STONEzen: Events

There is essentially not much difference between a man and a stone; only that the man has pride which says, "I am"; "I did"; and, "this or that belongs to me". While it is true that a man is as a stone is (or is not), and it is true that a man does as a stone does (or does not do), neither the man nor the stone can lay a claim to knowing just one thing (of many) without thereby accepting all (or nothing).
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In these (or any) turbulent days, it becomes ever more tempting to seek out symbols of serenity. Most of us in this corner of the globe share the Christian tradition; and Christ, certainly, can be regarded as having been a man of peace. Yet, the predominant Christian symbol is hardly a monument to enlightened quiescence. While it is true that most area churches have long since removed the suffering Christ from the cross, leaving in place only a vacuous arrangement of right angles, enough remains to thrust upon us a vicarious reaction to His tortured flesh.

The principle symbol of the Buddhist tradition - the Buddha himself - offers welcome relief to the battle-weary. The statuary, though always in strict compliance with traditional norms, nevertheless comes off as varied as the artists who have given it form.

Neither Buddhist nor Christian symbols address the active component of existence.

We live our lives largely in parallel, like sticks of furniture, side by side. This accounts for what is perceived as harmony within our social systems. Should any kind of interaction resulting in an event occur, however, it is likely to be in some way violent and disruptive to the parties involved.

Despite what anyone who has made the effort to understand the import of these pages can conclude, that all is essentially one single fragmented whole, existing either in a state of "being" or "non-being", it is nevertheless the task of humans to interact with "other"(s) and thus forge ahead in the pursuit of states as of yet undetermined.

Any such interaction (human or otherwise) can be seen as an equal exchange of energy. Implicit in this are three conditions that must be met if any given interaction is to result in an actual event: 1. There can be no more (or less) than two participating entities. 2. Each participant must contribute precisely one half the energy required to accomplish it. 3. Full 100% participation is needed for the event to actually occur.

While such strict parameters would tend to support annulment in some cases (such as in marriage), they would generally dismiss diminished capacity clauses (in hindsight) by now recantant persons party to assessable events. Neither could duress by an opposing plurality be cited, since every interaction culminating in event can only be the product of an equal exchange.

Perhaps the most revealing point that emerges from this is that allowing something to occur ranks equally with actively bringing it about. While this view maximizes the culpability of participants in events, it also limits the scope and influence of any single event to one involving no more than two parties.
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"Why do I persist in sending these letters to you, my friend (thirteen, by last count; in as many weeks) painfully enumerating variously obscure minutia, surely of minimal interest to either one of us?

"Laboriously, compulsively, I craft my words, stringing these into patterns of thought, an ambiguous attempt (at best) at fashioning myself after a man of opinions - a man in touch.

"But, time and time again, after my pens have all run dry and I am compelled to give it up - usually, just after having once again managed to scribble my name; a now often inkless smudge; a furrowed imprint which only the blind can reasonably be expected to decipher - I find myself trapped by aimless circumstance once again. Abandoned by the need for maintaining grammatical discipline, my wisdom is bled and reduced to the dust that scatters with each random breeze.

"I can almost picture these letters of mine, still neatly arranged inside your mailbox, each one encased under similarly addressed cover. Indeed, you have never seen fit to reply. Perhaps you found my message so compelling - my thrust so accurate - as to leave you with nothing more to say. Still, it would be so gratifying to hear from you.

"And, yet, I cannot stop. Not now! To do so would be to surrender to the void that forever threatens to overtake us all. This writing, the thirteenth, is on its way.

"I must admit that I write largely for my own sake. It is perhaps fitting that the fate of my words is to be swallowed up by the void of your inattention (for whatever reason), like semen spit so carelessly onto the empty pavements of darkened parking lots.

"And, yet, you have responded, albeit through intermediaries. A court order arrived just this morning. (Or am I imagining it?) It seems you feel you are being stalked.

"Except that I have always been here, while you are there. If anyone is stalking you, I can assure you, it is not I. Perhaps it's your own guilt that plagues you; guilt, stemming from the suspicion that the link I've been attempting to forge between us is somehow sacred.

"The world exists with its objects, after all. These are devoid of meaning without energy coursing between them along whatever pathways we may choose to invent.

"I was reminded of it again last night, the puzzle that has intrigued me ever since I first had occasion to consider it. I was watching a show on Einstein I'd taped a week earlier. They'd made a point of saying how even as a child the concept of light had fascinated him, and how he saw his life's work as being dedicated to the task of explaining it. He would explain it, alright. And the world was astounded by the bold simplicity of what he came to propose. Today, any schoolboy will tell you that light travels at 186,000 miles per second and that this speed is constant no matter what.

"I, personally, have never been entirely convinced, especially taking into account the mathematically proposed corollaries that must derive by extension from such basis: namely, that, when approaching the speed of light, a body contracts and becomes heavier; and, that, at the speed of light, a body's mass becomes infinite and time stops.

"While I do not question that Einstein's equations bear this out (which in today's religiously secular climate suffices as immutable proof certain, and is therefore universally accepted and taught as Gospel, and fully expected to be faithfully reproduced on the pages of innumerable blue examination books for generations yet to come), I've never been able to actually picture it. The subject was sealed, however, after having officially certified Einstein's 'genius', thus assuring that the problems he pondered would not be revisited any time soon.

"Politically too, the summary acceptance of Einstein's theories would prove expedient in that one of a disparaged group was now raised up; perhaps, simply to assuage the guilt generated by a whole host of vicious crimes - admittedly under separate context - that were being perpetuated against millions of that same group within roughly that same time frame.

"It was a comment by Martin Klein of Yale University on last night's program that got me to thinking about it again. 'If I had the opportunity of asking Einstein one question, I would ask him how he could be so sure of the principles on which he built his theories,' he said.

"Then it hit me: In order to ascribe the concept of 'speed' to light, one must first be quite clear about the elements that go to define it; namely, distance and time. One must ask oneself, for instance, if distance is indeed a straight line, or merely the shortest path between two points (as on a sphere)? Einstein himself had suggested that space might indeed be curved. If so, how can we know how far away anything really is (or how to get there, even)? Clearly, Einstein saw distances, for the most part, as measured by the shortest straight-line path between two fixed points. But, with the vastness of space (curved or otherwise) between them, can we really be all that certain of where these might actually be?

"Mystics generally discount the concept of 'distance' altogether. They will argue that the seer and the seen are one and the same; that any focus serves merely as a device to highlight, classify, and manipulate variously selected aspects of self within the illusion of a separate laboratory.

"If the boundaries we draw around ourselves are indeed arbitrary, fulfilling perhaps some arcane demand of ego; if a thing and its motion are one and the same; if our concept of distance is essentially no more than illusion, the only remaining variable, then, is time.

"Picture time as the shingles on the roof of a house. Some of these overlap while most don't. Each thing that exists is afforded one shingle of time. Within it, something can exist (or not exist); move (or not move). What it cannot do is enter the time(shingle) of another. Between shingles that do not overlap, there can be no interaction whatsoever. Where two (or more) time(shingles) do happen to overlap, direct interaction is still not possible, except by an event in which each of the players plays a part. An event, common to two (or more) time(shingles), provides the medium for whatever bond can exist between overlapping time(shingles). Events are immediate to all, regardless of how the non-overlapping parts of their respective time(shingles) may be positioned. 'Light' may now be classified as an 'event'.
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"On May 7th, 1998, The New York Times ran a front page article by Malcolm W. Browne entitled, 'Astronomers Detect Immense Explosion(;) 2(n)d Only to Big Bang.' In it Mr. Browne reports theorists as being at a loss to explain data gathered five months earlier (Dec. 14th, 1997) at various locations as no current model exists to accommodate the findings. It was calculated that the explosion, which remained visible a full forty seconds, occurred 12 billion light years away. Scientists involved in the project said it was like looking 12 billion years into the past when the universe was but 15% of its present age.

"The question that arises within my own mind is: Why did the light from said explosion take so long to get here when our ever-expanding universe must have been considerably smaller then?
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"The more I have thought about the confounding constancy of the speed of light, I have come to accept the possibility that light, rather than having a speed at all, is instantaneous. The moment there is light, it is everywhere (unless blocked), in all directions.

"How can this be? you ask. Any number of experiments already conducted in which the speed of light has been measured (both, moving towards the source of it, as well as away), all come to the same conclusion: that light always travels at 186,000 miles per second.

"Let's for a moment return to the celestial display witnessed by scientists on December 14th,1997, and look at it in terms of the time(shingles) model which discounts 'distance' and, therefore, renders any measure of (the) speed (of light, for instance) meaningless. Obviously, the time(shingles) of the observers and that of the host galaxy itself must be said to have overlapped at the moment(s) of the explosion, allowing for the event to be noted. Since said event would ultimately translate into the language of light, it is not likely to have been recognized on a planet inhabited only by earthworms and bottom feeders, even if all relevant shingles had been appropriately aligned. Proper time(shingle) alignment, then, is not the only requirement for an event to actually take place. It must be remembered that events function primarily as a bridge, a connection between two separate entities. Any event denied this or any purpose effectively ceases to be. Unencumbered, by the constraints of substance and time, events are always immediate to the parties involved, much as two friends talking on the telephone - one in New York, the other in San Francisco - though each lives in his or her own time, three hours apart.

"Clearly, Einstein based his theories on the notion that everything in the universe can be made to conform to a single time-line, starting with the 'big bang' and proceeding ever forward to the 'now' - and, perhaps, even beyond, into infinity; or, if not quite that, certainly ending in the 'big crunch' that some predict. If this were indeed the case, we would have to construct that line by stacking every shingle onto the next (possibly into infinity). Now, everyone who has ever lived would surely still be alive today. People, yet to be born, would already be with us. Dogs would live as long as men; as would redwoods. The hearts of insects, dogs, and men would beat in identical rhythm. And mountains would rise and crumble within the span of a single human lifetime.
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"One of the most intriguing passages in Carlos Castaneda's 'THE ART OF DREAMING' is where Don Juan explains that human beings appear to sorcerers (who "see") as luminous, egg-like shapes. Carlos, his pupil, then tries to imagine what these would look like as in theater lines or on rush-hour trains. Would these then merge, overlapping; or would they compress into odd shapes?

"Don Juan answers him, 'To understand all this certainly isn't an exercise for your reason.... When seers "see" the human energy shape, they see one single ball of energy. If there is another ball next to it, the other ball is seen again as a single ball of energy. The idea of a multitude of luminous balls comes from your knowledge of human crowds. In the universe of energy, there are only single individuals, alone, surrounded by the boundless.'1 We must now ask ourselves: What is the speed of any object relative to itself?

"When Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He answered him, saying, "You say so." (Lk.23:3). By His answer, Christ effectively blocked the event Pilate was instigating. Had He affirmed or denied the charge, Pilate could have condemned Him to death without having to wash his hands afterwards.

"Speech (or any action) does not exist independently of 'being'. Only self (I) exists - self that can either affirm or deny what it is and does. Neither agreement or denial are of consequence in that neither creates or voids what exists.

"The problem arises when we attach ego to events. Ego says, 'I did; I thought; I spoke; I wrote', fracturing the whole and separating itself from those who did not participate. Yet, if the logic holds, those who did nothing, cannot be said to have done; and, hence, cannot have had an effect; and, hence, cannot have existed within the context of this (or any) event.
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"My pen (or is it my mind?) has run dry again. I carefully fold the papers I have written and insert them in a pre-addressed envelope. After having affixed the stamp, I take the letter out to the mailbox by the curb where I put it along with the others. I count them again. There are now thirteen - one more than yesterday. I put the flag up to signal the postman to stop when he drives by tomorrow. I pause to look around. It is a crisp but beautiful day. The snow is about four feet deep. I note that the plow hasn't been by here yet. Come to think of it, I haven't seen anyone around here in weeks.
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A page of yesterday's paper blows across a road. Ego says, "I am the wind." The wind says, "All things are Buddha things."
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1THE ART OF DREAMING by Carlos Castaneda; HarperPerennial, a division of HarperCollins Publishers; 1993; ppg. 15.