Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.4

Series 1

I - 4: A Small Island in the Ocean of Death

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.

Health:

Salmonella bacteria

Some Salmonella bacteria use the long stringy appendages they normally use to help them 'swim' and move about to attach themselves to salad leaves and other vegetables, causing contamination and a health risk. Food poisoning from Salmonella and E. coli is commonly associated with eating contaminated bovine or chicken products, as the pathogens live in the guts of cows and the guts and egg-ducts of chickens, and contamination of meat can occur during the slaughtering process. However, some recent outbreaks of food poisoning have been associated with contaminated salad or vegetable products, and more specifically, pre-bagged salads.

Think.

Global Warming: Arctic Ice

Learn.

Each year, the Arctic Ocean experiences the formation and then melting of vast amounts of ice that floats on the sea surface. An area of ice the size of Europe melts away every summer reaching a minimum in September. Since satellites began surveying the Arctic in 1978, there has been a regular decrease in the area covered by ice in summer – with ice cover shrinking to its lowest level on record and opening up the most direct route through the Northwest Passage in September 2007.

Imagine.

Understand.

Astronomy:

Gamma-ray Burst

The gamma-ray burst, catalogued as GRB 080319B, was the result of a massive star's explosion 7.5 billion years ago that sent a pencil-beam of intense light on a direct collision course for Earth. It is the only known gamma-ray burst to have had a visible component bright enough to see with the naked eye. This was the brightest optical and infrared event that mankind has ever recorded. The gamma-ray burst was first detected by NASA's Swift satellite on March 19, 2008, after which many Earth- and space-based telescopes slewed into position to observe the rapidly fading light. Situated within the constellation Bootes, its flash eventually was pinpointed at a distance of about 7.5 billion light years. If the supernova were located about 6,000 light years from Earth, the gamma-ray burst would have appeared as bright as the sun. The burst at its peak was about 200 million times brighter than the entire galaxy in which it occurred.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Genetics: Evolving Brain Genes

Two genes already known to influence brain size have undergone relatively recent, survival-enhancing modifications in people and appear to be still evolving. Specific variants of these genes have spread quickly by natural selection. Researchers examined DNA from 1,186 adults representing 59 populations worldwide and determined the frequency of specific variants of the two genes called microcephalin and ASPM. A variant of microcephalin originated roughly 37,000 years ago and now appears in 7 of 10 people. Populations outside of sub-Saharan Africa most frequently possess this modified gene. A distinctive ASPM variant arose approximately 5,800 years ago and now shows up in 3 of 10 people. It occurs most often in Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterners, and South Asians. The functions of these particular DNA alterations, including any potential influence on intelligence or reasoning, remain unknown.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Mathematics:

Prime Numbers

Mathematicians at least since Euclid have known that the list of prime numbers is infinite. No obvious pattern has been found in how they show up in the list of all numbers, with one possible exception: The prime number theorem, proven toward the end of the 19th century, describes how rare prime numbers are, on average. The theorem predicts, for example, that from 1 to 1 million (or 10⁶), about one in every six numbers is a prime; between 1 and 1 billion (or 10⁹), it’s about one in every nine, and so on. In general, the theorem says that among the whole numbers between 1 and 10ⁿ, about one number for every n is a prime. (This is not literally true, due to a correction factor, but it describes approximately how primes become less and less frequent.)

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Ocean: Dead Zones

Penetrate.

Coastal areas lacking the oxygen to support most life forms (hypoxic) are associated with watersheds and populations centers that discharge a lot of nutrients. The number of these dead zones has been doubling roughly every ten years since the 1960s. Dead zones begin with an abundance of life. Nutrients from fertilizer runoff, sewage discharge or natural upwellings in the water column feed the growth of phytoplankton, tiny free-floating organisms such as some algae. When the phytoplankton, which may appear as large, visible blooms or “tides,” die, they sink in the water column and are eaten by bacteria. But these bacteria consume oxygen and soon there isn’t enough to go around. If fish, crab and other marine creatures can't physically escape the zone, they suffocate. When every last bit of oxygen is used up, a new suite of bacteria bloom with breath that can make these oxygen-starved waters reek of sulfur. Restricting the flow of nutrients into waterways is the first step in beginning to resuscitate these zones.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

All that is needed is to cast away your delusions.

You are not to attain to perfection. The Zen discovery is this: that you are not to attain it, it is already the case. Perfect you are from the very beginning.

All misery is in your imagination. When this imaginary misery is dropped there is nothing left but bliss, benediction, ecstasy.

Sex is raw energy, Anakin. Transformed it has to be, and through transformation transcendence there is. Don’t be too enamored of Padmé.

First you have to accept where you are, what you are. First you have to explore your reality, and only then you can find ways to go beyond it.

Meditation is the only way to transcend death. Otherwise man lives in fear, lives in trembling, anxiety and anguish.

Unless man comes to know that he is neither the body nor the mind but something transcendental to both, afraid and scared he remains.

If you are surrounded by death, Anakin, if your life is just like a small island in the ocean of death, what life can you live? In such fear is there no possibility of life.

Only meditation it is that gives you something which death cannot destroy, which is indestructible.

10.

It has almost become impossible to conceive how sudden enlightenment can be possible, how totally transformed in a single flash of lightning one can be.

11.

The person who lives close to nature is in an unconscious way close to God, close to truth. Because he lives close to nature, a certain vague awareness he has of the presence called God.

12.

First the ego has to be created, first the ego has to be strengthened, and when the ego is mature, dropped it has to be. Then the explosion!

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

Even to come in the close affinity of a Master by accident can change your life, can transform you totally. But a simplicity is needed, a simplicity of the heart. The calculating mind can come close and is still going to miss, because between him and a living Master the distance is unbridgeable. He lives in the mind and the Master lives in the no-mind; they are worlds apart.

- Osho