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Thursday, January 25, 2018

"Where are you?"


     Is this question geographical in nature, or perhaps chronological?  Maybe it is a matter of psychological geography i.e. are you here in front of your computer reading this or are you really at Disney World riding Space Mountain while your body languishes uninvolved at your desk?  Curiously enough my dad has recounted to me his unique experience of seeing Space Mountain with the lights on and apparently it wasn't nearly as impressive as it seems in the dark.  I presume this follows with some senses being heightened when others are deprived.  If you were to ask that seminal question right now, the answer would be floating in a pod in some primordial ooze (the topic of sensory deprivation always brings to mind something like Minority Report or The Matrix).  An appropriate corollary would be:

"What is the state of my mind?"     


  
     Sometimes the state of the mind is one of great weight.  It is not light like a blank sheet of paper.  Though typically translated into English as 'emptiness,' the Sanskrit word sunyata is more an absence of things and therefore ripe with possibility like the aforementioned paper.
     Sometimes the state of the mind is the opposite of sunyata.
     Sometimes it is like an overloaded Christmas tree and one half-hearted push would end a few dozen twinkling glass globes.