Dimensionally Barrett

  I don’t put much stock in New Year’s resolutions. I resolve throughout the year to fix what I can, improve where I can, and try to find faults and change them as I can.  That said, I do find myself making notes to myself, advice if you will, of how to be a better human being. There are way too many other figures throughout history who have written such texts (and far more profoundly and eloquently than I).  All of this said, perhaps there is something in sharing this “Advice to Myself” at the turning of this year.  NOTE: my original draft is a little more geared to a Buddhist approach. I’ve “universalized” it a bit more tor our common humanity’s sake. Advice to Myself Before going to sleep; dedicate whatever merit you have accrued throughout the day to all beings; offer a thought, a prayer, a resolve, that all beings be happy and free from suffering and may all bear both triumphs and defeats, moments of joy and suffering with equanimity. This includes oneself (of c...

Originally, I wanted to write up a piece about the participatory aspect of democracy and how, if you want to see change around you, one very important way to be that change is to be involved. Voting, sure. Advocacy, sure. But also, to avail yourself of meeting your representatives on issues that matter to you. Emails are fine, but depending on your reps, mileage may vary according to how accessible they are; I’m lucky, my House Representative is very accessible and I was able to promote some legislation on Burma/Myanmar while I was in DC recently. That was something else I wanted to write about; updates on what’s transpiring in Burma and the attendant issues surrounding the military’s continued oppression.  However, like many around the world, I woke Sunday morning to horrible and horrifying news out of Israel. There will be more tragedy to come out from the region and I do not look forward to it. I am not, by any means, a fan of Netanyahu and his hard move toward further authorita...

Jesus and Buiddha by Xiron/Deviant Art For  Kelly Ann Morrow Recently, I was reminded of how notions of religious practice and/or dogma intersect with secular custom and why I really don’t like to identify as a Buddhist (although, yes, I am a card-carrying member thereof of the Tibetan variety.) I tend to keep my affiliation private and if someone knows my history, then fine, I’m happy to represent. I am not always certain that some Buddhists would want me to do so, perhaps for some reasons that we may encounter here.  Buddhism isn’t monolithic. This tends to rub some practitioners the wrong way, but it’s frankly obvious. Just as Christianity isn’t monolithic. Or any other group, tradition, or for that matter, individual. We - all of us - contain multitudes. That being said, the question surrounding how different practitioners encounter the world is likely to vary. An amusing - well, to me - example is, do or can Buddhists celebrate Halloween? Sure, I’ll bet there are some con...

Biphoton state holographic reconstruction. Image reconstruction. a, Coincidence image of interference between a reference SPDC state and a state obtained by a pump beam with the shape of a Ying and Yang symbol (shown in the inset). The inset scale is the same as in the main plot. b, Reconstructed amplitude and phase structure of the image imprinted on the unknown pump. Credit:  Nature Photonics  (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01272-3 Quantum entanglement flies in the face of our quotidian “us-scale” reality. For that matter, post-Euclidian math and physics are for the most part, contradictory of the so-called “real world” and yet, humanity continues to live as though it knows what is real. In large measure, we don’t. Am I making a claim that quantum mechanics is the truest depiction of reality? Well, let’s put it like this; it seems to provide a telling proof that things are not as we perceive them (which any artist or philosopher or mystic over the past 10,000 years would av...

(Getty Images) “Just because we’ve temporarily gone over 1.5 degrees doesn’t mean we’ve breached the Paris Agreement limit,” cautioned Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus program. For that to happen the globe needs to exceed that threshold for a much longer time period , such as a couple of decades instead of a couple of weeks. From The Associated Press: “June temperatures briefly passed key climate threshold. Scientists expect more such spikes” With all due respect to Burgess, I sense hedging here. From another climatologist, there’s this: Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist who like Rahmstorf wasn’t involved in collecting the Copernicus data, said its significance is still unclear. “But sometime in the next few years we will shatter global temperature records,” he said. “It’s the coming El Nino, yes. But it isn’t just El Nino. We’ve loaded the climate system. No one should be surprised when we set extended global records. 1.5 C is coming fast; it ...

Of late, a number of the great Tibetan older guard of teachers has passed, among whom are a couple I’ve had the honor of meeting and studying under/attending their teachings. These passings are reminders of the impermanence of phenomena and at the same time, the lessons of non-self/anatman/annata/བདག་མེད་, in a couple of ways.  One is that all phenomena is composite, each phenomenon the result of patternings of causes and conditions. No substantial self obtains from the impermanent, ever-shifting and metamorphosing of conditioned existence. Every Buddhist teacher I know - Tibetan and otherwise - stresses the transient,་insubstantial nature of the self. That said, and this is a doctrine that falls under scrutiny for reasons of suggesting otherwise, there is posited and particularly emphasized in Tibetan Mahayana, persistently existing mindstreams. Now, any good madhyamika is going to say that even that mindstream is subject to impermanence and therefore, the positing of such is a ...

It is far too easy to get upset, angry, and apoplectic every time a politician, a so-called “elected leader” offers “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of the latest mass shooting and the bereaved and then, in nearly the next breath, declare that “the other side” is guilty of politicizing the issue when the subject of gun control is brought up. It is also exhausting. I live in Houston where there is permit-less conceal carry. My situational awareness spikes whenever I’m out, although so far, not to the point of dread. However, for someone who enjoys movies and writing about them, I sometimes wonder if someone is going to go off in a theater. Or if I’m strolling down the street on a walk, is someone having a bad day going to decide one less white bearded guy is less necessary or when I’m grocery shopping, what are the chances that someone else is going to lose their shit or decide to take out a store out of grievances along a spectrum (maybe racism, political orientation, gender ori...