christopher::: wrote:"A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower has to "inter-be" with everything else that is called non-flower. That is what we call inter-being. You cannot be, you can only inter-be... So the true nature of the flower is the nature of inter-being, the nature of no self. The flower is there, beautiful, fragrant, yes, but the flower is empty of a separate self. To be empty is not a negative note. Nagarjuna, of the second century, said that because of emptiness, everything becomes possible. So a flower is described as empty. But I like to say it differently. A flower is empty only of a separate self, but a flower is full of everything else. The whole cosmos can be seen, can be identified, can be touched, in one flower. So to say that the flower is empty of a separate self also means that the flower is full of the cosmos. It’s the same thing. So you are of the same nature as a flower: you are empty of a separate self, but you are full of the cosmos."
~Thich Nhat Hanh
And if many of us can come to realize this, deeply, the world would be altered in inimaginable ways...
mindfullmom wrote:Each time a thread appears on this topic it ends up going on for miles and miles.
I think it's a wonderful example of our collective conscious EVOLVING forward in an effort to CREATE something new.I chose those words carefully as I have been condititioned (up to this moment) to believe that creationism and evolution are one in the same. They are both empty of a separate existence aren't they?
If god created the universe, who created god? And if the big bang created the universe, what created the big bang? Isn't this emptiness at its best? Or is my understanding off?
I agree when the Buddha says that sometimes we are asking the wrong question. I can't find the story but it is about the man struck with an arrow and as he lays there bleeding to death, he demands to know from which direction the arrow was shot, what it was made of, how fast it was travelling, etc. While all that is being investigated, he dies because he does nothing to tend to the wound. Isn't that what we are doing here? There is suffering (the arrow) and then more suffering created from the first suffering (death from the arrow). Since there doesn't seem to be any way to really know either way, why not focus ourselves on the present moment, on the breath, on the rise and fall?
I agree with Chickadee. Our understanding of interconnectedness (emptiness) is the key to it all.
We may know it on an intellectual level but do we know it in the way we think, speak and act? And we all arrive at it in different ways. The linear thinker might want to pull apart the whole and separate it out into little "bits and pieces" (like quantum physics) and in doing so may penetrate the true nature of reality. The global thinker might not need to do that and might find analyzing systems a better way to see our interconnectedness. Either way you have made it there. Our schools and our workplaces compartmentalize because there is a need to do so, imo. There is so much to learn and so much to know, we have to start somewhere. It's up to each one of us to pursue a more global view indivdually whether we are talking about school subjects or work skills.
But I went off topic. Don't most religions believe that god is in us, we are in god? I'm not of the belief that a personal god exists, but isn't that the same as emptiness?
And I would like to thank all of you here, as a result of reading this thread I am now different then I was before and you are all part of me now
Very good thoughts, mindfullmom
You remind me that I tend to think (as most of us do) that my own conceptulizations are the 'right' ones, lol. I do agree that we each 'arrive' at this realization of 'interconnectiveness' or 'emptiness' or whatever you may prefer to name it, in different ways, each in our own time and way. I have this sort of 'need', as christopher::: said, to 'help' others to 'see' this Truth. But really, we may only be able to 'help' those that 'see' things in a similar way that we, personally, do. And who is to say which is the 'right' way of looking at it? Perhaps ALL views are really 'right' and can lead to the same, One Truth, which may be the same as saying that NONE are 'right'? The Truth, it seems (with a capital 'T'), is afterall, a Paradox. When we can learn to embrace paradox, then we are really getting somewhere, I'd say
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Thank you to us all for this wonderful discussion.
metta