Quantum Forest

Traveling between wooden temples, with columns that took centuries to growth in height and diameter, I try to understand the barriers. Why do we stop just before reaching the summit? Why do we try to solve the same problem, in the same way, all over again? (Needless to say to no avail).

Temples have a strange symbolism, because their walls represent our failures, our defects. The same walls contain the following inscription:

It is not external things that restrict us; it is our minds that are attached to things that restrict us — Ryōshun Nakano.

The problem is that if we forget the restrictions we could actually solve the problem: a whole industry of pessimism down the drain.

Walking in Kyoto.

This is a translation of something I wrote here^§. Olvidalia is a made up word deriving from Olvidar, to forget.

I am re-reading Stephen Batchelor’s ‘Buddhism without beliefs’, which I first read in 1999. I still think that the following paragraph captures really well my own position:

An agnostic Buddhist eschews atheism as much as theism, and is as reluctant to regard the universe as devoid of meaning as endowed with meaning. For to deny either God or meaning is simply the antithesis of affirming them. Yet such an agnostic stance is not based on disinterest. It is founded on a passionate recognition that I do not know. It confronts the enormity of having been born instead of reaching for the consolation of a belief.

Simple: I do not know.

Everything on a boat has a different name than it would have if it weren’t on a boat. Either this is ancient seafaring tradition or it’s how people who mess around with boats try to impress the rest of us who actually finished college — P.J. O’Rourke from Holidays in Hell

No one can retell the plot of a Cortázar story; each one consists of determined words in a determined order. If we try to summarize them, we realize that something precious has been lost—Jorge Luis Borges

If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day—John Archibald Wheeler.

…All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?—Reg in ‘Life of Brian’, Monthy Python.

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 6.

E debbasi considerare, come non è cosa più difficile a trattare, né più dubia a riuscire, né più pericolosa a maneggiare, che farsi capo ad introdurre nuovi ordini; perché lo introduttore ha per nimici tutti quelli che degli ordini vecchi fanno bene, e ha tepidi defensori tutti quelli che delli ordini nuovi farebbono bene.—Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, Capitolo VI.

I am not sure what I would have thought under other circumstances, but in my current mood Garden State (IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes) was a perfect match. Looking for understanding, trying to make sense of it all and then comes this quote:

- Large: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
- Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
- Large: You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place. [emphasis mine]

Breaking old ties, making new ties. Some times the script tries too hard to be intelligent and the editing goes too fast for my taste. However, when one sees the whole story, it touches the essence of my search.

I have been working a lot on statistical analyses this week, looking at issues of data relatedness, connectedness between sites and overall data quality measurements. A quote to remember:

Without assumptions there can be no conclusions — John Tukey

No conditions are permanent;
No conditions are reliable;
Nothing is self — The Buddha