I’d like
to share the following quote from Master Sheng Yen’s Chan and Enlightenment:
“Western religions talk about the time when the world was first created, and Western philosophy and science speculate on the beginning of the universe. But it is not very easy to answer the question: “When did it all really begin? For this reason, Buddhism speaks of time without beginning—it is like a circle where there may be a beginning but you cannot locate it because every point on the circle can be the place of origin. So, Buddhism says that suffering has existed since time without beginning, and its origin is ignorance in the minds of sentient beings” (p.206)
I have been thinking a lot about this theme, ever since I started reading about Rudolph Steiner’s concept of speaking through the ‘holes’ in education’s fabric. The metaphor that Master Sheng Yen uses is every point being a place of origin. I asked the discussion group members the other day: does this mean that one might become overwhelmed by ignorance, and not try to look for the causes of ignorance? I also recall a meditation practitioner had asked me the same question. Does the view of ignorance without beginning mean that we don’t try to look for causes of things? One of the participants even shared with me through email that perhaps it would not be such a bad idea to be overwhelmed after all, since this basic ignorance is what pushes people to try to know their true minds and true origins.
I had this reflection during my walk at lunch hour. I reflected: is there
anything in life that is so certain that people have fixed a single absolute
cause to it? Even if I declare something simple, like,“ rain causes grass to
grow”, is this a simple statement of cause and effect? In fact, it depends on a
great many things. The rain could be tainted with acid, or there may be too
much rain in a single week (thus killing the grass). In another sense, other
conditions need to be present for the rain to sustain life in the grass, such
as sunlight and soil quality. It is never just
the rain that sustains life for the grass. But it is easy to think that science
can create these solid, monolithic answers, or is getting closer to doing so. I
have read recently about the attempt to find the equation that establishes the
existence of all the natural laws in the universe, a kind of God particle. But
I wonder, if scientists do succeed in finding the ultimate cause of all things,
will that satisfy the sentient beings? My answer is: perhaps it will certainly
satisfy scientists, particularly those working on the project itself. But I
doubt that the scientists will ever fully understand where that satisfaction or
even dissatisfaction arises. They will focus only on the formula, and not on
the process they go through to assign meaning to those numbers and letters.
What underlies their belief is the understanding that the universe is shaped by
fixed laws that can be observed or measured. But the miracle is that no matter
how many measurements I make, no physical law in the universe takes hold unless
there is a mind willing to attend to it and observe it. Do scientists ever stop
to ask, who is observing these laws?
Is the who subject to strict cause
and effect?
The other reflection I had today relates to what Rudolph Steiner is getting
at in his writings. Steiner was writing at a time when many educators are trying
to get at the reason why children are given so many intellectual ideas, but are
not able to fully absorb those ideas or use them to transform their character
and emotions. He describes the realms of Will, Intellect and Feeling as the
three areas that need to be concurrently developed in children before they have
the maturity to learn and take in ideas. This he calls the Threefold Social
Organism (p.7). But Steiner notes that most people can only pay lip-service to
developing feeling and will, as long as they think that all action comes from
intellectual concepts or ideas. Steiner notes that the ‘supremacy’ of ideas and
intellect is one-sided, and it is based on an idealistic model that has been
around in education circles for many years.
Many philosophers I have read, in fact, seem to share the assumption that
human beings are shaped in some way by their ideas. It is as though ideas were
these commands that collide with people’s minds and then forces people to act
in some way or another. But I have found from my own experience that ideas don’t
necessary change me at all. An idea may have lots of evidence for its ‘truth’
but I may simply have no way of accessing the idea to find an inspiration to change. I might
look at it, shrug and say ‘that’s nice’, before moving on to another idea!
Without an inspiration to practice toward change, the idea has not much causal
effect on my behavior or thinking. It is one of many conditions happening in
mind.
To go back to this analogy of a circle having origins at every point:
people’s explanations for why things are a certain way depends on where they
sit in the circle, not on a proximity to an original cause. It means that one
may need to give up trying to find an absolute cause to things, as well as
trying to cleave to ‘absolute’ ideas that bring about ‘absolute’ effects.
Everything is always in a state of potential, and it cannot be controlled by
set ways of thinking or ideas. One can only keep learning to see what becomes
valuable in the future, but there is a certain despair in trying to educate with the aims of controlling,
predicting or expecting outcomes given specific conditions. It doesn’t mean
that one stops learning. Rather, it is perhaps best (and most humbling) to
continually contextualize what one has learned in terms of a mind that is not
conditioned, does not have a formula and can’t be ‘learned’ any more than water
can be ‘learned’. In this way, learning is rightly seen in terms of a principle
that has no boundary or limit. Mind contains all conditions and causes without
being limited by these causes and conditions. This notion can give rise to a
healthy humility toward learning, as well as a bigger space to learn from a
variety of contexts and perspectives. Mind accommodates them all, and it is
simply a matter of knowing the mind is not the same as its ideas, that gives
breathing room for people to play on different ideas to find ways to transform
their social and personal lives.
Sheng
Yen, (2014) Chan and Enlightenment.
New York, NY: Dharma Drum Publishing
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