Intergalactic Church of the Almighty Rod
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5/21/2006 1:31:41 PM
Surmon: Sunday 21 May 2006
So I got this little piece of daily wisdom in my e-mail. I finally got around to reading it and thought to my self that this warrants a little discussion. Ok maybe discussion is the wrong word...pontificating is more accurate.
When a lute is played, there is no previous store of playing that it comes from. When the music stops, it does not go anywhere else. It came into existence by way of the structure of the lute and the playing of the performer. When the playing ceases, the music goes out of existence.
In the same way all the components of being, both material and nonmaterial, come into existence, play their part, and pass away.
That which we call a person is the bringing together of components and their actions with each other. It is impossible to find a permanent self there. And yet there is a paradox. For there is a path to follow and there is walking to be done, and yet there is no walker. There are actions but there is no actor. The air moves but there is no wind. The idea of a specific self is a mistake. Existence is clarity and emptiness.
-Visuddhi Magga
First note the musical analogy. Parallels are something that always intrigue me and this particular analogy is no different. In 1984 a group of physicists postulated that the fabric of the universe (spacetime to use Einstein's word) on it's most fundamental level is made up of tiny packets of energy called strings. The vibrations of these strings form matter and forces. This theory also proposes that phenomenalogical reality (Samsara in Buddhaspeak) is made up of 10 dimensions. The three we percieve, the illusion of time that we can only conceptualize as an abstract measurement and six more that we can only represent mathematicly. Six dimensions that we cannot percieve, likely more. Wow.
Bear with me for a moment. What we regard as "real" lies within the realm of 4 dimensional space. We can percieve and manipulate it but we still think of past and future being real. What if this "enlightenment" is nothing more than the ability to percieve reality from a higher dimensional experience?
I say that through training, our mind begins to understand things in terms of higher dimensions. Buddhist scholars like to say that time is an illusion, that there is nothing but the moment. This would be true. Past is nothing but memory, in memory events are skewed according to our own perception and ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. The future is nothing more than probability.The present is where we exist at this very moment. The moment is infintessimally small but yet it is eternity itself. Because the now is dynamic and always in a state of change we are constantly moving forward, yet because the now is the only place we can exist we are always still. Get it?
The above quote says "the idea of specific self is a mistake". A lot of people misunderstand this (including myself at times) as meaning that the goal of understanding is to be rid of the idea of self. Death is the only way to be rid of self. The secret is to forge the understanding that all things are interconnected, self doesn't exist without the myriad of things that make up the cosmos. I don't exist without something to base that existence on. Because I am connected to everything then everything else is I. This I that is known as Rev to many people is a conglomeration of concepts based on my perception of reality, it is unique. Things are separate because they serve a purpose. The glass I am drinking from is merely a concept and form until I drink from it. Green, glass, round, are not the glass' true nature. The true nature of the glass is not even a vessel from which I put liquid refreshment into my body. That's just a definition. It's true nature is the experience of drinking. The glass can't drink from itself and I cannot drink without it.
Reality(Tao or Emptiness if you will) is the totality of experiences. Or in a scientific example, reality is Schroden
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