Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Heisenberg, Buddha and the Mind-Body Connection

Nick Herbert: Physics-saving hippie, feadog player
HEISENBERG, BUDDHA AND THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION

Matter for Heisenberg means pure possibility
That turns into Something whenever one looks
How promise comes true is the Measurement Problem:
The subject of dozens of lectures and books.

Buddha with a smile rejects your word-play conjectures
The Consciousness Problem stokes His Holy Fire
Simply freshly experiencing This Moment wide open
Feel impermanence, emptiness, spiced with desire.

For wide-eyed acolytes of the Orthodox Materialism creed
The Mind-Body Problem remains their toughest knot.
How can mere atoms possibly feel pain or pleasure?
And what conceivable motion of matter
Might make these inner feelings start and stop?

Tonight let's set aside all talk of fundamental questions
Be unaware we're heirs to their complicated histories
But right now as I bend to touch my mouth to yours
Let's just pretend we kiss them somehow too --
Both of us enjoying (is this possible?)
Deep kissing three of this life's basic mysteries.

"Can a kiss ever be just a kiss with you, Nick?" 
asks August
"Or do kisses gotta be metaphysical?"

August O'Connor: Graphic artist, bodhran virtuoso





1 comment:

Jean Harrison said...

I like this poem, Nick.