Some things seem obvious — you can see your hands, touch your skin. Other parts of yourself require mirrors or cameras. And many things you accept without ever seeing at all, simply because someone you trust — a parent, a teacher, a book — told you they exist.

But every source of knowledge has limits. Instruments can malfunction. Calculations can be flawed. Even your own eyes can mislead you.

If every channel of information can be wrong at times, can we ever be completely sure of anything?

Philosophers have wrestled with this question for thousands of years. The ancient Chinese thinker Zhuangzi once dreamed he was a butterfly — and upon waking, wondered whether he was actually a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Plato suggested that what we see might only be shadows of a deeper, truer reality.

What if our entire world is only a kind of illusion — something closer to a vast video game or a story like The Matrix?

The Simulation Hypothesis

Today, this ancient doubt has taken on a modern, technological form known as the simulation hypothesis.

About twenty years ago, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed a bold idea. He noticed how quickly video games, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence were advancing. If technology kept improving, he reasoned, future civilizations might be able to create incredibly detailed digital worlds — simulations so convincing that their inhabitants would feel completely real.

In such a future, billions or even trillions of simulated people could exist.

And if a digital version of you behaved exactly like you, thought like you, and felt emotions just like you — wouldn’t life from the inside feel perfectly authentic?

Bostrom took this idea further. Imagine humanity centuries from now, capable of recreating entire historical eras. Perhaps they would simulate the 21st century out of curiosity or entertainment, running countless versions of our world.

Here’s the striking logic:
If the original Earth existed only once, but future civilizations create trillions of realistic copies, then statistically it’s far more likely that we are living inside one of those simulations rather than the single original reality.

In other words — if such simulations ever become possible, chances are we’re already in one.

Scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson have even suggested the odds might be close to fifty-fifty.

Clues… or Coincidences?

If we were in a simulation, would there be signs?

Some people jokingly blame strange moments on “glitches in the system” — when objects seem to disappear, memories feel unreliable, or events oddly repeat themselves.

There are also deeper curiosities. Physics breaks down at extremely tiny scales. And we cannot observe beyond a certain distance in the universe because light hasn’t reached us yet since the Big Bang.

It almost resembles a game engine — limits in resolution, boundaries beyond which nothing renders.

Of course, there are simpler explanations. Maybe you just forgot where you put your phone.

The simulation hypothesis doesn’t depend on strange anomalies. Its power lies in logic alone: if advanced civilizations will one day run massive simulations, then probability suggests we’re probably inside one already.

Still, many remain skeptical. The computing power required would be so immense that such beings would seem almost godlike — and it’s possible humanity will never reach that level.

A Question That Changes Everything

Whether true or not, the simulation hypothesis forces us to rethink what “reality” really means.

Are we physical beings in a vast universe…
or conscious characters inside a cosmic program?

For now, no one knows.

But the question itself continues to challenge science, philosophy, and imagination — reminding us that reality may be far stranger than it appears.

The post Why Do Some People Believe We Might Be Living in a Simulation? appeared first on Table for Change.

Rooted in Christianity, the story of the world’s most beloved gift-giver stretches across centuries, cultures, and belief systems.

Saint Nicholas

The origins of Santa Claus trace back to Saint Nicholas, a figure believed to have lived in the fourth century. While reliable historical records of his life are scarce, tradition holds that Nicholas of Myra—later known as Saint Nicholas of Bari—lived during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great.

According to tradition, he was born in Patara, a city in ancient Lycia (modern-day Turkey). He later became the bishop of Myra and was widely admired for his deep faith and exceptional kindness.

Stories tell that during his youth he traveled to Palestine and Egypt, strengthening his spiritual devotion. Orphaned at a young age, Nicholas inherited considerable wealth, which he chose to give away to those in need.

His most famous act of charity involved secretly providing dowries for three impoverished sisters, saving them from hardship. Because of such deeds, he became known as a protector of children and was later honored as a saint.

St. Nicholas Day Traditions

Throughout Europe, Saint Nicholas inspired many regional customs, with December 6 marked as his feast day.

In parts of France, especially Alsace and Lorraine, children would place their shoes outside overnight, hoping to find them filled with sweets and small gifts. Festive parades often accompanied the celebration, featuring a donkey carrying baskets of treats through town streets.

In Central Europe, particularly in Alpine regions, Saint Nicholas traditions blended with local folklore as Christianity spread. There, he rewarded well-behaved children but was often accompanied by Krampus, a frightening figure meant to discipline the naughty—highlighting the contrast between reward and punishment.

In some regions of Poland, gift-giving was associated with Gwiazdor, or the “Star Man,” who wore sheepskin clothing, concealed his face with a mask or soot, and carried both gifts and a rod.

The Evolution into Santa Claus

The transformation of Saint Nicholas into Santa Claus happened gradually, shaped by cultural change.

By the 17th century, gift-giving in Saint Nicholas’s name had become common in Germany and the Netherlands. The Dutch called him Sinterklaas, a name that eventually evolved into “Santa Claus” in English. This version spread across Europe and later to North America.

In the 19th century, various interpretations of Saint Nicholas appeared throughout English-speaking societies. One of the earliest American literary references came in Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York (1809), which described Nicholas flying through the sky in a wagon to deliver presents.

The iconic red suit associated with Santa today is largely the result of modern marketing, particularly in the English-speaking world. In contrast, many European depictions of Saint Nicholas still resemble a bishop, complete with traditional robes and a miter.

A Lasting Legacy

Despite centuries of transformation, the essence of Saint Nicholas—kindness, generosity, and joy in giving—remains central to Santa Claus.

He has evolved from a Christian saint into a global, secular symbol of Christmas. Though today’s Santa, with his North Pole workshop, flying reindeer, and elves, may seem far removed from the historical bishop of Myra, he continues to embody the same spirit of compassion.

Thanks to global culture and commercialization, Santa Claus now transcends religion and geography. Yet understanding his roots in Saint Nicholas deepens our appreciation of Christmas traditions and reminds us that, at their core, these celebrations are about generosity, kindness, and caring for others.

The post Where Does Santa Claus Come From? appeared first on Table for Change.

During the ceremony, an unexpected visitor arrived — Ravana, the powerful king of Lanka, who had been granted near-invincibility by Brahma, the creator god. The sudden appearance of Ravana caused great alarm among the gods, compelling them to disguise themselves to avoid confrontation.

To escape his attention, each god transformed into a different animal or bird:

• Indra became a peacock,

• Yama turned into a crow,

• Varuna took the form of a swan,

• and Kubera — the god of wealth — chose to become a chameleon.

These transformations were not mere acts of camouflage, but strategic efforts to remain unnoticed and protect themselves from Ravana’s formidable power. The plan worked — Ravana, unaware of the divine presence, eventually left the scene.

In gratitude for the animals whose forms they had borrowed, each god offered a divine blessing. Kubera, in his chameleon form, bestowed upon the creature a unique and lasting gift — the ability to change its color at will.

This sacred blessing ensured that the chameleon would forever possess this extraordinary ability, allowing it to blend with its surroundings and shield itself from danger.

Thus, according to Hindu tradition, the chameleon’s color-changing ability is not merely a biological trait, but a divine gift — a sacred symbol of adaptability and survival, granted in recognition of its role in protecting the gods during a time of great peril.

The post Why Can a Chameleon Change Its Color? A Story from Hindu Tradition appeared first on Table for Change.

Ancient Gatherings at River Confluences: For thousands of years, people in India have gathered at river confluences (known as Prayag). Uttarakhand has five such confluences that form the River Ganga. However, Prayagraj is the most revered, as it is where the celestial Ganga meets the earthly Yamuna and the underground Saraswati, symbolizing the union of three realms.

Evolution of Astrology in India: Ancient Vedic astrology divided the sky into 27 Nakshatras. The 12 zodiac signs (Rashi), however, were introduced around 300 AD through Greco-Roman influence via maritime trade. These divisions were absent in the Vedas, Ramayana, and Mahabharata but became important in later astrological texts like Romaka Siddhanta during the Gupta period.

• Maratha Influence on Nashik and Ujjain Kumbh Melas: The large gatherings of ascetics at Nashik and Ujjain, associated with the Trimbakeshwar and Mahakal temples, were promoted by Maratha rulers in the 17th century. The Marathas sought to position themselves as defenders of Hinduism, similar to the revered Rajputs. Terms like Shahi and Peshwai in the festival’s traditions reflect the Mughal-Maratha era’s influence.

• Warrior Ascetics and Akharas: By 1500 AD, akhara (warrior-monastic groups) had emerged to counter Islamic warrior groups. These ascetic orders, affiliated with Shiva, Vishnu, and Sikh traditions, were not just religious but also economic and military institutions. Some trace their origins to Adi Shankara (700 AD), while others link them to figures like Parashurama (Vaishnavas), Bhairava (Shaivas), and Shri Chand (son of Guru Nanak, for Sikh warriors). These groups operated as monks, traders, and warriors, maintaining secret rituals.

• Ancient Texts and the Gathering Tradition: While the Vedas do not mention large religious gatherings, the Upanishads describe sages assembling in Mithila for philosophical discussions. The Mahabharata refers to kings and sages gathering for sacred baths. Such meetings played a vital role in exchanging ideas and fostering religious movements. South Indian scholars like Adi Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva visited these sites, though it is unclear if they participated in Kumbh Melas. Historically, melas were common in India but were not as widely publicized as they are today.

• Myth of the Amrita Kumbh (Pot of Nectar): The popular association of Kumbh Mela with the divine nectar (Amrita) emerged in recent times. Instead of zodiac alignments, the event is now linked to the Samudra Manthan (churning of the ocean). According to this belief, drops of nectar fell at these sacred sites, which are activated at specific astrological moments. This story is found in the Mahabharata, but not in the Vedas. Interestingly, depictions of the churning of the ocean are more common in Southeast Asia than in India. The Vedas speak of a hawk delivering Soma (a sacred drink) to Manu, but there is no mention of the ocean being churned.

• Colonial Influence and Modern Spectacle: During British rule, Kumbh Mela played a crucial role in strengthening Hindu identity. Today, it is both a religious and tourist spectacle, attracting photographers eager to capture ascetics in traditional attire. The festival is also a platform for showcasing Hindu culture, with grand displays involving elephants, horses, and camels. While much attention is given to naga sadhus (naked ascetics) and the new kinnar akhara (transgender monastic order), the role of women in the festival remains suppressed. Attempts to establish a female akhara faced resistance, as monastic power remains male-dominated. Many female ascetics, including widows, occupy lower positions in these orders, reflecting the longstanding belief in male celibacy as a source of spiritual power—a concept rooted in Tantric traditions associated with Shiva and Hanuman.

• Kumbh Mela’s North Indian Dominance: The festival holds greater significance in North India. Most North Indians are unaware of the Kumbakonam temple gathering in South India. Traditionally, Aryavarta (the land of the Aryans) was considered to be north of the Tropic of Cancer, where shadows always fall to the north. After 500 AD, scriptures like the Manusmriti expanded Aryavarta to include the South, claiming that sages had carried sacred rivers and mountains with them. The Sapta-Sindhu (seven sacred rivers) came to include not just the tributaries of the Indus and Ganges but also the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri rivers.

• Hinduism as an Orthopraxic Tradition: Hinduism is more focused on rituals (orthopraxy) than on belief systems (orthodoxy). Kumbh Mela exemplifies this—devotees perform sacred rites like ritual bathing at specific times without necessarily needing theological justifications. Stories and explanations about these rituals often emerge later.

• Monastic Politics and British Concerns: Traditionally, Kumbh Mela served as a meeting ground for monastic leaders and royalty to resolve disputes and plan succession within their orders. These monastic groups wield significant political and economic power, with hierarchical structures similar to royal titles (Mandaleshwar and Mahamandaleshwar). This power dynamic made British authorities uneasy, especially after the 1857 rebellion. However, by branding the event as purely religious rather than political, Hindu leaders ensured that the British could not ban it. The event grew even larger with the expansion of railways and newspapers.

• The Confluence of Many Elements: Kumbh Mela represents the confluence of celestial bodies, rivers, monastic traditions, and vast numbers of people. Whether it grants immortality is debatable—but it certainly provides a stage for politicians seeking influence. Nature, however, remains indifferent to human ambitions.

The post Interesting Facts About Kumbh Mela appeared first on Table for Change.

In conforming to societal norms and expectations, many of us find ourselves deeply unhappy. We chase wealth, fame, and material possessions, indulge in unhealthy habits, and consume endless streams of negativity through media. To escape insecurities and existential emptiness, we numb ourselves with distractions and substances. Often, our relationships with others—whether partners, children, or animals—become expressions of control rather than genuine connection. Meanwhile, we continue contributing to the destruction of ecosystems, species, and communities across the globe.

Our lives often reflect silent despair masked by a cheerful exterior. Despair, in one form or another, always feels close at hand.

But what if healing was as simple as stepping outside? What if reconnecting with nature could help us find balance and restore our sense of purpose?

While conventional therapy often takes place in clean, controlled environments, ecotherapy—or “green therapy”—offers an alternative. It emphasizes healing through connection with the natural world. This simple yet transformative approach can rejuvenate the mind, body, and spirit.

The Benefits of Ecotherapy

Ecotherapy, rooted in a deep connection with nature, offers many benefits:

• Interconnection: It reminds us that we are part of the same life force that animates all living things.
• Perspective: It puts our personal struggles into a larger context, revealing their insignificance in the grand scheme of life.
• Balance: It highlights the give-and-take nature of life, teaching us to restore harmony in what we consume and contribute.

Studies show that time in nature reduces anxiety, depression, and blood pressure while boosting self-esteem, vitality, and overall health. It even fosters a sense of belonging.

14 Simple Ways to Practice Ecotherapy

Here are some inexpensive, easy ways to incorporate ecotherapy into your life:

1. Take a walk in your yard, neighborhood, or local park.
2. Breathe in the scents of nature, noticing subtle aromas like flowers or fresh grass.
3. Walk barefoot on grass to feel grounded and refresh your energy.
4. Sit under a tree or lean against it to experience its calming presence.
5. Go bird-watching and see how many species you can identify.
6. Collect natural treasures like feathers, shells, or leaves for creative projects.
7. Gaze at the sky or ocean to expand your perspective and calm your mind.
8. Plant a garden with flowers, herbs, or vegetables to nurture life.
9. Capture nature’s beauty with photography—whether it’s dewdrops, sunsets, or landscapes.
10. Press flowers to use in crafts like handmade cards or scrapbooks.
11. Build a bird nest to offer something back to wildlife.
12. Forage for wild edibles, ensuring you’ve done proper research for safety.
13. Walk in the rain to reconnect with the elements and feel invigorated.
14. Sit in silence, doing nothing, and simply absorb the tranquility of nature.

By spending just 10 minutes a day consciously engaging with nature, you can transform your life. Ecotherapy is a powerful antidote to the stresses of modern living, helping us reconnect with ourselves, others, and the world around us.

The post Ecotherapy: 14 Types of Earth-Centered Healing You Will Love appeared first on Table for Change.

Nothing in our universe stands still: Earth orbits the sun, the sun circles the galaxy, and even galaxies are constantly on the move. So why is everything in space in motion?

It all comes down to how the universe and the objects within it were made, Edward Gomez, an astrophysicist and the education director at Las Cumbres Observatory, told Live Science. Scientists think the universe began with the Big Bang, a superfast expansion from an infinitely dense single point that eventually led to the formation of everything we see today.

“From the very beginning of the universe, it started expanding outwards because the force of the Big Bang caused everything to move apart,” Gomez said.

“It’s sort of the imprint of the beginning,” said Carol Christian, an astrophysicist and outreach project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “The beginning was movement, and so movement has been built into the universe from the very beginning.”

So one reason everything in space is in motion is because the universe is expanding. But that expansion has effects only on very large scales. “We only see it really happening on things that are very far apart or far away, because it’s not necessarily that these objects are moving through space,” Gomez said. “It’s that the space in between objects is getting bigger.”

On smaller scales, though, rotation is the movement that rules objects in space. “This spinning thing is kind of endemic in the universe, too,” Christian told Live Science. “There isn’t anything that doesn’t rotate.”

That’s due to angular momentum: When two objects in space move close together, their mutual gravity pulls them toward each other, and if they don’t collide or fly in different directions, they tend to orbit each other. This phenomenon affects everything, from the smallest mineral grains to the largest galaxies.

“The solar system was made like a pizza is made … If you’re making an Italian pizza, you throw the pizza dough up, and as you spin it, it flattens out into a disc,” Gomez said. “And that’s fundamentally how our solar system is made: This thing called angular momentum, that spinning effect stretches things out into a disc.”

That’s why the planets in the solar system orbit the sun: The solar system began as a spinning mass of gas and dust that eventually coalesced into a star and planets. Along the way, angular momentum ensured it never stopped spinning.

But a galaxy’s spinning effect happens differently than you’d expect from just the stuff we can see.

“It spins as if it were like a pizza base, as if it was solid instead of being made up of individual components, stars,” Gomez said. “It should be that the [stars] further out should be going slower than the ones in the center. But actually, you don’t see that … and that’s one of the first indicators that the universe had something crazy that you can’t see that we now call dark matter.”

Dark matter doesn’t interact with light, so we can’t see it with telescopes. However, it does have mass and interacts with other objects that have mass through gravitational effects. Dark matter also experiences angular momentum. It’s another reason everything in space is moving.

In the end, motion is a fundamental ingredient in the universe. It “shows that the universe is alive — not in a sense of being conscious, but you know, things are happening — chemical reactions, physical reactions are happening, and that requires energy,” Gomez said. “And the most basic form of energy is motion.”

Originally Published: www.livescience.com

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What Are Microplastics?

Microplastics are tiny plastic particles less than five millimeters in size. Despite their small size, they pose a large-scale threat to environmental and human health. They enter our bodies through various means, including the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe. The study suggests that the average person ingests about 5 grams of microplastics weekly—the equivalent weight of a credit card.

From Gut to Organ: The Microplastics’ Pathway

The new findings, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, detail how microplastics can cross the gastrointestinal barrier and migrate into organs such as the liver, kidneys, and brain, altering metabolic pathways in these tissues. Eliseo Castillo, PhD, an associate professor in the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at the UNM School of Medicine and a leading figure in microplastic research, explains the implications of their presence in our bodies.

“We could detect microplastics in certain tissues after the exposure,” Castillo shares. “That tells us it can cross the intestinal barrier and infiltrate into other tissues.”

The Impact of Microplastics on Health

The study sheds light on the potential long-term accumulation of microplastics in the body and their ability to exacerbate underlying health conditions, particularly chronic gastrointestinal diseases. Castillo points out that even healthy laboratory animals showed changes after brief microplastic exposure, raising concerns about the particles’ effects on individuals with pre-existing health issues.

“It is changing the metabolism of the cells, which can alter inflammatory responses,” Castillo notes. “During intestinal inflammation – states of chronic illness such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, which are both forms of inflammatory bowel disease – these macrophages become more inflammatory and are more abundant in the gut.”

Future Research and Implications

As the research team continues to investigate the impacts of microplastics, they are exploring how factors like diet might affect the uptake of these particles. The ongoing study will compare the effects of different diets on microplastic absorption, aiming to provide insights that could influence future dietary recommendations and public health policies.

Moreover, Castillo’s research is paving the way for a better understanding of how microplastics influence the gut microbiota, a key factor in overall health. “Multiple groups have shown microplastics change the microbiota, but how it changes the microbiota hasn’t been addressed,” he states.

The Call to Action

Castillo hopes that the findings will inspire changes in how society manages plastic production and waste, emphasizing the need for improved filtration and disposal methods to reduce the presence of microplastics in our environment.

“At the end of the day, the research we are trying to do aims to find out how this is impacting gut health,” Castillo concludes. Research continues to show the importance of gut health. If you don’t have a healthy gut, it affects the brain, the liver, and so many other tissues. So even imagining that the microplastics are doing something in the gut, chronic exposure could lead to systemic effects.”

This study is a crucial reminder of the interconnectedness of our environment, choices, and health. It calls us to reconsider our daily interactions with plastic and to take actionable steps towards safeguarding our health against the unseen dangers of microplastics.

Originally Published: wakeup-world.com

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With the destruction comes a wider acceptance of the scientific reality — and a growing motivation to contribute to solutions. But destruction also brings despair, fear about the future, grief, and panic. As we grapple with our new reality, contemplative practice can offer techniques for holding these challenging truths.

Spiritual practices are not alternatives to swift, wise action. They are complementary disciplines to education and activism. Spiritual resources can help us move from desperation to sustainable activism.

How do we get from anger to compassion?

Spiritual practice may not provide concrete climate solutions, but they do have the potential to shift consciousness. Practices and teachings can address how we relate to our grief, despair, and fear. These resources help restructure our understanding of what it means to be human, now, on our home planet.

Here are five tried and true contemplative practices from the Buddhist tradition that can help us hold the truths of climate change, species extinction, and the ecological crisis in our hearts and minds. While this list of practices is not by any means exhaustive, it is a beginning. Even though their roots are ancient, these practices are timely as we encounter the truth of suffering on a global scale.

1. Find a grounding in ethics

Some people see climate change as an ecological issue. Some see it as an economic issue. Some see it as a social issue. But, we know that human actions are at fault. In this sense, climate change is an ethical issue.

Our beliefs about justice — the values that we hold most dear — form the bedrock of our actions. These values are largely learned and assimilated from our culture. Each of us — as individuals and communities — can influence the values upheld by our culture.

Climate change is happening because of what we have valued and how we have conceived of our identity as human beings on this planet. The values have come from a dominant industrial ethos. Climate change, therefore, isn’t just a matter of what we can do. It’s a matter of what we should do.

Contemplative traditions teach moral reflections on our actions, speech, and thought. The Buddha emphasized ethics, śila, as a fundamental training for his monks. His monastic code of ethics was constructed around the idea of ahimsa, or non-violence. Essentially, the Buddha taught that ethical actions are those arising from a commitment to non-harm, gentleness, and simplicity.

Buddhism and other religious traditions have long identified love and compassion as motivators that drive effective and sustainable action.

If we extend śila to our relationship to land, water, natural resources, and animals, non-harm, gentleness, and simplicity become points of reflection for change-making.

Later Buddhist traditions developed rules of conduct, oriented towards compassion, such as the Bodhisattva precepts. These precepts extend from the idea that bodhicitta, or wise compassion, is the ground of ethical action and speech. We too can ground our activism, social engagement, and resistance in wise compassion. We can make our activism not about what we are working against, but what we are working for.

If we place our activism and relationship to the earth squarely among our deepest values and beliefs, we are more likely to turn again and again to the issue — not out of obligation, but out of genuine commitment.

2. Get comfortable with uncertainty

If there is one thing that climate scientists agree on, it is that we don’t know for certain what will happen as the earth warms. Evidence indicates that tipping points and crises cannot be averted. We have no how idea how much we can slow or ameliorate the suffering. We do not even know how long our species — and others — can survive changes that destabilize the conditions necessary for life. We are stepping into the void.

We want to know if our children and grandchildren will be able to visit the shoreline, walk in the forest, breathe clean air, and live in safety. It is human to fear that the world as we know it may be ending. This uncertainty can feel deeply unsettling.

Many of the Buddha’s teachings focus on uncertainty, not as an inconvenience, but as a source of liberation. The Buddha taught that nothing is certain, because nothing transcends impermanence. He called impermanence a “mark of existence” — an undeniable truth of what it means to be alive. To encourage his monks and nuns to face their mortality, he sent them to meditate in charnel grounds — open-air cemeteries — where they could witness decaying corpses.

The Buddha was not trying to torture his disciples. He was trying to free them. While awareness of our mortality stirs our deepest fears, it also frees us from the chains of attachment that bind us. The loosening of attachment helps us open to the truth that nothing is certain. Nothing can be taken for granted. This is how we learn to love the truth for what it actually is.

There is good reason to embrace the uncertainty of climate change as a liberating practice. The more we fear uncertainty, the more likely we are to avoid thinking about climate change. In fact, our worst enemy might not be climate denial, but rather a subtle, subconscious rejection of climate change, based on our fear of the unknown.

If, however, we embrace the truth of uncertainty, we can develop the courage to stay open and engage with the world. If we can accept the fragility of life on earth, we can invest ourselves in the possibility of collective action.

3. Work with emotions

Along with the discomfort of uncertainty, climate change can evoke many other difficult emotions. Witnessing ecosystem destruction and mass extinction, we respond with grief and sorrow. Encountering denial and global apathy, we experience anger. When we consider our children’s future, we experience trepidation and worry.

Anger can be a protective energy, a healthy response to that which threatens what we love.

Recently, I was talking to a European graduate student who was writing her thesis on the power of stories to affect climate change. The primary motivator for her work, she told me, has been anger.

Understandably, fear and anger often fuel activism. These primal emotions have kept us alive for centuries. They are good short-term motivators when we are in immediate danger. However, fear and anger are poor long-term motivators. Eventually, they result in stress and burnout — the insidious undoings of activists.

So, we need other chronic motivators for our work. In this area, spiritual traditions have much to offer. Buddhism and other religious traditions have long identified love and compassion, for example, as motivators that drive effective and sustainable action. The bodhisattva, a Buddhist archetype of compassion, typifies the possibility that positive and constructive emotions can be the primary fuel for activity. But how do we get from anger to compassion?

Tibetan Buddhism teaches that the states that we most wish to avoid are actually the key to our freedom. Instead of erasing emotions, we can metabolize them. If we take our reactivity into a contemplative space, it is possible to liberate the energy of emotion, transforming it into supple responsiveness.

We might start with an emotion like anger. When anger is heavily fixated on an object, it becomes isolating, contracted, and draining. When we take anger into a contemplative space, we can lighten our focus on the object and the story, turning inward to consider the emotion itself and our part in it.

When we take responsibility for our own anger, we can find its upside. Anger is not always reprehensible. It can be a protective energy, a healthy response to that which threatens what we love. That insight itself can liberate reactive, contracted anger into its deeper nature, a wiser, more inclusive resolve to act with decisiveness and courage in the interest of love.

In contemplative practice, anger can become an inspiration for empathy. We discover that uncomfortable states, while they belong to us, are not to our’s alone. Many others also feel anger, including the people we have othered. When we recognize that this is how so many others feel, we can commune with the suffering of others. We redirect our attention from the story stimulating anger to our empathy for all those impacted by climate change — even the deniers. By redirecting our focus from a polarizing narrative to a uniting one, we start building a more sustainable platform for action.

4. Access new wisdom

In discussions about climate change, we seem to primarily access one way of knowing — the intellect. The climate issue is couched in the language of conceptual knowing. This conceptual approach — typified by Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — is critically important. We need to know what is happening, and why.

However, our response will be much more powerful and resilient if we begin to access other ways of knowing, transforming conceptually-motivated activism into an activism of the heart.

There are two alternative ways of knowing that Buddhist practice and meditation generally rely on: bodily wisdom and non-conceptual wisdom.

Bodily wisdom

To encounter our human body is to encounter the natural world. We tend to forget that we are mammalian primates! The closer we come to the body, the closer we draw to the truth of our own wildness. This connects us to the planetary wildness that we aspire to protect.

While the mind is tugged into the past and future, the body is fully present. The body’s present wakefulness is one of its great wisdoms, and we can easily access that wisdom. It is as close to us as this moment’s inhale and exhale. While we want to stay mindful of creating a sustainable future, we don’t want to do that at the expense of missing our life. The body reminds us that we are here, now, and our presence is our most powerful resource.

Non-conceptual wisdom

Buddhist meditation also introduces us to the life beyond the conceptual mind — non-conceptual ways of knowing. The wider truth is that human experience is not just mental content. While we spend a great deal of time enmeshed in our world of ideas, there is more to the mental-emotional life than what we think and believe. There is a non-conceptual space in which all of this content arises, and that space can be sensed and widened through the experiences of body. In the practice of the Great Perfection, this space is identified as naked awareness, a part of our mind that is just experiencing, prior to forming ideas about our experiences. The space of awareness can be cultivated until it becomes a holding-environment for relative issues such as climate change.

We can make our activism not about what we are working against, but what we are working for.

As we begin to identify with non-conceptual space, we access a non-dual mode of perception. In the non-dual mode of perception, the illusion of separateness is perforated. This illusion of separateness may be one of the root causes of the crisis we are in. When we are caught up in that illusion, it becomes somehow okay that my consumption happens at your expense. If we are to live sustainably, we need to get used to the idea — nay, the reality — that we are all intimately connected. Meditation leads us there.

5. Find community

A friend of mine once attended a City Council meeting in her local community and ran into a woman who was repeatedly raising the issue of banning plastic bags. Discouraged, the woman said that she could not seem to earn the respect of the city council. My friend replied: “You don’t need respect. You need a friend. One person is a nut. Two people are a wake-up call. Three people are a movement.”

That friend was the environmentalist and author Kathleen Dean Moore, and her story inspired me. A small, committed group of people can change the world, as Margaret Mead said. Finding a community of activists might not be as daunting as we might think. It can be as simple as finding a few like-minded people and starting a conversation.

In order to gracefully lean into the challenges that we face as a planet, community is critical. But it also does double-duty, laying the foundation for spiritual life.

The Buddha’s close attendant Ananda once inquired of his teacher, “Surely the sangha [spiritual community] is half of the holy life?”

The Buddha answered, “No, Ananda, do not say such a thing. The sangha is not half of the holy life. It is the whole of the holy life.”

The Buddha felt very strongly about the power of community to support the path to awakening. He lived most of his life in intentional community, and identified sangha as one of the three spiritual refuges, along with the teacher and the dharma.

Now is a good time for the eco-curious in the dharma world. There is a growing community of people who seek both spiritual development and activism. If you are one of those people, now especially, you need not despair. Your people are out there.

As we are propelled forward by the consequences out of a warming planet, it is more important than ever that activists and contemplatives work together. We can benefit from an exchange of technologies. While I have highlighted five spiritual technologies to help contemplate climate change, activists have other tools and perspectives that can assist spiritual communities to take action. Activist communities have resources for education and technologies of peaceful resistance that can help contemplatives enact change.

While we grapple with the effects of climate change, we will need tools of resilience and inner work. As dharma practitioners, we bring essential gifts to the project of healing our world. Our challenge is to bring these gifts to bear and continue their development.

By practicing with ethics, uncertainty, emotion, wisdom, and community, we develop an intimate understanding that being human is about what we think and what we believe — and we deepen our ability to embody our work.

Embodiment sends an indelible message that peace and sustainability can become a lived reality. Even when they are imperfectly realized, we can inspire the sense that our lives have meaning, and that we are living our way into ever-increasing integrity with — and service to — our beautiful, unfathomable and sacred world.

Originally Published: www.lionsroar.com

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All this, according to a philosophical argument published in 2003, could be no more real than pixels on a screen. It’s called the simulation hypothesis, and it proposes that if humanity lives to see a day it can repeatedly simulate the Universe using come kind of computer, chances are we are living in one of those many simulations.

If so, everything we experience is a model of something else, removed from some kind of reality.

It’s more of a thought experiment than anything – but scientists do love poking it to see if anything squirms. And a new poke has hinted at something squirming.

Vopson’s and Lepadatu’s second law of infodynamics is based on the second law of thermodynamics, which states that any naturally occurring process in the Universe will result in a loss of energy and increase in a system’s measure of disorder, or entropy.

Vopson, who has proposed that information could in fact be considered a form of matter, expected that the same would be true of information systems; that, over time, its own kind of disorder ought to increase over time as well.

He also found that electrons in an atom arrange themselves in such a way as to minimize information entropy; and that, in order for the Universe to continue to expand, the increase in physical entropy must be balanced by a corresponding decrease in information entropy.

“Symmetry principles play an important role with respect to the laws of nature, but until now there has been little explanation as to why that could be. My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature’s inclination towards it,” Vopson says.

“This approach, where excess information is removed, resembles the process of a computer deleting or compressing waste code to save storage space and optimize power consumption. And as a result supports the idea that we’re living in a simulation.”

Originally Published: www.sciencealert.com

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The answer lies in the way the eye interprets the bending light that produces these images.

“It’s not an optical illusion,” Anthony Young, an astronomer at San Diego State University, told Live Science. That’s the thing people get wrong about mirages. The mirage is an image of a real thing — it can even be photographed — but it’s often a distorted image, and it’s easy to misinterpret. Viewers “don’t know what it is, so they misidentify it as something familiar,” Young said. For instance, in the desert, mirages that reflect the sky are often misinterpreted as a pool of water.
Even if we misinterpret the mirage, a question remains: How did an image of a real object end up in the wrong place?

The short answer is refraction, the bending of light rays as they travel through different materials. Mirages happen as light waves travel through air at different densities.

When light travels through the same material, it typically travels in a straight line,” Xin Tong, a doctoral student in optical imaging at Caltech told Live Science. But when the light encounters a different material, it will bend toward the higher density. Air density depends on temperature, so when light travels through air at different temperatures, it bends toward the cooler air, which is denser.

This creates two kinds of mirages. The first, a superior mirage, is what you see in the spring and summer when the sea is much cooler than the summer’s hot air, Tong said. It’s what historians suspect happened over freezing water the night the Titanic sank. In either case, the air closest to the water is colder than the air above it. The air gets warmer as you move away from sea level. This creates a temperature and density gradient, causing the light reflected by an object — like a ship, an iceberg or a nearby island — to bend.
The light bending toward the colder, sea-level air creates the mirage. It causes the object to appear higher than it really is, Tong said. That’s because your eye expects light to travel in a straight line, so it interprets the object as in a different spot because of the bending light. When these superior mirages are particularly vivid and changing, which can happen over the open ocean, they also go by the Italian name “fata morgana,” or “Morgan the Fairy.” The Flying Dutchman is suspected of being a fata morgana.

The other type of mirage, an inferior mirage, is what happens in the desert or on hot pavement when the surface and nearby air are warmer than the air above it. To see these mirages, you need to be above the warmest air layer. And light coming from above bends upward toward the cooler air. Again, because the eye anticipates that light will travel in a straight line, it interprets the image as lower and inverted, Tong said. This is how an image of the sky can appear like a water surface on the desert floor.
In both cases, seeing the mirage is highly dependent on position and receiving angle. A small change in position can cause the optical phenomenon to disappear, Tong said.

Inferior mirages are easier to find if you know where to look. But the more spectacular mirages can be finicky. “Superior mirages are only seen sometimes in an interval of a few centimeters,” Young said. And there’s really a very short window for them to appear — only 10 to 15 minutes. But they’re “nice to look at when you can find them,” he said.

Originally Published: www.livescience.com

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