Saturday, March 31, 2012

The Joy (and by joy I mean delight) of Learning

Just a few minutes ago I was reminded of how much I love, love, love to learn from someone who is passionate about his/her subject. I was watching an episode of TED Talks [sidebar: TED is "a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading," and TED Talks are watchable online at ted.com; you don't need to watch them on television], and after two lectures I had to stop watching and blog immediately.

The first lecture, given by writer/director/producer J.J. Abrams, was engaging, funny, and inspiring. His view of the unknown, as mystery to be anticipated with excitement, was beautiful.  However, it was the second lecture, given by Princeton molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler, that prompted my need to write today.


Her lecture described how bacteria talk to each other (with a molecular chemical language, since you asked), and how that enables them to behave in concert—including a very satisfying, oh-right-that-makes-perfect-sense explanation of how "bad" bacteria can become virulent. I noticed partway through the lecture that I was grinning as broadly as a child at a cartoon festival. Why was I smiling? After all, this wasn't humorous pop-culture stuff; there was hard science here (although Bassler made everything easily understandable to the layperson). Then it dawned on me: this woman was as excited about her team's discoveries as a kid pulling on your pant leg to say, "Hey, look what I found! Lookit, lookit, lookit! Isn't this the coolest thing you've ever seen, ever?" Her enthusiasm was infectious enough to reach out through the tv set and grab me. Granted, I would have been interested in the subject no matter what (because I'm such a nerd), but her love for her science and for its possibilities permeated her lecture and filled me with delight.

As I sit here typing, the smile still lingers. I'm still excited about what I learned. And I'm excited to be excited; the thrill of learning something new, the joy of discovery, the delight and fascination at how things work, it's all still inside me.

You're never too old to learn, and it's still just as much fun as ever.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Metta, part the first

I only learned the term Metta recently; I knew the term lovingkindness, a lovely comforting and comfortable word. So many letters all crammed together like a nice squishy hug, a nice long word like arms spread out to say, "I love you this much." Lovingkindness meant something different than either word separately; I always saw the word as an overall serene benevolence, a soft smile that misses no sentient being in its scope (and to me the smile encompasses the vegetable and mineral kingdoms as well as the animals). Lovingkindness is the state of being or emotion that reminds me the most of deism, because in my early religious training I was taught of a benevolent god who loves all his creation, and I associate lovingkindness with the state of mind that such a god would possess all the time.

Metta is different. Metta sounds like meta, which means several things to me: it has its computer meanings (e.g., metadata), its scientific meanings (e.g., metatarsal bones), and other meanings that come from its Greek origins as a prefix meaning after, next to, or regarding the self (e.g., metatarsals are the bones next to or after the tarsals, and meta-emotion is a person's emotion about his/her own emotion).

Metta practice is a meditation on lovingkindness in which one first thinks compassionate thoughts towards oneself (meta-Metta when meta refers to self), then towards someone close (meta-Metta when meta refers to next to), then towards someone who's not as close (meta-Metta when meta refers to after), and then towards everyone (meta-Metta when meta refers to beyond). The bigger picture is that all these various separations—I, you, he, they, others—are artificial. In truth we are not separate from each other, and metta is a way to remember that.

Considering how difficult that concept is, it's easier to start with thinking compassionate thoughts as close as our own hearts, and then letting the compassion spread out in expanding waves just like the ripples of a pebble in a pond. The waves begin at the center place where the stone plops into the water, and then roll out in circles that continue to expand farther and farther way from the center point until they reach to the edges of the pond on all sides. The vibrations never stop until the entire surface of the water has been affected; not only that, they don't even stop at the shore, but bounce back off the edges and ripple back into the middle of the pond again.

Poetry Info

There's a show on the CUNY channel* called Voices and Visions that has various different kinds of films about poets.
Next week it's supposed to be a repeat of their show on William Carlos Williams, although on cuny.tv's schedule it says it'll be a show on Hart Crane. I'm hoping the cable TV's schedule is the right one, because I saw the Williams episode before and enjoyed it.

This is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams
artwork by Ivan Boothe, on quixoticlife.net


*For those of you not in New York, CUNY is the City University of New York; CUNY TV is their television station, on Channel 75 on the various NYC cable stations. They have podcasts and YouTube videos of a bunch of their shows for all you out-of-region folks, but sadly I don't think Voices and Visions is one of them.