May 13, 2008

Lama Anagarika Govinda (Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism) on Modern Physics, etc.

The ultimate concepts of physics may lead us to a greater understanding. It is very interesting, for instance, that in modern physics the more logical you are, the more wrong you are. This shows very clearly the limits of our logic. Actually, the universe often seems unreasonable to us because we apply our own logic to something which is not of the same category. We never can say where a particle is and what it does, and so we can only guess, or define it as either particle or a wave. Yet it is neither one nor the other, but both. You may ask, for example, about the "logic" of reincarnation. I don't feel we can reduce the idea of reincarnation to pure logic. Since our beginnings are infinite, and the causes are also infinite, the combinations must necessarily be infinite. It is impossible to explain such things with our linear logic since the cause and effect, from the universal point of view, are multi-dimensional. For instance in the Lankavatara Sutra, I was impressed by the description of karma as "habit energy." Having done something once, we are impelled to do the same thing again under similar circumstances. Karma is indeed habit energy, and the moment we get out of the habit of something, it is gone.

--Lama Anagarika Govinda (Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism)

May 11, 2008

The illiterate of the 21st century...

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. -Alvin Toffler