# '57 Chevy Pickup with Butterfly Wings
> I wrote this winter term '90. I've lost the bibliography although the Huxley quotes come from _The Perennial Philosophy_; and a lot of the other chaos stuff comes from _Chaos_ by James Glieck.
You have studied all weekend for the math test, memorized every formula, read and reread all of your notes. There is no way you can get anything but an A. The studying falls apart, though, when you take the test. There is more than preparation involved here. Study is essential, but something else is present at the time of the test. You can't just force the right answers, you have to receive them through prayer.
This doesn't only apply to math tests. Have you ever driven a vehicle with funky steering? If you pay too much attention to your hands actually steer the vehicle, you start to swerve. The only way to keep going straight is to stare ahead and feel the way the vehicle moves. You can't force it, you must receive it through prayer.
The kind of prayer I'm talking about is contemplation. This is described by Aldous Huxley:
> The word "prayer" is applied to at least four distinct procedures -- petition, intercession, adoration, contemplation. Petition is the asking of something for ourselves. Intercession is the asking of something for other people. Adoration is the use of intellect, feeling, will and imagination in making acts of devotion towards God in his personal aspect or as incarnated in human form. Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead. (1, pg. 219)
Prayer is receiving the road or test with openness. Huxley points out that this kind of prayer can lead to understanding the Godhead, but my own experience has simply shown me that there is much more to my world than I normally allow myself to feel.
For instance, I am usually so occupied with myself and my personal problems that I don't experience how beautiful the morning can be, or any part of the day for that matter. Every once and awhile i will leave my preoccupations behind, and the morning blossoms. "How could I have not noticed this before?" I ask myself. Although I have not experienced a Godhead, prayer has led me to a deeper understanding of my life.
In 1960 a man name Edward Lorenz created a computer program that simulated weather patterns graphically on a computer printout. Using several fairly simple formulas he was able to display tornadoes, direction of air currents, and temperatures as they roamed an imaginary globe. In 1961, Lorenz wanted to examine a specific sequence of weather by plugging the numbers for the temperatures and wind currents manually. When he resumed the program, the weather patterns closely resembled the earlier patterns, but after an hour the weather patterns were completely different. The patterns *should* have been identical. It turned out that while Lorenz plugged in numbers expressed to three decimal places, the computer expressed them in six places. This small change caused a drastic difference in the weather patterns after just one hour of simulation.
In weather this became known half-jokingly "as the Butterfly Effect -- the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York." (2, pg. 8). Some meteorologists thought this meant weather control was within our reach.
> Lorenz saw it differently. Yes, you could change the weather. You could make it something different from what it would have otherwise done. But if you did, then you would never know what is would otherwise have done. It would be like giving an extra shuffle to an already well-shuffled pack of cards. You know it will change your luck, but you don't know whether for better or worse. (2, pg. 21)
Like steering an old truck with a sloppy tie rod ends, a prediction of weather cannot be forced. A temperature quirk or small bump in the road throws the prediction to the wind. What does this have to do with prayer? I'm using prayer as opposed to creation. Prayer is receptive admiration for what is around us as opposed to manhandling a solution or fix. The reason why Lorenz started his weather simulation in the first place was because of man's desire to know what the weather will be like. What started out as a predictor of nature ended up as a monument to the beauty of nature's unpredictability. Granted, weather is predictable for short periods of time, but by analyzing weather's unpredictability "Lorenz saw more than randomness embedded in his weather model. He saw fine geometrical structure, order masquerading as randomness." (2, pg. 22)
So; we prepared for the weather test by memorizing formulas and painstakingly programmed these formulas into a computer to drive a weather simulation. A butterfly effect, whether in our stomachs during the test, or bumps in the road, rattled our weather machine right off the road after a few hundred yards.
Lorenz found beauty in these bumps and butterflies. While it could be argued that the "fine geometrical structure" Lorenz unearthed was in fact an underlying order that could be predicted; what Lorenz discovered was a chaotic system. Magnification in chaotic systems is accomplished by focusing on small changes in the system (such as when Lorenz changed the number of decimal places in the data) which caused drastic reactions. When magnified, chaotic systems display erratic behaviour. Under further scrutiny, patterns can be seen in this chaos. Upon even further magnification, however, more erratic behaviour is uncovered, and beneath that more "fine geometrical structure." It's infinitely layered. (2, pg. 74)
There is a parallel to this paradox in Zen Buddhism:
> This does not mean that Zen has an answer to what lies beyond Zen... there is always further to go; enlightenment is not the end-all of Zen. And there is no recipe which tells how to transcend zen; the only thing one can rely on for sure is that Buddha is not the way. Zen is a system and cannot be its own metasystem; there is always something outside of Zen, which cannot be fully understood or described within Zen. (3, pg. 22 *[possible error]*)
Zen also gives some ideas about how to pray through contemplation:
> A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
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> "It is right before your eyes," said the master.
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> "Why do i not see it for myself?"
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> "Because you are thinking of yourself."
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> "What about you: do you see it?"
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> "So long as you see double, saying 'I don't', and 'you do', and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
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> "When there is neither 'I' nor 'you', can one see it?"
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> "When there is neither 'I' nor 'you', who is the one that wants to see it?"
The master teaches that "an enlightened state is one where the borderlines between the self and the rest of the universe are dissolved." (3, pg. 255)
When you are primarily conscious of **you** driving the truck, or **you** manufacturing the right answers on the test, or **you** predicting the weather with your manufactured formulas, the underlying nature of the truck's tie rod ends, the nature of mathematical thought, or the chaos of weather, will be obscured by your self-centeredness. Prayer is a way to cut through the veil of self identity that cuts you off from the rest of the world.
So, the next time you're driving a '57 chevy pickup with funky steering down a freeway dimly lit by headlights pointed at trees, be receptive. Enjoy what the road and truck have to offer, and the ride will be smoother. Remember, it might rain, or it might not, and there is beauty in this trivial fact.