Thinking about the permanence (or non-permanence) of things has been screwing with me for the past couple days. I don't mean the permanence of things as in everything, I mean the permanence of things, specifically. My cell phone, the pen on my desk, the bench outside, the empty water bottles I haven't bothered to recycle yet, my pillow... You get the idea here.
My reality is perceived. Things exist because I think they do. That's not to get all solipsistic on everyone here, but think about it. When I look at something, the cells in my eyes send a message to the cells in my brain, and I see. When I reach out to something, the cells in my fingertips send another message to my brain, and I experience touch. Pain happens because some other cells tell my brain to make me hurt. Without those organs and parts of my body, without my brain, what exists? The world doesn't exist to someone in a coma. Are they alive? Yes. But they don't know that.
When I go to sleep, my reality disappears and is replaced by a new one in the form of my dreams. Note here I'm saying my reality, because that's all I claim it to be.
Working at a psychiatric hospital, I see a lot of this. I mostly just do detox and rehab for addicts and alcoholics, but the other day I was on one of the more acute psych units. Someone with acute psychosis is experiencing a completely different reality than I am. I call their reality a "hallucination" just because I don't see it too.
What gets us by day to day without going crazy is our faith in the permanence of objects. I know where my apartment is. I can leave it for days at a time and I know it's not only still going to exist, but be right where I left it.
How do I know that it's all still there when I'm not? How do I know that the lily I'm looking at exists at all when I'm not there looking at it? We feel as though our senses provide "proof" of things, but how valid is it? If I'm not here, in this room, looking at this lily, it's equally probable that it's there and not there (enter Schrödinger reference for my nerds). It's only when I look at it that I know for sure.
Reality is fluid. Memories are impermanent and horribly unreliable. So what do we have?
"Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind.
ReplyDeleteOne said, "The flag moves."
The other said, "The wind moves."
They argued back and forth but could not agree.
The Sixth Ancestor said, "Gentlemen! It is not the wind that moves; it is not the flag that moves; it is your mind that moves." The two monks were struck with awe."
- The Mumonkan Case 29, translation by Robert Aitken
try this: http://zenhsin.org/zenphilosophy/understanding_Shobogenzo.html
"If one watches whence the notion 'I' arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas. When a mantra is repeated, if one watches whence that mantra sound arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas."
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