Tannishblog

Courtesy of my inquisitive nephew, some delicious links come my way. First, the blog of a science journalists illuminates about recent studies on ancient meditation practices. Modern scanning technology can now measure the effects of Buddhist mind training techniques showing meditation’s effects. The Dalai Lama recently wrote a book on the convergence of science and Buddhist spiritual assertions. If your interested, I highly recommend The Universe In A Single Atom.

Second, my wily relative sends me some short animation from a couple friends, one of whom is a co-creator of South Park, that illustrates some passages from Alan Watts. See it at coldhardflash.com.

It is a fervent hope of mine that a revolution in spirituality will propel humanity forward in the foreseeable future. Not religion, let me stress, but a connection of spirit and a reaffirmation of our collective humanity. Many would scoff. Yet I ask: how else are we to keep ourselves from self-annihilation?

Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self — if you become aware of it — the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake up and say, "Why, that’s me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes, that appears — now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown — and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.

~ Alan Watts

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Friday Night Zen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.