Not Knowing
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Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
The mind seems naturally disposed to latch on to things. Whether we really know something or not, it seems to offer some comfort to the mind to say its either this or its that.
Not knowing has a long tradition in Buddhism, but its also here in the west in terms of intellectual humility. I think the way of thinking known as Bayesian reasoning fits pretty well with the tradition of "not knowing". My basic understanding is that it tells us to think of things in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. In spectrums, rather than binaries. Having seen the evidence what is more likely? Then approaching the topic with that thought in mind, so if you judge something as 60/40 that's how you hold it in your mind, rather than the 60% being right and 40% being wrong.
It probably doesn't apply to all areas of life, matters of the heart seem to me to be more all or nothing. But the bird of the spiritual life needs two wings to fly wisdom and compassion.
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What you can truly know is what is being directly experienced in the moment. One of this is the experience of uncertainty!
Its true. The only thing we really ever know is what its like to be us right now. Maybe we're all deceived by Laplace's demon or we're all living in a simulated Matrix.
I think I'm referring more to our approach to knowing the external world. We may be 100% deceived about the world but what is our understanding of that perceived world and how do we contextualize and hold that knowledge?
I was paging through a book by Ramesh Balsekar the other day, a non-dual philosopher who holds that “consciousness is all there is”. It was an interesting concept to look at because if all is one, then where does all this definition in the real world come from? If it was really all One, would it not be more homogeneous?
That everything - from our bodies to our minds to our books to buildings to the natural world - is interrelated is clearly a fact, but there seems to be a very loose coupling between some pieces of that interrelated whole. Perhaps by observing the world around us we are also observing the mind of God.
That's basically Spinoza's Ethics in a nutshell.
Buddhism is, as is life, a process of ever growing, ever discovering, ever seeking; a process of continual change. When we stop seeking, we become complacent. When we stop discovering, we become stagnant. When we stop growing, we, like plants without water, wither away , leaving only our empty husks.
We are but a tiny part of all that is life. As we reach out to touch the stars, we are each a boundless universe and we are the stardust within the the vast universe we are exploring upon this, our Starship Earth.
It has often been said that all things are possible. From all the possibilities, what becomes manifest is up to each of us.
May we manifest Peace.
May we manifest Wisdom.
May we manifest Mercy.
May we manifest Compassion.
May we manifest True Joy.
And in all this, may we manifest our true unity with all life, with ourselves, with our Earth and all upon and within.
Peace to All
Not sure if this is right, but I like to think of the ordering of the universe like the temporary intricacy and beauty of adding cream to coffee. In the beginning, everything is homogenous and stable. For a brief moment, there is complexity, variety, motion. Then everything is homogenous and still again.
Life and all the 10,000 things exists in that transition state. In the time scale of the universe that brief moment may last billions of years.