Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.14

Series 1

II - 5: The Depth in the Moment

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.

Mind: Tool-wielding Gorillas

On Oct. 9, 2004, a group of researchers studying gorillas in northern Congo happened upon a never-before-seen event. In a swampy forest clearing, a female gorilla yanked a roughly 3-foot-long branch from a dead tree and waded into a deep pool of water. Keeping the stick in front of her and her upper body above water, the gorilla slowly advanced about 30 feet into the pool as she tested the water's depth. Then, she returned to shore to comfort her wailing infant. About 6 weeks later, the scientists recorded a second instance of such behavior. Another female gorilla ripped the thick trunk off a dead shrub. She used the piece of wood to support herself with one hand while digging for herbs with the other. Then, she placed the trunk across a patch of swampy ground and used it as a makeshift bridge. Until then, only chimpanzees and orangutans, among nonhuman primates, had been observed using tools in the wild.

Think.

Earth: Ancient Impact

Learn.

Pieces of an asteroid that blasted a 70-kilometer-wide crater in southern Africa millions of years ago have been found intact within the crater, a unique discovery that defies models of such collisions. The Morokweng crater lies beneath a 150-to-200-meter-thick layer of sand in the Kalahari Desert. Scientists detected the ancient scar over a decade ago after noting anomalies in the planet's magnetic and gravitational fields in that region. Analyses of samples that have been drilled from the crater have revealed an 870-m-thick sheet of rock that melted from the heat of the asteroid's impact and then cooled in subsequent millennia. At a depth of 766 m, a beach ball–size rock that bears the chemical signature of an extraterrestrial object was found. Radioactive dating of mineral crystals in that rock suggested that the collision occurred about 144 million years ago. Although fragments of rock purported to be pieces of crater-forming extraterrestrial objects have been found in debris thrown far from other impact sites around the world, no such fragment had ever been discovered within a crater.

Imagine.

Understand.

Astronomy:

Titan’s Sand Dunes

Although the surface of Saturn's moon Titan is cold enough to freeze methane, it has sand dunes like those in the Arabian Desert, as revealed by radar images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. But instead of being made of ordinary sand, Titan's dunes are probably grains of frozen organic compounds, water ice, or a mixture of both. The parallel, 100-meter-high dunes stretch for hundreds of kilometers at the equator of Titan, whose atmosphere is rich in methane. The grains that make up the dunes might have formed when rare but intense methane rain drove ice particles out of the moon's frozen rocks. Alternatively, the sand could be organic material produced by sunlight-driven reactions involving methane and other compounds.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Environment: Red Tides

Commonly called red tides regardless of their color, toxic algal blooms frequently occur in the shallow waters off Florida's west-central coast. The organism primarily responsible for red tides there undergoes population explosions that scientists have been working to explain for more than a century. Toxins produced by the algae accumulate in shellfish, kill sea creatures, and irritate the eyes and respiratory systems of boaters and beachgoers. At its peak, the red tide can cover more than 67,000 square kilometers of shallow coastal waters — an area larger than the state of West Virginia. New studies suggest that blame for the bloom falls on algae-boosting nutrients that reach the Gulf of Mexico via the discharge of groundwater beneath the Gulf's surface.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Evolution:

T.rex Vision

In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, one human character tells another that a Tyrannosaurus rex can't see them if they don't move, even though the beast is right in front of them. New research indicates that T. rex had some of the best vision in animal history. This sensory prowess strengthens arguments for T. rex's role as predator instead of scavenger. Scientists had some evidence from measurements of T. rex skulls that the animal could see well. In a new study, facial models of seven types of dinosaurs are used to reconstruct their binocular range, the area viewed simultaneously by both eyes. The wider an animal's binocular range, the better its depth perception and capacity to distinguish objects — even those that are motionless or camouflaged. T. rex had a binocular range of 55°, which is wider than that of modern hawks. Going by the best estimates, T. rex might have had visual acuity as much as 13 times that of people. By comparison, an eagle's acuity is 3.6 times that of a person. T. rex might also have had a limiting far point of 6 kilometers, compared with the human far point of 1.6 km.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Genetics: Artificial DNA

Penetrate.

Chemists have synthesized a DNA-like molecule using unnatural versions of the A, T, C and G “letters” that make up the genetic code. The resulting molecule has greater structural stability than natural DNA and would resist breakdown by DNA-degrading enzymes in cells. The artificial DNA may be a superior building scaffold for constructing medical and nanotechnological structures. This new research opens the door to creating DNA-like molecules similar to natural DNA in terms of their ability for potential information storage. While other variants of DNA and its cousin RNA have been made before, the new molecule is the first to have unnatural versions of the compounds that constitute all four letters of the genetic code. Like natural DNA, the new molecule can form a triple helix as well as a double helix.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

In a single moment all the past can be dropped. Instantaneously enlightened you can become.

You come to the Master only in deep humbleness, because only in humbleness is learning possible. To learn you have come, not to show who you are.

No-mind is a state of pure intelligence. Moving around no thoughts are, just the flame of awareness there is.

Your ordinary life has to become luminous, your every moment has to become a light unto itself.

The whole is not the sum total of its parts. When the whole is born, into something new the parts disappear, something absolutely new.

Zen is an invitation to fall into existence, to dance with existence — that's what meditation is. For a moment you disappear, you become part of this great dance.

Consciousness is the law — let consciousness be the only law.

Life reveals itself most plainly when clutch at it you don't, when cling to it you don't… when you are loose and ready to lose, when your fist is not closed, when your hand is open.

Let go — that is the secret, the whole secret, the whole art.

10.

Whatever is momentous, living and moving, is momentary. It is momentary but if you live the moment in a total let-go, it is eternal.

11.

A moment lived totally in a relaxed state of mind is eternity.

12.

Eternity is not a duration, eternity is the depth in the moment.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

The morning glory opens in the morning and by the evening it is gone. In the morning it was there, so beautiful, so authentic, so real, and by the evening the flower has faded, dropped into the earth, ready to disappear. The morning glory is an exact symbol for life .When the morning glory blooms, in that small life, in that short span, it is complete, it is total. It lacks nothing. Those few moments are enough. Eternity is touched. You live for seventy years but you don't live.

- Osho