Yoda Sutras: Concourse No. 2

Series 1

I - 2: Dropping Ambitiousness

Mind is a tangled web.

Use it to catch the world.

Try to comprehend the infinite complexity of it all…

…elegantly embedded in the fabric of space and time.

Open your eyes in amazement.

Be Aware.

See.

Pollution:

Ozone

Ozone at ground level is a health hazard, causing respiratory ailments such as bronchitis and asthma. It also damages vegetation and causes rubber and some plastics to deteriorate. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic gases emitted by automobiles and industrial sources combine to form ozone. In 1998, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implemented a new air rule designed to curb nitrogen oxides released by coal-fired electric power plants. Many cities issue public air quality warnings when ozone levels rise to dangerous levels. Forty-five percent of the U.S. population now lives in areas that exceed the health standard limit for ozone.

Think.

Cosmology: Multiple Universes

Learn.

Multiple universes, or the idea of a multiverse, is envisioned by some modern versions of the Big Bang theory. According to inflation, a leading theory of the birth of the universe, the cosmos underwent a tremendous growth spurt in its first tiny fraction of a second, enlarging from subatomic scale to the size of a grapefruit. This rapid expansion may also have occurred in other patches of space remote from our cosmos, creating a multitude of pocket universes, or multiverses, with different physical laws.

Imagine.

Understand.

Global Warming:

New Global Climate Models

Global warming could change our current world climate zones, which would affect where crops are grown and even drive some plant and animal species to extinction, all in the next 100 years. A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wyoming predicts that by the year 2100, many of today's familiar climates will be replaced by climates unknown in today's world, if current rates of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gas emissions continue. The new global climate models for the next century forecast the complete disappearance of several existing climates currently found in tropical highlands and regions near the poles, while large swaths of the tropics and subtropics may develop new climates unlike anything seen today. Areas of the world that currently have a tropical climate will be much warmer and drive vegetation and animal life north. These changes would lead to the spreading of malaria northward, more catastrophic natural disasters and overall greater human health risks.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Quantum Physics: Quarks

Scientists have found experimental evidence for six different types of quarks but have found only two types in ordinary matter: the up quark and the down quark. Protons contain two up quarks and one down quark, while neutrons contain two down quarks and one up quark. Two other types of quarks, the charm and strange quarks, exist in high-energy particles in Earth’s atmosphere. Particles containing the last two quarks, the top and bottom, have been created in the laboratory. Scientists believe that quarks are fundamental particles — that is, they cannot be split into anything smaller.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Material Science:

Steel

At high temperatures, tiny irregularities in steel's structure can disrupt its internal magnetic fields, making the rigid metal soft. Steels melt at about 1,150C (2,102F), but lose strength at much lower temperatures. At room temperature, the magnetic fields between iron atoms remain regular, but when heated, these fields are altered allowing the atoms to slide past each other, weakening the steel. Blacksmiths had exploited this property for hundreds of years — it allows iron to become pliable at temperatures much lower than its melting point. The peak in this pliability is at 911.5C, but begins at much lower temperatures, at around 500C (932F) — a temperature often reached during building fires.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Human Evolution: Lucy

Penetrate.

One fossil discovery above all has transformed views of how we became human. Lucy was discovered in 1974 by anthropologist Professor Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray in a maze of ravines at Hadar in northern Ethiopia. They eventually unearthed 47 bones of a skeleton — nearly 40% of a hominid, or humanlike creature, that lived around 3.2 million years ago. Based on its small size, and pelvic shape, they concluded it was female and named it 'Lucy'. Like a chimpanzee, Lucy had a small brain, long, dangly arms, short legs and a cone-shaped thorax with a large belly. But the structure of her knee and pelvis show that she routinely walked upright on two legs, like us. Johanson named Lucy's species Australopithecus afarensis, which means 'southern ape of Afar', after the Ethiopian region where Hadar is located.

Wonder…

But Beware!

Don't get caught in the mighty maze of your own mind.

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

Meditation is the tree and wisdom is its flowering.

If you want to have understanding, move from mind to no-mind. Don't go on polishing the mind.

The person who goes on being cunning with others sooner or later starts being cunning with himself. The language of sincerity, authenticity, and truth he forgets.

This is the greatest problem of wearing masks: they become your faces.

Fear does not allow you to live totally; it always holds back. It never allows you intensity, passion, totality, wholeness; divided it keeps you.

Once you accept a fundamental fact — that the society has already driven you mad — now the work to be done is how to get out of this unnatural state that society has forced upon you.

Drop ambitiousness and start living, because the ambitious person cannot live; postpones he always. Always tomorrow will be his real life — and never the tomorrow comes.

Things which have some utilitarian purpose we value, things which serve no utility we don't value. We will have to shift our whole consciousness from the utilitarian to the non-utilitarian.

The achieving mind, the ambitious mind we have to unlearn, and a totally new way of life, of enjoying, of rejoicing we have to learn.

10.

The capacity to enjoy the ordinary, the very ordinary, with extraordinary perceptiveness is the basic, most essential quality of Zen.

11.

To be non-greedy simply means you have to live each moment for no motive at all, for the sheer joy of living, for the sheer joy of dancing, for the sheer joy of singing.

12.

Be of the moment. In the moment - live. Learn the art of remaining in the present. Neither the past exists nor the future.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

There is bliss only for those who are singing for singing's sake, who are not looking for anything — they get it. This is one of the most fundamental laws of life. Ais dhammo sanantano — this is the fundamental law — Buddha says that you cannot directly find bliss; it comes always as a byproduct, as a shadow. You love, and there will be bliss; but don't seek bliss in love, otherwise bliss will not be found and love will disappear.

- Osho