In Zeitgeist Buddha we celebrate the role of the body, brain and nervous system in human experience while exploring the overestimation and misperception of consciousness in the modern zeitgeist. While consciousness may be incredibly important in our ability to process and make experience rich and meaningful, it is also extremely dependent on the body for its existence, relevance, and content.

In many ways the lore of and belief in an independent spiritual consciousness is just an example of consciousness gone amok. Many people do not only entertain the possibility that consciousness can exist separate from the body, but go so far as to view the body and the nervous system as limiting or a burden to consciousness or our spiritual essence.

As the song notes, both books and TV screens are comprised of a series of dots on a perceptual field. Obviously the density of information on the screen far exceeds that of the written document. Literary elitist feel that the content of books is usually superior, and the written word induces one to think and fill in all those empty spaces with their imagination.

Personally I do not feel books are inherently superior to TV, movies or any other visual medium. While there are those that view visual media as intellectual wasteland, I would say that the great percentage of written information is just as trite and useless. I also do not think that visual stimuli bars one from using their imagination, in fact rich visual content frees up the imagination for pondering on different levels.

A written speech is seldom as powerful or rich as one that is spoken. The spoken word is made all the more articulate and sensuous through voice tone, gestures and the many other subtleties of actual experience. This is one of the reasons I prefer writing lyrics over poems in that I feel the organic experience of the music and vocals fills out the words and deepens the experience.

Our thoughts are often viewed as pure acts of consciousness. Words read and spoken are also deemed acts of consciousness able to transcend our bodies. Yet, how can consciousness be regarded as an independent agent, or able to rival or surpass body experience. Will someone's description of eating a fruit I’ve never tasted even remotely compare or prepare me for the actual experience of eating it? How about someones explanation of listening to a symphony or viewing a painting? While words may be better at analyzing the meaning behind art they are usually quite poor at capturing the actual sensorial experience.

Modern thought has a long history of elevating the importance of consciousness while debasing and minimizing the role of the body and sensorial experience. The idea that consciousness or spirit continues to live after the body dies is extremely common in one form or another for most people. The belief that we will one day shed this mortal coil and somehow still exist and have some form of cognizant experience is held by a vast majority of people.

How many times have you heard someone frame their listening to music as a spiritual experience. Our bias towards the superiority and independence of consciousness is so strong that we do not recognize spiritual experience is an oxymoron. Let alone the fact that the hearing and feeling of music are sensorial experiences. Again, one can say that our thoughts generated by our brains enrich the experience but it is fanciful to say that we entered the transcendent or any other such expression suggesting that we went beyond our crass corporeal reality.

The making of consciousness as an abstract essence superior to the body and that will outlive the body is a dangerous concept devaluing sensorial corporeal experience and human life in general. War, starvation, torture as well as love have become abstract ideas whose reality is minimized and de-sensualized. What matters, we tell ourselves are people’s spirit and their soul which are enduring while their bodies are temporal.

Consciousness seems to be a process and not a thing. It is a wonderful and amazing process born of the interaction between world, skin, nervous system and brain. Human life is both amazing and precious. While my connection to the world, others and myself are deepened by consciousness, it is also a cellular reality. My experience is rich and full bodied.

I feel such elation
In corporeal celebration 

The zeitgeist of a time period usually contain values and priorities that are so universally accepted that they avoid detection. Our reverence and obsession with consciousness and its ramifications on under appreciating and vilification of the body is such an example. If we valued organic cellular sensorial life as much as consciousness our behavior would be quite different. The way we destroy the environment, and our willingness to kill others and even sacrifice our own lives for ideals such as god and country expose our priorities of consciousness. We place ideals, beliefs, and concepts above the existence and experience of the flesh. The survival of concepts such as freedom, democracy, spirituality as well as specific abstract entities such as a particular god, or cultural identify is far more important than the continued physical sensorial existence of millions of living organisms.

I refuse all temptation 
To be a sage or saved one
I sense a life through motion
I live a life through touching you
I try to live right action
Feel the pleasure of pleasing you
Holding on to life, holding on to you
Holding on to life, holding on to you

While it may put me at odds with the modern zeitgeist, my experience tells me that my body and mind are equal partners in this amazing adventure.