WEISHEIT UND DAS ALTER

"Es ist traurig wenn ein junger Mann nicht zum Tempel geht;  es ist aber trauriger wenn ein alter Mann den Tempel noch besucht."  So läuft ein altes, mir beliebtes indisches Sprichwort.  Es mangelt dem Jungen etwas; der weise Alte hat nichts mehr zu beklagen.  Weisheit, eine innere Erfahrung dass alles Eins ist; eine Anschauung, die die Welt so wie sie ist bestätigt, und die Verwirklichung dieser Lebensphilosphie im täglichem Handeln, nämlich mit Liebestaten, ist alles was man braucht.  Normalerweise wächst dieses gefühlte Wissen mit den Jahren. (Hoelderlin verfaßte mitten im Jugendtumult die schoenen Worte, "Friedlich und heiter ist dann das Alter." Leider verfiel er mit 35 Jahren bis zu seinem Lebensende in geistige Umnachtung.  Nicht jeder ist glücklich genug, die genügende Erfahrung in einem Gesundheitszustand zu genießen, um friedlich und heiter im Alter zu sein.)  Es gibt natürlich viele unweisen alten Menschen;  jungen Menschen, die weiser sind, gibt es sicherlich auch, aber die Tendenz, dass man weiser wird im Alter, ist nicht zu bezweifeln.  Warum?  Jüngere Leute sind notwendigerweise mehr ehrgeizig und kompetitiv, weil sie mitten in einer Karriere sind und eine Familie oder wenigstens sich selbst unterstützen müssen; in einer Hund-frißt-Hund Welt darf das Ich nicht als Maus vorkommen.  Mit anderen Worten, sie glauben, dass sie einzigartig sind oder sein sollen. 

Ein Motivationstrainer, mein Neffe sogar, berät seinen Kunden nur jene Arbeit anzunehmen die sie lieben, die ihnen Spaß macht.  Aber gibt es genug wunderschoene Stellen für Arbeiter, die für eine Familie verantwortlich sind?  Die Zufriedenheit der Arbeiter--ist das der Lebenszweck der Arbeitgeber?  Sind die Arbeiter für sie an erster Stelle Menschen oder Mittel?  Die Antwort ist klar.  Geld ist knapp und Arbeit lang und schwer.  Ihre Bedürfnisse deckt ihr Leben nicht ab.  Die Alten wissen, dass ihre Bedürfnisse auch nicht abgedeckt werden, aber das wissen sie schon längst; sie erwarten das nicht vom Leben, was es nur brüchweise und ungenügend gibt.  Das Wissen, dass unsere Wünsche nicht erfüllt werden heißt in Buddhas Sprache dukka; diese Erkennung ist der erste Schritt auf dem langen Weg zur Weisheit.  Wer innere Augen und innere Ohren hat; wer mit diesen Fakultäten alt geworden ist, der kennt euch, ihr himmlische Mächte! 

Obwohl ich jetzt den Tempel hauptsächlich besuche, wenn dort ein Konzert stattfindet, sehe ich nicht stolz auf die Religioesen herab.  Kritiker die glauben dass den Frommen an Logik mangelt, vergessen dass viele Gläubiger Religion brauchen.  Ein großer Bedarf huscht die Logik fort. Die Lebensverhältnise der Kritiker sind oft bedeutend besser; sie genießen meistens eine gute Ausbildung, sind Professionelle, haben eine gute Arbeitsstelle und sind nicht isoliert.  Wie die sterbende Violetta im dritten Akt von la Traviata singt; Religione è  sollievo ai sofferenti--Die Religion ist Entlastung für die Leidenden.  Die Kombinationen von inneren und äußeren Zuständen machen oft ein schweres Leben aus.  Wenn man sich auf Erden trostlos fühlt, kommt es oft vor, dass man himmlischen Trost sucht.  Ein großer Freund der eigentlich nicht da ist?  Shhhh--Der Alte, der schon seine Krücke weggeworfen hat--d.h. den Glauben an einen Gott, der in die Geschichte eintritt oder mindestens Gebete beantwortet--dieser hat keine Lust die Jüngeren frühzeitig aufzuklären.  Die Zeit ist ein besserer Lehrer.  Wenn  man Rat sucht, soll der Alte einem beraten, sonst sollte er es der Zeit überlassen, den anderen Menschen zur Weisheit zu bringen.    

Es ist moeglich, dass ich Religion brauchte, als ich jung war--sie hätte mir vielleicht helfen koennen. weniger isoliert zu fühlen zu einer Zeit der Verwirrungen und der Vereinsammung; vielleicht hätte sie mir Bekanntschaften und sogar Freunde angeschafft--der Patient hatte damals Medizin gegen Isolierung noetig.  Aber ich hatte kein Talent dafür.  Ich versuchte, Jude am Monntag, Christ am Dienstag, Muslime am Mittwoch, Buddhist am Donnerstag und Hindu am Freitag zu sein, und, ich muß  gestehen, ich war froh, das Wochenende frei zu haben.  Solcher Oekumenismus bürgt dafür, dass ich schon damals für Dogmatik nichts übrig hatte.  Das Freidenken machte mich alt zu früh, d.h. zu einer Zeit als ich noch Unterstützung brauchte, selbst wenn sie nur ein Wahnbild wäre.

Ich glaube jetzt, wie fast alle Wissenschaftler, dass der Geist eine Projektion des Koerpers ist.  Es ist als ob das Gehirn auf ein inneres Bildschirm einen Film zeigt, ein Film der für den Individuum mit der Geburt anfángt und mit dem Tode endet. (Der Titel deines Filmes ist dein Name.)  Dieses Lichtspiel, dessen Inhalt unsere engere Identitát darbietet, ist sehr wertvoll--für uns--äußerst wichtig.  (Es gibt aber Billionen von wichtigen Filmen!)   Einige moegen ihre Filme für wertlos halten--ihre Einbildungkraft hat ein selbstgefälligeres Drehbuch geschrieben; aber das Gehrin, das Stunde nach Stunde Daten von der inneren und äußeren Umwelt bekommt, ist nicht in der Lage, den Film zu zeigen, der dem Selbstgefühl besser gefallen würde.  (Noch ein Wort vom Buddhismus: tanja, nämlich die Lust nach etwas, was die Welt nicht anbieten kann.  Die Quelle alles Leidens nach Buddha.)

Der Inhalt des Films koennte spannungvoll, froehlich oder traurig sein--vielleicht alle drei--aber es handelt sich um "nur" einen Film.  Wenn zur rechten Zeit ein übernatürlicher deus ex machina ankommt, geschieht nur im Drehbuch und nicht außerhalb von  ihm.  Die Fiktion dass der Film eines Tages in die Hände des großen Redakteurs kommen wird, der nach ein wenig Umschreibung im ewigen Lichthaus immer spielen wird, ist genau das, eine Fiktion.  Ein Film der nie endet ist Einbildung.  Unser Vorhaben, ein erfolgreicher Regisseur des eigenen Films zu werden, ist vielleicht auch eine Illusion, aber eine notwendige und eine bessere, deren Folgen große Szenen sind, die uns alle inspirieren koennen und sollen.  (Vielleicht sind Wille und Determinismus nur zwei Teile einer Wirklichkeit; es kommt darauf an, von welcher Ebene aus man die Sache betrachtet.)  Nur zwei Dinge sind imstande, den Film in einen Klassiker zu transformieren; zwei Dinge, die wir schon erwähnt haben: Liebe und Weisheit.  Wenn unsere Hauptrollen und Nebenrollen in einem miesen Film stecken bleiben, sind unsere Wahnvorstellungen daran schuld.

Ja, unsere Geschichten finden mehr oder weniger im Dunkeln statt--Aber wir sind mehr--hier spreche ich von unserer breitesten Identität--als Film.  Das erfahren wir jenseits aller Worte, wenn unser Tun und Lassen von der Liebe und von der Weisheit geprägt sind.  Nicht zu vergessen: wenn der Film vorüber ist, erst dann wir es im ganzen Lichtsaal hell.


NB: Deutsch, wie Sie schon wohl festgestellt haben, ist nicht meine Muttersprache.  Aber ich moechte jetzt auch deutschsprechende Leser erreichen. (Obwohl die Zahlen nicht sehr groß sind, liest man meine Aufätze, Gedichte und Uebersetzungen  überall in der Welt.  Meine Gedichte sind in den letzten 40 Jahren in mehr als 400 Zeitschriften erschienen; ich bin auch der Autor von ein paar Sammlungen von Gedichten.) Vielen Dank zu Mary Uppman, die diesen Aufsatz gelesen hat, und mehrere Stellen, die Verbesserung brauchten, fand.  Wenn Sie für weitere Aufsätze wie diesen interessieren, bitte mich wissenlassen.

THE WISDOM OF AGE

There is a Hindu saying which goes something like this: it is sad to see a young person who doesn't go to temple; it is even sadder to see an old person who still does.  This in no way implies a loss of spirituality; it suggests rather a gain in wisdom.  Wisdom, an inner-experiential knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things, combined with its practice, love, is all one needs.  It takes time to realize this.  There are certainly many older persons who are not wise and younger ones who are; the tendency of increasing wisdom with age, however, is not to be doubted.  Why?  Younger people are necessarily more competitive, since they are, in general, what the ancient Hindus called "householders," a status which entails supporting a family, or, at the very least, entails supporting themselves.  Many younger persons are so thirsty for success that they try to con a drink from persons ahead of them, who, in turn, are trying to con a drink from those ahead of them.  In this process, of course, those behind tend to be ignored by those who imagine themselves as being deservedly ahead.

I heard of a motivational speaker who strongly advised everyone to work at a job one loves.  But are there enough lovely jobs to go around for workers who have to support a family?  Resources are scarce; no wonder many young people are frustrated.  Their needs are not being met.  True, the needs of older people are not being met either, but the old tend to realize that one's needs are not ever going to be met and have come to terms with this--another aspect of wisdom.

Although I do not visit temples except to attend an occasional concert, I do not look down at those who are religious in the traditional sense.  Many people who criticize the devout fail to realize that many of them are either  internally or externally desperate--or worse, both; their critics, however, tend to  have good jobs and a good social life.  They can afford to scoff at religion; they don't need it.  But some people do.  The endless combinations of the state of one's brain and the state of the world, which make us who we are, sometimes result in difficult, even desperate lives.  It is natural to seek support beyond if one feels lost on Earth--an imaginary friend?  Shh!  The older person who has thrown away his "crutch," that is, the belief in an external God who intervenes in people's lives, has no desire, if he is kind, to reveal to those  needing this belief that it is illusory.  As the Hindu saying implies, it's best to let time do that.  If the person asks advice, well, give it; if not, let the natural tendency toward wisdom take its course.  (Ignorant deeds, which harm, must always be opposed.)

I think I might have needed religion when I was younger--it would have perhaps helped me not to feel so isolated at a time when I felt so alone, and might have provided some socialization which I so desperately needed.  But I was not good at it.  I tried to feel like a Jew on Monday, a Christian on Tuesday, a Muslim on Wednesday, a Buddhist on Thursday and a Hindu on Friday--and was happy, I must say, to take the weekends off. Obviously such an ecumenical approach obviates the possibility of taking any religion's dogma as literal truth, which made me old too young, that is, at a time when I needed more direct help, even if that help was imaginary.

I have come to believe, like most scientists, that the mind is a projection of the body.  There is an internal screen, as it were, on which the brain is showing a movie that begins with birth and ends with death.  (The title of your movie is your name.)  This film about one's narrow identity is very precious to us, and alas! Darwinian mechanisms combined with a self-absorbed culture sometimes insist that one's movie is worthless if it doesn't become a blockbuster.  One's story can be gripping, happy, or sad--but it is no more real than a movie. If a deus ex machina arrives, it is part of the film, not a part of reality.  The fiction that it will some day be gloriously edited, then shown in the sky forever is precisely that, a fiction.  A film that never ends exists only in the imagination.  Although our attempt to be a good director of our finite film might be another illusion, it is a noble one, and sometimes results in great scenes that inspire others as well as ourselves. (Both free will and the lack of it are true; it depends on which plane of existence one is discussing.)The only things that can really take us beyond ourselves, resulting in a classic, are love and wisdom.  What keeps us starring in a Grade-B film is delusion.

Yes, our stories, more or less, take place in darkness. When the movie is over, however, the lights go on.

Book Review: The New Universe and the Human Future, by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack

Cosmology fascinates me and I enjoy reading about it and learning about  new discoveries.  True, it might not transport me as much as a great performance of a Chopin nocturne, but that still leaves a lot of room for fascination.  I  often go to the library, usually looking for something else, and  wind up borrowing a book or books on cosmology while I'm there.  That's how I found "The New Universe and the Human Future,"  by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack, Yale University Press, 2011.

Impresseive credentials: she's an attorney, a cultural philosopher and lecturer at the University of California, etc.  He is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, etc.  The book is adapted from the Terry Lectures that they gave at Yale University in October 2009.  Impressive crednetials, indeed.

Good credentials, however, do not always translate into a good book. The basic tenet of the book is that the universe is not only imbued with meaning, but, if we fully realize what that meaning is, we will stop depredating our planet and turn into seven billion Johnny Appleseeds.  I'm not kidding.

Do the authors somehow believe that if our politicians read this book, John Boehner would have another good cry while all the members of the House and Senate--in unison at last--belt their hearts out, singing "We Are The World?"  Do the authors know nothing about the psychology of power?

According to the authors, we are cosmically special and live in a cosmically special time. So, special people. don't be intimidated by the size of the universe; we have a central role in it. In Chapter One, they discuss two cartoons that joke about the feeling of insignificance in an unbelievalby vast universe.  The authors write:

In both cartoons, the feeling of cosmic insignificance is uncomfortable to think about, so the characters run from it.  This feeling derives from the Newtonian assumption that in  the incomprehensibly vast cold universe we are, to quote the famous biologist Stephen Jay Gould,  a "fortuitous cosmic afterthought."  But we know now that this is not the case.  The new picture is revealing a universe in which we intelligent beings have a central or special place in several different senses of the phrase.

Tell that to Betelgeuse.

The cosmos is indeed a mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  The sheer scale from quarks--or possibly strings--to the size of the unverse--or possibly multimverse--is so beyond the human scale that we are transported into a realm of awe--and for some, into a realm of terror, when we compare our size to Its.  Yes, this can give us a new perspective--ecstasy, rememeber, refers to the delight of traveling outside ourselves.  But meaningful is not an adjective to be applied to the cosmos.  Meanings are created by brains; as far we know,  there is no meaning without neurons or their equivalents, (artificial intelligence is possible.)

I used to think there was meaning outside the human brain; my error, however, is more excusable since I'm neither a top-notch physicist or a renowned cultural philosopher.  A brief account of my becoming disabused of this notion might shed some light here.  I knew that nature and the cosmos are indiffent to us; however, I did, and still do, find great meaning in the arts, especially in music.  I was convinced that something so powerful had to be connected with something beyond.  And I found in cosmology support for this.  After all, galaxies have pitches, albeit some sixty octaves below middle C.  So there was, sort of, music in the cosmos.  And string theory--the idea that everything is built up from extremely tiny vibrating strings 'proved" to me that music was eveything.  Then I got to know the brain a little better.  All the universe has is vibrations; it is the human brain that interprets vibrations as pitch.  Pitch--therefore music, in the sense of organization of pitches over time--does not exist outside the human brain.  The awe that we should have for our brains, which not only give us music but enable us, via an organ that weighs only a few pounds, to appreciate and partly comprehend the vastness, smallness and majesty of existence, should be, well, endless. Sure, our brains receive data from the external world, but meaning and music always comes from within.

The old question about whether a tree falling makes a sound if no one is there to hear it no longer makes sense.  The falling tree will make vibrations in the air. but if there is no brain to hear it, there will be no sound.  Even the Big Bang, therefore, had no audible bang at all, since quarks and such antedate all ears by billions and billions of years.

The book is full of truly awesome pictures of the universe, and the physicist half of the two authors recounts our current knowledge about the universe in an admirable fashion, so the book is valuable for that.  But  trying to derive human values from a valueless splendor is folly indeed.

The authors state that we are living in a critical, halfway point in the cosmos, in which we have a central role, and give several reasons for this.  I'm always suspicious when people believe we are central to the cosmos.  Ptolemy all over again; give him a rest.  Many Christians today believe that we are living, or at least approaching, the "end times"--and they've been believing this for the past two thousand years.

I will give only one of their silly reasons of why we are living "at a cosmically pivotal moment."  Multicellular organisms, animals, came into existence 500 million years ago during the so-called Cambrian explosion.  We are living at midpoint now, since the sun will support life on the planet for 500 million more years.  (A highly doubtful presumption; most scientists believe the sun would be able to support life for a longer period than that.)  That equals at least several hundred million (human) generations, they tell us. They write, "As the sun heats up, our descendants will have millons of generations to prepare to survive."  Wow, we humans are unable to predict with accuracy whether the stock market will be up or down in a year; the authors, however, have no problem predicting  that our descendants will be preparing for survival for the next half billion years!  Such nonsense is rendered even more absurd by assuming that during that long  period we will not have become extinct or not have evolved into something else. Name a species that has lasted 500 million years!  A trilobite is not a human; how can the authors imagine that we will be essentially unchanged after 500  million years?

Yes, you guessed it, they also talk about the universe becoming conscious of itself as intelligent beings evolve.  They even state that if we must stop our mad war against the planet, since this might be the last chance the universe has of becoming conscious of itself, since we might be the only highly intelligent life forms in the cosmos.  Oh, the poor universe!  Here is the Sun, just recovering from the extinction of the dinosaurs on Eatth, having to ponder the annihilation of those greedy yet glorious creatures who are giving her, after four billion years, a bit of self-consciousness of her own.  Poor thing.

They speculate that, because of the lack an appropriate mythology, "Maybe this is why no aliens are here.  They may have the technology but not the mythology."  The mythology they present is simply the current picture of the cosmos according to physics.  Awesome indeed, but a human mythology must address the human heart, and cosmology is unable to do this.  The authors believe that it does, but they are wrong.

The authors claim we are so important and critical because we are so rare.  Most of the cosmos is composed of dark energy and dark matter; only a tiny fraction of the universe is composed of atoms.  But the universe is certainly vaster than we had hitherto imagined.  The visible universe, a vast circle with a radius of 13.7 billion light-years  with Earth at its center--nothing special here, it's the same radius with the Andromeda galaxy at the center, althugh the area swept by the circle would differ, more markedly when the center of the circle is very far from us--is only a part of the universe, and some say, a very small part of the universe.  (We don't see it since light has 'only' traveled for 13.7 billion years since the origin of the cosmos.)  Not only that, the theories of the multiverse and of  Eternal Inflation, etc. while unproven, indicate that there's more to the cosmos than our own unvierse.  So what's rare becomes, cosmically speaking, commonplace.  If the cosmos is infinite and eternal as the Eternal Inflation theory would have it, matter, though a "lesser" infinity than dark enegry--at least in universes like ours--would be infinite nevertheless.

They talk about the importance of art, but I hope their aesthetic sense is not summed up by naming the new galaxy after ours and Andromeda collide, "Milky Andromeda." Ugh. "Milkandromeda" would be better, but, with a little effort, those with a better sense of language could come up with something that would stick.

The way to solve our problems, as the ancients have taught,is by putting love into action.  Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.  Empathy, compassion.  A realizaion that greed, hate and delusion now have the ability to destroy us forever.  In short, acting on the the best of what is within us. The power structure would have to evolve from Me Me to Us Us.  If we make significant progress in the realization of love and wisdom, we might not have 500 million years of peace, but peace for a long long time to come  If that happens, our descendents will indeed be blessed.  Betelgeuse, however, will still not be impressed.

The book is a mess.