From the Beginning

Ab Ovo
by Joseph Brodsky, from So Forth

Ultimately, there should be a language
in which the word "egg" is reduced to O
entirely. The Italian comes the closest,
naturally, with its uova. That's why Alighieri thought
it the healthiest food, sharing the predilection
with sopranos and tenors whose pear-like torsos
in the final analysis embody "opera."
The same pertains to the truly Romantic, that is,
German poets, with practically every line
starting the way they'd begin a breakfast,
or to the equally cocky mathematicians
brooding over their regularly laid infinity,
whose immaculate zeros won't ever hatch.

Nothing Made Modern Science Possible

“Our word cipher, meaning zero or nothing, comes from the Arabic word Sifr, meaning zero. We call our numbers Arabic numerals, but they actually came from India. It was the Arabs, however, who brought the Indian numerals to Europe. It took centuries to convince Europeans to use them, even  though they made calculations easier than using clumsy Roman numerals. Medieval Arab scholars also took the Indian idea of representing zero (the Arabs use a dot, ٠). This enables us to write all numbers with only ten symbols (0 to 9). Without the use of the zero, modern science would be impossible!”

~ Barbara Whitesides, from Sugar Comes from Arabic: A Beginner's Guide to Arabic Letters and Words

[See also: Zero and One & Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea]

Zero and One

Shinzen Young talks about zero and one as the two main paradigms used to describe the path of enlightenment. He then talks about having a complete experience of feel, image, and talk—or the subjective self—and experiencing ordinariness as extraordinary, and experiencing the extraordinary as ordinary. Filmed in Santa Barbara in January 2009.

• www.shinzen.org
• www.basicmindfulness.com

Coming to Understand the Nature of Consciousness

Shinzen Young talks about the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures can be interpreted in two different ways. One shows the stages on the path of enlightenment and the other shows the process of truly grasping consciousness. This lecture was filmed near the end of a fourteen-day intensive at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara (1.9.09).

(1) Searching for the ox (2) - Seeing the footprints (3) Glimpsing the ox (4) Catching the ox

 

(5) Taming the ox (6) Riding the ox (7) Arriving home alone (8) Both Ox and self forgotten (9) Returning to the source

 

(10) In the marketplace with hand outstretched

[Thank you Randy!]

Nothing Can Be More Dangerous Than Nothing

"Humanity's always been uncomfortable with zero and the void. The ancient Greeks declared them unnatural and unreal. Theologians argued that God's first act was to banish the void by the act of creating the universe ex nihilo, and Middle-Ages thinkers tried to ban zero and the other Arabic 'ciphers.' But the emptiness is all around us — most of the universe is void. Even as we huddle around our hearths and invent stories to convince ourselves that the cosmos is warm and full and inviting, nothingness stares back at us with empty eye sockets."

--Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea