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Is the Process All there Is?
If we say All is Process, how does it sound comparing with saying All is One?
In All is One the All is maybe felt like joy and freedom, but also peace or stillness, like a static standstill.
Meanwhile in All is Process the All becomes a dynamic moving experience with ourselves moving in it.
In mystic and many similar spiritual traditions the experience of oneness has a central place, whereas the awarness of the process as an aspect or a function of reality came to us from Psychology and other Sciences.
The Process, a mysteriously self regulating, impersonal, seemingly evolving ever changing flow of energy is actually tangibly felt ans observed in every speck of our reality which is apparently featured by the Process itself.
When someone`s s.c. realization happens suddenly like a flash of light, we probably ignore that there is a process behind it as much as ahead of it.
A cell is programmed to its function until next mutations. In the same way are we featured with a selfconscious mind which believes that it can act autonomously and change or affect the Process.
Yet the expected change can only happen if an indefinite amount of factors controlled by the Process allows that to happen.
The Process is proceeding seemingly forward in only a shift of timeless flow of energy and its nature and goals - if there are any, are carefully hidden.
Introspectively we can get an idea about how the Process works when insights change and deepen in awarness.
Is the true nature of the Process static or a dynamically ever changing movement?
Or both?
I wonder how Galileo`s famous words would sound like nowadays. E pur si muove, Yet it moves, he said.
Maybe today he would modify this statement saying: It moves, yet it doesn`t.
Thank you Ed for your comment, it was useful as comments from others always are to me to give light to my own points, if there are any.
I think my point was to focus on the paradox of a Process in no time, of the movement and the stillness, the dynamic and the static being perpetually one and the same.
I remember some time ago a Buddhist writer, I don`t recall his name but he belonged to the Theravada tradition, his meditation consisted sometimes in paying attention to as many things as possible in one singular moment, e.g. a movement, a color, a suond etc. It is very difficult, a kind of extrovert meditation, but an amazing experience and it is possible to inscrease the amuont of observations along with this practice.
In this way one gets a kind of taste of the synchronism ( or a-chronism) of life in motion as much as in slillness.
In this way also the dream in a dream ad infinitum becomes more tangible and the sanity or insanity of the society like everything else is in this dream too, as you also poited out.
Anna
Anna
I also did a walking meditation, based on a similar approach. To take in especially everything on the periphery,
but not to focus anywhere. The advice was that if you caught
yourself holding too long on one impression to free your
attention again each time. it made for some interesting observations. That was from a Tibetan Lama. Then a Zen
walking awareness meditation was different, more inward as I experienced it...
I get your point about process in the dream. But isn't it
inevitably a closed circle?
Thanks,
ed
Maybe it is called walking meditation, I don`t know.
It isn`t so much about focusing or not, but to just take in as much as possible and eventually increase the capacity to take in more in each moment of attention. Not to free the attention but to notice the "speed" of the synchronic "activity".
The closed circle, yes...
Actually I had in mind to define the Process as autopoietic, so you are somehow hitting the point.
Having only a slightest idea about this term, I suppose it means: a close system, not dipending on anything else to survive or develope.
It is only an intuition. So, why not closed?
the processed is not really the processed as in reality the processed is only the processing of it.
the only nature of any object is the seeing of the object(wei wu wei)
processing cannot be anything for if it was something then it too would be something processed and therefore not processing.
therefore all that "processing" can be is "not processing".
one need not look what and where this "not processing " is.... for all that we know as "processed"is the "not processing".
therefore everything that is , is the processed which in reality is not the processed but rather the processing which cannot be anything else but the processed.
now this is a closed system.
it implies non reality is all that reality can be and non reality is the non reality of reality.
void is not anything for if it was something it would be not void but rather something.
because void is void(not at all) that something allways is..this something being the void of void.
therefore void is void of void.
reality is non reality of reality.
or reality "is" non real therefore real.
therefore I am the blue winged butterfly as well as the butterfly in a the chaung zus dream, also the red eyed green parrot and the thunder cloud the oceans and the seasons (svetasvatara)
You sound so convincing in your statements AI, and it is good since I am never quite convinced myself about what I am saying.
Anyhow I`ll try to reformulate my topic to see if it can fit to your comment.
My quest was if the nature of the Void is a processing one or if the processing is an emanation "ex nihilo" (from the Void) which, if it flows back to the Void should be the matter of a close circuit.
I didn`t use the word "processed", so processing or not processing remains the quest.
Moreover, being "processed" a past participle it is a-priori non-existent.
But you mean of course that both the past and the present processing are non-existent.
You said: the only nature of any object is the seeing of the object.
So what is the nature of the seeing?
Of course, if both the processed and the processing are non-existent then our nature is empty just like the seeing and the blue winged butterfly, period.
Yet it could also be that if we take in the illusion of time the only seeing is of the processed whereas the timeless processing remains unknown.
the nature of seeing(reality) is not anything therefore there is allways only that which is seen(non reality).
for if the nature of seeing was something only that something would allways be seen.
the absence of everything cannot be something for if it was something it would not be the absence....it means absence is not at all.( nothing cannot be)
because nothing cannot be something allways is.
however something cannot be the something of something but rather the something of nothing( for nothing not being is what allows something to be).
being is the being of non being.
is is the is of the isnot.
only the non reality of reality can be.
or what ever is ..is the non reality of reality.
therefore only the non reality is is what reality is.
therefore that i am convinced is as non real as you not being convinced.
both of us are featured in different ways but both of us are only what is featured(not real) therefore as what we are featured too cannot be real.
In the world of duality there are questions with no answers, while in the Absolute there are no questions.
These words are from a sage (I think Nisarga).
Nor being myself a sage, yet I agree with him.
The mind where most of us are mostly dwelling always asks and makes suppositions and theories, yet the conclusions are always relative.
Being aware of that I keep asking.
What is the nature of the seeing, meaning the nature of every -ING, like the nature of the timless changing?
In science the question could sound like: What is the nature of the Unified field, which gives birth to the God particle?
I imagine it could be both Emptiness and Potentiality to timless Acting.
When thinking mind sets out to track down the logical or literal meaning of words presented in any particular sequentce it does so at its own risk for embedded within each word is its opposite and with even the slightest of missteps mind can find itself momentarily stuck on a rapidly spinning merry-go-round.
This may or may not be where thinking mind wants to end up. If so there may be a certain pleasure in spinning out of control and getting dizzy. In fact thinking mind might get so dizzy or exhausted it just stops and crumples in a heap of laughter or sickness. But then what might be seen, heard or felt in that momentary stillness and quiet, however achieved?
Hi Tony!
Welcome back and thank you for your beautiful posts. I really enjoy reading them.
The mind can be a master in spinning out as you said and it is wise to try to stop before it gets crazy. I know myself how it feels.
But it uses words when it has to, like in this Forum. Was it a Zen master who said: When I eat, I eat.
Of course the context of his words was different, but it reminds us to keep the distance to the words and their content or to be aware of whatever we are up to.
Anna
when the thinking mind sets out to track down the logic behind words it finds only emptyness.
then it ( after laughter or sickness etc etc etc ) thinks that emptyness is something(real)
and so it questions...
what is heard in that stillness?
in a dream the dreamer is features as someone sleeping only as long as the dream features the dreamer as someone who thinks that there is something real in the dream or anywhere(anywhere with the only possibility of being in the dream)
only and only when the dream features the dreamer as someone who has understood that everything is in the dream therefore a dream the dream then features the dreamer as someone who has awakened.
what is heard in stillness is that there is no such a thing as stillness for stillness cannot be(if it was it too would be a sound and not stillness) and therefore only "sound"can be.
And...that sound is the sound of stillness and sound is all that stillness can be.
therefore that there is only and allways sound(non reality) is stillness(reality).
The larger question
Does social context define sanity? The larger question then is can there be
insane societies?
It seems to me Romanticism and Idealism tread the same path as Authoritarianism.
The visceral effects of erotic, or non-erotic, drives - drive an intellectual compensation
to maintain the illusion of independence, and to impose this upon an average and
less-confident audience. Where it becomes dangerous is when an ordered insanity,
rather than a chaotic sanity, is assumed to be superior, and to lead a superior
lifestyle; whereas the very fact of life living life as a miracle of existence is
conveniently ignored or suppressed, just because it cannot be tamed and
is therefore an unseen and unnamed threat, like the experience of death
itself. Where words become jargon, we lose critical contact with reality,
that sheer form of existence, to which we cannot contribute nor harm.
That is where ego loses consciousness. Or where consciousness loses ego.
"if you can't speak it, don't believe it in principle/or let it rule/dominate your life/mind.
If you can't speak it, but you're inclined to believe that it's true, then you will learn
to speak it in its due course. Truth always takes its time." Or seems to.
So what is truth? What is process?
The dream is constant, and there is no way to know whether you have awakened
in a dream, or dreamt you have awakened in a dream, or dreamt you dreamt you
have awakened in yet another dream, in an infinitely receding succession of images
seeking for the self that seeks for the self that seeks. Seeking is process, not
seeking is also process. But truth doesn’t need time to take time. There is no effort that
you make that is a sure formula toward enlightenment; yet somehow it shows.
In the Christian tradition the argument is whether by grace alone or by effort
you are saved. When Mother Theresa was put this question, she said “I show you
my grace by what I do, how do you show your grace?” If you don’t act like it, can you
really be it? That begs a lot of questions.
Even Advaita is torn by internal conflict around just this. My Buddhist teachers insisted
that enlightenment is a primary state, without which there would not be the experience,
nor could you recognize it. Could it be mimicked? Of course it would probably be a
thin veneer and collapse under pressure, but it has been said that disassociative states
mimic enlightenment, when it is already there unrecognized, unclaimed, even feared.
Process takes time. But no process leads to the timeless. No movement leads to
stillness; yet stillness is always present. Consciousness directs awareness back
to consciousness. The still point of the turning universe is the center. But in
a holographic/fractal universe, all points are the center. There is no outer rim.
The universe is still, at heart. Time is the only engine of karma. The fastest way
of getting somewhere, is being there.
ed
PS
Thanks Anna. Yours is an evocative question that set my wheels turning again. I always leave out the comment that this is only in my view.