Nothingness or Mu

Sam Ghandchi

http://www.ghandchi.com/2405-nothingness-or-mu-english.htm

عدم یا مو

http://www.ghandchi.com/2405-nothingness-or-mu.htm

P.S. 11/16/20: A postscript was added today to the Persian version about discussions on Persian twitter somewhat related to this topic. SG

 
Descartes writes: "The Lord has made three marvels: things out of nothing-ness; free will; and the Man who is God" (1). Let's start from Descartes' second proposition. Look at a squirrel watching the trajectory of an acorn falling from an oak tree and reaches out to it. That is the *free will* of a squirrel brain, tied to intelligence, with the purpose of fulfilling a biological need to survive. Human brain goes beyond it and reaches to invent non-biological sentient beings as Ray Kurzweil has shown us (2), and that explains Descartes' second proposition: "Man who is God." But Descartes' first proposition is really a tough one. In view of this author, there is no nothing-ness and this is why the assumption of conservation of mass and energy has worked so well in physics. Everything *is*. We humans invented *nothingness* so that we could better understand *what* is, using a binary logic. And maybe this is why Zen practitioners start with *Mu* to meditate (3), as it upsets the comfort of a brain so used to *is*, by focusing on a *void*, the *Mu*, which is nothing but a logical abstraction.

Hoping for a democratic and secular futurist republic in Iran,

Sam Ghandchi

IRANSCOPE

http://www.ghandchi.com/index2.html
January 2, 2019

Footnotes:

1. Descartes and Laity
http://www.ghandchi.com/397-DescartesEng.htm
دکارت و لائیکات، مردم عادی غیر روحانی یا غیرمتخصص
http://www.ghandchi.com/397-Descartes.htm

2. Many Paths Beyond Singularity as Proposed by Kurzweil
http://www.ghandchi.com/1681-many-paths-beyond-singularity-english.htm
چندین راه در فراسوی سینگولاریته طرح شده کرزوایل
http://www.ghandchi.com/1681-many-paths-beyond-singularity.htm

3. Jack Li: Zen Meditation
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/Anthology/Jack_Li-Zen.htm