Early Tibetan Mandalas

Been ill lately, and worn out. And feeling stuck. Too much to do, not enough time to just have fun. Sigh. I'm hoping to get some funding for fwbo news which would enable me to stop using Blogger - it's a little eccentric these days - I never know whether I'm going to get through or not.

I'm reflecting a lot on belief, and paying attention lately.

Anyway here's nice little online collection of old mandalas from Tibet. Asianart.com. Ah - that's more like it. Some soothing mindless surfing.

Worship Not These False Idols

I like the tone of this rant by a Wired staffer. Wired
He asks the questions of why people idolise businessmen who have gotten rich by exploiting the foolishness of the masses. I'm not a great fan of any ideology which assumes conflict, as does Marxism, and there is a flavour of Marxism about Long's rant. However I'm willing to be tolerant in this case. Gates and Jobs probably don't have our best interests at heart, and I don't see why we should give either of them our loyalty or praise.

Don't get me wrong, I like computers, but they're just tools. If it hadn't been Gates manipultaing the markets to get his product out there it would have been some other greedy bastard. Sure now that he's got billions he can afford to be generous, but he wasn't and isn't generous in business. The money he's giving away was gotten through exploitation.

Anyway there are a lot of other opinions expressed on the Wired page so if you don't like mine I'm sure you can find one that you do agree with.

The Whole Brain Atlas

Since finding Incoming Signals, I have enjoyed it very much, and, of course, plundered it for blog entries. (Is that too many commas?). IS was one of the blogs that made me want to blog. And the reason? Well check out The Whole Brain Atlas, and I think you will see that this is really fascinating and geeky. I love stuff like this, and I so seldom find stuff like this, except when I look at IS. My friends, visit Incoming Signals, take some time, scroll down, and savour the work of a real artiste.

The Lama and the Neuroscience Community

I've been a fan of Wired magazine for many years now. The Jan 2006 issue has an interesting article about the appearance of the Dalai Lama at the Society for Neuroscience's annual conference. Apparently some of the scientists were a bit unhappy about his attendence, because, like, what does he know about neuroscience? Mind you a lot of the people who are complaining about him are Chinese. Say no more.

Apparently scientists are skeptical about the findings that compassion is a skill that could be learned. Well duh! Those of us who have been paying attention to loving kindness and meditating on it for any length of time have no doubt. And this is not just a religious belief, its the result of concentrated efforts over time. For the record I have a degree in Chemistry and think I understand the scientific method pretty well.

Actually this wooing of scientists, this seeking to justify Dharma through science, is IMHO a waste of time. The Dharma is something to be experienced for oneself. Scientists, like the guy in the Wired story, who have any kind of personal involvement in their own experiments are held to be suspect. But there's no benefit to standing and watching someone else meditate. It is ehipassiko - come and see for yourself. I like science, read popular science stuff still, and think it worthwhile to pursue scientific research. But while scientists can say a lot about the appearance of gamma wave oscillations in brain-wave patterns, that doesn't tell you anything about compassion. And even if it did, so what. The easiest way to confirm it is to meditate, and hard-core scientists are unwilling to do so because they think it would compromise their integrity. Like everything else in the world, the intergrity of scientists is an appearance, an illusion, like a soap bubble...

Wired