I've been reading a book called Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha: an unusually hardcore dharma book written by Daniel Ingram. He says something interesting in a section talking about the contemplation of impermanence.

Coming directly after a physical sensation arises and passes is a separate pulse of reality that is the mental knowing if the physical sensation.

[...]

Each one of these arises and vanishes completely before the other begins, so itis extremely possible to sort out which is which with a stable mind dedicated to consistent precision and to not being lost in stories

The idea is that at a fundamental level, the brain processes information sequentially. Meditation is a process of becoming familiar with this sequence, and developing stability to recognize increasingly rapid fluctuations.

We perceive objects as a stable, continuing entity only by a trick of the brain, a combination of incredibly fast processing, and by fooling ourselves. We reside a step removed from the experience, we reside in the interpretation of the experience.

This is the Buddhist teaching of impermanence. Impermanence also suggests lacking in an essential form. This is not the same as an illusion. Just because something lacks inherent form and is constantly changing does not mean it is unreal.

I was having a conversation at a friend's studio with Ottoleo. We were talking about thermal energy as noise in an experiment he's working on at McGill. That led to some discussion of white noise, and the nature of sound. I asked him the question I asked in an earlier blog post. Can noise exist?

True white noise is equal excitation of all frequencies at all times. But here's the thing. Between each defined frequency is a smaller partial. It's a form of zeno's paradox, no? 440 and 441 contain an infinite number of possible partials. So too do 440 and 440.1. 440.1 and 440.11

I'm likely to talk about noise as a sonic phenomenon, but noise exists in any medium. Ottoleo, remember, was talking about thermal noise in his lab equipment.

A computer cannot generate true white noise, because a computer algorithm substitutes randomness for completeness. But a computer does not understand random, so white noise generated by a computer is only an approximation of white noise

We talked about for sure there's a capacity of measurement that is discrete. Perhaps this perfect noise exists, but we are limited in our perception of noise by the granularity of our equipment, including the biological senses.

A world that is listened to is still a discrete world, even if we are listening to analog sine waves recorded on perfectly manufactured vinyl. Or the song of the humpback whale. There are frequency differences too fine for our ear to pick up. So we would perceive this continuous wave as an evolutionary convenience. Ingram puts it:

Predictability is used to assume continuity

But surely at some level, the noise exists completely, unutterably? I'd argue that at every degree - maybe it has to be at the atomic or the thermal or the quantum - there are discrete steps. Isn't that what Planck's constant is all about, the unit of a quanta? Planck time,the smallest possible measurement of time: 10^-43 seconds.

Built in to the fabric of space and time is emptiness.