Bad Packaging- Header Cards

As a graphic designer, I've been fortunate to work on product & packaging design for some of the biggest brands and licenses in the world.

I consider myself to have an eye for good design- but I'm also very amused by the endless examples of horrible art on packages.

Sometimes, if I'm in a dollar store or a flea market, I like to check out the bad design on the shoddy imported items.

Here are a couple examples of why good graphic design can't be outsourced to people working in a different culture for cheap:

"AOLE 

INARTIFI CIAL PRODUCTSFOR LAVING

Return to Big Nature Feelings!"

 seen on fusion anomalog

Bomei

Quality Products 

"Pet Thing"

seen on The Chive

Some more examples from The Monkey Buddha Archives:

•  "Sense of Right Alliance" Action Figures 

•  Specialman! 

 

Yama, Lord of Death

This is a composite picture that I made from a few different photos.

It's my interpretation of Yama, the god of death in Vedic mythology.

Yama is also a part of the pantheon of wrathful deities in Tibetan Buddhism.

I took the body of a Ho-Tai (laughing fat buddha) on a zen candle base, & Photoshopped in a metal skull with menacing red eyes:

The black emptiness of death envelopes him...

Yama smiles grimly down on the deceased soul, whose karma is under his scrutiny.

His glowing, demonic eyes pierce through the infinite darkness.

He sits cold & unmoving, like a granite tomb, atop a sea of blood red.

Of course, the highest realization is that, Yama, like ALL anthropomorphic deities, is a ultimately a manifestation of the mind; a figment of the imagination.

For some reason, I got the idea to make this composite photo when looking at the skull. Although I'm really not obsessed with death, I have had a few truly near-death experiences. These events helped give me a deep understanding of my own mortality & the fragile miracle of being alive.

From this comes an appreciation for Life, which we must realize is always overshadowed by the possibility of an unexpected Death.

That is why every moment should be lived consciously with gratitude, and not taken for granted.

Game Review: "Batman-Arkham City"

 A few years ago, I reviewed the ground-breaking game, "Batman-Arkham Asylum", in which Batman fights his way through the infamous asylum for the criminally insane. Arkham had become a giant trap, set by the Joker & his other arch-enemies.

Monkey Buddha Archives:

Game Review: "Batman- Arkham Asylum"  

Due to the glacially slow pace at which I play video games, I've only recently gotten around to playing the sequel, "Batman- Arkham City". After beating the campaign & all the side missions, I finally found every single Riddler trophy & hidden item on all the maps. It took me a while & I finally called it quits to move on to the next title.

Arkham City was just as excellent as the first game. The same iconic look, dark mood, & mechanics in both games made it feel like a true sequel that was just as faithful to the Batman mythos. This time, instead of being confined to the grounds inside the asylum, a whole section of old Gotham City has been cordoned off to hold criminals & gangs in a "prison city". 

The leaders of the various gangs are well-known Batman villains, such as Penguin, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, and of course the Joker. All the characters, including Batman, are handled pretty much perfectly. At first I was like, "the Penguin has a British accent?!?!" ..but he's great in the game, a ruthless jerk. These games make brilliant use of the entire roster of Batman's many foes.

 click to enlarge

This is a huge complement coming from me, because I'm a harsh critic when it comes to comic book movies or games. I drive my one brother nuts, because I'm always nitpicking plot details or stylistic choices in the superhero genre. I simply know that I could do things better! The Avengers was the one movie that I thought was as close to flawless as I've seen. Man of Steel was a pretty good one that I've seen recently, & I couldn't believe they didn't release a licensed game to coincide with the movie. We'll see what happens with the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie. Ben Affleck was totally mis-cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman, but I'll wait to tear apart the decision further until after I see the trailers.

As far as a superhero game goes, the Batman: Arkham titles quite convincingly put you into the role of Batman fighting his way through the grittiest areas of Gotham.  Playing as 'The World's Greatest Detective' is an immersive experience, that combines combat, stealth, & puzzle-solving that truly uses the many facets of Batman's character. You really get into the experience of the man behind the mask.

 click to enlarge

The only major complaint I have about the game mechanics is that the melee combat always felt clunky & repetitive. The stealth aspects of the game are great, though. You're kind of forced to play silently & intelligently, since more than a couple thugs with guns can take you out quickly. Batman is just a man in body armor, after all. This recognition of Batman's vulnerability makes the game that much more convincing. The controls involved in climbing, grappling, & gliding make traveling around the many cool areas of Arkham City fun, in a way that superhero games should be.

Spoiler Alert!...

My only other complaint, about ending, is that you don't even fight The Joker. He just dies. It's kind of anti-climatic. Also, I finished the story mode when it said the game was only "40% Complete" on the save screen. I guess there are Catwoman missions that are a large chunk of the game, but I didn't download them. This percentage threw me off & thought there was alot more of the main campaign to play. I still enjoyed playing the remaining side missions, the challenge maps, & searching all the areas to find the Riddler items.

Speaking of The Joker, the voice acting by Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, is one of the best parts of these games- despite his lame demise at the end. He also voiced 'The Clown Prince of Crime' in the Batman cartoons. The portrayal of Batman's arch-nemesis in these games is the best anywhere.

Playing these games, I was thinking back to the old Batman game I had for the Commodore 64 computer. I remember seeing the neat graphics on the box & dying to play it. 

I was already jaded with computer graphics as a kid & wasn't really impressed by the game once I tried it. Even though they were trying to deliver similar elements to the current Batman games, I thought it sucked & was a pain in the ass to play, even at the time. Looking back, I was just biding my time, until the gaming technology got to its current state. 

Oh... the humanity!!!!!

The graphics on these modern games are so damn ridiculous, though, that I often find myself wandering around the open world game maps- simply exploring & finding every hidden item, just so I can see every inch of the area. I can spend as much time scrutinizing the countless details in the amazing virtual worlds as I do actually playing the game! (That's also why it takes me so long to finish a well-produced title with alot of content like this.)

Anyway, I finally had to put this great game aside & move onto my next virtual adventure- which will probably take me at least a few months, at the rate I play. 

I'll be immersing myself back into The Animus & reliving the genetic memories of Ezio Auditore in "Assassin's Creed: Revelations".

Batman: Arkham City is a definite "must-play" for any comic book or superhero fan. It's as close as you can get to the experience of being 'The Caped Crusader'. Truly an awesome & epic game...

• The Monkey Buddha's official rating: 9.0

Improbable Images

I saw this collection of mind-bending images on BoingBoing that have been manipulated to be "unlikely"... but not totally impossible.

 Improbabilita'

by Giuseppe Colarusso

There are alot of clever creations in this set of surreal, sometimes paradoxical, pictures.

Some of them really make you think, before you "get" it.

 

Here are 2 creations I made, with the same absurdist approach.

They are available in the Monkey Buddha Bazaar:

Green Stop

 Double One-Way

"Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul" - Titus Burckhardt

Alchemy is one of those curious topics that I heard about when I was younger, but didn't start looking into until I was an adult.

Though it has been historically misaligned as 'magic' or 'occult,' the merits of the alchemists' rigorous studies & experiments are becoming more apparent in modern times. 

Also known as "The Great Work," alchemy has been derided by science orthodoxy as a quixotic search for the Philosopher's Stone- a material that could transmute elements into gold. In fact, the alchemists conducted reproducible experiments and discovered many scientific properties that are still relevant today.

Nowadays, there is also a wider knowledge of the metaphorical 'Great Work'. This consists of the inner work of transmuting the self, or Soul, infused within the physical limits of the material Body, into a gold-like, rarefied state of awareness that is expanded into the Spirit pervading all reality.

It's only recently that I've started to grasp the deeper concepts & symbolism in this lost tradition, that can be most succinctly described as "Mystical Chemistry". It was also an attempt at symbolically 'programming' Reality, through various physical & abstract means. The alchemical minds of the ancient past would be today's geeks & experimenters: computer programmers, physical scientists, & researchers.

Although I've read several books about the tradition & symbolism of alchemy, I recently finished the most clear & concise presentation of the topic that I've come across. I bought the book for only a few dollars from Sellers Books & Fine Art, a used bookstore in Jim Thorpe, PA. I could spend hours browsing books there on my annual visit to the Poconos.

"Alchemy: 

Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul" 

by Titus Burckhardt

The book cover itself is full of alchemical symbolism: 

• The androgynous twin- the male & female combined, with the sun (Sol) & moon (Luna) above their heads, and also in the background... all signifying the union of opposites.

• Polar aspects such as active & passive, the volatile & the stable, ying & yang, solar & lunar, are sublimated in the Alchemical Marriage of opposing principles, into a unified whole.

• This figure is surrounded by the alchemical symbols for the different planets, with their corresponding elements. From the left side of the picture: Venus (copper), Mars (iron), Sol (gold), Mercury (quicksilver), Luna (silver), Jupiter (tin), & Saturn (lead)

• Similar to the Freemasons, the fully-integrated androgen carries both a compass & a square, so that curves can be used with straight lines, to create any design.

• The two-headed figure is standing on top of the fire-breathing dragon- a symbol of the primeval & chaotic forces that the alchemists were trying to master.

• "REBIS," written backwards on the sign across the hermaphrodite's chest, means "double matter". This refers to the ultimate goal of The Work- to reconcile opposite polarities- like male & female, matter & spirit.

The word 'Alchemy' is thought to come from the name of Egypt in ancient times: Al-Kem or Al-Kemet. 'Kem' also means 'black'- referring to the base properties of the Prima Materia, or the coarse matter that makes up our world. Since the age of Dynastic Egypt millenia ago, the ideas that arose from investigating the nature of The Universe & The Mind have lived on, through the Hermetic Tradition. This philosophy is named after the mythical figure Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes "The Thrice Great". 

The most well-known saying from The Emerald Tablet of Hermes is "As above, so below." I see this as a precursor to knowledge such as fractal geometry, which is the study of recursion & self-similarity at various scales of reality.

From these distant beginnings, the alchemical work has since been done by people of all religions; Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Despite their differing theological dogmas, all these explorers were trying to discover new correlations between mind, matter, & spirit- the energetic source of all phenomena.

There are plenty of sources online to learn more about the ancient art of alchemy, but I'd highly recommend listening or reading about Terence McKenna's insights into the Hermetic Tradition. He was one of the greatest minds of the late 20th century & this was one of the many areas where he could give mind-expanding talks for hours.

I have listened to many of his lectures online, including this 4.5 hour workshop on Hermeticism & Alchemy.

Here is a shorter video with some basic info:

"Know Thyself"

 click for a bigger image

"Know Thyself" is an ancient Greek saying, carved in the temple of the Delphi Oracle.

I made this graphic to convey this essential, classical meditation into modern English.

As this bit of wisdom suggests, you should work to deeply understand your own body, mind, & spirit.

Then, you can extend your insight outward, to better improve your world.

This timeless design is available in my Cafepress shop- on framed prints, posters, magnets, stickers, & other products.

Shop @ The Monkey Buddha Bazaar:

"Know Thyself"

Poconos 2013

From Poconos 2013

Last week I went on vacation with my family, to a lakefront rental in the Poconos, PA. We all look forward to summer vacation every year, and we had a great time in Cape May & then on the lake.

In the beginning of the week, I got to see alot of shooting stars from the Perseid meteor shower on a couple of clear nights. I usually sit out on the dock to drink beers with my brother & brother-in-law after everyone goes to sleep, so we were outside anyway. Being on the mountain lake was as good a place as any to see the meteors.

Most of the week we hung out around the house or on the lake, but we also ventured out to do some stuff if the weather was crappy.

I've already posted some of the pics of my crazy Flea Market Finds, and also the interesting sights at Country Junction-"The World's Largest General Store".

This is the last batch of photos I'm adding to the album. They are mostly scenic pics of the lake & the beautiful sunsets.

Photo Album:

Poconos 2013

There are also some photos from our short hike to Hawk Falls. It's an easy enough trail for my nephews aka. the lil' dudes, & also my parents to come along and enjoy it.

From Poconos 2013

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. I had a good time, though, with plenty of pictures & memories of another great summer vacation.

From Poconos 2013

Poconos 2013: Country Junction

Last week I went on vacation with my family, to a lakefront rental in the Poconos, PA. It's a great spot & we always enjoy ourselves there.


One day, we all took a trip to Country Junction-"The World's Largest General Store".

From Poconos 2013

I've added some of the pics I took there into my Poconos 2013 album. There is so much crazy crap there, I could take photos all day. There is all kinds of stuff outside, too. One area in a big field has a playground I was calling "Redneck Disneyland". I can't even explain the weirdness of it, but the pictures can give you an idea.

Photo Album:

Poconos 2013

 Here are a few pics of me, & some other monkeys I saw:

From Poconos 2013

I was in the Jungle section,
chilling with the other primates
& pondering the mysteries of life...

From Poconos 2013

This riding monkey was friggin' awesome. 

 

From Poconos 2013

The giant gorilla wouldn't let me leave until I paid up... 

Poconos 2013: Flea Market Finds

Last week I went on vacation with my family, to a lakefront rental in the Poconos, PA. It's a great spot & we always enjoy ourselves there.

The weekend we get there, we usually try to go to a couple flea markets for part of the day.

My sister came up with a fun game awhile ago...

"Find the craziest/awesomest/most ridiculous item, 

for under $5 at the flea market."

Now, I scour tables & boxes when I'm looking around... trying to find that one thing that stands out above the others. My Mom asked me what criteria I used to pick my Prize Find, but I just know it when I see it.

I've started my Poconos 2013 album with "Flea Market Finds". My Prize Finds are below, click the album link to see more pics of other insane things that were for sale.

Photo Album:

Poconos 2013

Here was my purchase from the first flea market, "The Fisherman's Dream". I have photos of all 4 sides in the album:

From

Here is a pic of me, with my Prize Find from the second flea market, a $1 Monkey Cap:

From

I also really like this Bob Marley hand-painted wood sign with the simple, yet important, advice:

"WAKE UP AND LIVE"

From

"Flower of Life Aquascape" by Paul Micarelli

I've added another image to my gallery of 3D art that I've been posting online:

 3D Art by Paul Micarelli

Th eaquatic seascape features a mysterious water monolith, in the form of The Flower of Life symbol. This ancient pattern of interlocking circles is an expression of interconnectedness & perfect harmony.

"Flower of Life Aquascape"

From 3D Art by Paul Micarelli

The Monkey Buddha Bazaar's New Look

I recently updated the page design for my Cafepress shop,

The Monkey Buddha Bazaar

These are all designs I've made for fun or in my free time, so I figured I'd offer them on different products. There are a bunch more images & photography that I'll try to upload to the shop soon.

In the meantime, feel free to browse or bookmark the shop for future gift purchases!

"Fishing With The Dudes" by Paul Micarelli

I've added another image to my gallery of 3D art that I've been posting online:

3D Art by Paul Micarelli

This is a scene of me fishing on a mountain lake with my Dad & brothers. Just out of casting distance are 4 large fish, eluding our lines. 

Fishing with the dudes is one of our favorite pastimes. I made a framed print of this pic & gave it to Big Paul one year for Father's Day.

 click to enlarge:

From 3D Art by Paul Micarelli

 

The Human Being is an Ecosystem

a bacterium... on a diatom... on an amphipod

I've been seeing alot of interesting articles about the billions of micro-organisms that make up our body.

Even though we spend our lives thinking of ourselves as individuals, singular beings... we are actually walking ecologies, full of tiny creatures inside & out.

The fact of the matter is that each of us contains more bacteria than human cells!

Through new imaging techniques & computer graphics, technology is allowing us to visualize the complex microscopic worlds contained within the body:

XVIVO Scientific Animation

 Daily Mail:

Breathtaking Animated Simulations

 of the World Within the HUMAN BODY

Despite being a fairly neat person, I'm not really a germaphobe, so none of this information really bothers me. It's just the way things are, & nobody can be a fully-sanitized, immaculately clean person.  With that in mind, here's some headlines that may fascinate you, gross you out, or both.

BBC:  

Feet Home to More Than 100 Fungi 

Smithsonian Magazine:

Microbes: The Trillions of Creatures Governing Your Health


Design you Trust;

Your Daily Tech Habits are Making You Sick

(Infographic)

Microorganisms in our body may also be affecting our thought processes, in ways we don't fully understand:

Sci-News:

Study Reveals Changes in Gut Microflora 

Can Affect Brain Function

There is also a mystical aspect to the idea that our bodies are communal biological vessels, teeming with life throughout.

Prehistoric Shamanism:
We Are Not Alone: 

The Shamanic Implications 

of Our Body’s Microorganisms 

Alot of people criticized George Lucas's revelation in the Star Wars prequels- that "The Force" was actually a field that interacted with tiny organisms called Midichlorians. I thought this was actually a good way to explain the mechanism behind Force-sensitive beings. This symbiosis mirrors the interaction between life on the macro & microscopic scales in the real world.

What we should try to understand is that Life is infinitely complex, & the deeper we look into its processes, the more questions will arise. We have alot to learn about the processes in even the simplest forms of life:

Wired:

There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Simple’ Organism

Finally, here's a way of looking at our symbiosis with microbes that might be more creepy than comforting:

seen on Cheezburger

The Toltec Wisdom Path

“What you are seeing and hearing right now 

is nothing but a dream.” 

– The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz

Awhile ago, I read The Everything Toltec Wisdom Book by Allan Hardman, based on the teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz.

The Toltecs were a culture in Mexico that existed before the Aztecs. Don Miguel claims to have a lineage of traditional knowledge passed down from the Toltec shamans in his family.

I'm usually open to hearing any insights that might add to the bit of wisdom I've accumulated in my lifetime. However, I also have a highly-refined bullshit detector- good for recognizing extraordinary claims & inapplicable fantasies by insincere characters.

The book about Toltec wisdom was very effective, though... leading me to re-evaluate my own mind & my relationships with others in a new way. It resonated very positively with me & I think the teachings can be very helpful, if you are receptive to them.

Here's an article that's a good summary of the ideas behind Don Miguel's "Four Agreements":

Totlec Spirit

Living the Four Agreements:

A Life Changing Journey

Toward the end, the article above talks about the idea of being a "Spiritual Warrior". This is not the same type of spiritual warrior as a Crusader or Jihadist, fighting non-believers. It is a reference to the constant battle going on within oneself- in which you are trying to master the conflicts going on inside your own mind, as you navigate the inevitable difficulties of life.

The book also talks about the "Mitote", the mental parasite that feeds off the negativity we feel. This imagery is meant to be metaphorical, but it is also a way to characterize the undesirable psychological habits we all possess. The only one who can defeat this parasitic presence in your mind is YOU. The battle of the spiritual warrior in the Toltec tradition starts through simple awareness & self-reflection.

Recently I came across another article, on Waking Times, that was also an excellent description of the 'Toltec Wisdom Path'. Here's a link to the article, which prompted this post. It's under a Creative Commons license to republish here with attribution:

The Four Agreements – 

A Path to a Peaceful, Fulfilling Life

by Anna Hunt for Waking Times

 

The First Agreement

“The first agreement is the most important one and also the most difficult one to honor. It is so important that with just this first agreement you will be able to transcend to the level of existence I call heaven on earth. The first agreement is be impeccable with your word.”

“Word” is all expression, all communication, whether it is spoken, written, expressed, gestured, thought – inwardly or outwardly. It manifests itself into all that we see, do and experience. With each word you can manipulate a person into action – good or bad – that could influence entire populations. When you are impeccable with your word, you stop expressing anything that goes against yourself. When you are impeccable with your word, you act out of love and kindness. You use your energy to do good, impact others positively, and start being loving to yourself. You have a choice if you want to say negative things, gossip, cast ugly “spells”, or if you become impeccable with your word. Once your word is impeccable, it is more difficult for others to cast dark spells on you with their words because you are more aware. The negativity of others starts to no longer affect you.

“The word is pure magic – the most powerful gift we have as humans…”

The Second Agreement

“The next three agreements are really born from the first agreement. The second agreement is don’t take anything personally.”

People say and do things because of what is happening with them – we all have our own inner world. If you take things personally, you start to believe that what others say to you is truth. This can make you easy prey for emotional predators who like to send poison to others. If you stop taking things personally, you are no longer easy prey…you can even become immune to this poison. This is the gift of this agreement.
We can also apply this agreement to the voices in our own mind. Most of us have suffered inner conflict, but with this agreement, we start evaluate all of the agreements we’ve made with ourselves. By not taking things personally, we stop reinforcing inner suffering.

“Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”

The Third Agreement

“The third agreement is don’t make assumptions.”

Are you ready to get rid of the sadness and drama in your life? Then stop making assumptions! Stop creating truths in your mind that are just your interpretations of situations. Or perhaps a more appropriate word is misinterpretations. Assumptions are often our effort to fulfill certain expectations, fill our desire to know and understand, and take the place of actual communication. This applies to our own mind as well, with more inner conflict created by assumptions.

“The day you stop making assumptions you will communication cleanly and clearly, free of emotional poison.”

The Fourth Agreement

“The fourth agreement is about the action of the first three: Always do your best.”

By following this agreement, you can find a life balance where you will enjoy most things you do. If you do your best, then you are more likely to accept yourself for who you are. And here you have to realize: your best fluctuates. If you are ill, you may not be as patient as when you are feeling great. If you are tired, you may get your feelings hurt more easily versus when you are well rested. Action upon ideas is part of manifesting your ideas and seeing results in the process of transforming your life into a beautiful dream.

“…Forget everything you have learned in your whole life. This is the beginning of a new understanding, a new dream.”

Ithorian Jedi Meditation

I was just reading an article about the upcoming onslaught of new Disney-owned Star Wars media.

In the article's comments, someone mentioned "Ithorians". Being an self-admitted Star Wars geek of the highest order, I knew these are the 'hammer-head' aliens... like the one seen in the famous Mos Eisley cantina scene. (By the way, that particular Ithorian is Momaw Nadon. I'm so ridiculous that I knew that also & spelled his name exactly right...)

Anyway.... I did a random google image search & came across this cool image of an Ithorian Jedi, meditating in a natural setting.

The Ithorians are generally a peaceful species & environmentalists who live on "herd ships" above their planet, as not to disturb the natural ecology. Each herd was led by a force-sensitive shaman.

One of the great things about Star Wars is its use of truly alien creatures... Despite the differences between the many species from different worlds, "The Force" is a unifying & pervasive element that binds them all together.

Similar to how the Green Lantern Corp. is made up of beings of all kinds from across the galaxy, the Jedi were also representative of the myriad Force-sensitive lifeforms in the Galactic Republic.
 
 *After searching for the source of this image, I found it was originally in From Pencil to Pixel: The Art of Star Wars Galaxies

Many years ago, I had found a web page with quotes & insights from an esoteric Buddhist text, along with those by some of the greatest scientific minds of modern times.  It was an astounding collection of ideas.

I have studied most of the world's religions in depth, have read countless works of philosophy, & studied the many mysteries of the Universe that science has discovered so far. However, this single page contained the most profound, penetrating wisdom I had ever seen.

One day, when trying to re-visit the page, I found that the site had been taken down!!! I was alarmed that this amazing wisdom had vanished from the Web. Some time later, after searching the Internet for some keywords that I had remembered from the text, I finally found another site that had posted the content in its entirety.

Determined not to lose this information again, I bookmarked it, downloaded all of the page's contents on my own computer, & I'm now also going to mirror it here on my blog. This way, there's a better chance that people will see it & it will be available in the future. So, here it is... read these mind-shattering insights carefully & perhaps bookmark it for later contemplation, or share it, to open the eyes of others.

The Secret Doctrine

The primary source for this document is The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Neel & Lama Yongden. Alan Watts calls this work "a wonderfully lucid account of the Madhyamika (or 'middle-way') School of Buddhism, a method of meditation and enlightenment which was worked out sometime between 150 and 250 AD by the great Indian sage and pundit, Nagarjuna." 

Holomovement

The world is movement.

"The tangible world is movement, say the Masters, not a collection of moving objects, but movement itself. There are no objects 'in movements', it is the movement which constitutes the objects which appear to us: they are nothing but movement."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Wholeness is flowing movement. With the hologram, the movement of interference patterns of coherent light enfolds a subtle range of structures and orders. In a similar, but unthinkably vaster, way, the whole movement or "holomovement" of the universe carries the implicate order and allows us to see and experience our four-dimensional space-time world."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe


Movement arises from flashes of energy.

"This movement is a continued and infinitely rapid succession of flashes of energy (in Tibetan tsal or shoug). All objects perceptible to our senses, all phenomena of whatever kind and whatever aspect they assume, are constituted by a rapid succession of instantaneous events."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Mind, I believe, exists as fleeting energy in parallel universes. The universe we perceive consists of the overlap of these fleeting flashes of energy. The patterns create mind as surely as they create matter. Both the existence of matter and the perception of it are the same thing."
- Fred Allen Wolf, Parallel Universes


A single result arises from many causes.

"Nothing is produced by one single cause; the combination of several causes is always necessary to bring about a result. The seed without the co-operation of earth, dampness, light, etc. will never become a tree."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Though the universe is in some sense determined, it is in another more important sense multidimensional, creative, and indeterminate, constantly unfolding new 'forms' or subtotalities which are expressions of the whole. The galaxy, the city, the corporation, even the very cells of a human's body are in a ceaseless energy exchange like water flowing through a vortex."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe


The microcosm and macrocosm are intimately connected.

"The cycle of Interdependent Origins thus takes place in everything, everywhere, in the infinitely small as in the infinitely great. Its development does not take place progressively in time; the twelve causes...are always present, co-existent and interdependent, their activity is interconnected, and they only exist on with the other."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"The development of structures in what is called microevolution mirrors the development of structures in macroevolution and vice versa. Microstructures and macrostructures evolve together as a whole."
- Erich Jantsch, Creative Evolution


The World as Mental Projection

"Mind" is a description not a thing.

"During his meditations, while watching his mind with close attention, he [the student studying the Secret Teachings] has attained Lhag Thong and 'seeing more' than most men, he has contemplated the continual arising and disappearance of ideas, of volitions, of memories, and so on, which pass like a procession of short-lived bubbles floating down a river. He has realized for himself that 'mind' is only a word indicating a series of mental phenomena."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"For the operation of the nervous system, there is no inside or outside, but only maintenance of correlations that continuously change (like the indicator instruments in a submarine)."
"Self-consciousness, awareness, mind - these are phenomena that take place in language.."
"'Mind' is not an entity but can be ascribed to a system exhibiting regular behavior."
- Humberto Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge


The apparent world is a creation of the observer.

"It is this world which we watch like a play which unfolds outside of ourselves while, in fact, there is nothing there but a canvas bearing many colored patterns, which we have woven and printed in ourselves according to the indications of our erroneous knowledge."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"The apparent world, the one which is perceived, with its figures, its brightness, its colors, is a psychical product, a creation of the observer. The figures seen on the vault of heaven are neither the celestial bodies, nor the true clouds or the falling stars, but are only effigies which the observer's psyche has created and localized how and where it can."
- Vasco Ronchi, Optics, The Science of Vision


All that we perceive are our own projections.

"The greatest saint, even if he has sacrificed a thousand times all that he held most dear, even his life itself, for love of others, for that of a God or for a noble ideal, remains a prisoner of samsara if he has not understood that all that is a childish game, empty of reality, a useless phantasmagoria of shadows which his own mind projects on the infinite screen of the Void"
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"...All sensation will be the reconstruction of objects in space and time from apparent or virtual images of those objects recorded in the cortex. All that we sense as 'out there' is projected from our 'witness' of the recorded virtual images."
- Fred Alan Wolf, Parallel Universes


Memories are painted over our screen of perception.

"This root originally free from any admixture, origin of the illusory world in which we live is a fleeting contact with some unknowable instant of Reality, some indefinable force which the vasanas [memories] obscure at once, superimposing on it the screen on which the images which we see, are painted."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Consciousness unfolds like a computer displaying its contents on a screen. A considerable part of that display comes from the past and is confused with the self."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe


Our Illusory Self

Thought encloses itself in its own world.

"What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Thought forms a world of its own in which it is everything. It rectifies itself and imagines there's nothing else but what it...thinks about."
- David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1


We are the many fragments of others.

"The Secret Teachings lead the pupil further. They teach him to look, with the same serene indifference at the incessant working of his mind and the physical activity displayed by the body. He ought to succeed in understanding, in noting that nothing of all that is from him, is him. He, physically and mentally, is the multitude of others.
"This 'multitude of others' includes the material elements - the ground, one might say - which he owes to his heredity, to his atavism, then those which he has ingested, which he has inhaled from before his birth, by the help of which his body was formed, and which, assimilated by him, have become with the complex forces inherent in them, constituent parts of his being.
"On the mental plane, this 'multitude of others' includes many beings who are his contemporaries: people he consorts with, with whom he chats, whose actions he watches. Thus a continual inhibition is at work while the individual absorbs a part of the various energies given off by those with whom he is in contact, and these incongruous energies, installing themselves in that which he considers his 'I', form there a swarming throng."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"The origin of chaos is in our fragmented, atomistic thought. Only when thought is not there would it be possible to perceive what is beyond thought."
- David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1


We do not exist as a soul or individual self.

"The answer to those that imagine that Buddhist salvation consists in the annihilation of the 'ego', at the death of the 'person', is that, as Buddhism denies the existence of an 'ego' or a soul, whatever be the name given to it, there cannot be any question of the annihilation of that which is held to be non-existent.
"In reality there is annihilation but it is that of false views, of ignorance, and more exactly of the belief in the existence of an 'ego' which is independent, homogeneous and permanent, a belief which deforms our understanding of the world in deforming our mental vision."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects 

"Humans come to think of the individual self as a fundamentally separate 'thing' which persists despite an immensity of changes that take place in one's life."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe


Beyond Thought

The void is an absence of anything we can conceive of.

"Void is understood as a state in which the elements do not produce any combination, give rise to no phenomenon, a state in which only forces, latent and non-manifest, exist. Being the sphere of complete absence of manifestation, the Void is inconceivable."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Nothingness' is not the vacuum of physics, loaded with geometry and field fluctuations; it is a nothingness devoid of structure, law or plan..."
- John Wheeler, "Frontiers of Time"


Insight is a process that bypasses thought.

"To go beyond virtue and vice, opinions and beliefs is to go beyond the mental constructions which are built up by the mind, unceasingly, and to recognize, by transcendent insight, that they are void of reality. It is also to recognize, by transcendent insight, that which has been imagined as practicing virtue, surrendering to vice, as holding opinions and elaborating theories, as traveling towards a goal and reaching the goal, is nothing but an inconsistent phantom, devoid of reality."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Insight is an intelligence beyond any of the energies that could be defined in thought. Insight directly transforms matter; it sort of by-passes thought as of little consequence."
- David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1


Consciousness continually creates the universe.

"According to the Secret Teachings the origin of things is not situated in any place or moment of past time; it is produced now, at each instant, in our minds. At every moment the subjective image which is the world, arises in our mind only to sink back and dissolve in it the moment after, like the 'waves which arise from the sea and fall back into it'.
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"Not in the dim past but continuously by conscious mind is the miracle of creation wrought."
- Sir Arthur Eddington


The Great Liberation

"...The well-informed dreamer may cease taking pleasure in dreaming. He may stop imitating those dreamers who, enjoying the phantasmagoria which they watch and in which they play a part, persist in wishing to remain asleep. In truth, why do the dreamers fear awakening, why do they imagine in advance other dreams of hells and heavens which await them after death? It is because they fear that with the disappearance of the 'images seen in dreams', the illusory 'Ego' which is an integral part of them will disappear. They have not yet perceived that the real face of this chimerical 'Ego' is the face of Death. As long as the idea of this impermanent Ego lasts, this simple mass of elements which various causes have brought together and which other causes will separate, death also subsists. The Dhammapada alludes to the disappearance of this phantom from the field of our mental activity when it refers to whom 'death does not see', that is, he for whom death does not exist.
"To wake up...The Buddhas have done nothing else than this, and it is this awakening which has made them become Buddhas."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

"History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awaken."
- James Joyce, Ulysses

"There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being."
- Albert Einstein

"Subtle, sparkling, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across a landscape in spring-time in one continuous stream of vibrations... That is the radiance of thine own true nature."
- Bardo Thodol

The Cosmos Looks Like A Fractal

I had these images on my computer, so I finally decided to make a "Totally Looks Like" meme on my Cheezburger profile. Please give it an upvote if you like it.

Totally Looks Like.com:

The Cosmos Totally Looks Like A Fractal

The painting is "God the Geometer," the medieval depiction of The Creator using a compass to design a swirling universe with complex edges.

The Fractal is a version of the Mandelbrot Set, a visualization of the pattern that arises from the famous equation formulated by Benoit Mandelbrot.

Somehow, the ancient genius who painted the image of the Universe was able to accurately depict the complex, recursive quality of Reality that can now be modeled through fractal geometry... hundreds of years later!

I actually posted about this intriguing similarity waaaaay back in 2006:

The Monkey Buddha Archives:

God, The Fractal Geometer

Human Evolution Explained

I think the term "Evolution" is misleading when talking about the process of natural selection.

It implies that Life is "improving", when it is really just a process of continual genetic change & adaptation. Whether the process leads to something "better" or "more advanced" is a matter of opinion.

Anyway, some people don't even believe that natural selection is a real phenomenon & refuse to believe that we could have "evolved from monkeys". These people choose to remain ignorant of the nature of life- despite evidence from things like the fossil record, or mutations observed in short-lived animals like fruit flies.

This is an excellent infographic, explaining the reality behind our lineage from an ancestor common with other primates:

click to enlarge

Matrix Baby

When I saw this picture of a baby hooked up to a machine, it reminded me of the Sentinel robots from The Matrix. 


I made this animation awhile ago, but I just uploaded it to Memebase. Give it an upvote, if it makes you fear for the future of humanity!

Matrix Baby

The robots are trying to latch onto newborn humans!!!! 

Nooooo!!!

Peace in the Present Moment

I've read several versions of the Tao Te Ching over the years, & Lao Tzu's wisdom is as applicable today as it was thousands of years ago.

This is an excellent quote by the ancient sage. It is important to bring your mind back from it's mental wanderings... & be aware of NOW!

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past...

If you are anxious, you are living in the future...

but if you are at peace, you are living in the present."

-Lao Tzu

This moment is the only one that we ever really have. 

If we are not in it completely, we are not fully experiencing life & the world around us.

Procrastinators' Association Logo... Pending

I'm actually a very productive person. However, I still have an inner procrastinator that would much rather do nothing & put everything off until later.

Thankfully, demands in work & life have helped me develop the ability to motivate myself to get things done. The deep realization of my mortality, that each day could be my last, also helps me to stop waiting to do things.

This is a funny logo, that some procrastinator out there actually got around to working on- but (of course) it's unfinished!

seen on fusionanomalog

Earth from Saturn

NASA released this awesome shot of the Earth, the pale blue dot, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft near Saturn.

When our problems on Earth seem overwhelming, it's good to remember this cosmic view & put things in perspective.

I made a graphic to express this sentiment awhile back-

Monkey Buddha Archives:

LOOK!

 

 

Behold... The Future!

The future may not smell great- but it LOOKS awesome!!!!!

seen on The Chive

The VR headset this guy is wearing is the Oculus Rift, the most advanced virtual reality hardware out there.

Here is a 2-D demo of what kind of software is being created for it.

One of the developer's 90-year old grandmother was filmed trying it out. Imagine the tech that's going to be available when my generation is a bunch of centenarians...

'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius

This weekend I was eating breakfast outside in the summer breeze. While listening to sounds of nature, I was reading 'Meditations' by Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Living it up! Haha.

 He was like a Western Zen master who had many great quotes & insights.

 GoodReads.com

Marcus Aurelius > Quotes 

The book is deep, but written in brief, easy to read sections. I downloaded the e-book for free. 

Gutenberg.org

Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius