08/17/97 6:06 PM That the process of enlightenment is abrupt means that there is a leap, logical and psychological, in the

Buddhist experience. The logical leap is that the ordinary process of reasoning stops short, and what has been considered irrational is perceived to be perfectly natural, while the psychological leap is that the borders of consciousness are overstepped and one is plunged into the Unconscious which is not, after all, unconscous. This process is discrete, abrupt, and altogether beyond calculation; this is Seeing into ones Self-nature. page 54, The Zen doctrine of no-mind, Weiser Inc. York Beach, Maine, 1972 D.T. Suzuki, Samuel

A reading of this passage has me wondering if the gangs in Copenhagen might have been telepathetically hypnotized in formulating what we now call Quantum Mechanics. It reads like a very precise description of the state of mind described by Nils Bohr when confronted with the experimental results of experiments that lead to the Copenhagen Interpretation. The way Ive previously accounted for this strange symmetry of ancient spiritual wisdom and modern physical science, is that the experiments performed by ionization of hydrogen atoms and exposure of photo-sensitive film to emission spectra of those irradiated atoms, were in fact experiments which photographed the presence of consciousness in its effects. At first, the gang didnt know what the fuck had happenned except that it was very strange and unexpected because the observations - their experiences - transcended their experience as conditioned by classical causal, determinsitic, Newtonian mechanics (by the way - what the fuck is positivism and reductionism?) From these classical conditioning concepts the gang expected continuous emissive spectra on film or broad bands of radiation but what they found was discrete quantized emissions of

specific frequency or wave length that is charcteristic of atoms of a certain type like a finger print so to speak. Newtonian conditioning means in essence that the gang had a picture of the reality of the hydrogen atom as similar to the solar sytsem in which the planets Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranua, Pluto ect, revolve around the star Sun at the center. This Newtonian view holds that the more energy planets have, the greater the distance of their radial revolution about the sun - and - more significant that energy can theoretically added to the planets in any quantities desired so that it was envsioned as possible for the planets to revolve about the sun in circular orbits at any distance from the sun - a continuous band of energy levels. What the gang found in the hydrogen atom, which prior science had modelled in the form of negatively charged and relatively small electrons, revolving in circular orbits about a relatively large, positively charged, nucleus (a single proton for hydrogen), was that the electrons did not behave in this way at all and that they occupied very specific energy levels in very specific shapes that tended to combine the shapes of spherical shells and shells shaped like dumb-bells. It was Pythagoras come home too roost. Pythagoras had discovered the underlying nature of harmonics in musical intruments like the kithara (a precursor of todays electric guitar and Pythagoras was the Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix Keith Richard, John Lennon, Paul MacCartney and Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Jesus Christ and Bertrand Rusell of his day all woven into one). Harmony is pleasing to the ear and disharmony not so very pleasing. Pythagoras found that playing his kithara in a harmonious way seemed to have a soothing and calming affect on the crazy, demented, insane people who came to him for relief from the suffering produced by an intolerably horrifying preByzantine world of totalitarian empires and black magic. Pythagoras, with the curiosity of a scientist, wanted to know what the fuck was going on in his guitar and to understand the nature

of this Magical effect of harmony on human consciousness. Pythagoras must have been quite amazed to find that musical notes from the strings of his guitar harmonized when the length of the strings plucked simultaneously were of a discrete and mathematically defineable relationship. For example if two strings that were exactly related in length by a integer multiple, were struck then the effect was harmonizing. In other words, if two strings of the same material and same diameter but one is exactly double the length of the other are struck simultaneously, the effect is harmonizing. So too if one of the two is three, four, five, six, seven, eight etc. times longer than the other. If the two strings were of different lengths that were not an excact integer multiple (say for example one string one and seventeen twenty thirds) the length of the other) then the result was disharmonious and the further from the exact integer multiple the worse sounding the discord of the disharmony. Pythagoras came to view the entire universe in terms of his findings with respect to the harmony of the strings in the sounds made when he played his guitar. Nearly three millenia later his view of the Universe has survived in the form of what is today regarded as the naive concept of the Music of the Spheres. The Pythagorean view of the Universe was that everything in the heavens was in harmony and that the stars and all the visible light in the moonless night sky were arranged in a way that resembled the harmonies of his guitar strings - in other words that the Universe actually makes music. Modern wave theory has shed light (no pun intended) on the subject of harmony. We now have the following view. When an electric guitar string is plucked, it vibrates. As it vibrates it causes the air around it to vibrate and this gives rise to a wave of vibration in the air surrounding the string and at a distance. The waves of vibration in the air cause vibration of structures in our ears and the vibration of those structures gives rise to what we hear as the sound of the string of the guitar being plucked.

We now view the hydrogen atom energy levels as vibrational harmonies - a type of music but a type of music that cannot be directly detected by our ears. What about audible music that reporduces the harmonies of atoms and other objects and subjects of scientific interest? Some art form! How amazing that Pythagoras, the Buddha and Lao Tsu who each lived at about the same time (the 7th to 6th century BCE, described reality in much the same way that modern science eventually confirmed about a hundred years ago. The amazing thing is that Pythagoras, Lao Tsu and Siddartha Gautama could have known so long ago without any scientific traning or tradition and without any scientific instruments, the nature of reality that took nearly three thousand years of science to even begin to find hints. This leades me to just jump right out of this pile of excrement like an electron liberated from an atom and suggest that we might find something of value in seeking to know more about the harmony that links these three amazing founders of our modern human world culture. One of them was apparently a hybrid Greek-ItalianArab-Jew-Turk, and the other two probably of equally diverse lineage but to my relatively ignorant oxidental knowledge I can identify them only as Indian and Chinese. All three were technically born and educated in what we now call Asia. Pythagoras later left the island of Samos (present day Turkey) and settled in southern Italy on the island of Sicily, in a town called Tarentum, a stepping stone between Africa and Europe. Today I defied the orders of my jailer and read a book - parts of a book. A quotation is at the head of this journal entry. Buddhist (the word really means The Way of Enlightenment or we might we even say The Secret Way to Awaken the Enlightened Mind) history tells us that an Indian Buddhist travelled from India to China in the sixth century which is more than a thousand years after the man identified as the founder of the Buddha Dharma, first taught other people about his experience of an awakening of consciousness. The sixth century traveller from India to China is

given the name Bodhidharma which has a meaning that is quite identical to Buddha Dharma. In China, at about the same time that Siddartha Gautama was teaching his students in India about his awakening experience there was a Chinese man who wrote a sacred text that has come down throught the ages in the form of what is now called The Dow De Jing, my own attempt to phonetically reproduce in English language the sounds given to the name of his book by his own people - but usually written in the following letters Tao Te Ching - (I once had a person who was a teacher of psychology correct me when I said Dow by instructing me that the word is pronounced Tay-Oh) demonstrating how our English ancestors usually prefered to use a sort of pigeon English technique when they found it difficult to hear what people of other cultures and languages had to say - the arogance and ignorance that comes with Empire and the misuse of wisdom). Modern Zen scholars, and in particular, the late D.T. Suzuki (1870 - 1966) as far as I can tell from their writings, appear to recognize a harmonizing that has occured between the more ancient indigenous Chinese Taoist wisdom of Lao Tzu and his Dow De Jing, and the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, brought to China more than a thousand years after the birth of Dowism, by the Indian Buddhist sage Bodhidharma. Zen is the music we hear today that results from the harmonizing of these two amazing human beings. If the duet is a good thing what about a harmony of three or more. A barber shop quartet perhaps. Of the three sages who stand out from all others, both in the depth of their wisdom and the antiquity of their teaching, Pythagoras is the most ancient. We are told by philosophers and historians that Pythagoras was a student of an older trandition and that the masters of that tradition developed it on the island of Samos, right on the edge of Asia, in the Euro-Asian borderlands where ancient cultures were mixed together (does this begin to harmonize with the mixing

together of Indian and Chinese culture that is the music called Zen? ) No doubt Siddartha and Lao Tzu were also students of traditions but again, my oxidental ignorance has barred me from any knowledge of either the nature of this tradition or the names of the sages except that we know that Hinduism preceded Buddhism and that the ancient pre-Buddhist Indian spiritual tradition has handed down to use the sacred texts know as the Rig Veda and The Upanishads. What are the harmonies and how to hear the music? Pythagoras, Lao Tzu and Siddartha. Taoism has been beautifully and precisely distilled for those who care to listen in the texts of Lao Tzu and the later Taoist writer poet Chuang Tzu. As to the Buddha Dharma, the literature is abundant and complex. Personally I find D.T. Suzukis books, Mysticism - Christian and Buddhist and The Zen doctrine of no-mind more than adequate to provide an understanding of the Buddha Dharma view of reality. Yet there are other books that can provide more insight including The Sutra of Hui Neng, The Vajracheddika Sutra and many many others. What about Pythagoras? He is sadi not have written anything and if he did it is not widely available today. The best sources are those of the philosophical writers of Oxford and Cambridge and the ancient texts of Parmenides and Plato, who both wrote after the death of Pythagoras. There are frequent references in Platos many works to the activities and beliefs of the Pythagoreans of Platos time and a whole book on Parmenides by Plato as well as Parmenides own book. What survives of Pythagoras teachings are many but a lot of it shit about not eating beans. Pythagoras taught that the psyche is immortal and transmigrates. That all living things are kin and deserve reverence. That harmony is the binding principle of the Universe. That the Universe is in reality in perfect harmony. Further Pythagoras founded a monastic order and invented philosophy, mathematics. The perpose of the monastic order was to encourage people to devote their lives to contemplation (a word

that we take as meaning literally what the Buddha Dharma describes as meditation or very similar). Taosim might be said to emphasize that life should be lived according to the idea of non-interference, the achievement of stillness and desirelessness and the awakening of consciousness of the perfection of things as they are, and that the Ultimate Reality, the Tao, consciousness is immortal and ancient. Buddhism has many teachings but here Ill try to confine the discussion to those Buddhist ideas that seem to harmonize with the Taoist and Pythagorean since thats where were likely to find what we need in the coming years of development of our planetary culture or shall we call it the Gaian Age. Buddha Dharma also teaches about an original pure nature which is consciousness, undefiled, perfect and immortal. It teaches compassion for all beings. The Tantric branch teaches the absolute perfection of all things as is. It teaches that we should be devoted to a life of compassion and liberation of all sentient beings, to meditation, self control, the awakening of transcendental wisdom (prajna).