Shoshin-Zazen

The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.

- Fancis William Bourdillon

“The enemy is strong and we are weak. We cannot win, the light evelopes us; darkness will never prevail.”

However inevitable in the light of science and technology, I lament the disappearance of darkness. With burgeoning cities, roads and space laid with street lighting and neon lights, how can we look up and see the night of a thousand eyes? And much more, appreciate the cosmos in its entire splendour and beauty? Can our children look up and see its constellation and point out the Polaris star? I mull over that future where advertisements span the entire horizon, blanketing the entire sky and at the same time smothering us with artificial lighting. Indeed, there have been proposals to launch sateliites in the name of advertisements. Imagine, instead of orion’s belt, you see Tom Cruise’s latest mission impossible movie blanketing half the sky. I would be excruciatingly irritated.

Call it light pollution or the bane of globalisation, but mankind is facing the danger of losing darkness of the night-time sky.

Preserving darkness requires some common sense and some effort. Street lamps can be employed to direct light on the ground instead into the sky. Such a measure will save energy and help unnecessary glow into the night time sky. Too much light has many more disadvantages. Blinding Glare from passing cars travelling on well lit roads are common place nowadays. This problem is compounded when cars use super bright “neon-lit” headlights. It simply defies common sense to use such a powerful headlight on a well-lit road. Light pollution also affects nature’s ecosystems; a popular example is the sea turtle who judges the correct path to the ocean by moving away from the dark silhouette of dunes and their vegetation. There are even studies that suggest a link between light and the increase in the risk of Breast cancer(Wiki).

Therefore, it is important to bring light pollution into control. As Upgern(1998) states, “we are well on the way to that kinf od social opposition to comtamination from secondhand smoking of tobacco; let’s do it now with costly, wasteful secondhand light.” The night sky is a valuable heritage for mankind; a universal language that has helped guide our ancestors, intrigued and inspired children and adults alike, and has fostered a greater understanding of man’s place in the cosmos. The loss of the observation of the night time sky will severly handicap us; not only in sight but spiritually as well.

Finally, it is my New Year wish to look at a sky free from city lights and cars; to enjoy darkness with a thousand eyes and much more.

References
1. Upgren, Arthur. (1998) Night has a thousand eyes. Perseus Publishing.
2. Wiki. (2006) Retrieved 30 december 06 from the world wide web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution

Photo Credits
1. Source: Spaceweather.com
Aurora taken in Reykjavik, Iceland by Heidar Egilsson. Mail: haxel@simnet.is

Here I am, cursing the cold, out in the open, unsheltered from the elements, and away from a comfortable life. Two weeks far from home: one week had passed with some forlorn and excitement, the second with renewed strength and vigor. I wish for wisdom and contentment, only then can i truly enjoy the fruits of my labour. 17/12/06

Nobody writes postcards to himself. Well, maybe its just me.

Having spent 2 weeks in Chiang Rai, it feels different to be home. Things change when you return after steping out into the world; I could still imagine the boisterous malay wedding ceremony when i left and 2 weeks later, at the exact location, the sombre chinese funeral parlour. It was an awakening of sorts, especially after the dreadful exams and the drone of city life. I yearn for the adventure and excitement, where the world is not demarcated by four walls. There is so much to learn, not from books, but from a life that seeks greater fulfilment in helping and understanding others. There is so much to learn from people whom you have never met, and will probably never see them again.

There is no sense of accomplishment, no joy of one conquering a moutain peak and no sadness in leaving behind our new-found friends. Yet, there is this sense of emptiness that I do not know how to express.

It can be said that I leave Chiang Rai with a bevy of thoughts, the richness of being content and the company of friends… but there is this (almost) unbearable regret.

I didn’t bring my digital camera.

Update 4th Jan 07:

After considering Lai Zhen Jie’s consistent nagging to reference my photo, i have

1.Photo Credits: Ah-pi’s Hut. Memorable Homestay Chiang Rai YEP (2006)

2.And added one more favourite photo courtesy of the cute miseah and her puppy:

Someone once said, “To appreciate life, take a trip to the hospital.” Indeed, words like “happiness” and “good” are meaningless if they have no ying-yang opposites like “sadness” and “evil”. The world is such a strange place. Our mind has always tried to conjure up images of order, but underneath this illusion is there is much disorder and chaos. In the physical world, we yearn for simplicity and all things beautiful like a brand new BMW. Even gravity was such a wonderful example of keeping the cosmos together.

Nevertheless, it was too good to be true, as scientists and people soon found out with the advent of Quantum world and that its probabilistic nature was so strange and chaotic that we find it hard to accept. We struggle with chaos because it defies our common sense. To paraphrase Niels Bohr, does god ever play with dice?

This illusion of order is even weirder and maybe terrifying (to some) in the realm of the meta-physical; a truly enigmatic connumdrum called the human mind. While we have come far with physical theories since Newton, reached new technological heights (and threatened the survival of our species with a few thousand nukes), yet how much have we understood ourselves? This concerns, of course, the engimatic human mind which above all, sits like a crown jewel inside our protective skull. We have probed the outer reaches of the solar system with interstellar spaceships Voyager 1 and 2, yet for how long will we keep ignoring our brain - the apex of our consciousness? Are we reaching a new age of brain science or shall i put as “questioning the inquirer”?

Sigmund Freud(1856-1939), the famous but controversial neurological figure, once humbly said that there are 3 major revolutions in man’s modern history. The first was the Copernican revolution which shows that earth is only a piece of rock in the ocean of the cosmos. The second was the Darwinian revolution; Darwin has, to put it crudely, dethroned the almighty human figure to a mere monkey, though it is quite unfortunate that many fervent Creationist are still raving about it. The third was his(Freud) discovery that a central system of control or consciousness as most of us are familiar with, is false and illusory. He claimed that, “everything we do in life is governed by a cauldron of unconscious emotions, drives and motives and that what we call consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg, an elaborate post hoc rationalization of all our actions.”(Ramachandran, 1998) Nevertheless, Freud maybe totally wrong, and this is just rubbish. However, contrary to the development of medical sciences, it shows that we still have alot of learn about our brain and its functions.

For those who have yet to have accquainted with Freud, i would like to give an example a hypothesis of his. Indeed, the father of psychoanalysis has a penchant in giving sexual associations to explain mental disorders. Elucidating this is the Oedipus Complex developed by Freud to explain the puzzling behaviour of some patients who suffer from Capgras’ delusion; they claimed that their parents(or someone familiar) are imposters and that his real acquaintances are not there. Freud believed that as children we were sexually attracted to our parents. It might seem crude and barbaric to us, but Freud believed that somehow this deeply buried feelings were released and hence led to the Capgras’ delusion insofar that the patient finds his parents in his room sexually attractive. This, Freud explains, is very puzzling and shocking to him. Hence, he concludes the people in the room cannot be his parents. Freud’s explanation is no doubt interesting and make good arm chair reading however it fails to provide a conclusive scientific proof to Capgras’ delusion.

Today, brain science is taking huge strides in understanding such perculiar behaviour. Scientists will continue to probe deep into our thoughts and senses. I have no doubt that any answers will have deep and profound philosophical impact on us. The brain revolution is coming, maybe in my lifetime or the next, but it will sweep all humanity and change what we know and that something we often take for granted - our consciousness - and all life that is connected to it.

References
1. Ramachandran V.S , (1998) Phantoms in the Brain. Quill.
2. Answers.com. (2006) Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.answers.com/Freud

Its just another weekend.. with the piano and me.

And for a very good reason…

The book Cosmos which threw me across space and time by the populariser of science Carl Sagan was made into a documentary that vowed the public 2 decades ago still sends sensations of awe to me today.

Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until 1990.

It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 600 million people, according to the Science Channel.

Don’t hesitate.. let the immensity of the cosmos engulf your mind..

http://carlsagancosmos.blogspot.com/

On the 24th of August 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly in Prague, astronomers decided that the Solar System has eight planets, and Pluto is not one of them; changing the status of Pluto into adding a somewhat downgrading prefix - dwarf.

To be a planet, the assembly ruled, a world must meet three criteria:

(1) It must have enough mass and gravity to gather itself into a ball.

(2) It must orbit the sun.

(3) It must reign supreme in its own orbit, having “cleared the neighborhood” of other competing bodies.

Pluto, the now defunct-planet, has always a tendency to atract controversy. For example the Hayden Planetarium reopened after renovations in 2000 with a missing Pluto and was subjected to much flak. Other museums such as Adler Planetarium’s dedication plaque because it was built before Pluto’s discovery. The last few years marked the demise of Pluto when 50000 Quaoar was discovered, with a 1,280 kilometers diameter, making it a bit more than half the size of Pluto. In 2004, 90377 Sedna awas discovered and both have slightly smaller radius compared to Pluto.

The final straw was perhaps 2003 UB313, a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) larger than Pluto. For more romantic and practical reasons, astromoners nicknamed it “Xena”. Now, we can attach our sentimental feelings to it, just like what Walt Disney did when it named the famous dog Pluto. (imagine earth to be called 1CH4001). And so, 24th of August 2006 came to pass…

Almost all of us today look upon Pluto as a planet. Culturally, books and movies have been written, sung, and philosophised about it. Take it this way: Pluto is far far away, from the reaches of most of our telescopes. We romanticise about the outer reaches of the solar system and the emptiness beyond. Ultimately, Pluto embodies the mystery of space - the last known bastion of charted space before the unknownst.

With Voyager 1 and 2 flunging out of deep space, space discovery today has been rather limited to space imagery and un manned probes to moons like titan and neptune. The next phase of exploration of the outer planets of our solar system will include manned spaceships and will also require the collaboration of many nations of our planet.

Space, as the name signifies, is ubiquitious. It belongs to no one and will never be. The boundaries that demarcate nations and perennial squabbles will cease to exist in space. What is our human ego compared to the immensity of the universe? It truly humbles me to know that we are just an sea anemone in a deep ocean harboring infighting clown fish…