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Chaos is the only Truth
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Saw on someone's rucksack this message:
“Chaos is the only Truth”
Made me laugh. It is a truth ... but not the only one.
Probably the closest to it in dharma is Zen in principle, some practice but under strict discipline. A similar approach to Chaos Magick.
https://buddhistanarchism.wordpress.com/category/anarcho-buddhism/
Most of us before enlightenment are chaotic creatures and order or a disciplined/meaningful approach is a requirement.
What part of the order <> chaos spectrum are you on?
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"Chaos 'is' the only Truth" and according to the Dharma the times they are a changing...So if one wants 'order' it's best to go with the flow of change chaos
Chaos is only chaotic to those who don't understand. There is always a root, a reason, for everything. The only chaos exists in our minds as we try to grasp things on a surface level, getting bashed by waves. When the answer usually lies in diving into the depths where the calm exists.
Ordaos! Some order, some chaos and some I Don't Know!
Thanks everyone,
Just realised I had inadvertently, Freudian slip style, posted in the first pic a fish. Tsk, tsk, old subconscious habits/patterns die hard ...
I feel this spectrum has a myriad overlay of song notes. In other words it is a feeling of inclusion ... A matrix of potential and expansion ... an emptying of fullness ...
chaos <> order
awareness <> Nirvana
practice <> practical
So we contain elements aligning to practical practice, eventually encompassing our whole being. We may be sentient but does a Zen carrot stick to the same awareness of Buddha Nature we do ...
Are we a leaf carried by a stream or more as @wojciech alludes to ...
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
<> Walt Whitman <>
Chaos is reality's answer to our pointless grasping for a meaning, for a sense.
As we learn to accept things as they come and drop the questions, we stay poised and unruffled in the eye of the storm.
And the ceaseless whirling around us will not look like chaos anymore, but just background noise.
I think chaos only seems that way when we don't understand the cycles. This is because that was and every effect has a cause.
We call it chaos because it is unpredictable but it is unpredictable because of uncertainty, not for a lack of order. Too many things we can't account for and don't know about.
Think of the Butterfly effect. That's a theory based on chaos but if we understood all the steps between a butterfly flapping it's wings and the hurricane, it would make sense and not seem chaotic at all.
My friend once told me that the universe goes from chaos to order and from order to chaos. I said "Wouldn't that be order then?"
Nietzsche's famous apollonian and dyonisian theory in art, that also translates to our macrolife.
A succession of apparent chaos and order, classical and baroque cycles...
Principal to Emo - "Emo, Emo, Emo..."
Emo to Principal - "I'm the one in the Middle, you drunken slob!"
No, but in all honesty I'd have to side with order because I don't believe in chaos. The only opposite to order is no order but there is order.
If this was not the case there would be no logical path to the cessation of suffering.
Tread mindfully around those that truly believe the proclamation "Chaos is the only truth" because the logic of morality truly escapes them.
Simply incompatible with the wisdom of interconnectivity.
Don’t we all believe in causes for what happens? It’s rather fundamental in Buddhism.
In science entropy (disorder) is related to the number of ways in which energy is expressed in a system.
From a scientific perspective there could be zero entropy in a system that has zero temperature (no vibration etc) and ordered as a crystal or such.
And then as the temperature and structural complexity increases there are more ways to express energy (vibrate, rotate, move and collide etc). The entropy of a system is the natural log of the number of states the system can express energy. So the zero temperature crystal has exactly 1 state and natural log of 1 is zero.
@Kerome, of course, that is why I said there is always a root, or a reason, for everything that happens. Just because we see it as chaotic doesn't mean it is.
Buddhism teaches impermanence. Which to us often appears as chaos.
And Buddhism teaches that the solution is to open to and relax into this:
“Everything is always changing. If you relax into this truth, that is Enlightenment. If you resist, this is samsara (suffering).”
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, “What Makes You (Not) a Buddhist”
Ah that it was that easy to actually do.
Hi @Jeffrey
Is that zero entropy crystal a hypothetical one or is it possible for something with zero entropy to actually exist? My own scientific knowledge is hit and miss, so I was under the impression that zero state objects are effectively impossible, some movement always remains. Maybe that's what you're saying but I don't know myself so I'm wondering if maybe it is possible?
@FoibleFull, how do you equate impermanence with chaos? Personally, it doesn't appear that way to me at all....
I'm fairly ignorant to this and it's been a long time but I think the closest we can get to zero is to infinitely approach zero. Which would mean to me that no matter how close it gets, it will never reach zero, not that it eventually will.
I'm not sure if memory serves me well here but I don't think we could possibly find the smallest of the small without finding the biggest of the big. That is, I don't think zero is possible.
1, 2, 3, 4...
1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4...
We can theoretically have zero apples but we can't have zero period because we know there are apples so there has always been the potential for apples.
If there was ever a "time" with no potential for apples, there would be no apples today.
Sorry, I'm just letting the monkey take over today. On purpose though.
@person it's a hypothetical but of enough importance to be the third law of thermodynamics.
The reason it is important is that in theory there could be a 'zero' point to entropy (entropy is S). That is in contrast to enthalpy (enthalpy is H) where it is always relative between final and initial state.* As a chemist focus person I think of enthalpy as related to strong or weak bonds. If you form strong bonds from weak then you release energy as in when a fuel combusts. But with enthalpy it is relative and there is no zero point to enthalpy.
But entropy there is a zero point and it's a big enough deal to be the third law of thermodynamics.
The first law of thermodynamics is that the energy in the internal energy in the universe (i think and internal energy is U) remains constant so if I ball drops losing potential energy then the energy doesn't disappear rather it turns into kinetic energy of motion of ball and then heat when it heats up the floor and the ball.
The second law of thermodynamics is that the change in entropy of universe (system plus surroundings) is always greater than zero for a spontaneous (happens in nature). For those spontaneous a 'system' could lose entropy but release heat to surroundings and the heating increases surroundings entropy and many other permutations to have change in entropy (S) of universe greater than zero.
*I think both enthalpy H and internal energy U both are relative and have no meaning to a 'zero point'.
@Jeffrey the third law states that the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero is exactly equal to zero but that has never been actually reached. So while it is theoretically possible, that possibility is set as a marker and so far it is impossible in realizable systems to have zero entropy.
There is always some residual motion. It's one of those cases where the math doesn't exactly match the reality as "absolute zero" has never actually shown zero entropy and it isn't expected to outside of theory.
I'm not the one saying that chaos is the only truth. But I can see how, if someone seeks predictability and permanence out of life, the universe might appear to be chaotic to them.
I side with order, based on the principle of this-that conditionality. When this, that; when not this, not that. Phenomena appear chaotic, because they arise in a nonlinear, interdependent fashion, unfathomable in their collective immensity. But order underlies the apparent chaos, and snipping a thread can unravel the whole web. For example, craving arises interdependent on feeling. Avoiding entanglement in feeling, snips the strand of craving, unraveling the web. But the falling away of order isn't chaos; it's Unbinding, the clearing away of the conditioned to reveal the Unconditioned, the phenomenon beyond the order of this-that conditionality.
Well, as the old zen adagio goes:
If you understand, things are just as they are.
If you do not understand, things are just as they are....
Whenever the issue of entropy comes up, I remember the quip of Sally, one of the characters in Woody Allen's film "Husbands and Wives:"
Conditions rather than causes. But of course all conditions are transient, so there is inevitably uncertainty.