The Physics of Buddhism, Part One

from JoeUser Forums
With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



If I say, "I am here and you are there", what does this mean? We see from our language that "I" and "You" are relative to each other. This relativity can be stated as "I-You". I-You only makes sense within it. I am tall, you are short; I am White, you are Black, etc. Looking outward, my understanding of myself is always in relation to other in the language of relational values. This was also a POV espoused by Sartre (see The Wall). Martin Buber differentiated this language by suggesting different word pairs "I-It" and "I-Thou". By the former he meant a relation between people on objective grounds and in the latter a relationship of a wholly different sort, a more subjective experience with the Infinite.



Now, if I look inward and more deeply and see that this "I" is a product of perspective, then what?



“I” see myself as a collection of molecules in interaction, what Buddhists call aggregates. These aggregates are always changing; they are, in effect, dynamic. Thus, there is no individual, separate, "I". There is no individual, separate, "You". There is just what Bodhidharma called "vast emptiness". This vast emptiness might also be called the Infinite and according to Buber, I can have at least two relationships to it, the relation of I-It and/or the relation of I-Thou. Moreover, the thought of "I" (indeed, thought, itself) is a product of a field we call mind, electro-chemical processes traveling between neurons in a brain. Thought, and the thought of I, or you, has no independent existence apart from this neural network.



Be well.
religion
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Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Good question, LW., Buddhism at once denies the existence of a soul and suggests re-incarnation happens. Yet the reincarnation is not of an identity re-manifesting in another form. Its a sort of recycling of energy and matter. How this body and mind (myself) behaves, does well or ill, affects others, including the planet, and my genetic offspring. This is karma...good or ill. Its very important to remember when dealing with Buddhist thought and practices thsat they are never about a independent self. Never. As Buddhism holds there is not such thing, literally. We are all deeply interconnected and interdependent.

If we were to look at the Dalai Lama, for example. It is claimed that he is the re-incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokitishvera, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Dsoes this mean that a spirit or soul has migrated. No. It means that the person of the Dalai Lama was identified as possessing the essential qualities of such a Bodhisattva, indeed, was the actual manifestation of the sum of those qualities.

There are those Buddhists, especially in more primitive cultures who hold onto a belief in souls and spirits of dead ancestors, but this is, in truth, in direct contradiction to the Buddha's teaching.

Be well.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
LW,

Yet, a legacy in terms of our evolutionary descent from simple to complex increases, the good or bad karmic consequences are still at play, etc., long after we are "gone". The thing is, therefore, on the level Buddhists look at this, there is never really a point at which anything is "gone". That's the whole point of interdependence.

Oh my. I am my father, his father and his father's father. I am my mother, her mother, and her mother's mother. I am my son and daughter and their sons and daughters, in every direction throughout time in every direction. Now.

Be well.

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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
The Buddhist answer: With every breath I take, I offer my compassion to the universe.

The Jewish Answer: Oy.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
It makes some sense, too, because matter and energy never cease to exist, they simply change form. Why should human matter and energy be any different?


Bingo. I was talking about this to my kids the other day; telling them that if, when I die, they bury my carcass in the gound and plant a tree on top of me, that I'll decay and literally come back as bark and leaves and maybe even fruit.

I LOVE that idea.