Thank you, Jeremy. I have just ordered it.
Not even judging from its cover, while waiting I did just read the Introduction online ...
That is exactly right. However, I will make an observation some some writers on "non-self" from a South Asia perspective (Thich Nhat Hanh's writings sometimes seems to have this flavor as well) seem to describe the self as composites, often very material, while sometimes missing the Mahayana/Hua-yen/Zen sense of Emptiness as some great interflowing sacred Wholeness of the Dharmakaya Big "B" Buddha. I will be interested to how such is expressed in this care. For example, TNH's wonderful, famous expression of Emptiness ...
Frankly, I find it a little cold and materialistic. He seems to emphasize the pieces, but not the Whole which dances each and all. It can be taken to mean that the "paper" symbolically holds the "sun" or the "woodcutter" rather than the above, real tangible mystical experience of all being connected and interflowing. That awe and sense of some greater whole is something which has been shared by many biologists, physicists and other scientists too, and I would not term merely a "religious" sense, Bohr, David Bohm and others. Edward Schrodinger, for one, wrote [in his My View of the World] ...
Gassho, J
SatToday
Not even judging from its cover, while waiting I did just read the Introduction online ...
There’s no borderline we can say for sure marks where the eddy stops and the river begins. The eddy cannot exist without the stream, and the stream itself is nothing more than a mass of eddies and other currents. I suggest that the self is like that too. We are not separate from the world around us; we instead exist as the sum total of our relationships with a vast web of interconnected processes. We are not physically separate, and we are not mentally separate, and realizing these facts is infinitely enriching.
I’ll be suggesting that we embrace the fact that nothing permanent constitutes us. Each of us is an ever-moving flow of matter and consciousness. Just as an eddy can exist only because it’s continually changing, so too do our selves exist only because they are a process, and hence impermanent and contingent upon things that we take to be non-self. For example, we think of our bodies as being an important part of our identity, but 90 percent of the body’s cells are bacterial rather than human. Ninety percent of you is not you. In fact, when you look more closely you can see that your entire physical being is made of material that was, sometimes not long ago, not you. Every atom comprising your body is borrowed, and will be returned to the outside world. Some of it is returning this very moment. Physically, in fact, much of the external world around us is actually “us”—plants, animals, and even soil and rocks made from material that was formerly part of our bodies. Mentally, we are each “networked” to other minds through the action of mirror neurons, which allow us to share other people’s experiences. You could not in fact have a conscious self,
in the sense that you have one now, without having encountered other conscious selves. Consciousness is something “caught.” In fact, there’s no such “thing” as consciousness. Consciousness is not an entity that sits within us, awaiting contact with the outside world; rather it’s a series of activities that arise in dependence upon contact with the world. The ultimate act of letting go is to abandon the delusion that consciousness and the world are separate things. The more we reflect, the more we can recognize that there is nothing permanent or separate in the body or mind that can constitute the very limited and limiting kind of self we commonly assume we have.
,,,
On the spiritual side, I’ll borrow heavily from a reflective meditation practice from the Buddhist tradition: the Six Element Practice. In this practice, we reflect on what constitutes the body and the mind. We call to mind the solid matter (Earth), liquid (Water), energy (Fire), and gases (Air) that make up the body—as well as the form they comprise (Space), and notice how none of these is a static thing onto which we can hold, but instead is a process. We also notice that each element is “borrowed” from the outside world. With the sixth element, Consciousness, we note how our experiences—our sensations, feelings, emotions, and thoughts—continually arise and pass away, once again
leaving us nothing we can identify as the basis of a permanent and separate self
I’ll be suggesting that we embrace the fact that nothing permanent constitutes us. Each of us is an ever-moving flow of matter and consciousness. Just as an eddy can exist only because it’s continually changing, so too do our selves exist only because they are a process, and hence impermanent and contingent upon things that we take to be non-self. For example, we think of our bodies as being an important part of our identity, but 90 percent of the body’s cells are bacterial rather than human. Ninety percent of you is not you. In fact, when you look more closely you can see that your entire physical being is made of material that was, sometimes not long ago, not you. Every atom comprising your body is borrowed, and will be returned to the outside world. Some of it is returning this very moment. Physically, in fact, much of the external world around us is actually “us”—plants, animals, and even soil and rocks made from material that was formerly part of our bodies. Mentally, we are each “networked” to other minds through the action of mirror neurons, which allow us to share other people’s experiences. You could not in fact have a conscious self,
in the sense that you have one now, without having encountered other conscious selves. Consciousness is something “caught.” In fact, there’s no such “thing” as consciousness. Consciousness is not an entity that sits within us, awaiting contact with the outside world; rather it’s a series of activities that arise in dependence upon contact with the world. The ultimate act of letting go is to abandon the delusion that consciousness and the world are separate things. The more we reflect, the more we can recognize that there is nothing permanent or separate in the body or mind that can constitute the very limited and limiting kind of self we commonly assume we have.
,,,
On the spiritual side, I’ll borrow heavily from a reflective meditation practice from the Buddhist tradition: the Six Element Practice. In this practice, we reflect on what constitutes the body and the mind. We call to mind the solid matter (Earth), liquid (Water), energy (Fire), and gases (Air) that make up the body—as well as the form they comprise (Space), and notice how none of these is a static thing onto which we can hold, but instead is a process. We also notice that each element is “borrowed” from the outside world. With the sixth element, Consciousness, we note how our experiences—our sensations, feelings, emotions, and thoughts—continually arise and pass away, once again
leaving us nothing we can identify as the basis of a permanent and separate self
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.
"Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter" with the verb "to be", we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
"Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter" with the verb "to be", we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
“Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as 'I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world'.
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