We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

When I die what happens to all that data I've been collecting and putting everywhere on the Internet? Does my information die with me, does it slowly fade away or does it live on forever?

Near the end of his life, Thomas Aquinas had a revelation while celebrating mass in Naples.

He decided then and there to stop writing his Summa Theologica and let it be completed by another hand, whoever that might be.

This is what he had to say:

"My writing days are over for such things have been revealed to me that all I have written and taught seems of but small account to me, wherefore I hope in my God that even as the end has come to my teaching, so it may soon come in my life."

He died shortly afterwards at the ripe old age of forty-nine.

Nothing exists inherently, or is its own cause.

An object can be defined only in terms of other objects. Interdependence is essential to the manifestation of phenomena.

The world would not be able to function without it.

So a given phenomenon can come about only if it is linked to others.

Reality cannot be localized and fragmented, but should be considered as holistic and global.

(Borrowed from the book "The Quantum and the Lotus" by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan, which I just finished reading last week)

In the Sanskrit pratitya samutpada is a direct reference to "dependent origination," or in other words: things do exist in some way but nothing exists on its own, and nothing can be its own cause.

Everything is in some way interdependent with the rest of the world and what the world is trying to achieve with us being around to observe it all in the first place.

The so-called external things can only exist in relation to one another, never in and of themselves.

All visible and invisible characteristics of natural phenomena are defined only through relationships.

One relationship leads to the other giving the appearance of being connected, conditioned and in turn conditioning.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

- T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (1925)

I was just wondering when I saw that black tower over there in the distance poking its head above the topmost portions of the forest whether or not it was time to do something else. When I reflected upon this curious alteration of my consciousness and decided it was time to make amends whatever that may mean that was exactly the point in time when the so-called black tower simply disappeared altogether without warning. I had imagined a damsel in distress letting her golden locks fall down from the immense heights but that was not to be. The black tower had disappeared but the outline was still there to be seen by those willing to look beyond the cloak of awareness that the distance had put between us.

I never would have expected it of myself being the way that I am. But sometimes you just have to accept things as they are and continue as if nothing ever happened in the first place. Take a step sideways that's it no matter how much time has passed since whenever.

For those of you needing daily inspiration once in awhile, you might want to check out the DailyOM web site.

One of my favorite articles is Needless Fear.

(Thanks alot for the link, Kathleen).

At first glance, getting smothered to death at the Hajj might not seem a very fulfilling way of ending one's life.

That is exactly what happened today to more than three hundred pilgrims during the so-called symbolic stoning ritual.

There was panic and then a surge of the crowd and then an overpowering stampede of wishful worshippers all wanting to be at the same holy place at the same time.

The final moments in emotional turmoil swiftly going under in a heightened spiritual awareness...

(And then that's it)