Haiku and Other Musings

I’ve been making it back to my Thursday morning writing group fairly regularly for a month or so now. It’s great to be back. So much talent, I sometimes wonder what I am doing there….But here were my creations for the morning.

Even Einstein

It is spring. There are
birds chirping from branches bare
or needle spiked.

Spring announces self
with light not temperature.
Light velocity

In four dimensions
Defines the universe that
humans can perceive.

Even Einstein did
Not know this on inventing
relativity.

Comments: I am reading J. W. N. Sullivan‘s book from 1949 called The Limitations of Science. He was considered one of the greatest lay science writers of the 20th Century. I first encountered his writing in The Life of the Spider. What a lovely book! Also worth reading is Beethoven: His Spiritual Development. But back to The Limitations of Science. Mr. Sullivan, just a few years after the publication by Einstein of his theories of Special and General Relativity, explains it in a way that I feel like I understand certain concepts that I never have before. Apparently it was not until others started working with Einstein’s equations that the concept of the velocity of light as perhaps the fundamental measurement in the universe was arrived at and perceived as meaningful in reality, not just useful in a mathematical description of reality.

Why?

Jay hated the question why.
Jay hated the word why.

He told me that he had concluded that there is never an answer to the question why.

Whether this was a result of his training as a psychologist or his personal spiritual search, I never could quite fathom.

Jay is no longer speaking with me.

I don’t believe I did anything specific to end the relationship. Over the years, I have often been wrong, and am usually the first to admit that to myself.

But after not seeing him for a while, and then a friendly unexpected encounter at Meijer, I have never gotten a reply to any attempts to reach him.

So obviously, I ask myself why? He was a good friend and support to me when we had first met. Sure, I can think of things I did that he did not appreciate. But the relationship did not end then. Anyway, at that time my question would have been how did I wrong you, or what did I do, not why are you not returning my calls.

Now, of course, I better understand the Buddhist teaching of dependent arising. However, in my mind, that teaching does not mean that the question or word why is completely useless or meaningless. It simply points to the fact that there is never a simple answer to the question. There are always and always more steps beneath the platform of conscious perception.

A popular manufacturing process troubleshooting method proposes a mere five whys. If perchance we do dig deep enough, we will eventually get to the point where there is no answer. Whether that question is why does God exist, or why the Big Bang happened, we humans will never be able to produce an answer that will be accepted by all humans.

A fellow industry consultant apparently believed that the answer to all whys was “Because of Adam and Eve.” That tells you how old this discussion was. Because now we would say simply “Because…Adam and Eve.”

To get back to the main point, we can’t now and won’t ever be able to answer the fundamental why from within the only fundamental what that we can know. We now know, but only in part, as through a glass, darkly. The promise of the Gospels, that one day we may know in full, is a false one. The Unknowable will always “out-be” the Knowable.

So suck it up.

But keep asking why about the little things. That can only have the effect of instilling an attitude of wonder. Wonder is a help. Wonder gets us through. Whether it’s optimistic or pessimistic wonder, wonder opens our mind to the possibility that things, or at least our appreciation of them, could change.

And there was Joy!

Joy to the world, proclaimed Jeremiah the Bullfrog. Or so sang Three Dog Night back in 1971, on Jeremiah’s behalf. It is funny that they picked Jeremiah to proclaim joy. Jeremiah of course is associated with the Jeremiad. The strong warning of imminent doom. But maybe that is the joke in the art form.

Anyway, those were the days when music was music. It had catchy tunes. At least usually. Those were also the days when Phillip Glass experimented with sounds that were on the margin of what I considered music, but the experts now consider him one of the most influential composers of the 20th Century.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer thought that music was the only avenue humans had to overcoming the sorrows and troubles of the world. Only through music could joy be experienced. The great composers could presumably experience joy and help to midwife it for others. Schopenhauer thought, and wrote about how, all art could play this uplifting role in human life. But he reserved the highest levels of joy to the potential accomplishments of the musically inclined.

Osho, on the other hand, or maybe we are now in need of moving to the feet, having already used up both hands, between Three Dog Night and Phillip Glass and then Schopenhauer, taught that joy did not ever, and does not now in the present, require music, or any other aid, to manifest in our hearts. All we need or needed, according to Osho, was not even love. Nope, all we needed, da du de dah, is to drop our constant ruminations about what has already passed, and worries about what might be. Just stop listening to the fear mongering of the ego. That’s it. Osho, despite this simple advice, is/was in no way optimistic about the ease anyone will / has encounter(ed) on their path to achieve a joyful victory. But, he teaches, when we truly find ourselves understanding that we are in a hopeless position, and that our ego’s false preachings will never bring us the peace we seek, then, and only then, in the inner silence, there will be joy. Maybe even, I wonder, on looking back on our earlier experiences, we will see that there was then also joy. The greatest joy. Joy to the world. All the boys and girls. Even joy to the fishies in the deep blue sea. I’m so full of joy that I regret that joy was not explicitly allotted to the simpler forms of eukaryotic and archaic life. Why wouldn’t they have joy too? They never had egos to drop.