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deja vu
jae
Veteran
I was having a chat with my 14 year old son this evening about some of the things I've learnt about Buddhism.....he believes in rebirth and mentioned deja vu being one of the reasons he thinks hes been around before..
I imagine most of us have experienced deja vu....(tell me if I'm wrong)...what do you think from a Buddhist point of view?
I imagine most of us have experienced deja vu....(tell me if I'm wrong)...what do you think from a Buddhist point of view?
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In brief, we have thought patterns travelling from one hemisphere of the brain to the other, all the time, and even though the two sides have distinctly different functions, sometimes, they 'collude' and work together, simultaneously, on the same thing.
Perception is one of them. And it seems that for a nano-second, the two hemispheres can occasionally fall out of sync, thus perceiving one view, on one side, a split second before the other side perceives the same view. Therefore, when we believe 'this has happened before'... it actually has. only, it was less than a fraction of a second ago.....
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-going-on-in-the-brain
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090417132009AA7Tqrj
Other 'googles' may provide further input.
Yes, I know, you've seen it all before.....
Anyway I think science has gone over it pretty well and has something to do with a sort of neurological echo, nothing mystical. Assuming re birth you might remember someone in a previous life but they woudn't be in the same body and place as before so what would there be to remember?, Ah federica beat me to it.
@Dobs...who knows I've not really given it much thought before ...I've had the feeling and I know the name...be interesting to read the scientific points of view
Not all Buddhists are simply 'moral atheists',.though this viewpoint is prevalent here I believe.
Spend some time trying to grasp quantum physics, which concludes (my clumsy nutshell here) that at a subatomic level, objects are in a hazy state of probability until they are observed by something with some form of consciousness (a snake or a human) only after which they become 'actual'.
You can really hurt yourself pondering this, so be careful.
Gassho
@jae
Quantum entanglement is also an interesting subject.
PEAR : Princeton Engineering Anomaly Research.
princeton.edu/~pear/
PEAR was Princeton's ESP research department. Their most well known study used random number generators to test the purely mental influence on external factors. They also did studies on on the apparent specific and anomalous harmonic resonance in ancient archaeological sites.
on twin telepathy
All this stuff is to do with subatomic particles, which ostensibly behave the same way when aggregated into compound matter (like atoms or a tree). They haven't managed a to experiment with quantum-ly entangled atoms or molecules (or trees) to see if the same results happen.
There was a thread recently about Robert Lanza who wrote "Biocentrism". I read the article the thread linked, and then got the ebook. Lanza goes on and on about quantum entanglement and where other physicists like Stephen Hawking 'explain' quantum entanglement with the theory of multiple universes, Lanza asserts the explanation is consciousness itself. Lanza is a biologist, not a physicist, so his bias is understandable. On the whole, a 'biocentric' universe (as opposed to Newton's universe) has some congruence with Buddhism's cosmology, and is something a person can 'relate' with better than a universe of tick tocking 'dead' matter spreading out from a Big Bang.
If you like this sort of thing, the book is easy-ish reading, it is not a textbook, it's more like part memoir, part high-pressure super-excited on fire "Look at this! WOW!!". It has quite a few negative reviews, no doubt by constipated left-brain dominated scholastics who got their expectations dashed.
Gassho
Frankly my mind is completely blown by relativity and the big bang expansion. Space and time are so inorexibly linked that all time existed within the singularity. ! ! And spacetime is like a fabric that expands with us in it! And the expansion is equal everywhere, so it's like you could say that we came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time! So profound!
I wish I had tried to solve my question earlier; which direction can we point at the sky and be pointing at the origin of the universe, where the big bang was...
We can't! I love it!!
space.... I guess this measurent doesn't mean much at quantum levels because terms like 'space' and 'solidity' apparently lose all meaning at the subatomic level...
physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=74297
I guess from a Buddhist point of view I'd like to view it dispassionately as an experience, and not feel compelled to create a story that it fits into (like reincarnation). But it's been many, many years since it's happened, and I have no idea how to trigger it.
I enjoyed Robert Lanza's thoughts on whether or not something is 'real' (ie, solid and actual rather than a potential) when no one is looking at it. Even better, how about the bush outside my window? It's qualities; green, brown, shiny leaves, a few dark red berries left over from summer. The colors are merely interpretations made INSIDE the back end of my brain by exchanges of information with cones in my retina. The edges of each leaf and twig are interpretations of background and foreground erected by some gadget in my left brain hemisphere. That it IS a holly bush is only something some long dead botanist named it . . . what in the hell is a 'holly' anyway?
So what is this . . . squiggly pokey thing hanging out in spacetime? It's a holly bush, but only because my BRAIN whipped up the recipe (and possibly because I'm looking at it, if biocentrism has any truth to it
Going along like this REALLY makes the Buddha's assertions about 'emptiness' take on in-your-face kind of meaning.
Now back to pretending it's all real and there and what everyone says it is . . .
Gassho
Haven't you ever suddenly realized a word you just used sounds extremely weird or stupid? And then you say it over and over to yourself and it just gets stupider?
Maybe the less we question what we think, the better. If you want things to stay exactly the same, never question your thinking; it will be easier to insist upon what you don't know why you don't question what you think about that way
The more you question it, the stupider and weirder it gets (whether schizophrenia is involved or not). I think that might be because it IS weird, and we are stupid if we insist it is 'real'.
Gassho
Stuff you lug.
This is a newer assessment coming out of string theory, that 3 dimensional reality is essentially a projection.. I havent analyzed it too much but it looks like it stems from black hole observations.
"Huang Po asked the monk in charge of cooking rice: 'what are you doing?'
The monk says 'I'm picking over the rice for the other monks'
Huang Po said: ' how much do they eat every day?'
The monk says 'two and a half piculs'
Huang Po said; 'isn't that too much?'
The monk says: ' i'm only afraid it isn't enough!'
Huang Po immediately struck him a blow.
Later, the monk went to master Lin-chi and told him about the incident. The master told him he would straighten out Huang po for him.
So, Lin chi then went to Huang Po and said ' the monk didn't understand when you were asking him about the rice. Would you be so kind as to put as to put yourself in his place and give us a proper response?"
He then said to Huang Po,
"Isn't that too much rice?"
Huang Po says:
"Why not say, 'tomorrow you'll have a tatse of it!' ?"
Lin Chi replied
"Why say tomorrow, have a tatse of it right now!" As soon as he had finished speaking, he gave Huang Po a slap!
Huang Po said " this raving idiot coming in here and pulling the tigers whiskers!"
Oh, picking over is a cooking term that means picking out little rocks and such. And a picul is about a shoulder load of rice.