Dark Matter

Most of the universe is comprised of energy and matter we cannot even detect, commonly referred to as dark matter. Scientists recognize that something comprises this darkness because of the effect it has on the visible, known universe. 
To me that is a revelation. 
It tells me that we occupy a reality that we are only beginning to understand. In time, perhaps, we will know more about this dark energy that pervades most of our universe, but I believe the more we learn, the more we will discover how much more there is to learn. It is a confounding and beautiful eternity of answers that await all of us. 
When I was a child, I had a few out-of-body experiences where I would feel myself traveling, flying through the blackness of space, looking for the edge of the universe. Where was it? What was beyond the boundaries of what we knew to be real? It was mind-boggling to consider the answer. My child’s mind was only beginning to understand the concept of forever. 
Some religions teach that forever “begins” after death, that an eternal life somehow is separate from this reality that we are experiencing now. Perhaps that is not what their dogmas teach, per se, but it is the message that is conveyed to their followers and to others who hear their messages. I’ve always thought that was a strange idea. One cannot chop up time like a carrot. Time is a carrot. (One of the beauties of Buddhism is the fact that it recognizes the oneness of everything, but I digress.) 
Scientists have recently released “pictures” of a lopsided universe and the usual questions have ensued: why is it this shape? The images reveal the pathways that light has traveled since the beginning of what we consider “time”. And those images reflect a universe that some consider odd or unexpected. 
I am, admittedly, a layman. But I consider those questions odd themselves. Does one have any expectation of what the universe should look like? Especially given the fact that the majority of it is energy we can’t even detect? And to say the universe has a shape is giving it boundaries that I don’t believe are there. The universe reflected in those images are only the shadows of what our eyes can see. Like the allegory of Plato’s cave, we are only watching shadows dancing on the wall. We will not see what is real until we turn to face the light that is creating the shadows. But that is a scary proposition for some who have grown to love the shadows. 
My major concern about the “lopsided universe” though is that it creates the impression that we all occupy a finite universe. Can you even take a picture of the universe? To paraphrase Alan Watts, it’s like trying to bite your teeth. 
For me, the boy who still journeys to the edge, I have become comfortable with the fact that our reality is endless. Our eternity is now; the universe is forever. There was no Big Bang (at least in the sense that is commonly understood). That myth just brings up more unanswerable questions: what was before the Big Bang, what caused the Big Bang? 
Once you realize that the universe is a timeless phenomenon, those questions become meaningless because the answer is self-evident. We all know the answers. It’s just a question of realizing it. And I believe humanity is entering a new age of realization.

The Lost Chord

I wouldn’t describe myself as a person with many hobbies. I suppose one “hobby”, though, would be an interest in quantum physics. It began when I was in college and read “The Dancing Wu-Li Masters” and everything changed for me. That book made more sense to me than any other book I had read, because it united the rational, scientific world with the world of spirituality (in this case, Eastern philosophical thinking). 
Ever since I can remember, my life has been a battle between the rational, which I know to be true, and the irrational, things I feel to be true, and therefore also “know” on perhaps a deeper level. The rational appeals to my scientific and logical side. But that doesn’t satisfy the other side of me, the one that looked for meaning in the Bible and, indeed, constantly looked (and found) meaning in the mundane. 
As I grew older, I abandoned the Bible and Christianity as being too simplistic and, how else can I say it, cruel. A vindictive, unstable god who punishes people for the slightest infraction…that seemed wrong to me. And I believe truth is simple and beautiful. That was not a simple nor a beautiful “truth”. 
I suppose my interest in quantum physics is driven by my knowledge to know, down to the most minute, how the universe works. What I have found is that, though we know much about how the universe works, we still don’t know anything. It’s a beautiful dichotomy that I completely understand. I see no complications; it all works beautifully and simply. 
By saying we don’t know anything about how the universe works, I’m indulging in some hyperbole. Of course we know an awful lot about how things work. I wouldn’t be here in a heated room typing on a computer if we didn’t. What I mean is that science has discovered that a lot of what happens is unpredictable…particles communicate with each other across vast distances, light is at once a particle and a wave, particles can appear and re-appear at random. Quantum physics cannot predict what will happen, it assigns probabilities. The chances that something will happen are greater than the chances that something else will happen. But you never know… 
Of course, in the universe writ large, the chances of certain things happening are almost certain. Apples fall from trees, water finds its own level, and it always rains after you wash your car (not really, it just seems that way). This is the level of classical, or Newtonian, physics. 
Then, there is another level: the quantum level. This is the realm of uncertainty where the seemingly impossible happens. 
Scientists are on a grand quest to find a unifying theory that will tie these two levels together, the Holy Grail that will finally make sense of a universe that contain tachyons that travel faster than light and sloths that take days to move a few feet. 
That is where dharma practice comes in. 
By slowing down, by finding out the true nature of reality, the universe is harmonized. I do not claim to have any great knowledge of the esoteric, I am only someone who has been motivated by a concern to end suffering. 
In the beginning, I suppose, it was a selfish quest for knowledge, but I have discarded that notion and the temporary joy it gives. True knowledge is knowledge of the self. And the self is simply awareness. And awareness is all. 
But by being aware, I am aware that there is nothing to be aware of. It is all in the present. 
Chop wood, carry water.

Yelling in the dark

Nighttime in Louisiana. Leesville, Louisiana.

Leesville is a gathering of trailer parks full of hapless GI brats whose fathers were out riding tanks in nearby Fort Polk, motels that ungraciously housed the parasitic pimps who fed on on dad’s checks, mom-and-pop stores that sold everything from bubble gum to bras, bars, liquors stores and churches for the completely demoralized, and a post offices.

In the lounge of our motel, an artificial world of plastic, vinyl, and indistinct country music that wailed in the half-dark like a banshee, our enterprise sat, furtively swilling bottles of beer. Every few seconds, the drone of the juke box would be overwhelmed by the laughing, good-natured voice of our guide through the world of door-to-door sales, Larry, an overweight good ol’ boy with a wife and three kids back in Alabama. On the stool next to Larry sat Ralf, my paranoid half-manic friend. John, an easy-going burnout refugee from the world of psychedelics and higher ed, was perched on the stool next to me, a helpless, thrill-seeking wanderer lost in the throes of burgeoning self-development.

“Okay now, guys,” Larry had this unaffected way of talking that made you feel as if you’d known him for years. “Now this is y’all’s first time here so I expect some solid sales, awright?”

We all nodded yes, picturing the cold, hard doors that would confront us in a confused mixture of children, dogs, pine trees and pick-up trucks. We were sure these doors would open for us tomorrow and we would enter, singing the praises of our encyclopedias and of  the wise concern of the parent’s for their children’s future.

“So, Steve, you and JC,” Larry looked at me and John, “you two will be working those two trailer parks we saw today. I’ve got something picked out for me and Ralf.” Ralf glanced at Larry, with his usual smirk. He didn’t trust Larry, or anybody else for that matter.

I woke the next morning with mixed feelings of dread and excitement. The dread, I told myself, was just nerves. It takes a lot of nerve to knock on some unsuspecting door with hopes of making money off of the people who lived inside. There was excitement also. Who knows what adventure and riches lay ahead?

The door opened and Ralf entered, muttering incoherently. Something about needles and boils.

“John, get your ass out of bed,” he snarled. Ralf suspected John of “going through his stuff.”

As usual, John was asleep. Of us all, I believe John was the most intelligent among us and the most innocent. Though the big, bad (sometimes) scary world of private enterprise slapped us n the face daily, John faced each day with a calmness that I’ve always envied.

At 3:00 in the afternoon of the seventh day of November, 1981, a dingy brown Camaro stopped in front of the Shady Acres Mobile Home Park in Leesville, Louisiana.

“Steven and JC, this is it,” Larry said from the driver’s seat.

John and I climbed out of the back seats, taking in the crisp, autumn air.

“We’ll be back around nine, see you then!” As the car drove away in shower of dust and gravel, I heard Ralf yell “good luck!”

The two-lane road divided the trailers into two separate colonies. On the one side lay Shady Acres, an impossibly huge park with homes (mobile and otherwise) hiding between pine trees whose tops were lost in the sky. On the opposite side of the road lay another mobile home park, the manager’s house half-hidden by the constant pines and and a gathering of very used cars. It didn’t take long to realize that this sister park didn’t differ too much from the layout of Shady Acres – dirt roads running helter-skelter through the trees in a path only know to the denizens of these woods.

As the car drove off, John took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and through a cloud of blue smoke said, “This looks interesting, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied.

Many hours later, filled with hope, frustration and some success, I faced a pack of mongrel curs in the cold night air.

Through the hazy fog of time, I remember. I remember the confident strides I used in my walk through the darkness, solitary light bulbs of each front door marking brilliant spots in the night. I remember the startled jolt I felt when I saw the first mongrel cur hiding beneath the rickety front steps of the next trailer’s door. He looked like a vicious animal, half-eaten by fleas and poverty, and ready to fight.

I backed away, telling myself a few hundred dollars was not worth a painful gash in the leg.

Then, out of the surrounding darkness, more hopeless-looking dogs appeared, sniffing the ground littered with pine straw and that scent that only animals recognize. Slowly they advanced, with the dim light of the trailer’s light bulb causing random eyes to glow yellow and red.

Months of festering frustration, wasted hours spent chasing the elusive dollar, years and days of hopelessly falling in love, finally exploded in one primal yell on that dark autumn evening. I was not surprised to see the whipped mongrel curs scatter, nor was I surprised when no faces showed in grimy trailer windows to hurl filth and deprecations.

The world we knew didn’t pay much attention to desultory screams in the middle of the night. They knew that anybody who was out past sundown was past helping. Either that, or they didn’t want help. Which category did I fall into?

I wonder.

The Death of Noah (Cont.)

Noah knew it was God. He just knew it. The name of the god, he didn’t know. He just knew that he must follow him. And he appeared again and again in his dreams, telling him, convincing him that the world was not right somehow. All was evil. And Noah had to make it right.

He began to see things in a different light. At the marketplace, people bartering for and selling other people. He heard stories about the great cities and the injustices and evil that was there.

On a trip to the city once, he saw more people at once that he had ever seen in his whole life. There was a lot of noise and tumult, but there was also laughter. And smiles. The evil must be lurking somewhere, he thought. Did he dare investigate?

“Hey, boy,” a woman called to him from a street corner. The sun was fading and the market was closing. Farmers and herders were packing their animals and stalls, ready for their journey back into the hills. Noah, though a beardless boy, was in the city alone. His mother hardly kept track of him anymore. He had no father. There were stories about his father and Noah felt a twinge when he heard people talk about the way his mother succumbed to the desires of this wandering….angel? Something not of this world, people whispered. Noah was given a wide berth among the people in the local villages.

And Noah felt as if he were not part of this world. A human, yes, but not a human. Was he something less? The gods that he knew about had regular dealings with people. They were as much a part of the world as trees and dirt. But he didn’t know of anyone who could trace their family back to a god, except for kings and pharaohs. Like other children with uncertain parentage, Noah wanted to believe his parents were a part of that world. To rise from the dust of goat’s feet and put on the noble trappings that were part of his lineage, that was Noah’s secret desire. He spent many nights examining the heavens, looking for signs of a divine parent among the sky-borne lights shining in the dark.

Perhaps it was a foolish child’s game, but among those people in a world where secrets walked in the everyday light, the divine was not as much of a hidden jewel as it has come to be seen, or not seen. Virtue is another matter entirely, and not a matter for those ancient gods. Thus, Noah’s perplexity at evil in his world and the idea that it would be punished.

Here, in Hezphroit, though, Noah was just another shepherd boy. The woman’s call intrigued him and the bangles on her wrists clanged and jingled in a rhythm that set Noah’s heart on a galloping ride. He went to see her.

She led him back to her dwelling on the same street, only a few steps above the bustle of the city. “I want to show you something,” she said with a particular look that the young Noah could not turn away from. Up the stairs, into her room, the fading light of day became even more faint. The woman took Noah in her hands, kissed him, and Noah sunk to the floor, with the woman striding him and Noah, helpless, felt his world topple then rise again…then fall. It was as if the woman knew him and his secret heart and brought things into his world that he longed to see.

Propping himself up off the floor, Noah felt like a new person, somehow. More aware of the sights and sounds around him, and with a hunger he never had before. He took the woman again, this time laid out on her bed.

Is this the evil people have told me of in the city, he asked himself.

“You are a strapping young lad, aren’t you?” the woman said to him.

“I don’t know…what just happened…” he said, stumbling in the half-dark, feeling his way to the woman’s door and breaking out into the night.

Walking home that night, he tried to talk to his god once more. Of course he knew what happened to him. He had seen enough goats and sheep to realize that. But was it something that was forbidden by God? Though a little disorienting, he had to be honest and say it wasn’t unpleasant. Would God punish him for enjoying the gifts that had been given him? Was this the evil that he had been warned about? He didn’t feel evil; he was still the same person, somehow changed.

“God, where are you,” he shouted to the stars. If there was any evil in the cities, it was no different than the things he saw among his own people — lying, cheating each other, beating each other…

Over time, Noah began to see wrongdoing everywhere and it began to trouble him.  Anger and violence were an accepted part of this world, something that other men indulged in without thought.

Many years passed, Noah became a father. Then, finally, God spoke to him again.

In the fields, he saw a stranger approaching, parting the grasses as he walked purposefully towards him.

“Noah, what are you doing,” the man asked. Noah watched through a droplet of sweat slowly rolling down his nose. It looked like the man from his dream of long ago.

“You need to prepare yourself,” the man said. “For the future. And the end.”

Noah gazed at him.

“A gigantic rain will fall,” the man said. By this time, Noah was listening. “A rain like you’ve never seen. People will die.”

“You need to build an ark.”

The Death of Noah (Cont.)

Noah knew it was God. He just knew it. The name of the god, he didn’t know. He just knew that he must follow him. And he appeared again and again in his dreams, telling him, convincing him that the world was not right somehow. All was evil. And Noah had to make it right.

The Death of Noah

Outside, the rain was pounding the earth. When he looked very closely, little Noah could see the drops of water fall from the dark sky. But from far away, it was a watery sheet connecting the heavens to his world.

Because that’s where big ideas came from – nowhere. A dark sky slowly brightens with the light of knowing.

 

In the beginning was the ocean. It was always the ocean, or some form of it, Noah pondered. Was God in the water? That’s ludicrous, he thought, God was the water or he had formed it. Just like he had formed all these animals I find myself surrounded by.

It was difficult from the beginning. Neighbors, friends, even distant family members, stopping by ridiculing this fool for building a boat miles from water.

“Hey, Noah, going on a trip?” they’d say. Sometimes it was funny and Noah would look up from his labors and smile most of the time. After many months, though, he would mostly just ignore the sightseers. Not because he was angry, because he had become enraptured by his work – his God-given task.

God gave him this task when Noah was a child. It came to him in a dream. He vaguely recalled the dream now: he was playing with his brothers, a familiar game of rolling down the hillside. At the end of one tumble down the hill, a man whom he recognized but was, at the same time, unfamiliar, gave Noah his instruction: “Follow me,” he simply said.