I have decided it's well past time to do some light blogging. At this point, I have only rough ideas of what I am going to be writing about in this blog. Essentially it's about anything I feel like writing about.
To an extent, the Blogger system forces one to make certain choices sooner rather than later. In this case before I could proceed I had to name the blog. After some thought I found a name I wanted. I wanted to simply name it "Frank's Blog." Google's Blogger software reported back it would not accept that nor any of my other first choices. Finally, it accepted the name "Bubbles and Shadows."
"Bubbles and Shadows" is a coded shorthand way of saying, "Anything and Everything."
Since this is my first post, it seems like a good idea to talk about myself a bit and why I called called this blog "Bubbles and Shadows."
Bubbles and Shadows -- To start off with Bubbles always remind me of the simple fun, laughter, and wonder of a young child. For most of us bubbles made us giggle when we were kids. Shadows are rarely what they seem: Looking at the shadow of a cat how quickly can we determine which cat it is, or how big the cat really is. "Shadows" remind me of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," an illustrative story of how we often miss the true nature of things much like a group of cave dwellers might mistaken shadows for the objects that cast the shadows.
But besides the above the phrase "bubbles and shadows" was taken from a loose translation of the Diamond Sutra, an important text of Mahayana Buddhism. In particular it is an important text of Zen Buddhism, a school of Buddhism considered part of Mahayana Buddhism. I have long been interested in, and have practiced Zen Buddhist meditation since the Fall of 1969, which was also my first year in college.
According to Wikipedia, "The full Sanskrit title of this text is the Mahayana Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra." That phrase may be translated roughly as the "Vajra Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra." Since Vajra translates into English as "diamond," we have the "Diamond Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sutra" or "Diamond Sutra" for short.
Towards the end of the sutra there is a poem. One possible approximate translation of that Sanskrit poem is
All composite things are like a dream,A phantasm, a bubble and a shadow,
A like a dewdrop and a flash of lightning;
They are thus to be regarded.
This means that anything and everything -- humans, animals, minerals and vegetables -- is composed of something, but in the end it all turns out to be intangible and insubstantial. For a rough idea of this Far Eastern concept think along the lines of grammar school science. We were taught that everything is composed of a collection of various molecules, each molecule is composed of a collection [bunch, bundle] of atoms. Each atom is composed of a set of subatomic particles, one or more protons, electrons, and, usually, neutrons, and perhaps other so-called subatomic particles. Each subatomic particle is composed of even smaller things like Quarks. Eventually further careful scientific analysis reveals that the sub-sub...sub particles all turn into energy which is, often pretty much intangible and insubstantial. So Eastern "insight into the nature of things" actually beat Western Science of Things to the conclusion that everything is ultimately without real, permanent, solid substance. So someone back around 900 C. E. poetically, wrote that everything is like a dream, a hallucination, a bubble, a shadow, etc. Somehow that was attributed to Siddhārtha Gautama, a man who came to be known as "The Buddha" who lived for about 80 years around 500 B. C. E.
Welcome to Bubbles and Shadows! Hopefully it will be interesting, informative, funny, and, at least a little mysterious from time to time.
Best,
Frank LoCicero
PS There are other ways to consider what the term "composite things" means, and other ways to consider what the ephemeral nature of the so-called real world is.
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