers Walk in Kyoto Japan

I have so much to say about this little span of time in my life but let me see if I can titrate it down a bit. About travel: I have mixed feelings about travel when it comes to questing for the meaning of life and I have talked about this before. First off, it is difficult to get philosophical when you travel - you are just not in the right frame of mind (quiet) There is just too much to absorb and too much new going on. Second, I do believe that travel can help with the quest to find the meaning of life but only after you get back home and take time to contemplate what you saw, learned and discovered.

Anyhoo about the actual philopher's walk in Kyoto:

I spent a few minutes being smug because it was just a bunch of tourists all being smug at how smart they are. We all kept glancing at each other trying to show how smart we were to be philosophising about the meaning of life. I guess I am just human like everybody else :) Anyway, I took my time and walked the path and earnestly tried to contemplate the meaning of it all. I came up with no reveleations but I did take this one little video... hmm... makes you wonder.

About the Philosphers Walk:It was a daily path along a small canal that the philospher Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) would walk and contemplate philosphical things. He was a professor at Kyoto University. His work was predominanlty involved in a merging of Eastern and Western philosophies. Its a beautiful walk and the canal is lined with Cherry blossoms that bloom in Mid April. They say that when these cherry blossoms bloom this is quite possibly the most beautiful spot in all of Japan.

Triangulating on the elusive woodpecker

Off in the distance i heard the striking of a woodpecker. And the thing about this is that there really was no way for me to find out exactly where it was without moving. From a single perspective it is not possible to find it.

My ears can give me a rough line to it but depth is another issue.

So, to find the woodpecker I had to move to another spot so I could "triangulate" on it and get a better sense of where it was.

Is this the same thing with the meaning of life? Is it not possible to find the elusive hammering of an answer from only one perspective?

This particular riddle might be perfectly fine with me - I have no problem seeking out, finding, observing and feeling from as many perspectives it takes but..... What if all of these perspectives, in this current life as I know it are actually just one perspective?

This leads us to think that the only way to get another perspective is to cross that cloudy veil into the next. (If there even is a "next"). Hmm... For that matter what if I am the woodpecker?

Should I stay or Should I go?

Should I Stay Or Should I Go is the title for an old song by the Clash and it's fitting for what I want to talk about in this post.

It is a neverending question that spins around philosophers. Do you search for the meaning of life within yourself or do you travel and quest to find it? Of course it seems to me that both are necessary. And Paolo Coelho, in his famous book The Alchemist he lays out an excellent answer to this question. And I won't tell you about what he says or how he says it just in case you want to read the book and discover for yourself.

But I want to propose that both are absolutely necessary and here are my arguments for the case.

What would you be like if you were born in a cardboard box? ( The Box Man: A Novel )
And your whole life you lived in this box? The sum total of your experience would be what you experienced within the four cardboard walls. What would your internal dialogue be like? What information had you gathered to help you understand yourself and the world? For one thing the world is, to your experience very simple and small, corrugated and smelling of processed paper.

So, this is a good argument for adventuring out into the world and gathering data and experiences, of which in this world, there is an abundance. And this experiencing isn't just hedonistic. They are important because they enrich you and make you more capable.

But it goes beyond this. Because I believe there are places in the world that are something more than they appear to be. There are places in this world where the wall between what is, and what appears to be, is very thin. The ancient Celts had a name for places like this. They called them thin places.

So, you need both the internal and the external, and the two have to compliment and help each other. You can't just sit in one place and discover the truth and you can't just adventure out looking for the truth. This is the truth.

About Thin Places

I have been working on my third novel for quite a while now and it will be finished soon, the pieces are falling together. But, what I want to say is that well before I heard about thin places A portion of my novel takes place in this large stone structure that juts up into the air. At the top of this structure is a monastery. In the novel I call it Speyer after a town in Germany.

The thing about this place is that I thought I created it on my own. And its a funny thing how just a few days ago I discovered a thin place called Skellig Michael in Ireland. And it has me wondering, because I am Irish, if there is something more to what I have written down in my novel. Is it just a coincidence that I "created" my own Skellig Michael? Or have I been there before?

Anyway, It is now on my list of places to visit.

Being Michael Crichton

There is this great little indy film called "Being John Malkovich". It is a wonderful, quirky and insightful movie where the characters actually find a doorway right into John Malkovich's head. I read somewhere that they were making the movie and when John Malkovich heard about it he volunteered to join in the production. Anyway its a great movie.

But, I am envisioning a movie called "Being Michael Crichton". This comes about because of his recent battle and death to cancer. He was quite an amazing man who did a lot of fantastic things including directing movies, writing blockbuster books and graduating from Harvard as a medical doctor. He had the curiosity to deeply look into many things and the courage to say and do what he believed was right.

I always felt a bit of a kinship with him, I am not sure why, but since I read "The Andromeda Strain" at some point in the early seventies. He went on to pen such amazing works as Jurassic Park.

Now to the point:

Of all the things he has done and written there is one, in my mind, that stands above everything else. It is one of his lesser known books called "Travels". It is a very personal account about his life and his travels in this world in exploration of the external world and in an attempt to uncover the mystery or possibility of another world. Its a remarkable book and I believe it is the only one where we get a real peek at Michael. He was a very private person when it came to his own life.

Anyway, this book had a profound effect on me and I am going to re-read it to see what further insights I can gain from him and his quest to find an answer.

Battling the inevitability of my eyes

When I got to a certain age I started having a little bit of trouble with my vision. I am a heavy reader and this was quite a challenge for me. Right around the time my vision started giving me trouble two people I know, who are the same age as me also started having trouble with their vision. We all ended up getting glasses around the same time.

What's my point here?

Well, this little coincidence got me thinking. Is something going on here? Or is it just a coincidence? I did some research and sure enough, if you have had normal vision eyes since birth it is pretty certain that your vision will deteriorate at a very specific and linear rate. An ophthamologist can tell how old you are by examining your eyes or by just looking at your prescription.

This is mind boggling to me. What is the purpose of this? Why all these changes as we age? Skin, organs, eyesight, hearing, teeth. The whole shooting match. Why the decline? What is the purpose that is being served here?

Ok, this is no big revelation. But the thinking here is that nature always finds the optimal solution and it seems to be a pretty optimal solution to insure no individual of a species lives too long. It is necessary, for flexibility in the species, for new individuals to enter the stream.

That's the easy answer. But are there other possible answers?

How about the "Everybody gets a turn answer?"

It sounds silly but it could be true. The plan could be to give everybody a turn at the mystery and the miracle of life. Why not? Kind of like a pass on the roller coaster. Hey, you had your turn now step aside and let somebody else ride!

Horseshoes, Sneakers, and the Meaning of Life

Horseshoes, Sneakers, and the search for the meaning of life

It is common knowledge that nature finds elegant solutions to problems and amazing answers to questions. This ability of nature is evident in every aspect of life and the lessons nature has for us are manifold - from the mathematical patterns that ants follow in their foraging to the amazing navigation of bees, to the structure and strength of balsa wood and bamboo.

I could go on and on about the solutions nature has found to problems but you already know all about it. We are all aware of the fact. And we have only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to seeing the ways nature has solved problems.

Of course, this is what the sneakers are about.

I have these really great pair of sneakers that are comfortable and feel really good to run in. They were a gift and I didn't at first realize they were horseshoe shaped underneath - until one morning when I ran in a light coating of snow. Upon a second lap I noticed the horseshoes!

They seem to be very well designed and very comfortable. And an interesting thing about them is the very subtle clip-clopping sound my feet make as I run. It seems to be a kind of feedback and I can get a good sense for the evenness of my running by this subtle clip-clopping. It makes me wonder if horses use their ears to monitor and correct their running?

But, About man and nature:

I do have a couple of criticisms about these sneakers though. First off, in the picture you can see that the horseshoes are backwards! The open end is toward the front.. hmmmm.... And secondly, a horseshoe is not a creation of nature, it is a man made invention that is put on the foot of a horse. I am willing to bet that a sneaker designed after a real horses foot would be even better than the horse shoe design. Just a thought.

Now on to the Chatauqua

There are two distinct parts to this. The first part is the obvious part and in the second part I will be a bit more penetrating.

What nature has to say about the meaning of life

First Part: First of all she says to live according to how you are supposed to live, do the things you were meant to do, in the ways you were meant to do them. Second, be the piece of the puzzle you were meant to be, the good of the whole is good for you too. Eat, sleep, drink, procreate, be fecund, contribute to the circle in the way you do. All of this is easy but is there more?

Second Part: Yes, I believe there is more. I believe you should be grateful and thankful for this mystery and this existence. And this is evident in nature. I have a reasonable proof of creatures actually being grateful here (The thankyou bird)

And you should enjoy and appreciate the mystery of life and your existence in it. I am certain that my cat diitto does. He really revels in the joy of his life and the beauty of things, particularly in springtime. The philosophers Garden

Now for the really hard question. What is the "purpose" of all this? Is it simply to be? Is it to enjoy and appreciate the gift? Is it something more? Is it much less? What is nature showing us?