Laboratory

Thursday 21 July 2011

Science is human beings conducting experiments.  The knowledge that we can uncover when we turn our minds to exploring reality is toe-curlingly deep.

Mystics are not categorised with scientists, and yet they spend their lives facing and tasting and delving into those realities which so many run away from or ride over as if they're not there, as if death didn't exist for all of us.  So do Buddhists.  So do everyday people who meditate.  These people of all persuasions or no persuasion have as a laboratory their minds and their bodies.

5 comments

  1. I hope you didn't expect me to resist commenting on this, Sue;)

    If the human body-mind is part of the universe - as seems probable - then scientific experiments, meditation and the like are the universe exploring itself, waking up to itself. The universe becoming self-aware, in fact.

    And as far as I'm, err, aware, the universe doesn't know how to die, to cease to exist. It's only the mind-created little self which is afraid to 'die', but then it doesn't really exist anyway, so it's a no-thing afraid of becoming nothing...

    Ok... I'll stop there before someone hits me;)

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  2. Hey Harry,

    I'm reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying at the moment. Sogyul Rinpoche talks about the Buddha seeing the universe made up as a net of interconnected jewels, which is what I think you're saying here.

    But to get to that place requires a whole lotta courage. We live in such a death-denying culture. It encourages us to live in a fantasy land and pretend that one day we're not gonna die.

    Which is a shame, because facing that, and the impermanence of everything, leads you out the other side to that blissful sorta space you're talking about, where words fall down :)

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  3. Sometimes that second paragraph sure feels like me...for sure. Always introspecting trying to better understand the human condition. I just wish it was a more respected personality trait.

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  4. Erin - it's funny how many things are just such pure gold and yet they're totally ignored by our stupid moronic culture. We have so many things all arse-about on so many fronts, it boggles your mind.

    Well, it boggles your mind if you're people like you or I, thinking about the human condition :)

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  5. I've not read that, Sue, but it seems a very beautiful way of putting things. I'll look it out. Again, 'death', in the sense of 'ceasing to exist' simply makes no sense to me now, as I see this physical form called 'Harry' as a gloriously unique expression of the ceaselessly evolving, ever more self aware universe, and the essence of who I am as one magnificent manifestation of everything that is. Harry-flavoured Isness...

    Sort of;)

    Great post, Sue.

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