Ban Po - Neolithic Village Site

6,000 years ago people hunted, fished, grew crops, baked pottery, loved and died on this exact spot.  Exploring this site by myself today I realized that not much has changed.  We still don't know who we really are are why we're here. 

There is an experiment where the scientist records the moment when a decision to move the wrist is made in the brain.  Then the moment of the actual movement is recorded. That's quite straight forward, it takes time before the thought results in a movement.  However, the EEG was able to detect that the specific brain activity took place BEFORE the person thought they made the decision.  We think we have conscious free will, but at the time when we thought we made a decision to move.... the decision had already been made!

 What has this to do with the primitive village?  The primitive village is simpler - you can see how there lives are intimately enmeshed in their environment.  I believe it is the primary conundrum of human existence.  We desperately want to consider ourselves as free individuals.    Yet if everything we think and do is dependent on patterns that have already taken place then who we think we are is actually a very complicated mixture of predetermined flows.  Therefore, the idea of an 'I' who is steering the ship is only an illusion!  The beautifully formed bowl, the image of a face, the fishhooks for ears all arise from earlier causes.

 So what I am wondering is....if each choice was already made because of a complicated network of causes....maybe the life force that animated the primitive village is no different from the life force which surrounds it today in the form of enormous concrete apartment towers.  I would be tempted to say, "We are still here." Except that my theory/realization blows the pronoun 'we' right out of the water.

Descartes' statement:  "I think, therefore I am."  takes on new meaning if we care to wonder who we are if thinking becomes still.

On my days off I am experimenting with awareness of the breath. Even though it's sometimes hard to keep the mind on the breath, I notice it's always possible to attend to a single breath.  The mind wants very much to escape and think about something more interesting; however, if it always is just one breath the task never changes and never becomes more difficult.  Practicing this made me aware of the enormous resistance - a resistance, moreover, that is wholly incapable of justifying itself.  "Why keep running around?"  I ask the mind.  It has no excuse. "Why not be still for an hour?"  The mind goes into a panic and rebels.  I'm wondering if the reason for this panic is that it comes from an illusory entity (a false self) that is desperately trying to avoid exposure.

Now I am getting busy with my classes, trying to help Chinese people learn a language from a small island on the other side of the globe that happens to have spread itself world wide.  I know I am part of an unfolding that goes so far beyond me in time and space.  Did neolithic times contain the seeds of all we are today?