This is KZU, Stanford,

This is KZU Stanford.

Welcome to entitled opinions.

My name is Robert Harrison, and we're coming to you from the Stanford campus.

I begin with a quote from Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgment,

and to possess a spacious room for yourself, embracing in thought the whole cosmos,

to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change and the parts

of each thing, of how short the span is from birth until dissolution, and how the void

before birth and after dissolution are equally infinite.

The spacious room Aurelius refers to is the mind,

which can embrace in thought the whole cosmos.

How is that possible?

Is mind in the cosmos or is cosmos in the mind?

It's the preposition that befuddles us.

Maybe mind and cosmos are not containers, but something else altogether.

A ligature of birth and void.

A love affair that takes place somewhere that is not aware,

an energy transfer or excitation of the quantum field.

Silence must be heard.

Or time after love. Marcus Aurelius speaks of everlasting,

as well as the short span between birth and death.

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