sea of uncertainty.

[everyday exploration of entropy and enlightenment]

awareness. entropy. mindfulness. nothingness. pondering. time.

  • rare.

    The Universe, our home, is a place of unfathomable unimaginable scales. Mother Space-Time and Father Entropy alone fully understand its machinations, while crunching the numbers is the domain of deities. A humble wave of light travelling from one dark corner to the other—though in all probability, it’s shape is not of a geometry that is discernable to the human mind, so lacks ‘corners’—would take billions of years to traverse. It is an old container—in fact by definition, as old as time—having seen trillions of dawns. It contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each home to countless more stars, most with their own solar systems. Despite centuries of searching, we are still yet to find sentience beyond the realms of our small blue planet. And yet, as rare as this Earth-evolved sentience seems been, many being have experienced it. Myriad lives have come into being before succumbing to death and entropy. Billions upon billions of individual creatures, over aeons, experiencing this thing we call ‘life.’ Of this multitude of life, a tiny fraction have been human—born during different eras, in different climes, living different lives. We are all just one among the tally of many, both past and present; reminiscent of a small twinkling star nestled with many more in a galaxy, surrounded by countless other galaxies containing the same. While mathematicians no doubt have a name for the sliver of probability defining the infinitesimal coincidence that we even exist at all, comprehending it—truly understanding it—is beyond our frail faculties.

    With all that in mind, it is a wise use of your time to be anything but present?

  • 0>1

    Nothing lasts—an acknowledgement of the way of things, the indefatigable efforts of entropy. Desires, aversions, feelings, thoughts, opinions—all fleeting, lost eventually to the fading memories of time. Yet, knowing this, we still place such importance, such vehemence, upon these things; conveniently forgetting they are impermanent, yet our lust for permanence is insatiable.

    Decision by decision, brick by brick, we build lives on shifting sands, sandcastles to be washed away in the tide. Thoughts—despite being constructed in ephemera, the past and future—appear as fact, monoliths of truth, add the illusion of control and safety to an existence that contains neither. And so we masquerade—peacock-like charades of how successful, how beautiful, how intelligent, how kind we are, while internally our thoughts and emotions churn amongst the uncertainty.

    Paradoxically, contentment can be found in the nothing—beyond thoughts, decisions, preferences. For in the present—absent of past and future—anxiety, doubt, fear, separation of self, cannot exist without anything to cling to; without an imagined remnant of the past or an imagined glimmer of the future. In this sense, nothing really is greater than something. In the nothingness—the great suspended unknowing of mind before thought exists—is the abode of contentment.

    There is no thing greater than nothing.

  • vessel.

    Old frail fingers raise a tea cup to the weak light of the morning—a bony tripod, fingertips tenderly rotating the vessel; all the better to admire the colours, cracks, patina. The worn and wabi sabi in all of its perfect, imperfect beauty. Chips and cracks call to mind memories and stories, while patches of buffed glaze highlight preferences, familiar spots of fingers and palms. Black lacquer a mirror to the morning light, slicing as it was through the crisp air. It could be said that many things define the tea cup—both this one, and all cups. Material, colour, shape, texture… Consider for a moment, however, what it is not. It is not solid. Arguably, a feature of all vessels is their hollowness, their utility tied to their ability to be filled, to hold myriad liquids or trinkets, materials or miscellanea. Similarly, one measure of a mind is its ability to hold things; ideas and intricacies, patterns and possibilities. And of all of Nature’s vessels, the mind has the ability to hold the greatest variety of things—the number and scope of which are limited only by imagination.

    The grassy notes of green tea fill the air, a laminar flow of hot tea connects teapot to tea cup. After the cup is completely filled—not one drop more able to be balanced on top—the worn hands set the teapot down, gently and with reverence. A vessel that is not empty is no longer a vessel—it has become a storage apparatus. Unable to be filled, it has abandoned its function. A full mind is like a full tea cup—unable to hold anything more, unable to function as a vessel, unable to function as a mind. A vessel must be emptied, as is its purpose.

    After taking one long sip, downing the hot fragrant tea in one mouthful, the lacquered cup was set down gently on a heavy wooden table. An empty vessel is also the epitome of potential, of almost countless possibilities, being able to hold whatever is found across the breadth of time and space. Potential in its emptiness. So, too, an empty mind—the shimmering radiance of the Sun reflecting around in an old ceramic glaze.

  • maybe.

    The Sun—a warm shade of tangerine—hangs low in the sky. Sunset is not far away. It’s at dusk, dawn, and the distance between, that the atoll seems most isolated; like a black hole, nothing can be seen beyond the dark barrier, a marine event horizon, lowered by the night. Warm Pacific waves lapped at the shore as a father—himself wise, wizened, and well-worn by the waves in times past—awaits his son on the beach. Several other villagers appear, waiting to help unload the canoe-full of fish expected to be brought a shore by the son.

    As a lone waka ama, an outrigger canoe, came into view, the son was evident, his bulky frame cut an identifying silhouette against the setting Sun. Those on the shore could tell something was off; the waka ama sat higher in the water than one would expect of a canoe loaded with fish; and as the bow carved a crisp channel through the sand up onto the beach, it was confirmed. The waka ama was empty.

    The son’s head sank into his hands, and he recounted how as he was pulling a loaded fishing net up from the depths, an octopus had different ideas. Combined with the weight of the fish stranded in the net, the interference by the octopus was enough to cause a split in the net. All the fish broke free and returned to the watery blue.

    “Oh no, that’s terrible!” the villagers who had gathered exclaimed.

    “Maybe,” the father replied, an air of ambivalence about him.

    The next day, the son took to the water again. Without a net this time, which was still undergoing repairs, he was putting his faith in his favourite fish hook—a treasure gifted by his grandfather carved from a whale jawbone. After picking an auspicious spot, where the baitfish seemed to make the water boil, he had barely thrown his line in when it was struck by a massive ‘ahi, a yellowfin tuna! After an hour-long battle that tested the mettle of both fisherman and fish, the son hoisted the gargantuan leviathan into the waka ama, before turning for home.

    Again the father was waiting on the beach, and as the canoe came over the horizon a large tuna-shaped hump was visible. Others gathered around to help unload the ‘ahi, others sharpened knives to begin carving up the Goliath.

    “Oh wow, that’s fortunate!” the others commented.

    “Maybe,” the father responded again.

    Buoyant from his battle yesterday, the son eagerly pushed his waka ama once more into the infinite azure sea. Again he found where the baitfish were churning—a telltale sign there were larger fish in the area. And once again, he came armed with his whalebone hook. Though today not yesterday, today was another day…

    As was his way, the father once more waited on the beach. Though his heart sunk when he saw a larger vessel—a double-hulled voyaging canoe, a waka hourua—sail over the horizon. He recognised the sail pattern from a neighbouring island, and they would only be approaching the atoll, this far from home at evening, for a good reason. Both hulls rode up on the sand, and a familiar face hopped down onto the beach. The father pre-empted the news, and hung his head. The familiar face assured the father that he and the other crew tried as hard as they could to save his son, though despite their efforts he was dragged below the waves. His fish hook had snagged a large shark, which as it dove dragged his son under, the son’s leg accidentally coiled in the fishing line.

    “Oh no, that’s terrible!” the villagers exclaimed.

    The father was silent for a long moment, before murmuring “Maybe…”

    A week passed. Mourning rituals, laid out generations ago, were followed strictly. Wailing and lamentations spread out from the atoll, like ripples of a stone dropped in a pond, only to dissipate, unheard, into the vast ocean. A second week passed. Life continued, as it seems it must, though with heavy hearts for all; though none heavier than the father.

    In the third week, another double-hulled canoe sped towards the island, sails filled with a stiff breeze. Several villagers gathered on the beach—the waka hourua attracting a crowd, as it was unfamiliar to anyone on the atoll. And as nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, before long the father was, too, drawn to the shore.

    The waka hourua ran up on the beach, and some of the villages grabbed ropes to secure it. A stocky man, sporting somewhat recognisable yet altogether different tattoos of royalty, strode purposely up the sand towards the father. Standing before the father, the stocky man bowed deeply while at the same time his son, along with an unknown woman, appeared from below deck on the waka hourua. Bewilderment appeared on the father’s face, followed by a deluge of tears. The stocky stranger went on to elaborate—in a tongue that, like his tattoos, where both familiar and foreign—that the son had washed up on an atoll of a distant powerful thalassocracy a week’s sail away. The son was rescue by local fishermen, and brought before the chief. The son and chief’s daughter—now both standing behind the stocky stranger—were betrothed, the upcoming marriage would ensure the bonds between the two remote island groups evermore.

    “Oh wow, that’s fortunate!” the villagers rejoiced.

    “Maybe.”


    *(The above is inspired by parable of ‘The Chinese Farmer.’)

  • possibilities.

    Nothingness; the source, pure potential of all that has been, all that could become. Nothingness is available to every sentient mind; mindfulness and presence pull back the veil of our conceptual mind, revealing that thought, time, the separation of I and other, and myriad assumptions and opinions, are nothing but fallacies.

    That nothingness, the great time—the infinite moment in time before the machination of neurons concoct another thought—is the abode of awareness, beyond the prisons of past and future, as these can only live in memory and imagination; tools of the conceptual mind. Nothingness, or awareness, or mushin, is a state of possibilities, a state still yet to settle on a decision, to forge information; every thought, every categorisation, every memory, every imagined point in the future, still in limbo. Not until the wavefunction of thought collapses do we see a decision—something discernible, information—the emergence of ephemeral entities like ideas, memories, and time.

    To be mindful, present, in sadhana, is to sit in an experience of the superposition—all possibilities—of thoughts, an experience of the primordial nothingness before the dawn of time, a precursor to a Big Bang of thoughts. And like the cosmological Big Bang, which pried open existence, so, too, this wavefunction collapse to a single thought, a single decision, creates existence—the moment-to-moment existence of concepts and ideas. And yet, these concepts and ideas are annihilated at the next moment of mindfulness. Information is created, destined to be lost to the Universe.

    The dichotomy of thought is that at once it is the wellspring of all concepts, all ideas, and yet also the death knell of the thing we humans prize above all else, peace. What is and what is not; what could be and what is not; division of self and other; categorisation of good, bad, and otherwise; so desperate to be true and correct, until shown to be temporary, annihilated at the next point of mindfulness.

    And for peace to once again return, in the ceasing of information and concepts; the great time.

  • beginnings.

    Predawn cobalt, stretched taught across the firmament. A lone bird call—a sooty shearwater, or, as it is known locally, tītī—hails from beyond the distant horizon, the morning sun’s rays only just beginning to signal their intentions. Small waves, small acknowledgements to the moon, lap on coarse sand. To those willing to listen—to truly hear—the voice of the tītī speaks of solitude, resilience earned by time at sea, and ultimately, esoteric knowledge of the constant flux of the ocean, of life. It is an acknowledgement of survival against the struggle; thought survival is a practice and not a process, and as such the battle must be fought each day. And there is no “winning”, only survival—experience and observation—until the day comes where there is no longer survival.

    The above is not meant to be read as an admission of defeat or a lamentation, though rather as an acceptance, radical acceptance of the natural ebb and flow of change. And as with the call of the tītī, so, too, the call of the human; our species so desperate to be heard, to celebrate our efforts to push back the decay, to slow the constant churn of the tides of entropy. An unwinnable war, and yet a necessary experience—indeed, the only experience of sentience.

    These words are intended to serve a similar purpose—a call, if you will—a humble documentation of attempts to momentarily stifle entropy, observations of our follies and failures; our sandcastles washed away in the tides.