In contrast to what I posted a fake blue gator, these are real due to genetic defect that causes albinism that results in the lack of melatonin, skin pigmentation. Here they are in a shed to protect them from the strong sunlight in Florida at the St. Augustine alligator farm. A normal juvenile gator is there for contrast. Below is a focused image on the head of a white Albino. What it reveals is the lack of brain or cerebral cortex that mammals have unlike reptiles. Alligators appear somewhat intelligent, perhaps there cognition is in their huge spinal cord.

I have just received the results of my MRi from Kings this morning and I am afraid it is bad news. I have finally had a definitive diagnosis of Hippocampal Atrophy, a type of progressive and untreatable neurological disorder. However the symptoms fit the disorder like a glove, long and short term memory loss, loss of spacial navigation ie getting lost even in familiar places, loss of recall, amnesia and cognition disorders. So, a bit to process here but I had my suspicions, I have an appointment at Kings in April and have been referred to a dementia/memory clinic automatically. On the up-side if there is an up-side to all this, my critical illness cover will kick in!

Die im Jahr 1776 fertiggestellte Stiftsbibliothek wurde in der Vergangenheit als „Achtes Weltwunder“ bezeichnet, sie ist der weltweit größte klösterliche Büchersaal. Die ganze Konzeption steht exemplarisch im Zeichen der Aufklärung: Licht wurde mit Erkenntnis gleichgesetzt und sollte die Klosterbibliothek durchströmen. Der Büchersaal beherbergt ca. 70.000 Exemplare, der gesamte Bücherbestand des Stiftes umfasst rund 200.000 Bücher.

The in the year 1776 finished abbey library was called in the past the "eighth world wonder", it's the world's largest abbey library hall. The complete conception stands exemplaric under the banner of the enlightenment: light was equated with cognition and should flow through the abbey library. The library hall houses around 70,000 specimen, the whole holding of books of the abbey comprises around 200,000 books.

I find a place to think. Imagine words that shape thoughts. Imagine shaping words into thoughts. How do I begin? Here, now. Take a breath. Thoughts whistle in the wind, write what comes to mind. Rushing down mountainsides, write and write. Meandering along the valleys, clarifying, refining ideas. Textures of the landscape, plays of light, subtleties of colour, a picture begins to take shape. Ambiguities and playfulness open out to calmness and coherence. With a nice cup of coffee.

Shaping Thoughts 2

Imagine writing about the word 'shape'. Writing about shaping your thoughts into words, writing words that shape your thoughts. Where to begin? How do I feel? Take a breath. How can I begin to organise and refine my ideas? Begin by writing anything that comes to mind, but also have in mind that you want to have a piece of writing that resonates in insightful ways with your imagination.

Shaping Thoughts 3 - mainly Ai

Define 'Shape' in Writing: Start by exploring what 'shape' means in the context of writing. It can refer to the structure and form of a piece, how ideas are organised, and the overall impact of the writing. As one writer notes, "shape" in writing is about more than just the physical arrangement of words; it's about the emotional and thematic coherence that makes a piece resonate with readers.

Shaping Your Thoughts into Words: Consider the process of translating your thoughts into coherent written form. This involves not just putting words on paper but also refining and clarifying your ideas. One effective strategy is to write freely at first, getting all your surface-level thoughts out, and then revisiting the material to uncover deeper insights. This can help you identify the core themes and emotions that drive your writing.

Writing Words That Shape Your Thoughts: Reflect on how the act of writing can influence your thinking. The language you use and the way you structure your sentences can shape your perceptions and understanding. For example, studies have shown that the language we speak can affect how we perceive the world, influencing our memory, cognition, and even our sense of self. By choosing your words carefully, you can guide your own thoughts and those of your readers.

Practical Writing Strategies: To put these ideas into practice, consider the following strategies:

Freewriting: Start by writing without stopping, allowing your thoughts to flow freely. This can help you bypass initial self-censorship and uncover deeper insights.

Outlining: For longer pieces, create an outline to organise your thoughts and ensure a logical flow. This can help you see the bigger picture and make necessary adjustments.

Revising: Revisit your writing to refine and clarify your ideas. This is where the "knitting" process comes in, where you stitch together the different elements of your writing to create a cohesive whole.

Reflect on the Impact: Finally, reflect on how the process of writing has shaped your thoughts. Consider what new insights you've gained and how your understanding of the topic has evolved. This reflection can provide valuable material for your writing and help you grow as a writer.

By following these steps, you can begin to explore the multifaceted concept of 'shape' in writing and how it can enhance both your writing process and the impact of your words.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered from generation to generation, as presents to the postrity of those who are yet unborn.

-------------- Joseph Addison

(The American Theosophist - April 1971 - p. 88)

A Haiku Note:

========================

Some Buddhism books

check Amazon for reviews

then the library

========================

Buddhism has no creator god and gives a central role to the doctrine of karma. The ‘four noble truths’ of Buddhism state that all existence is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire, that freedom from suffering is nirvana, and that this is attained through the ‘eightfold’ path of ethical conduct, wisdom, and mental discipline (including meditation). There are two major traditions, Theravada and Mahayana.

(Apple Dictionary App)

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The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truths. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.

Space agencies of Europe, assemble!

Last week, ESA, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and French space agency CNES joined forces to run a special parabolic flight campaign entirely dedicated to life science experiments. Between 4 and 7 June, eight experiments were run in three different levels of partial gravity, another first for a parabolic flight campaign.

During our more common zero-gravity parabolic flights, research teams are subjected to 20-second bursts of weightlessness during which they run experiments ranging from life sciences, to technology demonstrations, to material physics. Results offer an indication of how various mechanisms work without gravity and are compared to results on the ground. But what happens at varying degrees of weightlessness?

To help fill in the graph, scientists were offered a unique opportunity to run experiments at one-quarter, one-half, and three-quarters gravity. The aim is to better understand biological dependence on gravity. Ultimately, if humans are to embark on long-term spaceflight and live on the Moon and Mars, we need to determine the levels of gravity in which humans can live and work.

One experiment investigated the effects of partial gravity on brain function. Previous studies have shown that short exposure to microgravity increased neurocognitive functions due to increased blood flow to the brain. However, longer-term spaceflight, in which increased blood flow to the brain is more permanent, showed negative effects on cognition. In this campaign, studying the phenomenon in partial gravity is helping scientists better understand where we draw the line for optimal performance.

Another team subjected baby plant roots to doses of partial gravity and monitored root growth using lasers to investigate how the roots manage to stay “grounded” in the absence of gravity. We know plants adapt to weightlessness rather quickly, but researchers still need a clearer picture of what’s happening on a cellular level. Extra-terrestrial farming is vital to human survival off-planet, and adapting agriculture to altered gravity is an important step to making this possible. For a full list of experiments, see here.

Parabolic flights are one of a few ways to recreate microgravity conditions on Earth, but how is this achieved? The A310 Zero-G aircraft, operated by Novespace in Bordeaux, France, repeatedly performs a special manoeuvre. After pulling up sharply to 50 degrees, the pilots reduce the thrust and pitch of the airplane to cancel air-drag and lift. This places the plane on a parabolic flight path, exactly as if it has been thrown upwards and released. It then essentially falls over the top of the parabola, creating 20 seconds of 0g. When it reaches 50 degrees nose-down, the plane then pulls out of the descent to normal flight.

To achieve partial gravity, the angle at which the plane pulls up and pulls out is shallower, and the pilots carefully cancel out only part of the lift. This creates about 25 seconds of one-quarter gravity, or 35 seconds of half-gravity, or 50 seconds of three-quarters gravity. The manoeuvre is performed every three minutes for a total of 31 times per flight. Watch a tour of the Zero-G aircraft here.

In addition to this unique collaboration between ESA, DLR, and CNES, the partial gravity parabolic flight campaign also featured a special guest experiment by NASA and pilot-turned-ESA-astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

"It was a real privilege to work on this unique campaign, not only because of the constructive collaboration with my colleagues from DLR and CNES, but also to provide such an interesting suite of experiments with rare and much-needed data,” said Neil Melville, Coordinator of Parabolic flight and Drop Tower campaigns. He is pictured on the left, alongside Katrin Stang of DLR and Sébastien Rouquette of CNES)

“We are certainly looking forward to the results the science teams will publish once their analyses are completed, and hope to perform a similar campaign in the future."

ESA conducts 0g parabolic flight campaigns twice per year for microgravity research. Learn more here.

Credits: Novespace

A Haiku to the Future

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It's never too late;

become what you might have been,

continue to live.

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42/52 : 52 Haiku Group

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The sacred scriptures of Buddhism, called the Three Baskets of Wisdom (Tipitaka), is the most voluminous and complex canonical work of any religion. The first and third Baskets or Pitakas are devoted to an elaborate and detailed description of the rules governing the monastic order, and explanation of how each rule was formulated and diverse commentaries on Buddhist doctrine. But in the second Basket -the Sutta-Pitaka- we find the great collection of Sermons and Discourses attributed to the Buddha, the treasury of The Five-Hundred-and-Fifty Birth-Stories of the Buddha - the famed Jatakas. Here, too, we find the Buddhist book of proverbs called the Dhammapada. Though the rest of the Buddhist scriptures are written partly in verse and partly in prose, the Dhammapada (which means The Path of Virtue or The Way of the Doctrine) is entirely in poetry. It consists of 423 stanzas, each presenting a precept or a principle; and collectively, they contain an abstract of Buddhist ethics. For this reason, Buddhists often recommend the Dhammapada as a starting point for those who wish to gain an understanding of the ethics of their faith.

Joseph Gaer, The Wisdom of the Living Religions, (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1966), 6.

"Without knowledge there is no meditation; without meditation there is no knowledge. He who has knowledge and meditation is near to Nirvana."

~ The Buddha ~

~ (0001 0110) ~

::::::::::: 16 :::::::::::

=====: 22 :=====

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations.

Current Most Interesting Pictures

flickrhivemind.net/User/buddhadog/Interesting

Leaving Calais on an early ferry to return home,

It is always nice to return home after a period away, yet at the same time sad to complete a journey or holiday.

seeing human characteristics in other animals and non-living things.

Many people will see the emotion hope in this picture. The reality is the arraignment of clouds and sunlight can happen frequently without any cognition or intention

Explore 22nd December #327

There is a particular glint in Danny Hillis’s eyes when he talks about machines—not the machines of industry or utility, but those that think. He has spent a lifetime not merely imagining intelligence but constructing it, piece by piece, in the circuits of supercomputers, in the mechanics of storytelling, and, more recently, in the quiet patience of a clock meant to last ten thousand years.

I have photographed Hillis many times over the past decade, often in the context of his work with the Long Now Foundation and its great monument to deep time, the 10,000-Year Clock. But my fascination with him predates even that. He is one of those rare figures whose mind seems permanently stretched between the past and the future, between the raw mechanics of the world and the ephemeral nature of thought itself.

When Hillis founded Thinking Machines Corporation in 1983, he was chasing an idea that most of his contemporaries considered impossible: that computers should function not like oversized calculators but like living brains. He built the Connection Machine, a supercomputer of unprecedented parallelism, a system designed to process information not linearly, but in a way that mimicked the neural networks of biological cognition. It was a machine that did not simply compute; it thought.

For a moment, it seemed the future might arrive early. Scientists at Los Alamos used the Connection Machine to model nuclear reactions, biologists used it to map the complexities of protein folding, and artificial intelligence researchers saw in it the beginnings of something profound. And then, as is often the case with the most ambitious ideas, it collapsed under the weight of history. The company faltered, AI entered one of its long winters, and Hillis moved on. But the dream remained.

At Disney, where he became Vice President of Research and a Disney Fellow, Hillis turned his attention to a different kind of intelligence—not the cold logic of computation, but the warm, human intuition of storytelling. He worked on interactive experiences, machines that could shape narratives, immersive worlds that responded not just to inputs, but to emotion and imagination. If a machine could think, could it also dream?

Yet Hillis has never been a man satisfied with a single future. His work with the Long Now Foundation—where he designed the 10,000-Year Clock—feels like an answer to an entirely different kind of question: not how machines can think, but how they can remember. The Clock, buried deep in the mountains of West Texas, is a slow machine, an enduring machine, a monument not to speed or power but to patience. It is built to measure time beyond the scale of empires, to remind future generations—whoever they may be—that they are part of something vast.

I remember standing with him at the Clock’s site, tracing my fingers over the cold metal of the gears, feeling their immensity. Hillis placed his hand on one of them and smiled. “This,” he said, “is a machine that waits.”

And perhaps that is what all of his machines have been, in some way—waiting. Waiting for intelligence to emerge, waiting for understanding to catch up. Thinking Machines, the Connection Machine, even the experimental storytelling of Disney—they were never just tools. They were invitations to imagine something beyond ourselves.

The question of thinking machines is not simply whether they will surpass us, whether they will become smarter, faster, more autonomous. It is a question of what we choose to build, and why. Hillis has spent his life designing machines that do more than compute. They provoke. They challenge. They endure.

And perhaps, in the end, the most profound thinking machines are not the ones that replace human minds—but the ones that teach us to think beyond our own limitations.

Author: Ángel Manuel Rodríguez

What biblical symbolism is associated with the four cardinal directions?

Cardinal compass points in the Bible are rich in meaning. Knowing their symbolism can help interpret some biblical passages. We often orient ourselves by facing north. In the ancient world the point of orientation was east. The east was before them, the west behind, the south to the right, and the north to the left. The future wasn’t in front, but behind, that is to say invisible. 1. The East: The importance of the east as the main point of orientation may be related to the rising of the sun and its importance in the religions of the ancient Near East. In the Bible its symbolism emerges for the first time in Genesis. The Garden of Eden was placed in the East (chap. 2:8), and its entrance faced the east (chap. 3:24). After sinning, Adam and Eve left the garden and went toward the east (chap. 3:24). This eastward movement continued with Cain (chap. 4:16) and culminated in the movement of the human race toward the east (chap. 11:2-4). Within this context the east is symbolically ambivalent. The garden placed there symbolized safety and security. After sin, when it was the direction of the exile, it represented a condition of alienation from God. It was also the place of the wilderness, from which destructive winds came, threatening life (Ps. 48:7; Eze. 27:26). To the prophets the east was a symbol of Babylonian exile and the saving presence of God. He traveled to Babylon and ultimately redeemed His people (Eze. 10:18, 19; 11:22, 23). The east became a place where God intervened on behalf of His people, bringing them salvation (cf. Rev. 16:12). 2. The West: The west symbolizes both negative and positive elements. To the west of the land was the sea, representing evil and death (Dan. 7:2, 3). In fact, the term “sea” often referred to the west (Num. 3:23). It is also the place of darkness because that’s where the sun sets (Ps. 104:19, 20). The positive meaning is its association with the Israelite tabernacle/Temple. Although it faced east, access to it required movement toward the west. In that sense the west pointed toward restored unity with God; a return to the Garden of Eden. When the Israelites traveled to and worshipped in the Temple they faced the west and had the rising sun behind them. This movement to the west began with Abram, who left the east and went to Canaan in the west in obedience to God (Gen. 11:31). It is a symbol of divine blessing. Once the exiles were liberated from their enemies in the east, they traveled west, to the land of Israel. In that journey, the Lord Himself traveled with them (Eze. 43:2-5). 3. The North: Bible students have suggested that the north is a symbol of the permanent or the eternal, perhaps because the polar stars were permanently visible in the sky. It is the place of God’s celestial dwelling (Isa. 14:13) and from which His glory descends (Job 37:22) with blessings or judgments (Eze. 1:4). He is the true King of the North. But the north—represented by the left hand—is also a symbol of disaster. The enemy of God’s people came from the north (Jer. 1:14, 15; Eze. 38:6), bringing destruction. In a sense, the enemy was the false king of the north who tried to usurp God’s role and is finally destroyed by the Lord (Zeph. 2:12; Dan. 11:21-45).

4. The South: The south is primarily a negative symbol. But the fact that it is represented by the right hand makes it also a positive one. It is negative because to the south of Israel was the wilderness, a region where life does not prosper (Isa. 30:6). To the south was Egypt, which opposed God’s power and oppressed His people. But the south was also the place where the Lord appeared to Moses, went with Him to Egypt, liberated His people, and appeared to them on Mount Sinai (e.g., Deut. 33:2). The ambivalent nature of the symbols of the four cardinal directions seems based on the fact that evil was perceived to be present everywhere and that God’s saving presence was always accessible to His people from any corner of the world (Ps. 139:7-12). In a sense they pointed beyond the points of the compass to the cosmic conflict between good and evil. Copyright: Copyright © Biblical Research Institute General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists® The Four Symbols were given human names after Daoism became popular. The Azure Dragon has the name Meng Zhang (孟章), the Vermilion Bird was called Ling Guang (陵光), the White Tiger Jian Bing (監兵), and the Black Turtle Zhi Ming (執明). In 1987, a tomb was found at Xishuipo (西水坡) in Puyang, Henan. There were some clam shells and bones forming the images of the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, and the Big Dipper. It is believed that the tomb belongs to the Neolithic Age, dating to about 6,000 years ago. The Rongcheng Shi manuscript recovered in 1994 gives five directions rather than four and places the animals quite differently: Yu the Great gave banners to his people marking the north with a bird, the south with a snake, the east with the sun, the west with the moon, and the center with a bear.

Cardinal directions in Chinese language: their cultural, social and symbolic meanings.Introduction In his discussions of dominant Ndembu ritual symbols, Victor Turner points out that one major property of symbols is polarization of meanings. That is to say symbols possess two clearly different poles of meanings - the physical and physiological (the sensory pole), and the abstract and ideological (the ideological pole) (Turner, 1967, p.28). At the sensory pole, the meanings represent "the natural and physiological phenomena and processes" and "arouse desires and feelings." At the ideological pole, the meanings represent "components of the moral and social orders, to principles of social organization, to kinds of corporate grouping, and to the norms and values inherent in structural relationships" (Turner, 1967, p.28).

The same kind of polarization of meanings can be detected in cardinal directions of the Chinese symbolic system. However, Turner did not focus his discussions on the interrelations between the sensory and the ideological poles of symbolic meanings. Durkheim's and Mauss's Primitive Classification represented one school of thought on this issue. They argued that the origin of logical classification was a result and an aspect of social classification (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.84). In the case of cardinal directions, more evidence has indicated that the sensory pole of meanings determines the ideological pole rather than the other way around. In this article the author first applies etymological method to study the meanings of direction words in Chinese language. The author believes such analyses help to understand how directions have been perceived in the history of the written language. The latter part of the article discusses how cardinal directions and other orientation concepts are used as part of traditional Chinese symbolic system. Following Jung's definitions of "signs" vs. "symbols" (Turner, 1963), we can say the directional words are signs of the known meanings of directions, whereas directions and other orientation concepts are symbols of the unknown universe.Etymological studies of directional words allow us to trace the evolution of the Chinese characters, whose hieroglyphic nature is particularly conservatory of the ideological evolution of the words. The etymological data are mostly collected from a variety of well-recognized dictionaries and online dictionary sites in both English and Chinese. The semantic units in Chinese language arc words and characters. However, graphemes and phonemes of the characters have been studied in some cases in order to understand the origin of meanings. In addition, idioms and phrases are also informational sources as it usually takes a long time for them to be established. Hence, they are used to trace ancient meanings of the words as well. Space and time are two of the most fundamental concepts in all cultures, the essential reality of human life. Like the air we breathe and the water we drink every day, they are the daily necessity we could never do without but usually take for granted. Perception of space and time defines the essence of a culture's worldview, which differs in geography and in periods of history. It is especially so in Chinese culture, as cardinal directions have become an integrative part of its symbolic classification system that defines the physical and the social reality. Studying perception of space and time would allow us to tap into the depth of a culture's worldview. The Chinese Characters Before starting the discussions of the direction words, the author would like to give a brief introduction of some major etymological and linguistic principles of the Chinese writing system. This will provide the theoretical foundation for some later discussions. If we are to divide the writing systems in the world into three types: the logographic system (in which the minimal complete unit is a logogram), the syllabic system (in which the minimal complete unit is a syllable) and the alphabetic system (in which the minimal complete unit is an alphabet) (Writing system, Wikipedia), the Chinese writing system is a typical logographic system. According to Shuowen Jiezi, one of the earliest and most well recognized etymological dictionaries in Chinese, the ancient Chinese characters can be divided into six different categories in terms of how they were developed or formed (Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; Shuowen Jiezi, Wikipedia; Zhongwen.com, online). The first category is the pictographs (xiangxing, [??]) (1), which are direct graphical depiction of the objects they denote. Examples include [??] (ri; the archaic form [??]) meaning the sun. The second category is ideographs (zhishi, [??]; or xiangshi, [??]) that represent abstract notions. For instance, the concepts of "above" and "below" are expressed as (shang, [??]) and (xia, [??]). They use signs like the dashes and dots to express abstract ideas. The third category is called logical aggregates (huiyi, [??]; or xiangyi, [??]) in which two or more parts are combined to indicate the meanings. One example would be the character for brightness (ming, [??]), which is a combination of the characters of the sun ([??]) and the moon (yue, [??]). The fourth group is phonetic complexes (xingsheng, [??] or xiangsheng, [??]), which are composed of phonetics that are indicative of the pronunciation and radicals that are indicative of the semantic category. An example of this category is (bei, [??]), which means the back of the body. It is a combination of a phonetics (bei, [??]) and a radical (yue, [??]), which indicates flesh. The fifth type of characters is called transferences (zhuanzhu, [??]) in which more abstract and complicated meanings are derived from the original concrete meanings of words. For an example, the word [??] (bei, the back of the body) gradually adopts the meanings of "turn one's back" and "betray and desert somebody or something." The last principle that Chinese characters developed is false borrowing (jiajie, [??]) in which words take on totally unrelated meanings from the original either intentionally or accidentally. There are two major writing systems used by Chinese language speakers in modern days. One of them is the simplified writing system currently used in Mainland China, which has been adopted as the standard writing system of the People's Republic of China since 1956. The other is the traditional and comparatively more complex writing system that is used by Chinese language speakers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and other Chinese diasporas around the world. The simplified Chinese is a further evolution over the traditional Chinese, and is therefore less preservatory of the original meanings. All Chinese characters used in this article are simplified unless stated otherwise. Direction Words in Chinese Cardinal directions are some of those abstract concepts that do not lend themselves easily to pictorial representations. In Chinese, the meanings of direction words are mostly combinations of graphemes and phonemes, although some parts of the words are pictographs. The author believes the relations between the formation and the meaning of the direction words could be of cultural significance and indicative of some cognitive characteristics of the culture. Traditionally there are three sets of orientation terms in Chinese culture: si mian and ba fang , which are two-dimensional' and liu he , which is three-dimensional. Si mian, literally four sides, designates the four cardinal directions and is sometimes thought of as including a fifth point, the center. Ba fang, on the other hand, denotes eight directions, the four cardinal compass points plus northeast, southwest, northwest and southeast. In addition to the two dimensional systems is the three dimensional concept of liu he, which literally means unity of six. It is the four cardinal directions and up (heaven) and down (earth) and is used to refer to the universe.

The simplified Chinese characters for the five cardinal points are (east, south, west, north and the middle) or (east, west, south, north and the middle), in the particular orders of the five. (dong, the east). is the simplified character for the east that is currently used in mainland China. The script no longer shows its original connections with the meaning of east. However, its comparatively older form does. is an example of a logical aggregate, which can be broken up into two graphemes - (ri, the sun) and (mu, a tree). The combination of the two pictographs depicts vividly the sun rising behind a tree (Karlgren, 1923, p.324; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). In contemporary Chinese there are at least three characters that are formed by different combinations of the same two graphemes (the sun) and] (a tree). In addition to the cardinal direction word (the east), the other two are (gao ) and (yao). The character (gao) represents the sun above a tree, hence its meaning being bright and being high. (yao), which is the sun below a tree, means being deep and far, losing contact with somebody. Its more archaic meaning is darkness as implied by the combination of the graphemes. The two examples prove that the relative positions between the pictorial components of (the sun) and (a tree) is significantly indicative of the semantic meanings of the characters. In the character (the east) the position of the sun is between the root and the top of the tree, indicating the sun is rising. The composition of the logogram strongly indicates that the concept of east in the language is associated with the observation of the sun's movements in the environment. (xi, the west). The ancient form of this character is , showing a bird roosting on its nest (Karlgren, 1923, p.234; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen. com, online). According to Shuowen Jiezi, the pictograph indicates that "when the sun is in the west, the birds perch over the nest" (Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online). The explicit meanings of the script are "being at home" and "being at rest." In Chinese idioms "birds returns to their nests" is usually associated with the meanings of dusk and sunset. Here the concept of sunset is borrowed to indicate the concept of the direction of sunset, the west. It is the concept of time that makes the logical link between this pictograph and its directional meaning. In many civilizations, the movements of celestial bodies define the concepts of time and space. Ancient people must have observed how the movement of the sun influences things in their environment. The sun creates days and nights, light and shadow, the seasons, and cycle of life, which all have great impact on people's livelihood. Records from all early civilizations show that ancient people established the first measurements of passage of time based on the movements of celestial bodies. For an example, the ancient Chinese read the positions of the shadow of a dial to tell the hours of a day. Our current 365 days solar calendar relies on the movements of the sun. The earliest Egyptian calendar depended on the movements of the moon. The Mayans of the Central America developed their 260 days calendar according to the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the Venus. In Chinese, the spatial division of east and west both contain some implications of time. East is connected to the beginning of a day, a year, and a life, whereas west to the end of work, a day, and a life. The Chinese character for the sun also means a day, daytime, and years. It also appears in many compound words and idioms with indications of time. Connecting east with sunrise and dawn and west with sunset and evening are common in many other languages as well. The English word east comes from Eastre, the name of a pagan dawn goddess whose festival was celebrated at vernal equinox almost at the same time as the Christian Easter (Weiner, 1989, p.36; Flexner and Hawk, vol. 5, 1993, p.615; Webster, 2002, p.716). In Latin and Greek among some other old Indo-European languages, the stem for east means dawn (Weiner, vol. 5, 1989, p.36). In English "go west" means "to die." There is exactly the same phrase in Chinese that means exactly the same thing. (nan, the south). is composed of a radical [??] and a phonetic [??] (Karlgren, 1923, p.203; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). The archaic form of [??] (bo) is [??], a picture of lianas indicating abundant and tangled vegetation. Living in the North hemisphere, ancient Chinese have observed that the southern side of a mountain, a tree, and a house receives more sunshine than the northern side. Vegetation is therefore more flourishing and abundant on the southern side. South is the direction where vegetation grows more luxuriantly. The phonetics [??], pronounced as (ren), is used as the phonetic in several other tree names (Karlgren, 1923, p.203). (bei, the north). The older form of this character is which indicates two persons positioned back to back (Karlgren, 1923, p.216; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). The picture strongly points to the meaning of back. In modern Chinese, another phonetic complex (bei) is used for the meaning of the back of human body, in which [??] (north) functions as the phonetic and ((flesh) as the radical. In some dictionaries the word it has two pronunciations, bei and bei (Guoyu Cidian, online; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online). The meaning associated with the first pronunciation is "an equivalence to the back of human body." North and back in Chinese share the same pronunciation and the same meaning in archaic Chinese. The meaning associated with the second pronunciation can be an adjective "being disagreeable and harsh," or a verb "to flee," or "to be defeated, to turn back on." The pictograph of north is linked to the observer-centered concept of back. In Chinese, back means being opposite to front, being the back of or being in the shadow. North is linked to back in all three senses. North is opposite to the sun and the south. That is why it is in the shadow and darkness. This is similar to the back of a person. In Chinese culture, the north side of a building is usually its back, for gates and doors are opened on the south to receive more sunshine. Light and shadow are the major dichotomous concepts associated with north and south in Chinese. The characters of north and south indicate that north is the shadowed side whereas south is the lit side. The geography and landscape of the country stresses the dichotomous divisions. All major rivers and mountains in China run west-and-eastward, which divide the land into parallel stripes. The ancient Chinese have learned to tell directions by looking at the positions of light and shadow. The saying goes "the shadowed side of a mountain is north and the shadowed side of a river is south." The two characters for being in shadow and being lighted by the sunlight are (shadow; Yin) and (light; Yang) respectively. The two words are also used for the dialectic philosophical concepts of yin-yang, which classify things, phenomena, and their traits into dichotomy in many eastern cultures. The two concepts are often represented by two signs,--(a broken line, yin)--(a solid line, yang). The symbols are stacked together to create eight trigrams like . Legend has it that one ancient Chinese king developed the eight trigrams into a system of sixty-four hexagrams to represent different processes in divination. His theory was written in a well-known book, Yi Jin (I Ching), another classic work of the ancient Chinese symbolic system. (the middle or the center, zhong). The ideograph could be interpreted as a vertical line bisecting an enclosure or an arrow hitting the center of a target (Karlgren, 1923, p.360; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). It denotes the meaning of the center or in between.

The fact that the concept of the center or the middle is depicted by an ideograph instead of a pictograph indicates to some extent that it is comparatively more abstract than the other four cardinal directions. A boundary is required before the center could be defined. Limited geographical boundary was not uncommon among ancient people who had no efficient way of transportation to travel widely. The center is a concept relative to the periphery. When the center or the middle is present, the four directions become the relative periphery or the frontiers. In Chinese, China means the Middle Kingdom. The name comes from the country's geographical position in early history when the core territory was surrounded by frontiers on all directions. The Five Elements System In addition to the Yin-Yang and the eight diagrams, another major part of the primitive Chinese symbolic system is the Five Elements System (Wu Xing, Wikipedia). The five elements refer to metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Each of these elements is matched to many other aspects of the material world (See table 1). For example, five planets, five colors, seasons of the year, organs of the body, sense organs, flavors, and animals to mention just a few. The four cardinal directions plus a center are an integral part of the system, which is critical and widely applied in many areas of traditional Chinese culture. Traditional Chinese medicine is one area in which the Five Elements System plays a pivotal role. Five major blood circulation organs, five major digestion organs, and other parts of the human bodies are corresponded with the five elements based on similar attributes. Things belonging to the same category are considered as related with each other. For an example, patients suffering from liver problem usually have weaker sight, crave sour food, are easy to get angry, sometimes show unhealthy dark greenness in skin tone and more likely fall victim of the disease in springtime.The Five Elements System is also a fairly sophisticated symbolic system that uses the concrete relationships between the five material elements in nature to represent and explain the abstract interactions and relationships of all phenomena . In general the system specifies four kinds of relationships. Two of the four relationships create a positive balance state. They are called generating (mothering) relationship (Sheng), and restraining or counterbalancing (fathering) relationships (Ke, . The other two exist when there is a negative out-of-balance state either because one element is too strong or too weak. In a restraining relationship, if the restraining element overpowers and hence over-limits the restrained element, there is an over-restraining relationship (Cheng, . On the other hand, if the restrained overpowers the restraining, it could not be contained but instead controls the restraining element. This would break the balance of the system and create a humiliating relationship (Wu) The picture illustrates the four relationships among the five elements. Clockwise, each element in the circle is generated by the previous element and in turn generates the following one, restricts the third one and is restrained by the fourth one. For instance, fire is fueled (created) by wood, creates earth (ashes), melts (restrains) metal, and is extinguished (restrained) by water. Orders of Cardinal Directions The juxtaposition of the four Chinese cardinal directions, sometimes five, is an idiom in itself, a synonym to "everywhere" and "direction." This idiom has two forms, east-south-west-north and east-west-south-north. When present, the word for the middle is the last character in both arrangements. The orders of the four cardinal directions are different from that in English, which is usually north, south, east and west. Statistically speaking, there are twenty-four permutations for four cardinal directions. It is culturally significant that only one or two orders are used. It is not known why these particular orders exist to the exclusion of the other possibilities. The first order is clockwise starting from the east, which happens to imitate the movement of the sun in the sky. It represents a continuous cycle in both time and space. In the ancient Chinese classificatory system, the directions are matched with the seasons, east to spring, south to summer, west to autumn, and north to winter. The clockwise order of the cardinal directions also coincides with the chronological order of the four seasons. Again, space and time are inseparable from each other. East, a spatial concept standing out originally as the place where the sun rises, takes on the meaning of a start in time. The day starts at the east. The east wind from the seas brings warmth and rain, an indication of the advent of spring. Spring is taken as the beginning of a year, which starts the annual farming cycle. The Chinese New Year is called the Spring Festival. The matching between directions and seasons results in substitution between the two sets of concepts. East wind is almost a synonym of spring wind, spring fanning is called east activities, and East Emperor is a literate alias of the god of spring. Correspondingly, west harvest means autumn harvest, and west wind usually refers to autumn wind that sweeps away leaves from the trees. The matching is certainly related to China's geographical and climatic situations. Warm and damp wind comes from the east and the south, and cold and dry wind from the north and the west. The former brings spring, the latter the winter. It's interesting to compare the Chinese classification with a similar one in the Zuni culture. The Zuni also attributes seasons, colors and animals to spatial divisions (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.43). They also add the center to the four cardinal directions, and have zenith and nadir in their basic spatial divisions. Also like the Chinese, the Zuni associate winter with north, and fire and summer with south. This is reasonable as both peoples live in the northern hemisphere. However, the Zuni "attributed water, the spring and its damp breezes, to the west; ... the earth, seeds, the frosts which bring the seeds to maturity and end the year, to the east." (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.43) This is exactly the opposite to the Chinese's. For the Zuni, who lived in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, damp breezes and rain come from the west and frosts come from the east. The differences and similarities of the two systems provide strong evidence for how people's perceptions of spatial divisions are shaped by their environments. In the second Chinese order the cardinal directions are organized into two dimensions: east-west and south-north. The east-west dimension always comes before the south-north dimension in such an order. Southeast and Northwest are * Eastsouth and * Westnorth in Chinese. [??] (east-west) also means things in Chinese. That is because, as is explained in an ancient Chinese book, "things are produced in the four cardinal regions but are called briefly as east-west; that's similar to history being called briefly as spring-autumn though it records four seasons." (Guoyu Cidian, Online) In this case east and west stand for all the four cardinal points. This points to the comparative prominence of the east-west axis over the north-south axis. Within the axis, east always comes before west and south before north. Chinese has plenty of idioms with the structures of "east ... west ..." and "south ... north. ..." There are exceptions, of course, but the proportion is too small to be cognitively significant. The comparatively more dominant status of east and south can also be understood from a political and economic perspective. Due to its geographical features, the western parts of the country were mainly deserts and barren plateaus, and the north was associated with bitterly cold weather and infertile frozen lands while in the southeast parts the fertile rice fields that were the grain barn of the country. The north and the west were important only in terms of military defense. In a culture with a long history of agricultural civilization, it is understandable that the east and the south were more preferred and more important economically, politically, and culturally.

Social Orders of Cardinal Directions Facing south adopts cultural and social significance over time in ancient China. The general pattern of traditional Chinese building complexes and room arrangements look like a square, with the front gates facing the south in order to be warmed and lighted by the sun. This pattern can be seen in residential houses, palaces and temples. The southern side of buildings has front gates, doors and wide open windows. On the north side, there are merely walls and small windows. In a building complex the main rooms face south with the wings facing east and west. There are back doors on the north sides of buildings in a complex, but they are for convenience of connection between rows of buildings. Some units do have doors facing north, but these are called the reversed houses (daoxia) (Cao, 1996, pp.29-59) and are considered atypical. The arrangement of furniture is confined and determined by this architectural pattern and so is the order of seating. In this way the practicality of facing south becomes symbolically important.

The north seat that faces south is reserved for persons with the highest social status. In the imperial court the emperor's "dragon chair" was not only significantly elevated but also invariably facing south. Court officials stood underneath his feet on the east and the west sides of the hall. Because the emperors' thrones always faced south, the phrase "facing south" came to be used as a proper noun designating an emperor. "To face south" means to become the emperor or the king. Accordingly, to face north meant to be a subject of an emperor or a king. Being bright was an adjective to praise the rule of a good emperor. As the saying goes "a good emperor faces south to listen to the discussions of national affairs and rules brightly." Such seating arrangements were copied in military and civil courts at all levels, in schools, and even in family lineages. The person who dominated the group took the north seat that was usually elevated but not as significantly as was the imperial throne. In military and civil courts it was for the official with the highest rank. In a lineage this south-facing seat was reserved for the eldest and most influential male or female member of the lineage. In schools the south-facing chair was for the teacher. The expression "facing north to somebody/something" was a figurative expression meaning to submit oneself as a subordinate, or, in the context of schools, to be a student. The phrase "the white-haired still face the north" indicates an old person who is still a student. The person with the second highest rank was positioned on the east side. The individual ranked third in the gathering was located on the west side facing the second ranking person. Then, back and forth, east and west, all the way down through for all present. In Chinese, the east is a synonym of the host whereas the west also means the guest. Custom had it that when the host and his guests entered a house, the host used the eastern stairway while the guest entered by the stairway on the west. Hence, the host is called "dong dao" (east road). The landlord is "fang dong" (east of the house); the master, "dong jia" (east family); and the hotel owner, "dian dong" (east of the hotel). To be one's treat is "zuo dong" (being the east) in Chinese. In "xi xi" (west seat) and "xi bin" (west guest, west is related to the meaning of guest. This usage, still prevailing in contemporary common language, can be traced back to an ancient custom that the host sat on the east and the guest on the west. In the system the relative spatial concepts of left and right are also interwoven with the absolute system of directions and became substitutes for east and west. The Chinese characters for left and right are [??] (zuo) and [??] (you). In older manuscripts, these are written as and . The two icons represent a hand facing different directions. Thus left and right are related to the two hands and indirectly to the two sides of the body. This substitution is no longer active in contemporary Chinese culture. However, traces of this tradition are still found in a few idioms and place names. "You di" (right lands) means west lands. "Shan zo" (left of the mountains) and "shan you" (to the right of the mountains) refers to Shandong and Shanxi provinces that are located on the east and the west sides of the Taihang Mountains respectively. In like fashion "he you" and "jiang you" (both meaning to the right of the river) designate the area west of the Huanghe River (the Yellow River) in the first case and to the west of Changjiang River (the Yangtze River) in the second. Conversely, "he zo" and "jiang zo" (both meaning to the left of the river) are the areas east of these two rivers. Like east and west, left and right are also social status indicators. Facing south, the right side is the east and the left side the west. The right seat was considered more respectable than the left one. "Lu zo" (left side of the street) is equivalent to the other side of the tracks in Anglo culture of North America. In older times, the wealthy lived on the right side of the street and the poor inhabited the left. "You xing" (right surnames), "You qi" (right relatives) and "You zhi" (right positions) referred to the aristocracy, the imperial families and the high-ranking official positions (Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, 1996). The right has also taken on the meaning of being better as is in the idiom "no one is on his right," which means no one is better than he. An exception to the prominence of right is encountered in carriage where the person with the highest social status occupies the seat on the left. That is the source of the idiom "waiting with the left seat empty," which is a signal of showing respect to someone not yet present. Another pair of directional concepts are up and down. The two characters for up and down are [??] (shang) (Karlgren, 1923, p.251) and [??] (xia) (Karlgren, 1923, p.69). They are iconic signs. The long dash, the base line, represents the horizon (zhongwen.com, online). The short stroke to the right is above the horizon for shang and below it for xia. Up symbolizes high social status and down the reverse. To reinforce the imperial authority, feudal rulers elevated their thrones in the audience halls. Last but not least, the cultural significance of [??] (zhong, the center or the middle). The long history of highly centralized feudal regime stressed the cultural significance of centralization in the culture. The centralized pattern of feudal political regime is clearly embodied in the design of the capital cities and the imperial palaces. Beijing and its Forbidden City, the best-preserved imperial capital and palace, best illustrates the idea of centralization. The old city of Beijing is a fortified square with well-aligned grids running along the two axis of north-south and east-west. The imperial palace, the Forbidden City, occupies the central area of the city proper. The major palaces inside the Forbidden City line up in a row, forming a north-to-south line dividing the city into two symmetrical parts of east and west. Being at the middle is also an important philosophical concept in Chinese culture. Confucianism highly advocates the doctrine of being at the middle, or not going to the extremes, in attitudes as well as in actions. Conclusion These etymological analyses of Chinese direction terms show how observation of the celestial bodies and their impact on natural environment underlies the initial ancient Chinese definition of the cardinal directions. Comparisons with similar primitive classification systems originating in different natural environments also provide some evidence of how perception of time and space are significantly determined by the geography and landscape of the motherland. The limitations and definitions by the environment gradually come to impact other aspects of ancient Chinese livelihood as the culture developed. For instance, the environmental influences helped to define the architectural styles and structures in ancient China, which over time influenced social behavioral norms. As directions were integrated as an important part of the symbolic system, they become dominant symbols in the culture, which can be seen in the usage of directional terms in a variety of idioms and phrases as well as in many areas of the traditional culture. Medicine and divinations are two examples. Data from the study provide further evidence to support Victor Turner's theory that symbols possess bipolar meanings - one clusters around the physical and concrete, and the other the abstract and ideological. Durkheim and Mauss refuted Frazer's argument that the social relations of mean are based on logical relations between things, and argued that it is the social relations that have provided the prototype for the latter. (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.82) In their article Durkheim and Mauss stressed the role of social organizations and social relations in human cognition. They believed the essential cognitive characteristics underlying the primitive classification are the same as that of the modern scientific classification, which both result from human tendencies to unify knowledge, to know as social beings and groups, and to extend the unity of knowledge to the universe. (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, pp.81-84) In the case of cardinal directions, the Chinese characters clearly indicate the influences of the natural phenomena on people's understanding of them. The ancient Chinese architectural styles and structures were influenced by the environment, which in turn influenced the social lives of people. However, the study does not intend to deny that human beings see things from their own perspectives and understand the universe within the limitations of their perceptions. The limitations also exist for any anthropological interpretation of cultures, just as Victor Turner discussed in Forest of Symbols. It is the case in this current study as well. Generally speaking, the modern views of orientation terms are not often the same as what was originally meant in antiquity. Our understanding of the direction concepts must have drifted away from the empirical perceptions of the ancient people. Therefore, when trying to make sense of why things become what they are, sometimes it is inevitable that our understanding is limited by our perception of here and now. This is a paradox for all anthropological studies of the "other" cultures (both culture of the others, and the other culture of ourselves). Ancient Chinese culture is baffling to modern Chinese who are confronted with a similar paradox - try to understand the perceptions of the ancient Chinese but have to do it from the perspective of a modern Chinese. In this article, the author uses the four cardinal direction words and the fifth, the centrum, to present an outline of the primitive Chinese classification system. Yet it must be said that the Chinese classification system is far more complicated than what can be explained in this essay. Concepts of the Yin-Yang dichotomy, the eight trigrams, and the Five Element System are all phenomena worthy of an independent study. However, as an interesting and inseparable part of the symbolic system, the orientation words help to show the interconnections between the several important concepts of the ancient Chinese symbolic system. COPYRIGHT 2009 Institute of General Semantics

Copyright 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

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Termite hills

Mound-building termites are a group of termite species that live in mounds. These termites live in Africa, Australia and South America. The mounds sometimes have a diameter of 30 metres (98 ft). Most of the mounds are in well-drained areas. Termite mounds usually outlive the colonies themselves.

Collective Mind in the Mound: How Do Termites Build Their Huge Structures?

Termites move a fourth of a metric ton of dirt to build mounds that can reach 17 feet (5 meters) and higher.

A single termite can be barely bigger than the moon of a fingernail, its semi-transparent exoskeleton as vulnerable to sunlight as to being crushed by a child in flip-flops. But in groups of a million or two, termites are formidable architects, building mounds that can reach 17 feet (5 meters) and higher. The 33 pounds (15 kilograms) or so of termites in a typical mound will, in an average year, move a fourth of a metric ton (about 550 pounds) of soil and several tons of water.

The termites also "farm" a symbiotic fungus that occupies eight times more of the nest than the insects do. And some termites eat as much grass each year as an 880-pound (400-kilogram) cow.

Like ants, bees, and other social insects, termites live in societies where the collective power of the colony far outstrips that of the individual. Being part of a super-organism gives the tiny termite superpowers. But a termite mound is like a construction site without a foreman—no one termite is in charge of the project. Is there a "collective plan" encoded in the collective mind of the colony?

In addition to experimenting in the mounds, Turner designs computer simulations to explore deeper patterns in termite behaviour. It wouldn't be wrong to say he's been searching for the psyche of the super-organism, but it wouldn't fully get at the richness of all of the other things he's noticed along the way—including clues to how humans might build more energy-efficient buildings, how we might design robots to build on places like Mars, and even peculiar termite behaviours that might help us understand how our own brains work.

The life of the termite is a race against rain, Turner says. Termite mounds can take four to five years to build, but a really heavy downpour might cause a third of the mounds to collapse. So termites are always scurrying to rebuild their mounds as fast as the weather erodes them.

To demonstrate the rebuilding process, Turner uses an auger, a tool that looks like a big corkscrew, to cut into the rock-hard surface of a mound. As he pulls a six-inch (15-centimeter) plug of dirt from the side, termites pour out of the hole. Soldiers fan out with their pinching mandibles ready for battle, and workers with mouths full of dirt run to plug the hole. How do they know there's a hole in the mound?

Termites are "novelty detectors," attuned to excitement and always on alert, says Turner. (When there isn't external stimulation, termites sometimes stand in little clusters, massaging each other's antennae.) Experiments in Turner's lab suggest they respond to slight air movements and changes in humidity and concentrations of gases like carbon dioxide.

At the first sign of a disturbance, a termite runs to communicate the news with touch and vibrations. Roused, masses of termites fill their mouths with dirt and head toward the source of the problem. The commotion attracts more termites with more dirt, and within an hour or so the hole is patched.

Peering Inside

The only way to get a glimpse of the termite super-organism in action is to rip the side off a mound. And so one morning Turner, along with entomologist Eugene Marais of the National Museum of Namibia, takes a backhoe to the test fields. With a single swoop, the backhoe removes the top of a mound and then precisely dismantles the rest, like pulling the walls off a dollhouse.

The termites are not happy that their walls have suddenly disappeared, and they swarm frantically around the exposed structure. Marais dislodges a chunk of dense soil about the size of a squashed soccer ball—the queen's chamber.

After repeated blows of a hand pick, the capsule breaks open suddenly, revealing a saucer about five inches (almost 13 centimeters) across containing the queen. Her sweating body is swollen to the size of a human finger. A coterie of workers carries the eggs she produces—at the staggering rate of one every three seconds—to nearby nurseries, while others feed and clean her.

The queen herself, once a relatively normal size, retains her original legs, but they are now nearly useless. Her pale body pulsates, the caramel-colored fats and liquids inside swirling under her skin.

The title "queen" leads people to imagine that she is in charge of the mound, but this is a misconception. "The queen is not in charge," says Marais. "She's really a slave." The queen is the epitome of the super-organism: one for all and all for one. She is a captive ovary, producing hundreds of millions of eggs over her life span of up to 15 years to populate the mound.

Farming Fungus

Below the queen's chamber lies the super-organism's largest organ: the fungus garden. In a symbiotic relationship dating back millions of years, the termites exit the mound through long foraging tunnels and return with their "intestines full of chewed grass and wood, which they defecate upon their return, and other workers assemble these 'pseudo-feces' into several mazelike fungus combs," Turner explains.

The termites then seed the comb with spores of fungus, which sprout and dissolve the tough cellulose into a high-energy mixture of partially digested wood and grass. For the termites, the fungus functions as a sort of external stomach, but the fungus gets the better deal. Ensconced in elaborate termite-built combs and constantly tended, the fungus receives multiple benefits, including food, water, shelter, and protection.

In fact, the deal is so lopsided that it calls into question just who's in charge of the relationship. Collectively, the colony's fungus accounts for nearly 85 percent of the total metabolism inside the mound, and Turner speculates that the fungus may send chemical signals to the termites that influence—control?—the way they build the mound. "I like to tell people that this may not be a termite-built structure," he says. "It may actually be a fungus-built structure."

Living Quarters

Which brings us to the most extraordinary organ: the mound itself. Contrary to common notions, termite mounds are not high-rise residence halls. Rather, they are "accessory organs of gas exchange," in Turner's words, designed to serve the respiratory needs of the subterranean colony located several feet (a meter or two) below the mound.

For many years, researchers looked at termite mounds and supposed that the spires worked like chimneys, drawing hot air up and out. But Turner discovered that mounds function more like lungs, inhaling and exhaling through walls that appear impenetrable but are actually quite porous.

Inside the mound, a series of bubble-like chambers connected to branching passages absorb changes in outside pressure or wind and pass them through the mound. To regulate the mix of gases and maintain a stable nest environment, the termites are forever remodeling the mound in response to changing conditions.

"A termite mound is like a living thing," says Turner, "dynamic and constantly maintained."

Wet Kisses

While studying termite building behavior, Turner noticed that his subjects seemed to be kissing each other, mouth to mouth, after a complicated ritual that included grooming and begging. Curious, he added fluorescent green dye to their water and discovered that all this "kissing" was actually a bucket brigade, transferring large amounts of water across the mound. A termite can drink half its own weight in water, scurry to a drier part of the mound, and distribute it to other termites. In addition to rebalancing the mound's moisture level, moving all of this water dramatically changes its shape.

Turner's work with termites has attracted some notable collaborators, among them British engineer Rupert Soar. Inspired in part by termite mounds, Soar has plans to build energy-efficient houses with porous walls that make use of passive wind energy. He's also looked into using termite-style building methods to help robots build structures in remote locations using only local materials.

Group Brain

Termites may even change the way we think about thinking. A research project at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering brought computer scientists and roboticists to Turner's site to observe termite behavior with a range of sophisticated scanners and software.

Harvard professor of robotics Radhika Nagpal makes an analogy between the behavior of termites and the brain. Individual termites react rather than think, but at a group level they exhibit a kind of cognition and awareness of their surroundings. Similarly, in the brain, individual neurons don't think, but thinking arises in the connections between them. (Single neurons, for example, may recognize a baseball bat and the smell of hot dogs, but working in concert they let you know you're at a baseball game.)

Nagpal's team set up dozens of experiments to try to observe just where this collective cognition arose. "What program are they running?" mused Harvard physicist Justin Werfel, comparing the termites to robots. "Can we get a stochastic model of a stateless automaton that has no memory but reacts to what it encounters?"

Nagpal, Werfel, and Kirstin Peterson, also from Harvard, recently used termite behavior as a model to build a small swarm of robots (named TERMES) that assembles a structure without any instructions.

"This is a system where complexity is of the essence," Turner says of the termites' behavior. "If you don't capture the complexity, there's no hope of understanding it." And so the quest continues for the elusive mind in the mound.

Here are some tips on how to eat to preserve your memory and keep your brain healthy.

Key Points

Limiting candy in your diet may support brain health, as high added sugar intake could increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

A brain-healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, managing chronic diseases, staying socially engaged and following diets like the MIND diet.

Making mindful dietary and lifestyle choices can enhance cognitive health and overall well-being over time.

More than 55 million people have dementia worldwide, with Alzheimer’s disease being the most common form, contributing to 60% to 70% of dementia cases. Having Alzheimer’s disease means living with a progressive disorder that causes brain cells to degenerate and die, leading to a continuous decline in memory, thinking skills and the ability to perform everyday tasks. Sadly, as the disease progresses, even basic activities and communication become challenging.

Several factors influence the risk of developing dementia, with some being completely beyond your control. Aging is the most significant risk factor, as individuals over the age of 65 are more susceptible. Genetics also play a crucial role, with specific genetic mutations directly linked to Alzheimer’s disease. However, along with unchangeable factors, certain lifestyle choices can help lower the risk of cognitive decline, with diet being a pivotal piece of the puzzle. “Some of the best foods for brain health are antioxidant-rich wild blueberries, salad greens for B vitamins, salmon for its anti-inflammatory fatty acids, fiber-rich black beans, and walnuts, the best source of plant-based omega-3 ALA among nuts,” says Maggie Moon, M.S., RD. There are some foods you should avoid when focusing on brain health support too, with candy being the #1 food on that list.

Why You Should Limit Candy for Brain Health

Taking steps to reduce dementia risk is one positive step for brain health. While there isn’t one food that will cause dementia, high-added-sugar candy tops the list of foods that should be limited on a brain-healthy diet.

“Candies are not your brain’s friend,” Moon says. She points to a study that found that eating too much added sugar more than doubled the risk for dementia. “That includes added sugar from candies, as well as other sweets like pastries, sweetened café drinks and sodas,” she says. Researchers think that high blood sugar and insulin levels are risk factors for Alzheimer’s because insulin resistance may also occur in the brain, which may impact memory.

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Of course, everything can be eaten in moderation in a healthy, balanced eating plan. “While fine once in a while, research has found that a diet that is consistently high in added sugar may increase the amyloid plaque buildup in the brain,” says Laura M. Ali, M.S., RDN. "These plaques disrupt the communication system in our brain, and scientists have found that people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have more of these plaques.”

In fact, says Ali, one study found that every 10 grams of added sugar consumed per day (equivalent to 2½ teaspoons of sugar or 8 gummy candies) was associated with a 1.3% to 1.4% increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Those with the highest daily added sugar intake had 19% higher odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

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The #1 Habit to Start Now to Reduce Your Dementia Risk

Other Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Dementia

Limiting sweetened candy doesn't guarantee that you won't get dementia, but it is a positive step forward. Along with limiting added sugar in your diet, here are some other ways to reduce your dementia risk:

Exercise by participating in both aerobic activity and resistance exercise.

If you smoke cigarettes, take the first steps to quit.

Limit alcohol intake. If you regularly drink alcohol, try to do so in moderation. Excessive drinking is linked to cognitive decline. Moderate drinking means two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women.

Stay socially engaged. Maintaining social connections builds your cognitive reserve to maintain good brain function with age.

If you have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, make sure you’re managing these well. Stiffness in arteries and blood vessels can damage the brain. If you need help or individualized advice, reach out to a healthcare professional.

Include brain-healthy foods in your diet. The MIND diet emphasizes foods like whole grains, nuts, berries, vegetables and olive oil, which research shows may help support brain health. “The brain-healthy MIND diet limits foods high in saturated fats and added sugars because both are linked to oxidative stress, inflammation and the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Moon. She clarifies that this diet limits—but does not eliminate—fried foods, pastries and sweets, red meat, whole-fat cheese and butter.

Our Expert Take

Nothing will guarantee that you will live a life free from dementia. But certain steps may help reduce your risk, with your dietary choices being one factor. And along with eating brain-healthy foods, limiting your candy intake can help keep you cognitively sharp. Enjoying a small handful of candy corn on Halloween or conversation hearts on Valentine’s Day won’t “cause” dementia. “It’s important to remember that no single food eaten once, or even once in a while, is going to make or break your brain health,” Moon adds.

8 Sources:

World Health Organization. Dementia.

Alzheimer’s Association. What is Alzheimer’s Disease?

National Institute on Aging. Thinking about your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease? Five questions to consider.

Dhana K, James BD, Agarwal P, Aggarwal NT, et al. MIND Diet, Common Brain Pathologies, and Cognition in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. J Alzheimers Dis.;83(2):683-692. doi: 10.3233/JAD-210107.

Agarwal P, Ford CN, Leurgans SE, Beck T, Desai P, Dhana K, Evans DA, Halloway S, Holland TM, Krueger KR, Liu X, Rajan KB, Bennett DA. Dietary sugar intake associated with a higher risk of dementia in community-dwelling older adults. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;95(4):1417-1425. doi:10.3233/JAD-230013

Liu L, Volpe SL, Ross JA, Grimm JA, Van Bockstaele EJ, Eisen HJ. Dietary sugar intake and risk of Alzheimer's disease in older women. Nutr Neurosci. 2022 Nov;25(11):2302-2313. doi:10.1080/1028415X.2021.1959099

Alzheimer’s Association. Risk reduction.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dietary guidelines for alcohol.

His education was liberal for it's time but his exploration of "the new sciences" was under the guidance of rigid church doctrine. I believe this left him partly philosophically blinded. The statement that has been affixed to his name is his biggest misstep. He knew almost nothing of thought, of cognition.

This is my footprint taken seconds after it's creation and because I find our senses as subjective as our thoughts I can not hold even this as evidence of my existence.

NordArt 2024

Artist: Xiang Jing

Despite the lightness and dexterity of the composition, the sculpture "Mortals – Maybe I Want It All" can only be truly appreciated when comprehending its inherent spiritual intensity. If we admit that the modern world has succeeded in standardising everything and erased all boundaries or differences, then the world has become boring and unbearable. The rules and punishments dull the cognition of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. For XIANG Jing, this is a path of doom that lowers the bar of humans' existence. Only if you believe there is divinity, do you strive to climb the summit. Only the hardship with both mind and body ensures reaching the destination.

Quid Pro Quo Becomes Supreme Cause in all action-reaction phenomenon.

A Haiku Note:

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Strive to be happy

try not to be cynical

have strength of spirit

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The Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truths. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.

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DESIDERATA

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann c.1927

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Live your life in happiness, even though those around you

live their lives in hatred and wish to spread their antipathy

to you. Be happiness itself. -:- Some Buddhist Philosophy

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“A disciplined mind brings happiness.” – Buddha

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Instinctual Behavior shapes the Beast, conduct and cognition shape the Man .... Quotes by Patricia Bechthold

"Robert The Bruce of Scots " 1316- 1329

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iss065e006534 (April 26, 2021) --- Expedition 65 Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency is pictured inside the Columbus laboratory module setting up hardware for the Grip experiment. The motion study is composed of a series of dexterous manipulation tasks that may lead to improved spacecraft interfaces and deeper insights into human cognition in space.

Faith, like the light of Sirius, flows through the world. It exists in the flower, the monkey and the stone, but it is strongly exemplified in the nature of the dog. It is a fiery force which, when flaunted without discrimination or when wrongly focussed, can scorch or drive to madness. But nurtured in its proper season and trained with loving care, it is the fertile key that gives birth to a higher level of insight into the heart of things unseen by the personal man. The homing instinct, so wonderfully manifested in the dog and so much a part of his love and faith in his Master, becomes in man the guide through the intangible realms leading to his spiritual home. Not by sight or smell or hearing but by intense love for a beloved master, the dog is guided home. Man has come on a very long journey, taking him a long way from his spiritual abode. On the way he, like the gods, has been accompanied by the dog. It is fitting, nay poignantly just, that the dog should follow him and sometimes guide him on the long journey home. Weaving back and forth across the boundaries of life and death, guided by a faith that overcomes any uncertainty between the two, the dog unravels the complexities of conditioned existence and pierces to the deathless source of love.The faith that is cleansed of false hopes and objects is the gateway to higher intuition. The instinct of a dog can be described as the "direct perception of what is right within its own realm", whilst intuition is the direct cognition of the truth in all things, the memory of the knowledge of one's past existing in one's real nature. The instinct of the dog is universal in Nature and endowed by the Spirit of Deity, a divine spark entering conscious development in the higher animals. This can be guided by the intelligence within or by influences from without. As the dog's instinct is modified by exposure to a sensitive human being, the animal learns to rely increasingly on the "intuitive prompting from within", thus becoming a channel for pure reflected Buddhi. It cannot be said that the dog possesses the faculty of reason, nor does it recall its past lives, but through the inherent power of its uplifting nature it can become an acting template for its master's own yet to be consciously understood intuitions. A faithful dog can know, long before the event, of danger threatening the object of his love. A human being who knows of this potential will adjust his approach to the dog so that love, justice, honour and truth will be reflected through their daily relationship. These are qualities of the soul which can spring to life through contact with the soul in man. As a perceptive Lt.-Colonel in charge of British war-dogs during the First World War put it, "AH the dog knows about God must come to him through us." One might add to this that man, not fully merged with the Master within, can learn from the dog's yearning love and faithful assimilation of his own master's qualities.As guide or witness or guardian, the dog seems to exemplify fidelity. Even as harbinger of war and death, it demonstrates a faithful execution of its master's desire. Its faithfulness includes and goes beyond death, and so it is said to be a fidelity surviving death, to be reborn again and again. It was this perception of the death-defying power of faith that caused the Greeks to recognize in the dog the companion of healers like Aesclepius, whose temples were frequented by canines of all sorts. The sick who came to these places for cures believed the dog to have a healing tongue. They thought that if the animals licked their wounds while they observed an 'incubation' period (sleeping at the temple), or if the dogs appeared to them in dreams, a cure was heralded and would soon come into effect. Thus, through the transference of the power inherent in the faithfulness of the dog, death was surmounted and life recommenced. Such beliefs demonstrate on a simple thaumaturgic level a profound metaphysical conception of faith and a deep insight into the essential inner qualities of familiar creatures. Plutarch felt that the dog symbolized the conservative and watchful principle of life and, like Plato, characterized it as a philosopher. This perhaps suggests a witness who, like the Shawnee Grandmother's dog, existed from the very beginning of things. Apuleius described the dog as "raising his rough neck, his face alternately black and golden, denoting the messenger going hence and thence between the higher and infernal powers". In the Shawnee myth the dog is the unraveller, but here the stress is upon his role as a weaver, coming and going between worlds. As companion of the dead on their crossing to the nether region, the dog is indeed weaving its way in the role of a guide to those who do not know the way. In Hindu myth Indra's dog, Sarama, mothered the Sarameyas, the four-eyed dogs of Yama who run between this world and the nether region, summoning men and women to the other side. Many an Eastern ritual calls for the participation of a dog at the time of death. The Parsees traditionally introduced one to the deathbed and it accompanied the funeral procession. The death of a woman in childbirth required two dogs in order to accommodate two souls. In old Tibet sacred dogs were kept in the monasteries to devour the remains of the dead before the influence of Buddhism encouraged the spread of cremation.Northern Buddhists identify this virtue in the lion-dog guardian who is the defender of the Law. Watching, motionless and in complete obedience, the guardian-dog has subjugated all passions through the Law. No bright rag or tasty morsel can divert its attention from the faithful performance of its appointed task.If the dog is a guide to the realm of the dead, it is also a keeper of the boundary between the two worlds. Like the great mastiff of Charon, it guards the entrance way and none can pass without its acquiescence. But on the field of battle the dog throws himself into the fray. He is at once messenger, watcher, combatant and guard. He weaves his way back and forth from the living to the dead or wounded if trained to do so, or he becomes a Hound of Hell fighting along with the boldest soldier on the field. It is said that dogs larger than wolves accompanied the Celts when they attacked Delphi in 273 B.C. Terrifying the Greeks, they raised havoc like Hecate's own hounds of war, against whom regular soldiers had little effect. Often pictured with war-gods and heroes, the dog has been placed in the role of a witness of death as well as its guide.Satisfied that she had thoroughly made her point, the old story-teller tucked the children in, herself a grandmother finishing up the day. Behind closed eyes the children's thoughts drifted along the rim of the world and explored the details of the tale They had heard. Had the ancient Grandmother existed before the dog? Did the dog exist before the world? Had there always been dogs waiting and watching? They wondered about these things and about the Creator, who took his dog with him when he created the world. The questions merged with dreams for the children, but asleep or awake, anyone might wonder if the dog may have been around forever. It seems to appear always, even in the oldest myths and in quaint scratches on the walls of caves. To the Egyptians and the Greeks the dog was esteemed as a companion of Hermes, who, as the good shepherd, is both messenger and presiding deity of the mind and goes about accompanied by his faithful dog, Sirius, the 'all-seeing vigilance'. For many people of the world, the dog itself has been a messenger: between the gods and man and between life and death. Revered as a fire-bringer and solar herald, seen by many as the Hound of Heaven, the dog inspires awe, whilst in its guise as harbinger of death it is dreaded and reviled. A companion in life, it continues to be such in death and so weaves the two together in a pattern of perpetual coming and going, a continual design of birth, death and rebirth. For this reason the dog is also associated with resurrection and fertility, leaving one to ponder whether Yudhishthira was not motivated by something in addition to compassion when he insisted that his faithful dog accompany him to heaven.Imagine, my little ones, the ancient Grandmother of the Earth. Since the beginning of time she has sat, huddled, on the rim of existence. Humming over and again to herself the most pristine harmony, she tirelessly weaves the great basket called the world. Slowly by day the woven pattern emerges while her dog patiently waits. His eyes never cease to follow her nimble hands, recording and remembering the pattern as it grows. Until she rests from her work at nightfall, he watches and waits and then begins to unravel every strand. The Old One sleeps and the dog unwinds the knotted strands of day. By morning, all has been undone and the patient weaver begins again. She never rises from her task to chase the dog away nor does she fail to feed him from her exhaustless store. Every day and night proceed like those that went before: so it has always been; so it shall always be. We of the Shawnee Tribe have never doubted this, and I have heard it said that others believe it too. Do not the Kato people say that 'when the First Mover was going around the world creating, he took his dog'?"

www.theosophytrust.mobi/704-dog#.WB-B6oZPeEc

We tried to make the concept of city’s image and identity in the suburbs of Paris . In this regard, identity was defined as the qualities of a place that is recognized or recalled as being distinct by the individuals. Identity is a critical issue in suburban housing . The overall image of the city, which includes similar forms, has no identity. The new developments in suburban have no distinctive character. The first objective of design was to find out the distinctive architectural’s elements. The second objective of this proposition was to imagine how interacting with those distinctive sequences. The third objective of this facade was to ascertain the variation between different inhabitants and their identification of distinctive building’s elements. Finally, the last objective is to find out residents’ evaluation and feelings regarding the new Streetart😍. The workshop adopted mixed elements using both the quantitative and qualitative methods of sculpture collection and details. The quality approach adopted a using references on a sample of the Parisian’s classic design . Patterns from different parts of decorative elements were involved in the sample concept. The qualitative approach used three ways ; root of Parisian , rules of identifiable elements , and visual survey.

Awesomely fun game to pass the level of repetitivism we tryout for

How residents were involved in the missed identity, how repetitive windows and repetitive blocks or repetitive towers have killed lives and activities in the immediate environment. The use of the crafting were connected and should be sailed using social network.

Wishing for cross roots and craft’s art for convergence of both quantitative and qualitative suburbs. New buildings shall be identified as the imageable buildings of suburban housing all over the planet.

The results should indicate that the physical features and the appearance of the distinctive buildings were the most important factors in the process of recalling the distinctive buildings.

Meanings and activities attached to those buildings were also important. It could that residents’ age and their period of residency in the city have important effect on the identification of distinctive elements of the city. The proposition of design suggests that the buildings in suburban have been important elements in people’s mental cognition.

The design hoped to found that the characteristics of distinctive physical elements are influenced by the physical appearance of the buildings more than non-physical attributes. Singularity has the most effect on the imageability. It is hoped that these findings would reveal some knowledge of the elements of identity characteristics and inspire city planners and designers and community leaders to improve the image of the city

manic depression is the new black.

Bipolar disorder or manic–depressive disorder (also referred to as bipolar affective disorder or manic depression) is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood. These moods are clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes or symptoms, or mixed episodes in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time. These episodes are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood, but in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, known as rapid cycling. Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia, and other types, based on the nature and severity of mood episodes experienced; the range is often described as the bipolar spectrum.

The onset of full symptoms generally occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood. Diagnosis is based on the person's self-reported experiences, as well as observed behavior. Episodes of abnormality are associated with distress and disruption, and an elevated risk of suicide, especially during depressive episodes. In some cases it can be a devastating long-lasting disorder; in others it has also been associated with creativity, goal striving and positive achievements; there is significant evidence to suggest that many people with creative talents have also suffered from some form of bipolar disorder.

Genetic factors contribute substantially to the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder, and environmental factors are also implicated. Bipolar disorder is often treated with mood stabilizer medications, and sometimes other psychiatric drugs. Psychotherapy also has a role, often when there has been some recovery of stability. In serious cases in which there is a risk of harm to oneself or others involuntary commitment may be used; these cases generally involve severe manic episodes with dangerous behavior or depressive episodes with suicidal ideation. There are widespread problems with social stigma, stereotypes and prejudice against individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder exhibiting psychotic symptoms can sometimes be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia.

======================================================

~ ( 1 ) - ( 2 ) - ( 3 ) - ( 5g ) - ( 5+) - ( 6 ) - ( 7 ) - ( 8 ) - ( 9 ) - ( 10+ ) - ( * ) ~

======================================================

A Haiku Note:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The way of virtue

to help create harmony

among all mankind

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Live in joy,

live in peace,

even among the troubled."

~ The Buddha ~

~ (0000 1001) ~

::::::::::: 09 :::::::::::

=====: 09 :=====

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.

dont forget to breathe

Much of the current knowledge of memory has come from studying memory disorders. Loss of memory is known as amnesia. There are many sorts of amnesia, and by studying their different forms, it has become possible to observe apparent defects in individual sub-systems of the brain's memory systems, and thus hypothesize their function in the normally working brain. Other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease can also affect memory and cognition. Hyperthymesia, or hyperthymesic syndrome, is a disorder which affects an individual's autobiographical memory, essentially meaning that they cannot forget small details that otherwise would not be stored.[10] Korsakoff's syndrome, also known as Korsakoff's psychosis, amnesic-confabulatory syndrome, is an organic brain disease that adversely affects memory.

manic depression is the new black

Bipolar disorder or manic–depressive disorder (also referred to as bipolar affective disorder or manic depression) is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood. These moods are clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes or symptoms, or mixed episodes in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time. These episodes are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood, but in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, known as rapid cycling. Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia, and other types, based on the nature and severity of mood episodes experienced; the range is often described as the bipolar spectrum.

The onset of full symptoms generally occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood. Diagnosis is based on the person's self-reported experiences, as well as observed behavior. Episodes of abnormality are associated with distress and disruption, and an elevated risk of suicide, especially during depressive episodes. In some cases it can be a devastating long-lasting disorder; in others it has also been associated with creativity, goal striving and positive achievements; there is significant evidence to suggest that many people with creative talents have also suffered from some form of bipolar disorder.

Genetic factors contribute substantially to the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder, and environmental factors are also implicated. Bipolar disorder is often treated with mood stabilizer medications, and sometimes other psychiatric drugs. Psychotherapy also has a role, often when there has been some recovery of stability. In serious cases in which there is a risk of harm to oneself or others involuntary commitment may be used; these cases generally involve severe manic episodes with dangerous behavior or depressive episodes with suicidal ideation. There are widespread problems with social stigma, stereotypes and prejudice against individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder exhibiting psychotic symptoms can sometimes be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia.

A Haiku Note:

=============================

A Buddha portrait

made out of four slates of wood

live the Eightfold Path

=============================

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truths. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.

I have been working on an album cover design for saxophonist/composer Chris Bowden. The music is recorded and mastered and the artwork prepared to be made into the finished package. I have a lot of variations on the album theme to be revealed including the actual sleeve design itself. This will appear soon. Meanwhile here is a variation which will be part of the pre-release publicity.

The album will be entitled 'Unlikely Being'.

“Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but ... let us once try… assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition.”

-Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher

An important code of object recognition is color. The grass is green, the rose is pink and the sky is blue. But then, is the sky really blue or is it a figment of our imagination? What if I told you, colors are colorful exercise of the mind and are defined by our experience of the world and the blue of the sky is a coat of surreal identity we all impose unknowingly on the sky to suit our cognition?

We sense colors though a set of cells in our retina, the cones. The number of cones varies widely among individuals. Yet, everyone can identify colors with more or less comparable efficiency. All of us will look at the sky and agree it is blue. This is because colors are recognized not by the cones but by our brain. And the brain is a crazy place, literally speaking. Think about colored sunglasses. Unless the viewer consciously remembers wearing them, people using these colored glasses tend to 'see' original colors of their surroundings after few minutes. In this case, the brain auto-corrects the color tint rendered by the glasses relying on previous experience. The midday sky, which turns pink or lavender in one of those Bono eye-wears, appears the usual blue after few minutes. You see, colors are not merely what we see. They are also what we have seen in the past. Despite the deformed perception of the sky in the present due to chromatic glasses, the brain remembers and makes the perceived sky conform to our regular cognition.

Our issue on hands gets more interesting with achromats. Achromatopsia is hereditary total colorblindness where achromats lack functional cones in their retina and do not sense any color and see everything in black, white and all imaginable shades of grey. Often, they describe things as ‘lighter than’ or ‘darker then’. How is the sky to them? Lighter than the rain clouds perhaps? Perhaps, darker than breaking waves? So, are these achromatic brains conforming to objects or are objects conforming to the brain in every possible shade in between white and black? The answer may rest with patients suffering from 'Cerebral Achromatopsia', where accidental dysfunction of the brain region responsible for 'creating' colors leads to a loss of color perception despite functional cones. To these unfortunate colorless minds, who were once coded in color but now fail to use the code, the sky might as well be a lump of incongruous jelly hanging up there.

As these mindless thoughts crowded my mind that afternoon at Point Reyes, I could not help but marveled at the sublime surrounding me. Sublime, as defined in psychology, is the ‘feeling of pleasure (or displeasure) in the superiority of our reason over nature’. Being a feeling, sublime is not contained in the nature; like the colors that surround us, it is contained in our mind. You see… Out there, the sky is beautiful; in my mind, it is blue and it is sublime.

Bipolar Disorder

is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or more depressive episodes. The elevated moods are clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes, or symptoms, or mixed episodes in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time.[1] These episodes are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood; but, in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, which is known as rapid cycling. Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to such psychotic symptoms as delusions and hallucinations. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia, and other types, based on the nature and severity of mood episodes experienced; the range is often described as the bipolar spectrum.

Bipolar disorder is a condition in which people experience abnormally elevated (manic or hypomanic) and, in many cases, abnormally depressed states for periods of time in a way that interferes with functioning. Bipolar disorder has been estimated to afflict more than 5 million Americans—about 1 out of every 45 adults.[4] It is equally prevalent in men and women and is found across all cultures and ethnic groups.[5] Not everyone's symptoms are the same, and there is no simple physiological test to confirm the disorder. Bipolar disorder can appear to be unipolar depression. Diagnosing bipolar disorder is often difficult, even for mental health professionals. What distinguishes bipolar disorder from unipolar depression is that the affected person experiences states of mania and depression. Often bipolar is inconsistent among patients because some people feel depressed more often than not and experience little mania whereas others experience predominantly manic symptoms.

Bipolar disorder is something that hits really close to home. My dad's mom was borderline bipolar. She apparently spent a great deal of time in hospitals and attempted suicide several times when my dad grew up. He resented her but at the same time went into psychology. Little did he know his daughter would be born with and go through the same things his mother did. My sister began to suffer from clinical depression about 5 years ago. Since then she has gone missing, attempted suicide, been on several medications that have failed, went through ECT treatments and to this day can't remember anything that happened for those months of her life, spent time in hospitals, and spent some time in a children's home. I don't know everything she's been diagnosed with but I believe she's also OCD...but most certainly bipolar as well.

Since my sister went through these things (she'll only be 18 in December) I look at the disorder completely differently. It's not about mood swings per say....but it's a disorder about hopes and dreams and disappointment. For periods at a time my family would gain hope that she was getting better-that the medication was working. Then out of nowhere she would attempt suicide or request to be taken to a crisis center for treatment before she attempted suicide. It's not about "oh I'm happy!" "oh I'm sad..." ...it's far deeper than that. So stop yourself next time you call someone "bipolar" cause they're PMSing or something.

I can't leave you guys on a bad note though. I want to thank you all for supporting me. This flickr drug can be quite powerful sometimes...and I apologize when I let it get to me. But really what means the most to me is when I realize how many people I inspire. That, to me, is the greatest thing I can do for you guys. I love to answer questions and make tutorials and give you images to inspire you to create your own work. So please don't hesitate to ask me something-anything. I know how difficult it can be to get answers from people on flickr.

Again, I thank you guys for the support :) I never imagined I'd be as successful as I am. Some days I may not feel like it...but truly, I am successful.

NEW YORK TIMES - April 16, 2021. As a work of realism worthy of notice on Flickr, this map and information from this morning's NYTimes holds a mirror on American cognition, demonstrating the chaos inspired by the blimp formerly referred to as a "president" and the power of "centralized simplicity."

From David Leonhardt: The main reason for local variance ties to the party of local government.

"Democrats believe more strongly than Republicans in the power of government. Compare, for example, the chaos of the Trump administration’s virus response to the Biden administration’s. Democrats’ belief in the power of government certainly doesn’t ensure they will manage it competently, but it may improve the odds.

In the most successful state programs, one theme is what you might call centralized simplicity. In Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont gave priority to older residents, including people in their 50s, rather than creating an intricate list of medical conditions and job categories that qualified people for shots (and that more privileged families often figure out how to game).

In New Mexico — which has the country’s highest rate of fully vaccinated people, despite also having a high poverty rate — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has overseen the creation of a centralized sign-up system. The state has one vaccine portal that all residents can use to sign up for shots, rather than the piecemeal, confusing systems in many other states. (This is how it was initially going here in Massachusetts, a real mess under Republican governor Charlie Baker.)

South Dakota, the red state with the highest share of vaccinated residents, has also taken a centralized approach.

Vaccine rates still are not high enough — in any state — to have ended the pandemic. In Connecticut and New Mexico, combined, about 11 people have died on a typical recent day. But that toll has fallen more than 80 percent since mid-January, even more than in the rest of the country."

P.S. STATEHOOD FOR D.C.! 🇺🇸

©Jane Brown2023All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without explicit written permission

He looked better than last time, but there was a noticeable decline in his cognition.

I photographed Dr. Rodney Brooks on September 17, 2021, at his high-rise condo on Vallejo Street in San Francisco. The soft light filtered through the large windows, casting a warm glow as we sat discussing the state of robotics.

At one point, he held Genghis on his lap—a six-legged robot he built at MIT in the 1980s. Genghis was a breakthrough in robotics, showing how intricate behaviors like crawling can arise from a system of basic, independently operating controllers. It was a fascinating moment, seeing the legendary roboticist reunited with one of his most influential creations.

Brooks, known for his work in artificial intelligence and robotics, has long championed the idea that intelligence is built from the ground up rather than imposed from above. His insights into embodied cognition and behavior-based robotics have reshaped the field, influencing everything from industrial automation to household robotics.

The conversation was a reflection of his lifelong curiosity and relentless pursuit of innovation. Even as we spoke about the challenges facing the industry today, his enthusiasm for the future of robotics remained palpable. A visionary in his field, Brooks continues to push the boundaries of what machines can do—and how they might one day coexist with us in everyday life.

Minster House located at the University of Lincoln's Chemistry, Pharmacy and Life Sciences research and laboratory facilities. Part of the University of Lincoln's Science and Innovation Park. On Beevor Street in Lincoln, Lincolnshire.

Minster House is used as the research facilities of the University of Lincoln's Animal Behaviour, Cognition and Welfare Research Group, a unique team of internationally-renowned researchers at the forefront of the animal behaviour field.

The Science and Innovation Park was built jointly by the Lincolnshire Coop and the University of Lincoln and part of a new College of Science. Lincoln Science & Innovation Park is built on the site of the fomer Ruston Bucyrus factory in the centre of Lincoln.

Lincoln’s southwest industrial quarter has been at the heart of the city’s prosperity for more than 150 years. Not only was it at the forefront of industrial plant development -it can claim to be the home of the original tank before WW1- by the middle of the Twentieth Century, it boasted Europe’s largest foundry. The Science Park has preserved much of this heritage by retaining the majority of the old HQ, Becor House, and the former substation that is now the reception area of Boole Technology Centre.

Lincoln Science and Innovation Park (LSIP) has been tasked by its founders, the University of Lincoln and the Lincolnshire Co-op, with reinvigorating this site as an engine of industry driven by science, technology and innovation.

Since it opened, Lincoln Science & Innovation Park has created 12,000m2 of renovated and purpose-built space that is home to a science and tech community. Phase Two of the park’s development aims to continue this success by creating an environment to engage larger and expanding businesses, it will offer bespoke developments for sole-occupancy to medium and large knowledge-intensive businesses.

More than £22 million has been spent on the project since 2013, principally on the Joseph Banks Laboratories and the Boole Technology Centre, supporting small and medium enterprises and the University of Lincoln’s College of Science. The new expansion will offer a new hub for private sector investment and innovation, alongside state-of-the-art academic research science facilities in the centre of Lincoln.

Buildings will range in size from 5,000 to 27,000 sq ft (500m2 to 2,500m2) over six landscaped acres of the current park, with access to its facilities and services. The land has outline planning consent for 12,000m2 of new development, however individual applications will be submitted.

Information soources:

cityx.co.uk/2019/03/work-on-phase-two-of-the-lincoln-scie...

thelincolnite.co.uk/2017/09/green-light-for-next-phase-of...

www.lincolnsciencepark.co.uk/about

www.lincolnsciencepark.co.uk/facilities/joseph-banks-labo...

NordArt 2024

Artist: Xiang Jing

Despite the lightness and dexterity of the composition, the sculpture "Mortals – Maybe I Want It All" can only be truly appreciated when comprehending its inherent spiritual intensity. If we admit that the modern world has succeeded in

standardising everything and erased all boundaries or differences, then the world has become boring and unbearable. The rules and punishments dull the cognition of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. For XIANG Jing, this is a path of doom that lowers the bar of humans' existence. Only if you believe there is divinity, do you strive to climb the summit. Only the hardship with both mind and body ensures reaching the destination.

Procedure according

To principles

Extending cognition

Guanyin is an East Asian spiritual figure of mercy, and a bodhisattva associated with compassion as venerated by Mahayana Buddhists. The name Guanyin is short for Guanshiyin, which means "Perceiving the Sounds (or Cries) of the World". She is also sometimes referred to as Guanyin Bodhisattva (Chinese: 觀音菩薩). (Wikipedia)

======================================================

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truths. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.

“AND THE BUILDING BECOMES MAN”: MEANING AND AESTHETICS IN RUDOLF STEINER’S GOETHEANUM

Carole M. Cusack

Introduction

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of the Anthroposophical Society, is renowned for his work in widely varied fields including education, biodynamic agriculture, politics, banking, poetry, and drama (Hammer 2009: 209). His accomplishments in architecture are among his less well-understood cultural productions. His two greatest achievements – the buildings known as Goetheanum I and Goetheanum II (the latter built after the destruction by fire on 31 December 1922 of the former structure), in the small town of Dornach near Basel in the canton of Jura, Switzerland – have been described as “sculptural architecture,” of a kind similar in Expressionist form to works by his contemporaries Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), Hermann Obrist (1863-1927), and the younger Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) (Sharp 1966). The focus of this chapter, Goetheanum II, is a giant sculpted concrete form four stories high, with sweeping lines that give the effect of a monolith. It is headquarters to the Anthroposophical movement, and contains a one-thousand seat auditorium in which religio-spiritual performances of Eurythmy (Steiner’s movement art, which he initiated in 1912) take place. Contributors to a 1960 issue of the Swiss architectural magazine

Werk featuring the building agreed that its design required “a uniform worldview and lifestyle” (quoted in Steinberg 1976: 4). This is the case: to understand both incarnations of the Goetheanum, built as “Schools for Spiritual Science,” requires an understanding of Anthroposophy and of Steiner himself. Richard A. Peterson has posited that the main “symbol-creating domains most often identified [are] art, science, and religion” (Peterson 1976: 673). Anthroposophy, as developed by Steiner, is a philosophy that integrated all three of these domains, and which formed the basis for an enthusiastic programme of cultural production. This chapter considers the meanings embedded in the aesthetic choices of Steiner in the design and construction of both Goetheanum I and Goetheanum II. Steiner thought that Western Europe needed to re-orientate its Weltanschauung

as a spiritual priority and that art was a crucial part of this regenerative process. David Brain’s argument that cultural production creates society itself is relevant here. Brain states that “[t]he social construction of cultural artefacts entails the production of practices which, in turn, enact their own status in broader social contexts by inscribing both the boundaries of cultural domains and the social status of the author in qualities of the artefact” (Brain 1994: 193). Expressionist artists, some of whom (for example the Russian Wassily Kandinsky) shared Steiner’s Theosophical background, shared his vision for the spiritual renewal of Europe. Steiner could not have been unaware of a range of significant Expressionist philosophies and artistic forms present in Europe during his lifetime, and particularly at the time he was developing Anthroposophy. As a lecturer he travelled extensively, and came into contact with many artists and writers who shared mystical ideas about art. His vision for the headquarters of Anthroposophy was grandiose, like that of many other Expressionists, though unlike most of them he had the opportunity to construct his vision himself. Goetheanum II has also been referred to as a

Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’), a term associated with Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and with architects such as Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, who influenced the interiors as well as the exteriors of their buildings (Adams 1992: 182). Yet Steiner wanted something specific for his group; “[n]ot to build in a style born out of our spiritual world view, would mean to deny Anthroposophy in her own house” (quoted in Steinberg 1976: 82). The Goetheanum embodies Anthroposophical ideals, and Anthroposophy inhabited the entire cultural life of its adherents. For Steiner this came in the form of cosmological insights, which could best be achieved in the sculptural shapes and organic forms, derived from the natural world, of the Goetheanum (in both its first and second incarnations). This chapter first considers Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual quest, Anthroposophy, the teaching he developed, and the place of art and cultural production in his vision for a transformed humanity. The creation of seventeen buildings between 1908 and 1925 in Dornach, which in the twenty-first century is a community of approximately six thousand, was a major achievement in embodying the Anthroposophical ideal of revealing a “logic of life” deriving from Goethe’s writings on the natural sciences and esoteric Christianity, in physical forms, and transformed Dornach into something of a pilgrimage centre for Anthroposophists and spiritual seekers (Reese 1965: 146). The meaning and construction of Goetheanum I is explained, then the chapter’s focus shifts to the realised Anthroposophical theology of Goetheanum II, which was designed by Steiner in 1923 but not completed until 1928, three years after his death. This magnificent building is a magnet for tourists and architecture enthusiasts, as quite apart from its Anthroposophical significance, it is a remarkable and beautiful example of Expressionist architecture.

Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born in Donji Kraljevec, a village in what is now Croatia but was then Hungary, in the Austrian Empire. He was educated by his father, the provincial stationmaster at Pottschach in Lower Austria, and at the local school. In his uncompleted autobiography, Steiner claimed that by the time he turned eight “the reality of the spiritual world was to me as certain as that of the physical,” and that he was able to communicate with the spirits (Davy 1975a: 12). He was heartened to discover that geometry (and mathematics more generally) was about invisible realities that had been discovered by humans. From 1879 to 1883 he studied mathematics and physics at the Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Vienna. Steiner funded his studies by working as a tutor, chiefly in philosophy, classics, and literature. During this time he met two people who would significantly affect his development; “an old peasant herb-gatherer … [who] possessed faculties of spiritual perception which allowed him to see deep into the secrets of nature and know, for example, the curative properties of herbs” and “Professor Karl Julius Schroer, the great Goethe scholar” (Davy 1975a: 14). After graduation he was employed at the Goethe Archive in Weimar, where he worked on Goethe’s scientific writings under the direction of Joseph Kürschner, who was preparing a new edition of Goethe’s works (Landau 1935: 50). In 1891 Steiner received his doctorate in philosophy from Rostock University and the next phase of his intellectual and spiritual quest began. This was concerned to relate the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) to that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1742-1832). From 1897 to 1900 Steiner resided in Berlin, where he edited the

Magazin für Literatur

, “visited Nietzsche, [and] wrote introductions to the works of Schopenhauer” (Schwarz 1983: 11). During this period

he became deeply interested in Theosophy and was a key player in the establishment of the Nietzsche Archive. In 1902 Steiner became head of the Theosophical Society in Germany. Yet, his orientation shifted in the first decade of the twentieth century as he embraced a combination of natural science and esoteric Christianity, partly through the influence of Marie von Sivers, an actress and artist of Russian extraction (Davy 1975a: 20). Von Sivers became his second wife in 1914 after the death of Anna Eunicke, whom he had married in 1899 and separated from a few years later. In 1901 von Sivers had asked Steiner “[w]ould it be possible to create a spiritual movement based on European tradition and the impetus of Christ?”

The Theosophical Society had always looked to Hinduism and Buddhism, to the East, for spiritual inspiration; Madame Blavatsky’s “Masters” were Tibetan lamas, and Annie Besant, her successor, and her colleague Charles Webster Leadbeater promoted Jiddu Krishnamurti as the next World Teacher (

Maitreya in Buddhism, also known as the “Cosmic Christ”). It was Theosophy’s endorsement of Krishnamurti that caused Steiner to leave the movement, and to form the Anthroposophical Society late in 1912. The first meeting was convened on 13 February 1913. Steiner was convinced of the crucial and unrepeatable nature of the “Christ impulse,” which was introduced into the human soul through the “Mystery of Golgotha” (Steiner 1976: 63). Christ, for Steiner, was the paradigmatic Being, and a human being at that. Anthroposophy means “the wisdom of man,” and is therefore explicitly contrasted with Theosophy, “the wisdom of God.” Steiner thought that modern

spiritual knowledge should depend, not upon external revelations, but rather upon the development of human mental powers … He claimed to teach nothing he had not himself known through … methods of “spiritual scientific” research … Until his death in 1925, he worked … to develop examples of practical applications of anthroposophy in diverse fields, including education, agriculture, economics, medicine – and architecture (Adams 1992: 185).

Steiner taught that modern humans, influenced by empirical science and logical reasoning, had lost the consciousness possessed by ancient humans, in which the individual was understood to be a microcosm of the universe, and life had meaning accordingly. He advocated the gaining of “Initiation knowledge” of “Mysteries,” which involved developing the human will; and cultivating active thinking, which becomes “an organ of touch for the soul, so that we may feel ourselves thinking in the same way that we walk, grasp or touch; so that we know that we are living in a real being” (Steiner 1991; 13-14). Steiner continued to employ Theosophical concepts, including: the notions that human beings have an etheric body beyond the physical, and an astral body beyond the etheric; the existence of higher beings,

karma

and reincarnation, and the essential unity of religion and science. He placed great emphasis on the cultivation of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, which are creative capacities in ordinary human life. Yet Steiner argued that, like the capacity for love, quotidian experiences of imagination, inspiration, and intuition were only “dim promptings,” a “shadow- picture[s]” of highest cognition, the attainment of which humans must strive toward (Steiner 1991: 25). Like his near contemporary G. I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949), Steiner spoke of the radical discontinuity between subjective human states, and “objective”

love, art, and so on. Both men, following Madame Blavatsky’s lead, presented their esoteric teachings as occult science, a comprehensive system that restored to modern humans their ancient spiritual birthright, and which had the capacity to create a true self, delivering moderns from the splintered identity they customarily experienced. Both systems were cosmological in orientation, presented the physical world as alive, and engaged in processes of transformation. Steiner argued that sleep and dreams were access points to the supersensible world, where spiritual beings could be encountered, and that these beings could waken dead matter, transforming it into living nature:

[a]ll … in those hills, is expecting that one day it will be able to dream, and so with dream- consciousness to take hold of lifeless matter, and from these rocks and hills to conjure forth once more as embryos, seeds, living plants. It is indeed these beings who bring before our souls a wonderful magic of nature, a creating from out of the spirit (Steiner 1991: 77).

Anthroposophy understands all within the physical world to be evolving into higher forms, and in humans the development of spiritual senses enables the “digestion” of experiences by the soul. With this digestion, certain cosmological realisations are possible; for example, recognition of the interrelatedness of the human being with the whole of creation will lead to the person “becom[ing] a living Zodiac” or absorbing the wisdom of the dead (Steiner 1975: 37). It is crucial that humans learn that “the world [is] a book which the Hierarchies have written for us, in order that we may read in it, then only do we become Man in the full sense of the word” (Steiner 1975: 77). For Steiner, becoming “Man” fully involved the realisation that the human was a microcosm of the macrocosmic cosmos. The logical consequence of this is that the human being is the model for everything; the system that offers the key to all other systems. In 1911, Steiner wrote a poem for Marie von Sivers, which began, “Shaping the world in the self/ Seeing the self in the world/ Is the breath of the soul” (Steiner and Steiner-Von Sivers 1988: 121). The centrality of Christ in Anthroposophy follows from this teaching, and Steiner’s teaching contained many examples of this “fractal” structure in which each component is broken down into components that are smaller models of the whole. The layering of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego is similar, though the underlying principle is not one of size but spiritual development (King 1987 [1986]: 360). Anthroposophists often use homeopathy, a form of holistic treatment developed by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), which operates on the same principles of intensification through breaking down to minute quantities, reflecting the occult teaching of the

Emerald Tablet

of Thoth (or Hermes), “as above, so below” (Shumaker 1972: 165). Hahnemann believed that like substance should be employed to cure like ailment, and Francis King states that, “[h]ighly dynamized or potentized medicaments are possessed of qualities pertaining to non-material modes of being” (King 1987 [1986]: 64). The cosmological dimension is not neglected either; cosmic data, such as planetary events, are also factored into the process of making remedies within Anthroposophy. Steiner’s debt to his master, Goethe, is everywhere apparent; Goethe had spoken of coming to understanding through “the inner sense” and had asserted that, “every living thing is not an isolated being, but a majority” (quoted in Pehnt 1991: 9). He was notably influenced by Goethe’s notion of metamorphosis; if the archetype of a plant was located, “out of that conceptual archetypal plant one could think out countless numbers of special forms” (Steiner 1938: 3). Chapters in this

volume by Liselotte Frisk and Alex Norman treat other aspects of Steiner’s Anthroposophical teachings.

Steiner’s Teachings on Art

Due to his concentration on the human development of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, Steiner accorded a prime place to artistic endeavours within his system of esoteric development. He understood that the imaginative capacity was engaged when human consciousness was clear of physical “pictorial impressions” and filled with “etherically pictorial impressions.” When these were cleared from consciousness and the person was aware of the void, “into that state of voidness pour astral impressions” (King 1987 [1986]: 37). This signalled that the inspirational capacity was engaged. When the intuitive capacity was engaged, Steiner claimed that the spiritual has been “brought to full consciousness and has been born to a new life in which he or she is a spirit being dwelling amongst other spirit beings” (King 1987 [1986]: 38). Steiner himself worked in a wide range of creative arts with notable success; he was a poet, sculptor, painter, and architect, “the creator of a new art of movement,” Eurythmy, and a dramatist (Klingborg 1975: 48). Steiner himself allied the arts very closely with true religion, saying “Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is from the beginning so placed, that it flows as one stream from a source out of which both art and religion in their origins can also flow” (Steiner 1938: 7). Steiner’s ideas on the spiritual function of art reflected a wider concern in European society just prior to the outbreak of World War I; for example, the Theosophically-inclined Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), a member of the art movement

Der Blaue Reiter

(“the blue rider”) published the hugely influential

On the Spiritual in Art

(1912), which called for a return to the spiritual as the fundamental inspiration for art and the principal aim of artistic production (Fant, Klingborg and Wilkes et al 1975: 9-10). Steiner commenced writing a series of Mystery Plays in 1909 with Marie von Sivers, who as mentioned above, was an actress. The four resulting plays were pictorial scenes intended to convey spiritual truths, and were performed in theatres. The four titles were “The Portal of Initiation: A Rosicrucian Mystery” (1910), “The Soul’d Probation: A Life Tableau in Dramatic Scenes” (1911), “The Guardian of the Threshold: A Series of Soul Events in Dramatic Pictures” (1912), and “The Soul’s Awakening: A Drama of the Soul and Spirit” (1913) (Steiner 2007). Drama is an embodied art, and in Steiner’s lecture series

The Arts and Their Mission

(1923) he placed great emphasis on the fact that ancient peoples in Greece, Rome, India, and other countries were at harmony with their bodies and did not suffer from the mind- body dualism that plagues modern people. As important as the unity of the mind and body, Steiner asserted, was the “unity of spiritual life and art,” which Goethe deeply apprehended but which is no longer experienced (Steiner 1964: 15). Unsurprisingly, Steiner was critical of mimetic art, claiming that it could only reproduce things in nature, whereas true art could express “kinship with the spiritual world” (Steiner 1964: 16), and was experiential; it was not sufficient to see the colour red but it was necessary to experience “red or blue in the spiritual world” (Steiner 1991: 21). In art, as in spiritual exercises and authentic life experiences, humans were enabled to be truly themselves. Therefore Steiner paid close attention to the body, teaching on food and diet, clothing and costume, and art forms that partook of bodily experience.

The movement art of Eurythmy shared certain qualities with the Mystery Plays, in that both art forms were externalisations of “innermost laws” that were perceived through bodily actions. The first Eurythmy classes were taught in 1912, and by 1919 two courses of training had been developed and Steiner’s eurythmists had toured Europe giving public demonstrations. Marie von Sivers and Lory Smits, an early teacher of the art, contributed significantly to its development. The esoteric meaning of Eurythmy was emphasised by Steiner:

[w]e are setting the human organism in motion; we are making its limbs move. The limbs, more than any other part of the human body, are what pass over into the life of the next incarnation. They point to the future, to what comes after death. But how do we shape the limb movements we bring forth in eurythmy. In the sense realm and in the supersensory realm we study how the larynx and all the speech organs have been brought over from the previous life and shaped by the intellectual potentials of the head and the feeling potentials of the chest. We directly link what precedes birth with what follows death. In a certain sense, we take from earthly life only the physical medium, the actual human being who is the tool or instrument of eurythmy. But we allow this human being to make manifest what we study inwardly … Eurythmy shapes and moves the human organism in a way that furnishes direct external proof of our participation in the supersensory world. In having people do eurythmy, we link them directly to the supersensory world (Steiner 2006: 17).

Eurythmy is thus explicitly cosmological and anthropological, linking the human person’s body as it manifests in this lifetime with their previous and future lives and with the universe of which the person is a microcosm. In Anthroposophical circles Eurythmy has been referred to as the speech of the soul. Steiner wrote extensively on literature, music, and painting, but for the purpose of this chapter his remarks architecture are most relevant. He stated, “[o]h soul, if you wish to leave the physical body in order to regain a relationship with the cosmos, what aspect will you take on? – this was the question. The forms of architecture were, so to speak, answers” (Steiner 1964: 23-24). From the perspective of the production of culture, “the symbolic elements of culture are shaped by the systems within which they are created, distribute, evaluated, taught, and preserved” (Peterson and Anand 2004: 311). In the case of Steiner’s buildings in Dornach, the ‘system’ is Anthroposophy. For Steiner, buildings (like all art forms) should not slavishly imitate forms witnessed in nature, but should rather exhibit organic forms like living nature, and stand in the same mirror relation to nature as the human body does to the macrocosmic universe. For Steiner, in a very real sense, buildings were alive. His application of Goethe’s notion of metamorphosis to architecture meant that, to quote Rex Raab, “the transformation of mass and shape according with a recognisable motive or theme appropriate to the task, creates ‘the appearance of consciousness’” (Raab 1975: 70). For Steiner, the building and its natural setting created “landscape,” which was creative and active, and spiritual power (for example, from the cardinal directions or the heavenly bodies) could be tapped through the strategic design of buildings (Bockemühl 1981: 42). This made environments like Dornach able to facilitate the spiritual development of those people who lived there and interacted with the architecture. In short, human creativity was intimately connected to divine creativity.

Goetheanum I at Dornach .…

During World War I, Steiner and his followers began constructing Goetheanum I on a hill in Dornach. Wolfgang Pehnt observes that, at that time, the Birs valley was open country, “half cultivated nature and half a little world of buildings” (Pehnt 1991: 7). Steiner’s architectural ambition for the Anthroposophical headquarters was initially to erect a twin-domed meeting hall, provisionally called the Johannesbau, in Munich. This was conceived as a Theosophical structure, as he had decorated the interior of the Tonhalle in Munich for the 1907 European Theosophical Congress, and there was enthusiasm for a building in which Steiner’s Mystery Plays, discussed above, could be performed in (Schwarz 1983: 14-26). Architect Carl Schmid-Curtius was engaged to realise Steiner’s design concept. But in May 1913, after Steiner broke with the Theosophical Society, his friend Dr Emil Grosheintz donated land in Dornach to be the site of the building, now to be called the ‘Goetheanum’. There was only one structure on the hill at the time, in which Steiner resided. The foundation stone, which was aligned east-west, was laid with great ceremony (in which Steiner invoked spirit guides and protectors, and noted the stone’s formation “in accordance with the cosmic picture of the human soul”) on 30 September 1913 (Schwarz 1983: 36). Nearly two hundred of Steiner’s pupils, from seventeen different countries, worked on Goetheanum I in 1913 and 1914. The building was 272 feet long, 243 feet wide, and 111 feet high, with a sixty-five thousand cubic metre interior space. It was oriented east-west, with the stage beneath the smaller of the two domes and the seating area beneath the larger. Rex Raab notes the “domes were clad in Norwegian slate, which shone silvery in the Jura landscape” (Raab 1975: 63). A major sculpture,

The Representative of Humanity

, nine metres high and sculpted of wood, by Steiner and his collaborator Edith Maryon, depicted the dark and light aspects of being (which he named for Ahriman, the Zoroastrian “Evil Spirit” and Lucifer, the Biblical angel and “Light Bearer”), stood in the Goetheanum. These figures represented the closed self and the open self, and were united by the central figure of Christ, “The Representative of the Human” (Klingborg 1975: 50). The acoustic qualities of the structure were important in that it was intended for performances. Goetheanum I was built of wood; Rom Landau says that, “Steiner used for its construction the same seven different kinds of wood which are used for the construction of a violin, and the ceiling of the main hall was as buoyant as the walls of a violin” (Landau 1935: 71). In a 1921 lecture, Rudolf Steiner repudiated the idea that Goetheanum I should be read symbolically, rather asserting that it was built according to laws that made possible the “revelation of the supersensible world in the sensible” (Steiner 1938: 9). He further claimed that the organic forms of the structure were an attempt to explore creation itself, in the manner of Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis. The macrocosmic-microcosmic principle described above was present in the first Goetheanum; at one point Steiner, describing the stair-hall, says;

I arrived, through feeling, at the development of these three semi-circular canals standing in the three directions of space at right-angles. If you go up this staircase, you have this calming sensation. It is not copied – that it certainly is not – but afterwards I remembered that the three semi-circular canals of the ear also stand in these three directions of space. When they are injured, man falls down in a faint: they are therefore closely connected to the laws of balance. It did not arise out of a naturalistic desire to copy, but from experiencing the same element by which the aural canals are arranged (Steiner 1938: 12).

This quotation makes it clear that, for Steiner, mimetic art (that which seeks to copy nature and produce “life-like” artistic products) is an inferior, or perhaps entirely

illegitimate form of art. Spiritual art, which brings people into contact with the supersensible through the sensible, is, rather, the production of artworks that embody certain laws that resonate with the embodied viewer. He does allow that the first Goetheanum featured some occult symbolism (for example there were five pointed forms that could be interpreted as pentagrams, though they could also be seen as leaves), but in general the building’s effect was intended to be emotional rather than intellectual. The building’s interior featured just one inscribed word, “Ich.” Of this, Steiner said it referred to “Faust striving towards the fully-conscious ‘I’ – towards the ‘ICH’ embodying itself in the word. The older languages had ‘I’ incorporated in the verb; in this epoch it is right that a separate word for it should appear” (Steiner 1938: 16). The interior of the Goetheanum was flooded with symbolic colours, facilitated by huge red and yellow glass windows and “luminous wall paintings” that exemplified the colour theory of Goethe (Adams 1992: 200). By the time the Goetheanum I was finished, Schmid-Curtius was no longer involved, and the team of Ernst Aisenpreis (who also worked on the Goetheanum II) and Hermann Ratzenberger, assisted by Albert von Baravalle, oversaw the final stages of construction (Schwarz 1983: 51). Goetheanum I was sited among other early buildings at Dornach, including Haus Duldeck (now the archives), the Boiler House (with its dramatic “flame” chimney), and the Glashaus, all constructed between 1913 and 1916. The latter two also featured twin domes, and all exhibited an absence of straight lines and a preponderance of curves and organic forms (Adams 1992: 187-188). On 31 December 1922, New Year’s Eve, a Eurythmy performance was held in Goetheanum I at 5 PM, and at 8 PM Steiner delivered a lecture to the audience. At the close of the evening most people left; shortly after, the building was discovered to be on fire (Anon 1923). It was not possible to save it, and Goetheanum I was destroyed after eight brief years. Anna Samweber, in her memoir of life with Steiner and his wife, describes the rescue of the sculpture, “The Representative of Humanity,” from the flames. She also notes the fear that the nearby Schreinerei, a building “with the halls and Rudolf Steiner’s studio,” might also catch alight (Samweber 1991: 30). Although it was never proven, many Anthroposophists believed that the fire was arson; that “non-Anthroposophists could not bear the beauty that was created for such a unique spiritual group” (Steinberg 1976: 57). Steiner was deeply distressed by the destruction of Goetheanum I, and his health began to decline. He decided that the second Goetheanum would be built entirely in concrete to render it more durable.

Haus Duldeck. There was considerable opposition to the erection of Goetheanum II by the local council, probably motivated by hostility to Steiner and Anthroposophy, despite the movement’s considerable contribution to the local economy (Steinberg 1976: 61-62). Conformity to the building permit resulted in a reduction of height of the west front and a widening of the horizontal wings. The vital importance of the second Goetheanum is evident in the fact that nowadays Anthroposophists call it simply “the Building” (Sharp 1963: 377). Steiner’s considerable talent as an amateur architect is richly evident in the second Goetheanum. The exterior sculptural mass has a plain east end, almost a flat wall, and develops towards the west, with the west front as the “face” of the building opening onto the landscape. It is radically different from the earlier building; some Anthroposophists regard it as a poor substitute. This is partly because Goetheanum I had been funded through donations, whereas Goetheanum II was largely funded through an insurance payout. Additionally, the concrete structure, although larger, spelled “the relinquishment of detailed work by hand, the farewell to a vast sun of invested creativity” (Pehnt 1991: 21). Steiner and his wife acknowledged the tragic loss of Goetheanum I but stressed the need for a second School of Spiritual Science to be erected swiftly, and Steiner’s design for the concrete building utilised the same notion of metamorphosis and transformation from Goethe. Sharp describes it as “a piece of living sculpture” (Sharp 1963: 378) and Hans Hasler, in his discussion of the major conservation operation undertaken between 1993-1996, emphasises the plasticity and dynamism of concrete as a building material (Hasler 1999:9-11). Hagen Biesantz notes that the ground plan retains the cruciform shape of Goetheanum I, but the double space created by the two cupolas has given way to a threefold space, which relates to Steiner’s theory of the “threefold division of the social and human physical organisms” (Biesantz 1979: 59). Only the windows provide some indication of the function of the rooms concealed within the building; for example “the three high side windows tell us that the great hall is behind them” (Pehnt 1991: 7). Writers on the Goetheanum constantly stress its organic forms, and Wolfgang Pehnt argues that the group of Anthroposophical structures in Dornach exemplify Steiner’s theory, taken from Goethe, of “architecture and architectural ensembles as societies of biological species … a biotope” (Pehnt 1991: 9). Although Steiner did not design the interior of Goetheanum II in the same detail that he did for Goetheanum I, Anthroposophical teachings inform the general scheme. The Great Hall has four long windows, which are coloured “as in the first Goetheanum … green, blue, violet and pink” (Biesantz 1979: 69). The Great Hall was actually completed by Johannes Schöpfer, a Stuttgart architect, chosen by competition in 1957. Georg Hartmann’s study of the windows notes that Goetheanum I had nine coloured glass windows, two sets of the above-mentioned four colours, and the central red window over the west entrance. He claims that, “the motives of the coloured glass windows deal with the experiences of the human being, searching for spiritual knowledge” (Hartmann 1972: 17). In Goetheanum II, the huge red window in the west wall features the human face, the four evangelists’ symbols from the New Testament (the lion, bull, eagle, and the man), and occult symbols such as the lotus, the swastika, and planetary images, such as that of Saturn. Olav Hammer notes that when writing about the significance of colour, “Steiner informs us that purple is the color of mysticism, blue calms the soul, red gives a feeling of festivity, while green is associated with the earthly domain” (Hammer 2009: 214). Anthroposophical poet.

As Steiner had no formal training as an architect, Anthroposophists have been inclined to treat his achievements in the field as evidence of his extraordinary creativity and spiritual development. Within Anthroposophy it is not acceptable to speak of Steiner being influenced by other architecture of the period, although Dennis Sharp has made an excellent case for the inclusion of Steiner within the category of Expressionist architecture, a sub-field of the broader Expressionist movement in art

(Sharp 1963). Sharp argues that Steiner was influenced by the Art Nouveau style, the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde (1853-1957), and the exuberant Catalan Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), whose own creations were inspired by his passionate though rather unorthodox Roman Catholicism. Sharp contextualises Goetheanum II with the works of Hermann Obrist (1863-1927) and Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) (Sharp 1963). The title of this chapter, “And the Building Becomes Man,” is a motto written over the south window of the model of Goetheanum II on display in Brodbeck House, a house that predated the second Goetheanum and which now has the Eurythmeum built as an addition to it (Turgeniev 2003: 61). It is a romantic notion, yet one that encapsulates the core of Steiner’s Anthroposophical teaching that the human being is the basic unit of the cosmos, the fractal model on which larger and smaller structures are based. Steiner’s architecture, though striking and beautiful and appreciated by architectural experts, casual tourists, and Anthroposophists alike, cannot really be understood without reference to the Anthroposophical worldview and Steiner’s “spiritual science.” Pehnt notes wryly that, “Steiner’s inspiration seems always to be productive in architects who apply his methods without feeling committed to the results achieved at the time” (Pehnt 1991: 39). Brain has argued that “the production of cultural objects can be more closely tied to the to the conditions of possibility for social action in general – not only at the level of meaning, but at the level of the capacity to conceive and enact strategic action” (Brain 1994: 218). Goetheanum II in Dornach is a structure of crucial significance for Anthroposophists the world over, and visiting it (whether to study Eurythmy or some other aspect of Steiner’s spiritual science, or simply to feel close to Steiner and the transformational philosophy of Anthroposophy) is a deeply meaningful experience. Brain continues that cultural objects such as Goetheanum II (and the practices that take place within it, including the visual arts and Euythmy) illuminate “the making of the social world that goes on in the practices through which culture producers inscribe intentions in artefacts, and social actors, generally, make sense

with

things” (Brain 1994: 218). Steiner, of all esoteric and new religious teachers of the early twentieth century, was acutely aware of the peculiar value of cultural production, an activity with which he engaged with tireless energy, and considerable (amateur and professional) skill and achievement. It is true that the majority of architects inspired by Steiner are not Anthroposophists, and have only a limited understanding of the underlying principles of Goetheanum II, being enamoured of its aesthetic qualities alone. This, however, still confirms Goetheanum II as a consummate cultural product of Anthroposophy, and one that continues to amaze and delight all those who are fortunate enough to visit Dornach.

www.academia.edu/738542/_And_the_Building_Becomes_Man_Mea...

The whole of the Gospel of St. John culminates in that event in human history which we call the “Mystery of Golgotha.” To comprehend this Mystery of Golgotha esoterically predicates also the ability to decipher the deep significance of this Gospel. If we turn our attention to what exists at the very central point of this Mystery and wish to express it in occult terms, we must contemplate the moment of the Crucifixion when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Saviour, and at the same time we must remember something which has often been said in the course of these lectures, that for one who knows the spiritual worlds, all material, substantial, physical objectivity is only the outer expression, the external manifestation of something spiritual. Now let us permit the physical event to arise before our souls: Christ-Jesus upon the Cross, the blood flowing from His wounds. What does this picture, the content of which is a physical event, express for those who are able to understand the Gospel of St. John?

This physical event — the occurrence on Golgotha — is the expression, the manifestation of a spiritual event which stands at the central point of all earthly happenings. Anyone interpreting these words according to the present materialistic world concept will not be able to make much out of them, for he will not be able to imagine that at that time something occurred in this unique Event of Golgotha which differs from some other like event, or from one perhaps physically similar. There is a very great difference between all the earthly occurrences which preceded this Event of Golgotha and those that succeed it.

If we wish to picture this in the soul in all its detail, we must say that not only has the individual human being, or for that matter any other individual creature, a physical, ether and astral body as we have described it from many aspects in the foregoing lectures, but that cosmic bodies likewise do not consist only of physical substance as they appear to the astronomer and to other physical researchers. A cosmic body has also an ether and an astral body. Our earth has its ether and astral vehicles. If our earth did not possess its own ether body, it would not be able to harbour the plants; if it did not possess its own individual astral body, it would not be able to shelter the animals. If we wish to visualize the earth's ether body, we must imagine its central point exactly at the center of the earth where the physical earth body also has its central point. This entire physical earth body is embedded in its own ether body and these two are again embedded in an astral body. If someone had observed clairvoyantly the astral body of the earth during the course of the earth's evolution, during the course of long epochs of time, he would have seen that, as a matter of fact, this astral body and ether body of the earth have not always remained the same, that they have changed. In order to represent the matter quite pictorially, let us in spirit transplant ourselves outside beyond the earth to some other star, and let us imagine a person with clairvoyant vision looking down upon the earth from this star. He would not only see the earth suspended there as a physical planet, but he would see an aura about it, he would see the earth surrounded by an aura of light, for he would be perceiving the earth's ether and astral bodies. If this clairvoyant person were to remain a long time on this distant star, long enough to have observed the pre-Christian periods of the earth pass by and the Event of Golgotha approaching, the following spectacle would have presented itself to him. Before the Event of Golgotha the aura of the earth, the astral and ether bodies offered a certain aspect of colour and form, but following a particular, definite moment of time, he would have seen the colour of the entire aura changing. What was this particular moment of time? It was the very moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ-Jesus upon Golgotha. All spiritual earthly relationships, as such, changed from this moment.

It has been previously stated that what is called the Logos is the sum total of the six Elohim who, united with the sun, present the earth with their spiritual gifts, while externally the physical sunlight is falling upon the earth. Therefore the light of the sun appears to us like the outer physical body of the spirit and soul of the Elohim or of the Logos. At the moment of the Event of Golgotha, that force, that impulse which formerly could only stream down upon the earth as light began to unite with the earth itself. And because the Logos began to unite with the earth, the earth's aura became changed.

We shall now consider the Event of Golgotha from still another point of view. We have already reviewed the evolution of the human being and of the earth from various standpoints. We know that our Earth, before it became the Earth, passed through the three embodiments of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Therefore the embodiment just preceding that of our Earth was that of the ancient Moon. When a planet has attained the goal of its evolution, something happens to it similar to what happens to a human being who, in a certain incarnation, has attained his life's goal. The planet passes over into a different invisible existence, a state called a “Pralaya” and then after a time it embodies itself anew. Thus between the previous embodiment of our Earth, the Moon Evolution, and the Earth's present embodiment, there existed an intermediate state. Out of a sort of spiritual, self-animated, externally invisible existence, the Earth gleamed forth in its earliest state and out of this state developed those states which we described yesterday. At that time, in that early age when our Earth gleamed forth, it was still united with all that now belongs to our solar system. It was then so large, that it reached to the furthest planets of this solar system. All was unity, for only later individual planets became segregated. The present earth up to a certain point of time was united with our present sun and moon. Thus we see there was a time when sun, moon and earth were a single body. It was as though you were to take the present moon and sun and stir them together with the earth and thus make one large cosmic body. This was our Earth once upon a time when your astral body and your ego were floating about in a vapour-like form. Even earlier than this the sun, moon and earth were joined together. At that time the forces which are now in the sun — the spiritual and physical forces — were bound up with the earth. Then came a time when the sun separated from the earth; but not only did the physical sun with its physical light which can be seen with physical eyes depart, but with it all its spiritual and soul beings at whose head stood the Elohim, the real Spirits of Light, the denizens of the sun. What was left, was a mixture of the present moon and earth. Then for a time the earth, though separated from the sun, was still united with the moon. It was not until the Lemurian period that the moon separated from the earth, when, as a result, there arose that relationship between these three bodies, sun, moon and earth, that exists today. This relationship had to occur. The Elohim had to act from without. It was necessary for one of them to become Lord of the moon and from there reflect the powerful force of the other Elohim. We live at present upon our earth as though dwelling upon an island in cosmic space which has separated from the sun and moon. But the time will come when our earth will once more unite with the sun and again form one body with it. Then human beings will be so spiritualized that they will again be able to bear the stronger forces of the sun, able to receive them and unite them with themselves. They, together with the Elohim, will then occupy the same field of action.

You will ask, what is the force that will bring this about? Had the Event of Golgotha not occurred, the earth and the sun would never be able to reunite. For through the Event of Golgotha, which bound the force of the Elohim in the sun to the earth — in other words the force of the Logos — the impulse was given which will again eventually impel one Logos-force toward the other, and finally once more unite them — sun and earth — in one body. Since the Event of Golgotha, the earth, spiritually observed, is possessed of the force to draw the sun again into a unity with it. Therefore it can be said that through this great Event, the force of the Logos, which formerly radiated down upon the earth from without, was now taken up into its spiritual being. The question may be asked, what existed previously within the body of the earth? It was that force which streamed down upon it from the sun. But since that time, what exists there within the earth? The Logos itself which through Golgotha has become the spirit of the earth.

As truly as your soul and spirit dwell within your physical body, do also the soul and spirit of the earth dwell within the body of the earth — that earthly body which consists of stones, plants and animals and upon which you tread. This soul and spirit, this earth spirit is the Christ. Christ is the spirit of the earth. When the Christ spoke to His most trusted disciples on an occasion which can be numbered among the most intimate of such occasions, what did He say to them? With what mystery had He occasion to entrust them? He was able to say to them: “It is as though you can gaze into your own soul from your physical body. Your soul is within. It is the same when you observe the whole earth-sphere. That spirit which for a time now stands here before you in the flesh is also the spirit of the earth and will always continue as such.” He had occasion to point to the earth as to His real body and ask: “When you behold the cornfield and then eat the bread that nourishes you, what in reality is this bread which you are eating? You are eating My body. And when you drink of the plant sap, it is like the blood in your own body; it is the blood of the earth — My Blood!” — These were the very words that Christ- Jesus spoke to His most intimate disciples and we must take them very literally. Then when He called them together and expounded to them symbolically what we shall call the Christian Initiation, He uttered those extraordinary words which we find in the 18th verse of the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of St. John, where He announced that one among them would betray Him:

“He who eats My bread treads me under foot.”

These words must be taken literally. Men eat the bread of the earth and tread upon the earth with their feet. If the earth is the body of the Earth-Spirit, that is, of the Christ, then men tread with their feet the earth's body, the body whose bread they eat. An immense deepening of the idea of the Last Supper as presented in the Gospel of St. John is granted us, when we learn about the Christ, the Earth-Spirit, and about the bread which is taken from the body of the earth. Christ points to the earth and says: “This is My body!” Just as the muscular human flesh belongs to the human soul, so does bread belong to the body of the earth, that is to the body of the Christ. And the sap that flows through the plants, which pulsates through the vine stalk, is like the blood pulsating through the human body. Pointing to this, the Christ says: “This is my blood!” That this truthful explanation of the Last Supper can cause some of the sanctity to be lost which has always been associated with it can only be imagined by someone possessing no understanding of it or who has neither desire nor capacity for such an understanding. But anyone who wishes to understand will acknowledge that this does not cause it to lose in holiness, but that through it the whole of the earth-planet becomes sanctified. What powerful feelings can be engendered in our souls, if we can behold in the Last Supper the greatest mystery of the earth, the connection between the Event of Golgotha and the entire evolution of the earth; if we can learn to feel that in the Last Supper the flowing of the blood from the wounds of the Saviour had not only a human, but a cosmic significance, that is, it gave to the earth the force to carry forward its evolution.

Anyone who understands the profound meaning of the Gospel of St. John will feel not only united through his physical body with the physical body of the earth, but as a psycho-spiritual being will feel united with the psycho-spiritual being of the earth which is the Christ Himself, and then he will feel how the Christ, as the Spirit of the Earth, flows through his body. When we have this experience, we are able to ask: what illuminated the writer of the Gospel of St. John at that moment when he was able to behold the profound mysteries which have to do with Christ-Jesus? He beheld the forces, the impulses which are present in Christ-Jesus, and he perceived how these impulses must be active in mankind, if only mankind will receive them.

In order to understand this quite clearly, we must once more bring before our souls the way in which human evolution actually takes place. The human being consists of physical, ether and astral bodies and an ego. How does this evolution occur? By the ego gradually working through the other three members, purifying and strengthening them. The ego is called upon gradually to purify the astral body, to cleanse it and to raise it to a higher level. When the entire astral body has been purified and strengthened by the special forces of the ego, it becomes Manas or Spirit-Self. When the ether or life-body has been thoroughly worked over and strengthened by the force of the ego, it becomes Budhi, or Life-Spirit. When the physical body has been fully overcome and conquered by the ego, it becomes Atman or Spirit-Man. Then will the human being have reached the goal which above all lies in store for him. That, however, will be attained only in the far distant future. Moreover, we wish it to be quite clear that the ego acts in full consciousness in what has just been described; namely, that the human being consisting of the four members — physical, ether and astral bodies and ego — works by means of the ego upon the other three members, transforming them into Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. For the most part this is not yet the case with present humanity which, as a matter of fact, is just beginning, fully conscious, to work a little of Manas into its astral body. The human being is doing this now. Through the help of higher beings he has already, although unconsciously, worked upon his three lower members during this Earth evolution. In ancient times he unconsciously worked over the astral body, and this then became permeated by the Sentient Soul. The ego unconsciously worked into the ether body and this unconsciously re-formed ether body is what you will find described in regular sequence in my book Theosophy as the Intellectual Soul, and that part of the physical body, unconsciously worked upon by the ego, you will find described there as the Consciousness Soul. The Consciousness Soul only came into being toward the end of the Atlantean period when the ether body — previously outside the physical body in the head region — gradually drew wholly within it. Through this the human being learned to utter the word “I.” Thus variously-membered, he gradually passed over into the post-Atlantean period. It is the task of our age to work Manas or Spirit-Self by degrees into what had previously been received unconsciously. The human being must, as it were, develop Manas within himself by means of all the forces he has acquired by virtue of possessing a physical, an ether and an astral body, a sentient, an intellectual and a consciousness soul; by means of all the forces which these various members can give him, he must develop Manas and also, although in a very small degree, the germ of a Life-Spirit or Budhi. Therefore our post-Atlantean age has the important task of helping the human being to develop consciously these higher members of his being (Manas or Spirit-Self, Budhi or Life-Spirit and Atman or Spirit-Man) in the distant future when he will at last have reached his goal. He must from now on, by degrees, develop within himself the force to evolve his higher members out of his lower.

Let us now ask: what has been the condition of the human being that has kept him from already developing these higher members, and what will be the difference in the future? How will the humanity of the future differ from that of the present?

When at last the whole of the higher man has been developed, the entire astral body will be so completely purified that it will simultaneously become Manas or Spirit-Self; the ether body so thoroughly purged that it will simultaneously become Life-Spirit or Budhi, and the physical body will be so greatly metamorphosed that it will, at the same time, be as actually a Spirit-Man, Atman, as it is now a physical body. The greatest force will be needed to conquer this lowest body, hence the conquest and transformation of the physical means the greatest victory for the human being. When mankind has fully perfected the physical body, this physical man will then become Spirit-Man or Atman. All this is at present only in germ within the human being, but a time will come when it will live in him in its fulness. And by lifting his gaze to the Christ Personality, to the Christ Impulse, by energizing and strengthening himself through this Christ Impulse, he draws into himself the force that can accomplish this transformation.

Since humanity of the present has not yet perfected this metamorphosis, what is the result? Spiritual Science makes this very clear. Because this katharsis of the astral body has not yet been accomplished, that is, the astral body has not yet transformed itself into Spirit-Self, selfishness or egotism is possible. Because the ether body has not yet been strengthened by the ego, lying and error are possible; and because the physical body has not yet been fortified by the ego, sickness and death are possible. In a once fully developed Spirit-Self, there will be no more selfishness; no sickness and death, but just health and salvation in the fully developed Spirit-Man, that is, in the fully evolved physical body. What does it mean for the human being to take the Christ into himself? It means that he has learned to understand the forces that are in the Christ, which if taken into himself make it possible for him to become master even of his physical body.

Imagine for example that someone could receive the Christ Impulse fully into himself, that it could completely pass over upon him. The Christ Himself might stand directly in the presence of this person and the Christ Impulse be transmitted to him. What does that signify? If the person were blind, he would yet be able to see by means of the direct influence of this Christ Impulse, for the final goal of evolution is the conquest of the forces of sickness and death. When the writer of the Gospel of St. John speaks of the healing of the man born blind, he is then speaking out of the depths of the Mysteries, he is demonstrating, by means of an example, that the force of the Christ is a healing force when it appears in full power. It may be asked: Where is this force? It is in the body of the Christ, in the earth! But this earth must, in truth, be fully permeated by the being of the Christ Spirit or of the Logos. Let us see if the writer of the Gospel recounts the story with this meaning. How does he relate it?

Standing there is the blind man. The Christ takes some earth, insalivates it and lays it upon the blind man's eyes. He lays His body, the earth, permeated with His spirit upon the blind man. In this description, the writer of the Gospel indicates a mystery which he very well understands. Now laying aside all prejudice, let us talk a little more in detail of this sign — one of the greatest performed by the Christ — in order that we may learn to know more exactly the nature of such a thing and not be disturbed because our very clever contemporaries will consider what has just been said to be sheer madness or folly! There are, however, in the world great and mighty mysteries which mankind is not yet entitled to know. Human beings of the present day, even though they may be sufficiently developed, are not yet strong enough to go through the great Mysteries. They can know of them, they can understand them when they are able to experience them spiritually; but our present humanity, so deeply immersed in matter, is not yet capable of converting them into their physical expression.

All life is, in fact, made up of antitheses and extremes. Life and death are just such extremes. For the thought and feelings of the occultist, there is something very extraordinary in seeing, for example, a corpse and a living human being side by side. When we have a living, waking human being before us, we know that a soul and spirit dwell within him. But as far as consciousness is concerned, this soul and spirit are, as it were, cut off from any connection with the spiritual world; they cannot look into it. If we have a corpse before us, we have the feeling that the spirit and soul which once belonged to it are passing over into the spiritual worlds where consciousness, or the light of those worlds is flashing up within them. Thus the corpse becomes a symbol of what is taking place in the spiritual world. But in the physical world also, there are reflections of what is happening in the spiritual world, but they are of an extraordinary character. When a human being descends again into physical birth, his bodily part must be reconstructed; material substance must, so to say, rush together in order that a body be created for him. For the clairvoyant, this rushing together of physical substance represents the death of consciousness in the spirit world. There it dies — here it becomes alive. In the rushing together of substance to form a physical human body can be seen, in a certain sense, the dying of a spiritual consciousness; while on the other hand, at the moment of decomposition or of the burning of the physical body, when the parts disintegrate and dissolve, the opposite actually becomes manifest in the spiritual world, that is, the awakening of a spiritual consciousness occurs. Physical dissolution is spiritual birth. Therefore all processes of decay and dissolution mean something more than just decay and dissolution to the occultist. A churchyard, spiritually observed, where physical bodies are in the process of dissolution, is the scene of remarkable processes, the continuous flashing up and glistening of spiritual birth; (I am now speaking of what is taking place spiritually in the churchyard itself apart from the human beings there).

Let us imagine for example that a person were to give himself up physically to a certain training — naturally no one would recommend this, for the present physical body could not possibly endure it — to a schooling in which he would train his body to breathe in putrified air for a certain prescribed length of time with the conscious intent of taking in the spiritual processes which have just been described. If he does this in the proper way, then in his following incarnations — it cannot be done in one — he can be incarnated with that force which offers restorative and health-giving impulses. Breathing putrid air belongs to a schooling which gradually gives strength to the spittle, when mixed with the ordinary earth, to become the healing substance which the Christ rubbed upon the eyes of the blind man. This mystery through which a person consumes, eats or inhales death, by which he acquires the power to heal, is the mystery to which the writer of the Gospel refers when he describes such signs as the healing of the man born blind. Instead of declaring without cessation that such and such a thing should be interpreted to mean thus and so, it would be much better were people to learn that such a thing as is described in the healing of the blind man is literally true, that it exists, and that it is possible to have respect for such a personality as the writer of the Gospel and be able to say: “There was such a person who was thoroughly initiated into this mystery about which we must try to acquire an understanding.”

It was, moreover, necessary to call attention beforehand to the fact that we are here in an anthroposophical group in which many prejudices have been eliminated, thus making it possible to speak of such real mysteries as the insalivation of the earth's soil for healing purposes, and to say that such an incident has a literal significance.

However, let us now try to comprehend how, by knowing these facts, we unite with the idea that occupies us today namely, that the Christ is the Spirit of the earth and that the earth is His Body. We have seen the Christ spiritualizing the etheric element in one instance and have seen Him giving up something of Himself in order to perform the miracle we arc considering. Now let us consider something else. Besides what has been said today, let us take what the Christ Himself said: “The most profound mystery of My being is the I AM, and the true and eternal might of the I AM or of the Ego which has the force to permeate other bodies must flow into human beings. It dwells within the Earth Spirit.” Let us hold this clearly in mind and take very earnestly, quite seriously, the fact that, because the Christ wishes to bestow the true ego upon every human soul, He will awaken the God in it and gradually enkindle the Spirit of the Lord and King in everyone. What does this signify? We have here nothing more nor less than the fact that the Christ brings to expression, in the highest sense, the idea of Karma, the karmic law. For when anyone fully understands the idea of Karma, he will understand it in this Christian sense. It means that no man should set himself up as a judge of the inner soul of another human being. Unless the idea of Karma has been understood in this way, it has not been grasped in its deepest significance. When one man judges another, the one is always placing the other under the compulsion of his own ego. However, if a person really believes in the “I AM” in the Christian sense, he will not judge. He will say: “I know that Karma is the great adjuster. Whatever you may have done, I do not judge it!”

Let us suppose that a transgressor is brought before a person who really understands the Christ-Word. What will be his attitude toward the transgressor? Let us suppose that all those who would like to be Christians were to accuse him of a terrible sin. The real Christian would say to them: “Whether what you maintain has been done by him or not, makes no difference, the I AM must be respected; it must be left to Karma, to the great law which is the law of the Christ-Spirit Himself. Karma is fulfilled in the course of earthly evolution. We can leave it to this earthly evolution to determine what punishment Karma shall inflict upon a human being.” He would perhaps turn to the earth and say to the accusers: — “Pay heed to yourselves, it is the duty of the earth to inflict the punishment. Let us inscribe it then upon the earth where it has, moreover, been registered as Karma.”

Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives.

And early in the morning He came again into the temple and all the people came unto Him and He sat down and taught them.

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery; and they placed her in their midst.

They said unto Him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned; but what sayest Thou?

This they said, tempting Him, that they might accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground.

So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

But when they heard this, being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

When Jesus had lifted

Over the past decade, I have photographed Norwegian entrepreneur and roboticist Hans Peter Brøndmo many times, capturing him in settings that mirror his dual nature as both a visionary engineer and an artist at heart. This particular portrait was taken aboard the R/V Kinfish in the high Arctic, where the stark, elemental beauty of the surroundings seemed to reflect his own blend of precision and imagination.

Hans Peter is a rare subject—an inspirational leader in engineering and a dear friend. We share a deep passion for photography and art, and our conversations often drift between the mechanics of robotic autonomy and the aesthetics of light and form. His work at Everyday Robots for Google was transformational, leading efforts to create learning-based, adaptive robots that could navigate complex human environments. By integrating advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and embodied cognition, he sought to push beyond conventional automation and into a future where robots could assist in meaningful, intuitive ways.

Beyond Everyday Robots, Hans Peter’s entrepreneurial career has been defined by a deep understanding of both technology and human experience. As a serial entrepreneur, he has founded and led multiple ventures at the cutting edge of robotics, AI, and digital media. His ability to bridge technical breakthroughs with real-world applications has made him a sought-after leader in the field. Early in his career, he worked on pioneering internet technologies and later shifted his focus to robotics, recognizing the profound impact intelligent machines could have on industries ranging from healthcare to environmental monitoring.

His approach to robotics is as much philosophical as it is technical. He often speaks of the importance of creating systems that adapt, learn, and evolve—machines that are not rigidly programmed but instead develop a kind of digital intuition. One of his key lessons from years of work in the field is that the best robots are not those that seek to replace humans but those that enhance human capability, allowing people to focus on creativity, connection, and problem-solving.

There are few people who move so effortlessly between disciplines, who can speak as fluently about neural networks as they can about composition and exposure. Hans Peter embodies that rare synthesis of logic and intuition, of rigorous engineering and boundless creativity. Whether on the deck of a research vessel or in the depths of a machine-learning lab, he carries the same spark of curiosity—a restless pursuit of the next great challenge.

"The mind, frightened by the lure of desire exerted by the material world, will thrash about like a fish freshly caught."

A Haiku Note:

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Old philosophy

t'was 6th century B.C.

when this became known

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The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truths. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.

"Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive—that you can touch the miracle of being alive—then that is a kind of enlightenment."

........ Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh