As you'll get from the intro to most books on the Tao, the word was a bit of a fluff, an "ah, bugger it". The idea being that you can't name this " ".
As you'll get from reading further into the intro or from chapter 2, labels delimit and form apparent separation and opposition. It reminds you that these seeming separations are only in language and the true reality has no separation.
I was playing with the idea of the infinite today while staring into the middle distance, over some trees and into the sky and was reminded of a point made well in the Hua Hu Ching 'the tiny parts are not tiny and the vast universe not vast' - this same situation where it is our mini mind breaking things into manageable bits and then being convinced that they have reality.
The core error being that you see your self as real, so from this perspective the universe is vast and the bits tiny - but this separation is fallacy.
Scientists have "nasty infinity" they have an infinity they can handle, but then a nasty infinity they can't - dualistic infinities, funny. We'll skip getting into that pointless mind game and go with infinity being the same thing no matter which direction you look, small or big, we can do this as we have read the Hua Hu Ching recently, meditated, farted, and reminded ourselves, unlike the scientists, that this dual big/small is based of a fake reference point.
So there is the infinite, 'a-happening'. It is not infinitely big as in vast beyond measure, and it is not made of infinitely small bits. no no no, it is an infinite a-happening. The trees budding, coming forth, the wind blowing, my beating heart and metabolizing cells are this infinite a-happening.
Not old, no beginning, as there is no true point of reference to base those ideas from. Just Thus.
And for the meditative, take note, nature is alive, always in flow. You may have been searching for an inner stillness, trying to kill the rampant mind, and the universe is ultimately at rest, but your efforts to realize inner calm have a greater goal and that is to truly comprehend the real action.
As when you have either stilled OR you have embraced the vastness (opposite routes to the same place) then you have removed the fake point of reference and just left the whole action.
When you have stepped back from 'all things based from this viewpoint', then you are left apperseeing that you are this.
The seeing and the seen are not separate AT ALL. This a-seeing is the universe and - you're it.
This does not relate enough that I can shoehorn it into the piece I scribbled, but it's good.. Here.
ReplyDeleteGood post...the delusion of a solid-static self and the breaking of the universe into categories...yes, this is the core error as my delusional self sees it as well.
ReplyDeleteI like the term "a-happening". You might be getting quoted again!
I just checked your link...fantastic! I laughed my ass off...
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty good site huh?
ReplyDeleteYet another good link provided by Leaf Dharma of Buddhist Torrents.