If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Kaidō (皆道) Every Way
Washin (和信) Harmony Trust
----
I am a novice priest-in-training. Anything that I say must not be considered as teaching
and should be taken with a 'grain of salt'.
100 children have been killed in Aleppo in one week. This can stop if world leaders enforce a no-fly zone. Let’s urgently give them public mandate to protect civilians. Add your name:
Well, you can sit and find out for your"self" what is meant. I might just say that, in Indra's Net (and actually many modern cosmologists have come to share the view) there is no point in the universe with better claim than any other to being the "center". Another way to say it is that any place, and all places, are the center ... (Some people take Copernicus' model to mean that our place in the universe is unimportant and small in a vast cosmos, but it can also mean that every place in the universe is each its own center, and equally an expression of the precious whole) ...
It always amazes me how Science always seems to confirm what Buddhists surmised centuries ago... Above is a link explaning why every point in the Universe is mathematically no more the center of the Universe than any other point.
Just sat with the recording. Thank you to Jundo and to all.
[Edited to add this:] Thanks so much, Marina, for sharing that link. I looked for some information about how to help those still in Syria and refugees around the world, and I came across this article from PRI, which also looks helpful:
Sat/danced zazenkai with you all.
(I am led to understand that the center of the universe is easy to find; just avoid picking and choosing.) Straight ahead to Taizan. All aboard!
Gassho,
K2
#SatToday
It always amazes me how Science always seems to confirm what Buddhists surmised centuries ago... Above is a link explaning why every point in the Universe is mathematically no more the center of the Universe than any other point.
Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday
Thanks for the article, Jakuden, very interesting.
It always amazes me how Science always seems to confirm what Buddhists surmised centuries ago... Above is a link explaning why every point in the Universe is mathematically no more the center of the Universe than any other point.
Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday
Yes. Thank you.
Where is the centre of the universe?
There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualised as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.
...
The Famous Balloon Analogy
A good way to help visualise the expanding universe is to compare space with the surface of an expanding balloon. This analogy was used by Arthur Eddington as early as 1933 in his book The Expanding Universe. It was also used by Fred Hoyle in the 1960 edition of his popular book The Nature of the Universe. Hoyle wrote "My non-mathematical friends often tell me that they find it difficult to picture this expansion. Short of using a lot of mathematics I cannot do better than use the analogy of a balloon with a large number of dots marked on its surface. If the balloon is blown up the distances between the dots increase in the same way as the distances between the galaxies."
The balloon analogy is very good but needs to be understood properly—otherwise it can cause more confusion. As Hoyle said, "There are several important respects in which it is definitely misleading." It is important to appreciate that three-dimensional space is to be compared with the two-dimensional surface of the balloon. The surface is homogeneous with no point that should be picked out as the centre. The centre of the balloon itself is not on the surface, and should not be thought of as the centre of the universe. If it helps, you can think of the radial direction in the balloon as time. This was what Hoyle suggested, but it can also be confusing. It is better to regard points off the surface as not being part of the universe at all. As Gauss discovered at the beginning of the 19th century, properties of space such as curvature can be described in terms of intrinsic quantities that can be measured without needing to think about what it is curving in. So space can be curved without there being any other dimensions "outside". Gauss even tried to determine the curvature of space by measuring the angles of a large triangle between three hill tops.
We often dance with those as well during our Zazenkai. There are also R&B, regge and all manner of these. I have avoided the metal, although I am think about headbanging the Buddha, and maybe stage dives off the Altar soon.
Comment