Hologram Thoughts

I watched a very good presentation by Aubrey de Grey on TED. I am going to embedd the video below and then talk a little bit about these thoughts.

So this is amazing to think about, to say the least. If I could live to 150 years of age what would I do with this time? Learn languages, become a yogi, work towards Enlightenment and watch the Cubs win another series?

I first became familiar with Aubrey when I joined a site called BetterHumans and began to read his comments on the forums and his papers. He struck me as a pragmatic optimist. He could see that there is a chance we, as a race, could attain immortality, and he had the tools to do his part.

This all made me wonder why aren’t humans immortal already. I mean, you can look around at the world and realize that biodiversity is wonderful and obviously brilliant, so why not an organism that can live forever? Doesn’t that seem like the goal? I don’t think it is actually.

The goal of every organism I know of is simple: reproduce. Create offspring and ensure that your genus survives the drought, or the winter or the predator or whatever. So why would your individual genes try to create the super-being, one that would live forever if left alone.

I know that I don’t want to live forever, not in this world of suffering. But I would take an extra 60 years to get myself ready for the bardo if I don’t wake up first.

I went to my first official Buddhist function this past weekend in Oklahoma City. A local Kagyu meditation group brought Lama Dudjom Dorjee, pictured at right, to speak on the subject of Bardo, the intermediate state.

We are all in Bardo right now. Every moment of every day we are in a state of transition. From waking to sleep, from birth to death, from one mood to another; transition. Lama spoke about the bardo of dreams, of meditation and obviously the state of bardo after death, before rebirth.

For those enlightened or advanced enough on the Dharma path, bardo can be a time of liberation and knowledge; a time to further advance before rebirth. For the rest of us though, we suffer the chance that bardo is filled with hallucinatory images related to our own needs and desires; virtually ensuring that we are born into a lower realm.

I am reading more about the subject in a book, which is just good timing, I didn’t plan this. The book is The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a lama in the Bon tradition. I plan on moving to this one as soon as I feel ready for it, The Bardo Guidebook, by Chokyi N. Rinpoche.

The most famous book on the subject of Bardo is Bardo Thodol, Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State, which in the west we have mistakenly named The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I actually have a really cool version of this on video, Lenoard Cohen narrates the video.

Okay, how was that for rambling?

The talk was held at Windsong Dojo, a wonderful Aikido & Judo dojo here in Oklahoma City.