they call it the corpse flower

went with friends yesterday to see the world’s stinkiest plant, the titan arum, at the san francisco conservatory of flowers. this flower from sumatra gives off the smell of rotting flesh to attract flies and beetles for pollination. unfortunately or fortunately for us the plant has not opened yet and all we were exposed to was the sweet smell of nearby orchids. tomorrow they hope it will open and stink up the place.

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tom paine was a blogger

one of the things i love about working in silicon valley is a sense of positive influence, that the innovation made here in this small corner of the world has a greater impact. not all of it is positive certainly, and it depends what you mean by positive. but i’m now including blogging in my list. it’s akin to cheap printing presses invented in the 18th century, they both reduced the cost and skill needed by individuals and groups to communicate with a larger audience.

an amazing example would be this gentleman in china, a freelance investigate reporter making waves there (thanks tim worstall). three cheers for disruptive technology.

i want to scream

i’ve gotten into a habit of watching a site that correlates acceleration in linking to specific URL’s, to see what’s new and has buzz in the blogging world.

today i came upon a link to this, the last entry of a teenage murder victim, who was blogging while his murderer waiting in the house before killing him and his sister.

how can anyone think that taking a life will in any way make the world a better place, or make your life better? it’s proof of insanity.

the blog entry caused the confession of the murderer, who’s story crumbled because of it. Here’s a news item before the confession, and one after the blog entry was discovered. Update: another report.

please don’t wrap me in jcrew catalogs

a just read a followup to the oxyrhynchus collection imaging. i had written earlier about how cool i thought this was that 500,000 papyrus scraps that were mostly unreadable are now legible.

they’ve just translated a short piece from a soldier in the trojan war. not a story written later, but a war correspondent’s actual front line view.

funnier though is that they’re using the same imaging to look at the papier-mache used to wrap and paint mummies in egypt. i always thought they were wrapped in cloth, ala the monster movies of my youth. some are wrapped in a papyrus like material and scholars knew that some of it also had faded writing. when trying their first mummy, they could finally read the writing but it was simply a discarded government report.

still photography is a dying art

i heard about the crying while eating site a couple days ago, but didn’t think much of it until i went to the site myself. a couple things come to mind about this from a presentation and user interface point of view.

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taking inferential valid cognition as the path

today i found an interesting and short commentary - if you’re a geek about meditation like i am - about why tibetan vajrayana buddhism uses logical analysis (e.g. madhyamaka) to realize the nature of reality, but also why it is not used as the primary path. this commentary was from venerable khenchen thrangu rinpoche, one of the leading current teachers in the kagyu (black hat) lineage of tibet.

my favorite quotes:

The reason that you cannot find anything when you look for your mind is that the mind is not a self. The mind has no true or inherent existence, which is what the Buddha meant when he talked about selflessness and when he talked about emptiness; this is it, exactly.

and then

And the first thing you need to understand about this is that this is not some kind of doctrine or belief; it is not something you should take on faith or on authority… This has nothing whatsoever to do with what you have been told about the mind, because this is something that you can see as an individual for yourself… So please look at your mind.

glossary of some terms used:

• dharma - can be ‘truth’, ‘teachings’, but used once in the commentary to mean ‘a moment of experience’
• dharmata - phenomenon
• lama - a teacher, more generally anyone who has completed a three year solitary retreat in the kagyu lineage
• mahasiddha - greatest realized masters. often 84 of these masters are mentioned in indian history

not a new comparison of course

my jedi and tibetan buddhist tradition comparison is not new of course, in fact a zen practitioner named matthew bortolin wrote an entire book about this comparison titled the dharma of star wars.

he writes from a zen perspective though. all dharmas lead to the same kind of enlightenment they say, but i think the references to the force in star wars are more of a tibetan buddhist presentation. the tibetan form of buddhism uses the idea of subtle energy below thought and emotion that is the root of pre-conceptual wisdom, and some tibetan lineages also say that it is truly existent. that last part about existence might be where they are most critiqued by other buddhist sects and other lineages in tibet, who feel that goes too far toward hinduism - by claiming existence they say that the subtle energy below thought and emotion would then be an undying form of soul or atman. these sects would then defend their view by saying that it is not soul or atman, but treating that energy as existent is less about absolute view and more about relative training to avoid the trap of nihilism when studying the impermanent nature of all phenomenon. it therefore leads to a skillful route to the direct experience of phenomenon without elaboration for some people. but that debate rages on…

i suspect though my mapping of “the force” to the five wisdom energies in buddhist tantra is perhaps too much of a stretch, but the way the force is depicted in the movies is somewhat consistent. luke is told, “reach out with your feelings” and the subtleness of the feelings in general are discussed. we often see yoda in meditation to connect with it, or the jedi must relax or stop to contemplate their feeling of the force. ok, i’ll stop with the comparison there, but it’s been a fun contemplation.

CORRECTION: No Tibetan lineages actually say “truly existent” I’ve discovered, for the subtle energy below existence. Some do discuss that as a stepping stone to going beyond the extreme of existent and non-existent. But ultimately they seem to agree that nothing has been found to be truly existent.

more evidence of a jedi and tulku link

an article at tibet.com claims that the language spoken by the ewoks in episode VI is tibetan!

plus the name “padme” is a really popular sanskrit name for lotus, and the name “skywalker” is very close to a tibetan term for dakini energy which is “sky dancer”.

also, the name “yoda” is a short form of the sanskrit name yodhrin meaning warrior. guess what the modern hindi word is for yoda? it’s “jedi”, according to exoticnames.com

UPDATE: I’ve studied some more tibetan now, and the tibetan word for dakini is khandro, which literally translates to “sky goer”. and “sky walker” would be a reasonable rendering of that, as well as “sky dancer”.

jedi inspirations

i’m somewhat convinced that lucas took inspiration for the jedi knights from the tibetan tulku tradition. here are some comparisons between the jedi and the tulkus.

of course they differ in that tulku’s as far as i know don’t use weapons or try to keep the peace. not sure what tibetans have done historically about policing, violent neighbors, and the like though. that armed spiritual warrior aspect might be more of a chinese shaolin priest or christian knight mythology?

sith versus jedi

saw the big movie today, episode III. liked it. sure there were awkward spots, and anakin’s transition seemed rushed, but the story flowed for me and i really enjoyed myself. i especially liked the subtle political commentary. definitely seems relevant to what is happening in the US at the moment, perhaps in any power structure. the movie has me thinking more about the structure of the US government compared to monarchy. it’s amazing that there has been some sort of power balance over time in the US, a form of bifurcation of view that shifts over time but stays nearly equalized.

i’m sure it has been said many times before, but i really wonder though if that equalized ’sides’ of a two party republic are in effect a self-charade. we often get so caught up in the drama of us versus them in our own politics that i think we loose touch with a bigger perspective or world view. it’s like a convenient distraction, something we plebeians can bicker about and feel involved without any real influence. that’s over simplifying, since popular opinion does shift. but popular opinion is also swayed and having two sides - ala football teams - to pick from and root for could be one of the best ways to corral opinion and feel supported. is democrats versus republicans just a structure that arises naturally from a desire to be positioned? have those of us polarized by our values just bought into a game without realizing that we’re playing ourselves? it all does matter, political decisions cause prosperity or destitution. but i really wonder to what degree the structure is a reflection of our own desire for ground and lacks a larger view.