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personal universe

lobsterlobster Veteran
edited July 2018 in Mindfulness

From another thread:

... My problem is my desire to rage at an impersonal universe.

We live, well I seem to, in a personal universe. What kind of universe do you live in?

My problem, my desires, my rage and ... whose solution? Eh ... mine again ...

Strangely enough going with the nature of the Tao/impersonal is very acceptable and calming ...
... That and some of the Buddhist stuff ...

ShoshinDavidyagr

Comments

  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran

    Awareness is knowing how the universe is flowing

    So when in the know. one goes with the flow
    But when ignorance prevails, one get's stuck on wrong trails

    Don't take the universe personally! ...Well that's the motto I 'try' to live by... :)

    The Universe is Impersonal

    BunksDavid
  • CarameltailCarameltail UK Veteran

    You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop

    Still I think there is some level of personal through the way we experience things. It is about the process.

    kando
  • paulysopaulyso usa Veteran

    i just want to say thank you to my e-sangha teachers.i think we laypeople are pretty cool.learning and growing together.

    about personal universe. what pop in my head was membrain loaf of bread,multi-verse,...science meet dharma on pbs show i saw...i dont know?

  • lobsterlobster Veteran

    @paulyso said:

    about personal universe. what pop in my head was membrain loaf of bread,multi-verse,...science meet dharma on pbs show i saw...i dont know?

    <3

    We have to use the loaf/daily bread, life has baked for us ...
    How many of our battles are dead fish?
    How much are we living water?

    In the words of Jesus Bodhi:
    Feed them lambs (something like that ...)

    Ay caramba ...

    paulysoyagr
  • kandokando northern Ireland Veteran

    I have always lived in a world of my own, and becoming an artist was canny enough to make a career of it! :) universe is another matter, or another load of matter, I stayed on the isle of Skye for a year and remember nights when the sky was full of stars from horizon to horizon, dark sky island is right, it could be terrifying! just the size and weight of it. I have never forgot that feeling, I both loved and hated it!

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited July 2018

    I remember whebn I was about 8, I think, going with a large number of my Italian family (Grandfather, uncles aunts and a host of cousins) to a location in the Alps, called Alpe Veglia. Apart from the hostel we were staying in, there wasn't another living soul then, for at least 50km. And the sleeping quarters were a short path's walk away from the eaterie, bar, dance hall... leaving said place one night, after much fun, eating, dancing, general familial revelry... we set out along the path back to our beds... and were entranced by an eerie light.... whereupon we looked up - and could scarcely see sky, for the number of stars.... I remember it wonderfully, and have never seen such a night sky since. It's a treasured memory, of a memory, of a memory.....

    kandolobsterRojeho
  • VimalajātiVimalajāti Whitby, Ontario Veteran

    "Personal universe"

    Adjective "personal", noun "universe".

    A universe. A unity. A oneness.

    Once we have a "one", does it matter if it is personal of impersonal? Any adjective on a "one" is a "one", still.

    The Yoga Masters of the Mind-Only School say that the universe is mind alone. Three worlds one mind.

    In Vasubandhu's theory of consciousness-only, there is only the one consciousness, but it is divided into the discriminating and the undiscriminating forms of consciousness; the discriminating consciousness is what we usually call consciousness, whereas the undiscriminating consciousness is "consciousness appearing to be an object". All the physical objects in the universe- vases, clothing, carts, and carriages- are all this undiscriminating form of consciousness.... But since they are all one nature, we can equally say that there are two forms of matter, the discriminating and the undiscriminating.... It is in this sense that the mind and matter are non-dual. Since he is able to say there are these two different forms of consciousness, we can equally say that they are two different forms of matter.

    (T1918.573b20, from a sermon spoken by Venerable Zhìyǐ analyzing cittamātravāda views)

  • JeroenJeroen Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter Netherlands Veteran

    I was discussing this with my uncle, who has some background in Zen, and it’s quite interesting to see how much of the world we live in is shared. It’s like a series of concentric circles, where the center is the commonly shared experience, the next circle is things we largely agree upon like language, and so on, until the outer circles contain things like dreams, which we have great difficulty sharing.

  • paulysopaulyso usa Veteran

    @lobster said:

    @paulyso said:

    about personal universe. what pop in my head was membrain loaf of bread,multi-verse,...science meet dharma on pbs show i saw...i dont know?

    <3

    We have to use the loaf/daily bread, life has baked for us ...
    How many of our battles are dead fish?
    How much are we living water?

    speaking of bread,it's a source of health,archetype.of course life and dharma is our health.

    personally,art and artist is my

    daily"bread".

    about living water.i rarely go deep about christ dharma.what i will say is, if our fountain is driping,we can fix it. and show others our health and beauty in life.me too working on my fountain,for the water to flow,our state of being.i know it's also dharmaic.

  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran

  • lobsterlobster Veteran

    Good post @David

    Describing the Tao, the grasping/clinging/attachment and letting go ... The Yin turning to Yang is not easy but experientially it can be centered in mindful being rather than reactive raging against the karmic unfolding, nature of life etc ...

    Blunt the sharpness,
    Untangle the knot,
    Soften the glare,
    Merge with dust.

    https://fractalenlightenment.com/24816/culture/yin-yang-a-symbol-of-balance-and-harmony

  • kandokando northern Ireland Veteran

    A memory of a memory of a memory, like that @federica, how much of our world view is made up of fragile layers, fragments and internal maps. All my work is. And yes you can say that none of it is real anyway but without them there would be no art or poetry or music.

  • yagryagr Veteran

    @lobster said:

    >

    How many of our battles are dead fish?

    How many aren't?

    Kundo[Deleted User]
  • lobsterlobster Veteran

    I find @yagr that our attention determines our being. Sometimes we are overwhelmed.

    However we have to swim in the 'living waters' as much as we can ...

    @Carameltail said:
    You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop

    Still I think there is some level of personal through the way we experience things. It is about the process.

    yagr
  • GuiGui Veteran
    edited July 2018

    Let go of the concept of knowing and realize you are the flow.

  • Personal is not a bad thing, and the universe is comprised of everything including “personal”. Just have to correctly differentiate between the two when it’s called for.

    David
  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran

    I just reread Call me by my True Names.

    Can't get more personal a universe than that.

    Still... Nobody left to blame.

    namarupa
  • RojehoRojeho CT Explorer

    What I have come to notice in my ever evolving awareness, is though I feel better and thrive in being alone, and have become very comfortable in my lonesomeness. It does not weaken my interactions with folks. I do like to engage, laugh, humor to me is the ability to share our commonality. In my interactions with people, most folks fill the voids in their lives with measure; they use other people as probes, be it someones misfortune to feel better about themselves, or someones success to feel worse about themselves. It's rare that your interactions with people doesn't work to serve these two objectives. On occasion you find a person, who like you, is within the midst of a search, and then you share with one another the spirit of your journey. Thanks, Peace.

    lobsterkando
  • I really liked the offensive video I posted earlier. I found nothing offensive in the video but the comments at the end seemed to come from an 'agenda' ...
    Still posted it as the perfect example of our perfectly flawed universe ... ;)

    ShoshinKundoDavid
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