On Contradiction
I was deeply moved when I saw Avatar today. It contains many of the ideas I’ve been working through in my head and experiencing in paddy fields and on the street. I’ll expand on that further, but first there’s one idea at the foundation. That everything is founded on contradictions. That the most important things in life seem to be in two states, often warring. That rather than divide and explain, these contradictions must be accepted for anything to be understood.
On Contradiction
I don’t know if this makes sense. It makes sense in my head, but that’s a web of experiences and information, inchoate and incomplete. I am basically becoming of the opinion that contradictions are true. Not in the binary sense of On/Off, but in the unitary sense of, well, Om.
Many things can be two states at once, in fact they are, and that their being one or the other is largely a function of our observation. I think this has some backing in physics. Hence, zero and infinity have a unity, they are both awesome and complete. On an experiential level, absolutely nothing and absolutely everything feel very much the same. Death and life, too, are united. Eating, breathing and puberty (sex) kill us, but also keep us alive. We experience this personally and through art as the sublime. Love and loss. Creation and destruction, etc.
I have found a thought, Govinda, which you’ll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That’s like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it’s all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception.” (Hesse)
This idea, I think, has some support in modern science, specifically Einstein’s special relativity and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This is obviously a gross simplification, but time is relative and much of our reality is literally defined by our observation. Applied physics, grounded in true/false binary logic works fine for most our lives (flying for example) but it breaks down and high or low levels, hence the modern gap between theories of the very big and very small. When it comes to the depth of human experience, however, binary logic is not enough. It’s a lot more complicated than flying.
I think this is something that philosophy, mostly Eastern, has already explored. In practice it means, well, this
To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect. (Hesse)
I’m not saying that love is the grand unifying theory of physics, but I am beginning to dig the ‘hippie’ side of things. In the sense that there are no sides at all. It is possible for something to be two things at once. Indeed, it seems that most important things in life are. Right and wrong, life and death, the putrid and the divine. I experience this keenly in India. To get to the most beautiful spots in nature I have to burn petrol and spend time in hideous bus transport towns. It’s like I need to destroy beauty in order to experience it. This is just one contradiction, but it’s one I’d like to explore further. The tension between the natural and the artificial, and its resolution in acceptance. This is, in many ways, what I got out of the movie Avatar.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
Deep stuff. Hesse was brilliant, but he won’t be my guide to India’s rich past.
Btw, check out this guy’s blog. He looks like he knows how to travel on a dime:
Homeless by Choice, Extolling the virtues of ‘Free Sleeping’
http://freesleeping.blogspot.com/
Hesse is good but only for a lazy afternoon. But the contradiction you mentioned is evident everywhere, including here on this blog, within your writings and our comments. I hate some of your ideas but would I kill you for it, No. Will I respect your rights, Yes as long as they do not kill me.
This world, hippie or not, is a good centrifuge that separate lighter stuff from the Heavy. Out individual abilities let us see the reality in our own way, like Hesse did and documented and we see and fight about.
Avatar, seems different every time I see it. First time 3D was pure fun and did not give a damn about the story. But after seeing the 2D version a few times, beginning to imagine different stuff, all contradictory.
(but mens 15KM Mass just started, got to go and have my beer, enjoy India, all of it)
What the fuck have you chaps been smoking? And since when did vague quantum mysticism start deserving respect?
You look terribly confused and too confused to that you are confused… Don’t try to find parallels between western science and Buddhism. There’s none… According to Buddha “A” doesn’t exist. “Not-A” doesn’t exist. “A and Not-A” doesn’t exist. “Neither A nor Not-A” doesn’t exist… Is it me who dies? No. Is it someone else who dies? No. Is it me and someone else who dies? Nope. Is it neither me nor someone else who dies? No.
Buddhism isn’t that simple. It’s beyond A or not A, which is again the binary logic I’m talking about. There are certainly parallels between science and Buddhism, especially since they’re talking about the same reality. On a concrete level, there’s a lot of studies regarding meditation and neuroscience and a (I think annual) conference on Buddhism’s intersection with that and other sciences. But again, in two views of the same reality there are bound to be parallels.
Indi, if you think Buddhism intersects with science you will have to give some solid examples. as someone who has had a formal education in physics, I don’t see anything substantial connecting Buddhism and physics.
What I’ve written above isn’t binary logic. It’s catuskoti, an indian logic in which there are 4 possibilities (instead of 1 or 0)… (there are new western logics with multiple possibilities. Fuzzy can even represent infinite number of possibilities)… Lord Buddha uses the Catuskoti extensively. But when he’s asked key questions, he rejects it completely. My understanding is that this is because what Buddha tries lead us to, is simply beyond logic. Maybe the truth is understood in an unique way, not in the way we understand scientific truths. Logic is good for the lay person. But the truth is beyond it… If there are parallels between science and Buddhism, and if they are leading us to the understanding of the same reality, the science one day will make us all enlightened. Do you believe that’s gonna happen? Is science leading us to an ultimate truth? That means there’s an end to science, that we can someday finish learning. Do you think that’s possible?…
I have read that physics can only describe physical reality. There may not even be such a thing called ‘The reality’.
Similarly Buddhism only deals with a single issue: human condition. Everything else, including ‘reality’ and ‘logic’ are considererd irrelevant sideshows.
@i witness.. Quite true. But only partly. It’s true that Lord Buddha avoids existential questions. But few centuries later, the thinking in India had changed and Buddhist scholars were pressured to answer those existential questions. That’s when Nargarjuna came. He’s arguably the greatest buddhist thinker since buddha. He was uncompromisingly logic. He’s fascinating to learn about. Anyway, among other things, he devised the concept of Nullness. Buddha had talked about everything being Null, as in anitta, dukka, anatta, shunya. But he hadn’t said anything about a concept called Nullness (shunyathava). This concept later gave rise to Mahayana and Tantra so on.
@Lefroy, Appreciate you input. Can you recommend a place to learn more about Buddhist logic. Thanks in advance.
Forgot to say. The reason Buddha avoided existential questions is because they have nothing to do with salvation. The only thing he promises is that, salvation. Here’s the path. Follow it. You’ll find salvation at the end.
@ i witness.. “understanding nagarjuna’s catuskoti” by R.D. Gunaratne