"Naming is the origin of all particular things." Lao-Tzu said that [as far as I know]. I think it describes the most important sentiment I've spiritually considered. Now, by particular things, I mean defined realities. Objects, smells, the personalities of your friends, really every thing you classify as obvious truth. You watch these things, and develop an opinion on them that is formed of a checklist of criteria that thing has to exist. A lamp makes light, has a general shape, can be powered by electricity, the combustion of some fuel, has some sort of shade to direct its light, etc. Your mind programs these criteria in, and you can start to recognize objects.
But there's a problem. What if you're wrong about those criteria? Even deeper, why do you classify a lamp as such and not the coincidence of power and material in a given shape? Your idea of that object, whatever it may be, is based on a faulty set of perceptions, because your senses do the same pattern recognizing gag in order to understand something. But nothing is the same as anything else, and for that matter, nothing is anything, because all things are just transmuted forms of predecessor shapes.
There is an essence of life, true divinity, ultimate creation in every thing that you can come into contact with, but it is perverted into a material manifestation that is based on more or less nothing. That is because everything that is has come from an original state of nothingness, so it is all basically made of nothing, and nothing doesn't matter. So every single thing in your life is essentially meaningless, because it is part of an eternal stream of transmutations. Even you, with all of your humanly glory, will at some point rot into the earth, where your remains will be transmuted to other forms. It's nothing to be scared of.
So your body is made from other materials, which were made from nothing. Your body is nothing. But now you must consider who you are. Your brain is a physical part of your body, your cognition aberrant flashing synapses, linking on and off positions into complex patterns that you are used to. Then your mind can rule your body. But your mind is a set of arbitrary responses that the patterns of material forms based on nonexistence trigger. So your mind is nothing, and your thoughts can't save you.
But if you can understand that, what you begin to lose is the deadly idea that somehow got lodged in your cognition: You are separate from the reality your mind is interpreting. That idea is what blocks you from the path to growth and content. You are part of that vast transmutation of matter, the totality of the universe. That means that the personality you have constructed, based on arbitrary observations and decisions grounded in falsehood, doesn't really exist in the grand sense, because it can't go with you when your body falls apart into the earth. This is also nothing to fear.
You still have that divine element in you, but since your mind is based on impermanent flesh, you haven't been able to access it. It is there, I promise you. If you start to lose your separate ego, you can start to feel, experience, and even make decisions from the part that anchors you to the original glory. Stop naming things. You pervert their holiness with your words, your particular realities. Live in nonparticularity. You know nothing at all, because all of your thinking is on faulty ground, and influenced by your perception of self. Just feel what is right. Look inside yourself. You will know the truth, and allow yourself to be a human being, to be everything you were born into. leave your attachment to forms behind. To worship any particular arrangement is idolatry, and objective judgement, based on self-styled criteria, clouds the holistic joy on subjective feeling.
You can't know what's there, but you can have a good idea, and even if you can't figure it out, it doesn't really matter, as you don't need to save yourself from anything. You don't have to earn anything in this life. However you live, you will pass back to the eternal.
But what you can do is end your suffering early, and let yourself enjoy something. I hope you do.
1. Anything CANNOT be nothing because nothing is unquestionably the absence of anything, not the absence of a single defined value.
ReplyDeleteTry to imagine the impossible: Total and complete nothingness without idea, matter, energy or area.
However, it is true that there is no single defined value that can be set to any particular name. There has to be a level of subjectivity because no two humans (who are the only thing in the universe to which the concepts of item and language apply) have the same value set.
So, the physical criteria for an object rather than being faulty are merely tools used to help man deconstruct value and should be treated as so.
2. Also, in the insignificance of the individual isn't as mandatory as you make it out to be.
Consider the christian concept of the soul on a literary level; Any "great" person leaves a residue on their generation which is confirmed by the values and achievements of
his successors and can be immortalized through language and technology.
One of the most beautiful and desired ideas that separates humanity from anything else is the idea of immortality, stark ripples through every piece of art, every genocide, and every technological leap that ties any name to its values, while neither are important otherwise.
Everything comes from an original state of nothing, and that state is persistent. The lack of the ability to perceive nothing does not invalidate its existence, but rather confirms it. The forms it takes are not its real representation, and thus are not worth considering. Nothing exists because it has a name, even though it is the absence of existence. The criteria we name by also come from nothing, and only nothing has my consideration.
ReplyDeleteThe self is not the soul; no one can know what they are, only feel that divine bit of a soul inside them, and know that they are part of something grander. Your self is the construction of your thoughts over time, and since thoughts are based on nothing, your self is nothing. Even the residue you speak of decays, loses its truth, and eventually vanishes. And you're right, the values that guide actions are as unimportant as the actions themselves. That's because naming things as moral or immoral involves decisions based on falsehoods. To have no morality to to let good work through you naturally, because you cannot force it.