godnotgod
Thou art That
I suppose He whispered that tidbit in your ear. You must be in His inner holy circle, eh?
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I suppose He whispered that tidbit in your ear. You must be in His inner holy circle, eh?
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
The Buddha didn't experience the sub-atomic world, he experienced the everyday world in a radically different way. He discouraged speculation on questions like "the nature of reality" because he viewed these as irrelevant to the goal, liberation from suffering.
godnotgod
Thou art That
No, he discouraged questions about origins.
The nature of Reality is not speculation, metaphysics, philosophy or origins. It is just the way things actually are, rather than how the mind conceptualizes them to be.
He did not experience the everyday world 'in a radically different way'. That is what most people are already doing. We call it 'conditioned mind'. What he experienced was the way things actually are. That is called Reality, as opposed to what the ordinary man thinks of as 'reality', which is a conditioned view. The Buddha returned to what he called 'Original Mind' which is an unconditioned view. The process of this transformation from a conditioned view to an unconditioned view is called 'awakening'. What did he awaken to? He awoke to the true nature of Reality, and thus achieved liberation from suffering due to delusive thought. Awakening to the true nature of Reality, or 'Original Mind', is crucial to liberation from suffering. The unawakened mind is still caught in delusive thought.
Everyone is experiencing the Absolute manifesting itself as the everyday, or Ordinary, world, via the sub-atomic world. It's like what Buddhists say about Enlightenment: everyone is already enlightened, but they haven't realized it yet.
godnotgod
Thou art That
He experienced Sunyata, out of which the sub-atomic, and thus the so-called 'everyday' world is simultaneously being manifested as a singularity. There is no difference between what we conceive of as 'the everyday world' vs. 'the sub-atomic world'. They are one and the same. To think they are separate is to continue to dwell in the delusion of duality.
Fritjof Capra on the Unity of All Things, One
The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view - one could almost say the essence of it- is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. (Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975)
In ordinary life, we are not aware of the unity of all things, but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality. It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorising intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate ‘things’ and ‘events’ are realities of nature is an illusion. (Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975)
The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all the phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe.* The Hindus call it Brahman, The Buddhists Dharmakaya (The Body of Being) or Tathata (Suchness) and the Taoists Tao; each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concepts and defies further explanation. This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to the very nature to manifest itself in myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves into one another without end. (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, p210)
A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated ‘basic building blocks’, but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, p78)
The ‘this’ is also ‘that’. The ‘that’ is also ‘this’… That the that and the this cease to be opposites is the very essence of the Tao. Only this essence, an axis as it were, is the center of the circle responding to endless changes. (Quoted in Fung Yu-Ling, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, 1958 p.112) (Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975)
The impermanence of all forms is the starting point of Buddhism. The Buddha taught that ‘all compounded things are impermanent’, and that all suffering in the world arises from our trying to cling to fixed forms - objects, people or ideas - instead of accepting the world as it moves and changes. (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, p211)
The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves and grows and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognised that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles, and is even more essential in relativity theory, where the unification of space and time implies that the being of matter cannot be separated from its activity. The properties of subatomic particles can therefore only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction and transformation. (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics)
Fritjof Capra: Metaphysics Philosophy of Fritjof Capra Tao of Physics,Quotes
*It is important to note that this is a mystical view, such as the practice of Zen or Taoism, as contrasted to an orthodox view, such as orthodox Theravada Buddhism and others. The Buddha realized his Enlightenment as a spontaneous mystical experience, and not as an orthodox doctrine he had been indoctrinated with.
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godnotgod
Thou art That
NOTE: THIS IS THE THIRD REQUEST FOR A RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION:
Do you deny that the Quantum world fully underpins the world of human experience, even though most humans are unaware of it?
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
As I've explained before we don't experience the sub-atomic world, we experience the everyday world which operates according to Newtonian mechanics rather than quantum mechanics. Different principles apply at different scales
As I've explained before the Buddha didn't experience the sub-atomic world, he didn't see atoms and quarks and his behaviour wasn't determined by quantum mechanics.
Sorry but I remained entirely unconvinced by your attempt to relate Buddhist awakening to the sub-atomic world, and mysticism to quantum mechanics. To me it's just a new-age style word salad which misrepresents in order to persuade.
Clearly you have become very attached to your theory and now can't see it's shortcomings.
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godnotgod
Thou art That
You didn't answer the question.
You experience air molecules as wind, but you don't see them.
Air molecules made of atoms are actually what you are experiencing. You just call it 'wind'.
The Buddha experienced the Absolute, manifesting itself as this world via the atomic world.
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE ATOMIC WORLD. THE ATOMIC WORLD IS THIS WORLD.
How can you prove this? Remove the atoms from this world and this world vanishes.
The physical world made of sub-atomic particles is actually what we experience. You call it 'the everyday world'
because the conceptual mind requires some means of dealing with it.
Because the true nature of this everyday world is, according to the Buddha and Quantum physics, empty, you think you are experiencing something real, when it is an illusion. It is akin to drinking water in a dream. Your dream thirst is satisfied, but it is still a dream. You 'experience' all sorts of sounds, sensations, tastes, and visions in a dream, but they are all illusions. When you awaken, it is only then that you realize the illusory quality of your dream. The same is true from the state of Waking Sleep to the next higher level of Consciousness. It is then that this 'everyday world' is understood as illusory.
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godnotgod
Thou art That
Yes, it was, just as a sailboat's behavior is determined by air molecules in motion.
You still want to arbitrarily create two worlds where only one exists, based on different systems of measurement, rather than on the fact that the atoms of the Quantum world are what constitutes this everyday world. They are one and the same, only seen from different levels of magnification, that's all.
Because we are so used to the convention of what we call 'the everyday world', when Quantum mechanics revealed its true makeup, we still cling to the old conceptual paradigm as if it were one reality, comparing it to what we think is a separate reality. There are not two separate realities; there is only one reality.
We are bamboozling ourselves.
If you still think there are 'two worlds', show me where one leaves off and the other begins, and pointing out differences in how they are measured doesn't mean there are two worlds.
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Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
Then you clearly don't understand either Newtonian or quantum mechanics. These are not arbitrary distinctions, different rules of behaviour apply at different scales. Very different rules.
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godnotgod
Thou art That
Doesn't matter. Still only one world, but looked at from different levels of magnification. Differing rules do not mean differing worlds.
When I say there is no difference between this world and the atomic world, it is to say that this world is none other than the atomic world. You think there are two distinct worlds because you are using the measurement systems applicable to different levels of magnification of just one world as your gauge. That is where you are confused, because the FACT is that what you are calling 'the everyday world' is completely composed of atoms.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
I'm not confused at all. We don't experience atoms. In our everyday world we experience gravity and solid objects, and if you drop a brick on your foot it will hurt.
Mystics don't experience atoms and quarks, they simply have a different perception of the everyday world. So claiming that mystics have an insight into the weird and inaccessible world of quantum mechanics doesn't make sense.
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Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
No, it's determined by the various forces acting on it, including wind and tide. When you feel the wind on your face what do you actually feel? What you feel is a pressure or force, you don't feel individual air molecules.
godnotgod
Thou art That
I never claimed that. You're confused.
We are all experiencing the Absolute manifesting as atoms.
We experience atoms as this world of forms.
The Buddha looked at forms and realized they had no individual inherent nature.
Hence: 'form is emptiness; emptiness is form'
You're confusing the sub-atomic level and the gross level with the systems used to measure their behavior. There are two systems, but only one world. The gross level is completely made up of atoms. Therefore, if you are experiencing the gross level, you are experiencing atoms.
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godnotgod
Thou art That
You're putting words in my mouth: I never said we felt 'individual' air molecules.
What you call 'wind' is, in reality, air molecules, 'wind' being the name we give to many air molecules acting in a certain way.
There really is no such thing as 'wind', just as there is no such thing as a 'whirlpool'. There is only whirling water, and there are only moving air molecules.
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Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
Wind is fantastic stuff! I can remember sailing a Laser in a Force 5 wind, hang on for dear life and just go with the flow!
