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personal universe
lobster
Crusty Veteran
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 ...
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Comments
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
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.
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?
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 ...
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!
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.....
"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.
(T1918.573b20, from a sermon spoken by Venerable Zhìyǐ analyzing cittamātravāda views)
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.
I seem to disagree a little bit with the idea that struggle is unnatural. Then again, I would disagree with the idea that anything is unnatural.
I think Nagarjuna would say the truth is both of these working together.
When I think of an impersonal universe I take us out of the equation. Although we are intricate to the wholeness, we can hardly be held accountable for the universal flow in which we find ourselves. We can take responsibility for our actions but when the fruit doesn't turn out the way we expect we can hardly blame some "other" for the way things go.
Everything can be of use but for which use is rage when the focal point can only be everything we hold dear?
When we let go of everything, we let go of any rage but when letting go of letting go so as not to be irresponsible with thoughts and actions, it is easy for everything to rebecome dear.
To find the Middle Way between letting go and clinging seems to be only caring and not at all trying to control or possess.
Easier to do with the people I care about than the fruit of my actions.
Nurse a bird back to health to see it fly into a building... To transform that sadness into something other than rage at the universal flow is sometimes hard for me. If I could smile in the face of such a turn of events without caring any less I would be ready.
For what, I have no idea.
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.
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
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.
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How many aren't?
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 ...
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.
I just reread Call me by my True Names.
Can't get more personal a universe than that.
Still... Nobody left to blame.
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.
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 ...