Friday, June 27, 2008
Beginning, Being, Death
Since rationality is the antidote to spirituality, this is merely a metaphor for my current spiritual state.
Imagine a cork bobbing in the Pacific Ocean.
The central focus of the cork is the question “What is safe?”
And the answers are all pathetic and lead to rigidity.
The ocean in all its forms and in all timescales sings a song, (“the harmony of the spheres”).
Beginning, Being, Death.
You can see it everywhere, in the plants, in the animals it is easy to see. But it is there in the mountains and the rocks as well. Even the Earth begins, is and will die, even the Universe.
The very atoms that make up our body, the atoms that we breathe are the children of several generations of stars. Stars that over millions and billions of years began, were, died and in dying laid the seeds for the next generation, of stars, of humans, of the Earth.
At the smallest possible level of time and space, in the “empty space within atoms”, in the vast empty space between galaxy clusters, virtual particles of all different types appear, exist and then annihilate themselves. Counterintuitive to the cork, the energy of their annihilation is what fuels their becoming. Just as the Tibetan Buddhists have learned, Death begets Beginning. “The harmony of the spheres” is actually subtly different. It is:
Death, Beginning, Being
And that makes all the difference.
And the cork must come to realize that there is no oasis in the desert.
The desert is a mirage.
Imagine a cork bobbing in the Pacific Ocean.
The central focus of the cork is the question “What is safe?”
And the answers are all pathetic and lead to rigidity.
The ocean in all its forms and in all timescales sings a song, (“the harmony of the spheres”).
Beginning, Being, Death.
You can see it everywhere, in the plants, in the animals it is easy to see. But it is there in the mountains and the rocks as well. Even the Earth begins, is and will die, even the Universe.
The very atoms that make up our body, the atoms that we breathe are the children of several generations of stars. Stars that over millions and billions of years began, were, died and in dying laid the seeds for the next generation, of stars, of humans, of the Earth.
At the smallest possible level of time and space, in the “empty space within atoms”, in the vast empty space between galaxy clusters, virtual particles of all different types appear, exist and then annihilate themselves. Counterintuitive to the cork, the energy of their annihilation is what fuels their becoming. Just as the Tibetan Buddhists have learned, Death begets Beginning. “The harmony of the spheres” is actually subtly different. It is:
Death, Beginning, Being
And that makes all the difference.
And the cork must come to realize that there is no oasis in the desert.
The desert is a mirage.
