Tropical on one hand, sidereal on the other 20/4

[Guest guest]

Dear Rishi,

 

well a good subject in time.

well recently heard Swami Sukhabodananda talk on Astha TV channel and in the

talk quoted KathOpanishad where it sums to a question that if after reading it

you fell you have understood it IT MEANS YOU HAVE NOT UNDERSTOOD IT.

and if You feel you have not understood a bit of it you have understood the

wisdom in it. all matters to perception of the perciver. no perciver no matter

to write, talk about.

 

 

Prashant

 

rishi_2000in <rishi_2000in wrote: RRji,

An article in todays newspaper for your perusal, it has some

relevance to what we are discussing. Written by Jug Suraiya, a

popular columnist out here who is more renowned for his humor.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1494959.cms

 

" Is the paper that you are reading really a paper — or

any 'thing' at all — or is it merely the 'appearance' of a paper?

Further, are 'you' really you, or just another 'appearance'? Such

questions could be put to you not by an other-worldly spiritual

seer, but by a very matter-of-fact scientist.

 

Indeed, scientists are increasingly asking whether 'matter'

or 'facts' actually exist in and of themselves. Investigations of

the subatomic world have shown that what we in the everyday world

take to be tangible matter — this newspaper, your hand holding it —

is largely composed of emptiness.

 

All material things — a flea, an elephant, an ice-cream cone, Mt

Everest — are made not of discrete particles — like tiny bricks —

but of 'events' which slip in and out of existence and are

inseparable from our consciousness of them.

 

One way of looking at it is that they 'exist' because we perceive

them to exist. Contrarywise, do 'we' really exist other than by and

through our act of perception?

 

So if all matter is illusion, or at heart insubstantial, why is it

that your hand does not go straight through the appearance of the

paper you're reading? Or, conversely, why doesn't the paper go

through the appearance of your hand?

 

The scientist would say that is because though matter is

insubstantial (not made up of any finally irreducible substance) it

is held together by interwoven force fields, or 'relationships'

between the 'events', that make up the unfolding narrative of the

universe.

 

This is beginning to sound not like physics but metaphysics,

specifically Buddhist metaphysics that talks about samskara, the

world of appearance or phenomena, of which we are an inextricable

part, and which is based on the principle of total interdependence.

...(This paper is a paper because you are a reader, and you are a

reader because it is a paper.) The interdependence of all phenomena

is the under-pinning of the Buddhist concept of universal

compassion.

 

If all phenomena — a grain of sand, a galaxy, Salman Khan, a

blackbuck — are part and parcel of the same shimmering interplay of

appearance, it is not so much 'morally' wrong to seek to harm

another entity as just plain illogical because what you are trying

to harm is only a reflection of you, and vice versa.

 

A seer might call it the interdependence of all phenomena. A

scientist might term it as Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty, by

which through seeking to discover we change what is sought to be

discovered.

 

A poet, who deals in metaphors, might describe it as inter-

penetrative consciousness. A metaphor is a way of inter-relating two

apparently dissimilar phenomena. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's

day?'

 

A metaphor is a bridge, a force field, which links together two or

more seemingly disparate phenomena: one's beloved and the warmth and

splendour of sunlight.

 

The poet's job is to reveal such linkages, which is why Octavio Paz

described a poem as a cosmos complete in itself, as 'real' as the

universe 'out there'. So is this paper that you are reading,

really 'real' or 'really' just an appearance?

 

A scientist, a seer and a poet might give three separate answers,

which are but one. Just as are the poet, the seer and the scientist.

And this paper, and you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SURRENDER JOYFULLY TO THE WILL OF THE ULTIMATE DIVINITY AND RELISH THE TASTE

OF ABSOLUTE BLISS.

 

 

 

 

 

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Visit your group "" on the web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prashant

 

 

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