A koan: “There is no time. What is memory?”
If I knock the table with my hand twice, I have to accept that it’s time that separates the two knocks from each other. Therefore, time exists. But it only exists because I have memory of the first knock.
Everything I build within me, I build using memory as cornerstone – and because memory has plenty defects, I cannot but doubt everything I build.
What does this leave me with? With this very moment, right now; nothing more. Even if time exists, it’s not important.
7 comments:
When you can do nothing, what can you do?
Nothing, obviously. :D
Another koan, how nice!
Do something for the nothing or take a rest, go to sleep. :)
Zzzzzz.....
"Everything I build within me, I build using memory as cornerstone – and because memory has plenty defects, I cannot but doubt everything I build."
Within time, it is only the process of building which matters. It matters how and why we are building rather than what. And, obviously, we are not building for ourselves.
So, memory should not be considered a processor rather than a storage device. Hmm, have I really not thought of this before?
I'm sure that you have. :)
But you see neuroscientists say that the mind uses memory to make evaluations for everything. It compares/contrasts the events at hand with anything similar it can find in its memory bank. Then it uses imagination to fill in the gaps. That's how we become predictable - because our brain always leads us to the same strategies, do you see? It's an automatic process.
Congnitive scientists also tell us that memory as a function has lot of weaknesses embedded in it. Check out eurestics for example: it sorts facts by similarity and not in time order. This is why more often than not memories fade, become entangled with others and are altered in the end.
Certainly there exist functions to order facts by time, intensity and maybe other features too, as far as I know myself. So, sorting by similarity is not a weakness, but a function of the brain among others. Weakness is properly when the brain automatically controls us, instead of we the brain. But sure, easier said than done :)
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