smokey the bear sutra

Smokey the Bear Sutra
by Gary Snyder

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings — even grasses, to the number of thirteen billions, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

“In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.”

“The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.”

Read more »

always a little bit off

for awhile i led a small meditation group in a room that had a fairly noisy clock. for the most part i ignored the ticking of the clock. but i heard once that repetitive sounds can be insightful, so a few times i paid really close attention to both the sound and how my mind reacted to it.

the clock was fairly regular, but there was often a slight variation in the sound and timing of the second hand ticking.

from that i suspected that my mind was always slightly anticipating the sound, often comparing the anticipation with the experience, and then from that noting if things were expected or unexpected. if it did something different, that might be noteworthy enough to draw my attention.

that amazed me.

because it meant to make comparisons and determine “unexpectedness” my mind was constantly predicting and estimating what kind of experience i was about to have. then my mind compared its prediction to actual experience. all below my usual awareness.

my theory seems to have played out in more detail and rigor. last month some researchers at caltech and mit posited the we use a ‘forward model’ when planning motion. this allows, for example, baseball batters to swing at a ball that is too fast to perceive real time.

from my meditation experience, i suspect this kind of internal modeling is happening often and not just in planning motion. it might be that we’re interpolating most things, and then relating more to the mental model than to direct perception. but maybe i’m going too far with my idle conjecture? what do you think?