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Let me tell you something about the world: To a degree which may surprise you, it does not exist without you to sense and think about it.
Take, for example, the old conundrum "If a tree falls in the forest, and there is nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?" In fact, naked vibrations traveling from an event we might call "falling tree" would remain just vibrations spreading onward without an ear drum to intercept them, inner ear bones to convert them into an electrochemical signal sent shooting from the auditory nerves, and a brain to interpret the same as a sound which we subjectively experience. There would be no "sound" without our reception to create the subjective experience.
Likewise, there would be no "green falling tree" ... only, perhaps, some clutters of atoms in motion in a certain pattern ... without our eye and brain to interpret light waves from the event and create the experience and labels of the images "green" and "tree" and "falling" and "up/down". Your experience of the pattern and waves is what creates the entire interpretation subjectively.
Likewise, there would be no "you" ... only, perhaps, some clutters of atoms in motion in another pattern ... without your senses and brain to interpret and create the entire experience of all the characteristics which you bundle together as "you".
In a very real sense, the world needs you to experience it or there would be no "world" and all it contains ... only bare patterns of waves and vibrations of matter in motion. You (and your fellow sentient beings) bring all the sound, color, taste, touch, scents and thought created appearance and identity to the countless things of the world. No less. you might be said to need the world to be you ... for not only do you need its air to breath and food to sustain you ... but without all those sounds, sights and other experiences your brain would have nothing to process and no context in which to place and isolate your own self-identity situated within the rest. An hearing impaired individual would still have other senses to rely on, and so would someone without sight in a "Helen Keller" form of being. However, strip away enough of the rest of the senses ... touch, taste, smell and (the final sense for Buddhists) "thought" itself, and there would be no basis for "you" to have experience and self-identity of your "youness".
Thus, if trees did not fall in the forest and create something "to be heard" combined with all the other phenomena which we register each day ... you might not exist. You need the so-called "outer" world to create your "inner" experience as much as the "outer" world needs your "inner" experience to be that "outer" world as seen and experienced.
(And let's not even get into the whole question of quantum mechanics in which the event and the observer might be even more interdependent than that) ....
Now, scientists at the Australian National University ... used helium atoms and laser lights in their ‘bizarre nature of reality test,’ which was published in the journal Nature Physics. Again, they discovered that atoms only ‘become’ a particle or a wave when we are watching.
“It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” lead researcher and associate professor Andrew Truscott said in the press release on Science Daily.
Thus, for Buddhists, human "mind" is not limited to the "inner". Inner flows into outer and outer into inner as one great looping dance transcending borders of "self" and "world". That dance is who "you" are.
Gassho, J
SatToday
PS - Alan Watts once added this observation ...
Last edited by Jundo; 06-08-2016, 05:32 PM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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I love the above lymerick by him:
"There was a young man, who said,
'God, I find it exceedingly odd
that a tree as a tree simply ceases to be
when no one is around in the quad'."
"Young man, your astonishment's odd,
I am always around in the quad,
so the tree as a tree never ceases to be
since observed by yours faithfully,
God."
I also like this quote:
“There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.”
Gassho, Jishin, STComment
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Well, anyway, all speculation aside ... I am too lazy to find a haiku about the sound of falling trees, so these will have to do ...
The old pond;
A frog jumps in —
The sound of the water.
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Hsiang-yen Chih-hsien became profoundly attuned to a sound while cleaning the grave of the Imperial Tutor, Nan-yang Hui-chung. His broom caught a little stone that sailed through the air and hit a stalk of bamboo. Tock! He had been working on the koan “My original face before my parents were born,” and with that sound his body and mind fell away completely. There was only that tock.
...
Gassho, JLast edited by Jundo; 06-08-2016, 05:42 PM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Beautiful explanation, Jundo, thank you.
Gassho, sat today求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.Comment
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Interesting "...the reality of the event basically depends on the reality of the observer".-Alan Watts
I'm really learning so much from this thread!
Thank you for the explanation Jundo.
Deep bows
Sat 2dayComment
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Thank you so much for the link - I loved it!
If you enjoyed that story, you might also like this book:
The Quantum and the Lotus
by Matthieu Ricard
Gassho,
Marco
satodayComment
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Thanks for the explanation, Jundo. Could we go even further as to say that even "clutters of atoms" is also something that is dependent on our interpretation ? After all, even atoms, in fact everything that we can conceive with our minds, are dependent on our subjectivity to exist... We invented atoms. So really, there's no REAL reality (ahaha). There's nothing "outside" or "inside" our perceptions. It's all the same stuff !
Thats what i found very interesting in the article posted above. When he says : "no wonder neuro scientists fail to account consciousness". Theres no such thing as consciousness in objects because objects are made of consciousness in the first place. Scientists who think they will "find" consciousness somewhere are just looking for the thing that allows them to look at that very thing. They are using tools that are made of the thing they are looking for with those tools ! A lot of scientists, especially in physics, are like that, trying to discover the "true nature" of reality, as if it was something separated from their own attempt to find it...
Gassho,
Ugrok, sat todayComment
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MuComment
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Darn it! ... I that isn't I, it's my perception of an I that somehow how my atoms, neurons, electrical impulses and all the other wonderful stuff, including even my (not belonging to I) bacteria that work together (and sometimes not) in some strange symbiotic relationship that produce a non existent and yet existent mind that 'I' (see previous explanation ref this) try to see into with, to see the realization of 'no-self'.
Ha...I'VE got it!
No.... got it not, sounds better
Brilliant, brilliant thread and some great thoughts and explanations, thank you all (thank you Jundo for great teachings too, taking your advice and getting on that cushion)
Some days after reading posts I'm tied up in knots and spending time on my cushion, sometimes untie them, sometimes not but it ain't going to happen trying to 'think' my way out of them.
Thinking has probably done me a lot of harm in my last 47 years, try to avoid it as much as possible nowadays.
Jishsin- you my friend are encourageable
Gassho
Kazashimo~~sat today~~Comment
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Hi Ugrok,
We can leave such details to the physicists and philosophers. The extreme idealists throughout history have proposed that there nothing truly "out there" and it is all thoughts, pointing out that we can never know for sure (since we always encounter the world as our thoughts. Could be, although I tend to think that there is something "out there" and our experience of life is an circling dance of "out there" and our individual "in heres"). Philosophers and scientists still are mystified by the connection of consciousness and matter. It could be that we are all heads in a jar or living in a computer simulation (like in that movie the "Matrix"). Could be, no way to conclusively prove not.
However, for our purposes, such precise understanding and resolving all the details are not so important No need to go so far, or understand all the story (much as one does not need to know all the details of auto-mechanics to drive a car, the name of every fish to swim in the ocean).
What we know is enough for our Buddhist purposes, namely: One way or another, what we take to be "the world" and our "self" in relation to it is more radically dependent on our mental creation and interpretation of the experience than we generally realize ... creating intricate object categories, value judgments, all manner of interpretations imposed on raw sense data in ways much more radical than most human beings realize in their "common sense" day to day experience of life ... all to a degree that we might say (Star Trek fans) that we are all living in a kind of "holodeck" simulation largely put together between the ears. It is a shared experience because human beings, of like bodies, sense organs and brains, have been educated to see, experience and express the world in similar ways, so are living a kind of shared delusion (although a useful and functional one ... because it may be a mental grocery store in our shared interpretation, but it lets us find what we call "tomatoes" in the completely language based "vegetable section," and whether they are merely "chemicals made of atoms in a certain configuration which emit photons of a certain wavelength that our eyes interpret as 'red'", those so-called "tomatoes" are delicious and nutritious ... yum. Also, stay away from the atom configurations we label "Doritos" over in the social construct we call "Snack Aisle" because, even though "death" is something of a mental construct too, those things will eventually kill you!).
Our most cherished "Diamond Sutra" closes with these words ...
Master Dogen said that we live in a dream within a dream ... a dream so dreamy, one might thus say it is as real as real can be ...“So I say to you –
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:”
“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”
“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”
Thus spoke Buddha.
... but such is our dream, so best dream-live it well!
In other words ... this dream is a dream of your life, and your loved ones ... it is your life. Why squander it?
Even if life is something like a film we watch, why walk out? It is a darn good film (Better even than Matrix!!)
In a very real sense, since we are the universe manifested as us ... when you dream, it is the universe dreaming!
Dogen's Shobogenzo Dream Within A Dream is Dogen at some of his dreamiest, word and mind-bending best if anyone wants to go along for the wild ride ...
So, it may be a dream ... but it is your dream of you. Dream well.Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. What requires questioning is this very point. What is confusing is this very point. At this time, there are dream grasses, grasses within, expressive grasses, and so on. When we study this, then roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as radiance and color are all the great dream. Do not mistake them as merely dreamy.
However, those who do not wish to study buddha dharma believe that expressing the dream within a dream means speaking of unreal dream grass as real, like piling delusion upon delusion. But this is not true. When you say, “Within confusion is just confusion,” still you should follow the path in the vast sky known as “delusion throughout delusion.” You should endeavor to investigate just this thoroughly.
The expressing of the dream within a dream is all buddhas. All buddhas are wind and rain, water and fire. We respectfully maintain these names of buddhas, and also pay homage to those names of other buddhas. To express the dream within a dream is the ancient buddhas; it is to ride in this treasure boat and directly arrive in the practice place. Directly arriving in the practice place is riding in this treasure boat. Meandering dreams and direct dreams, holding and letting go, all freely flow like gusting breezes.
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When we learn this in practice, roots and stalks, twigs and leaves, flowers and fruit, and light and color are all the great dreamstate, which is not to be confused with dreaminess. Yet people who prefer not to learn the Buddha’s truth, when they encounter this “preaching a dream in a dream,” idly suppose that it might mean creating insubstantial dreamy things which do not exist at all; they suppose it might be like adding to delusion in delusion. [But] it is not so. Even when we are adding to delusion in delusion, we should endeavor just then to learn in practice the path of clarity of expression on which the words “delusion upon delusion” are naturally spoken. “Preaching the dream-state in the dream-state” is the buddhas, and the buddhas are wind, rain, water, and fire.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 06-12-2016, 01:12 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Thank you Jundo.
Gassho,
Jakuden
Dreamed I satComment
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A while ago I had this sudden idea that we all might be seen as snowglobes containing the (our) world in which we ourselves live.
Everything contained in us. Us contained in us. Us contained in everything and everything contained in everything.
I put it of Facebook and everyone thought I was crazy
Shake that booty!
Gassho
Ongen
Sat TodayOngen (音源) - Sound SourceComment
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Snowglobes. Hmmm. Not sure about that. But sometimes I do use the analogy for the mind settling and clearing naturally in Zazen.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 06-12-2016, 10:06 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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