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is dark matter emptiness etc......
chanratt
Veteran
is dark matter the same stuff as we call emptiness. Truth Seeker started a excellent thread in this very forum entitled Emptiness and it has got me thinking. Is the empty part of the atom dark matter-emptiness?
another question....i get the 'everything is made of the same stuff' point of view, but what i cant wrap my head around is when buddhism talks of us being the same as the sound we hear or the wind in our face. I can see us being the same as a rock because it is made of atoms etc, but sound waves etc?
another question....i get the 'everything is made of the same stuff' point of view, but what i cant wrap my head around is when buddhism talks of us being the same as the sound we hear or the wind in our face. I can see us being the same as a rock because it is made of atoms etc, but sound waves etc?
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empty of self. (intrinsic emptiness)
empty of other. (extrinsic emptiness)
The concept of emptiness is an antidote to seeing independently existing entities. The concept of emptiness is used to refer to the subjective pole of awarenesss. The concept of emptiness is used in different ways.
Emptiness is not some mysterious cosmic essence. The "Tao of Physics" style drawing of parallels with "the cosmic void" misses the point... and is overplayed.
Traditionally everything, including us, is made up of the 4 primary elements and their derivatives. So for example the wind in our bodies ( eg breathing and flatulence:o ) is just the same as the wind which makes the trees move about. Sounds waves are just vibrations in air molecules.
P
Through meditation we come to see that the self that we hold onto so tightly is nothing more than a name. It is something we attribute to certain physical and mental factors, but has no existence apart or above these factors. It is only a concept we hold when these factors come together. When we truly see this there is no separation between us and our experience. The sense of separation between observer and observed is lost. This is what is meant when Buddhists (usually Zen Buddhists) use such phrases as becoming the sound.
Just like Schrodinger's Cat, no finite state actually exists until it has been observed. The existence of observation is everything.
p.s., jinzang, I really like the rainbow example.
Tom, the notion of the Earth being flat or curved is quite different than that of the universe being flat or curved. Dealing with the Earth, flat literally means flat like a piece of paper, and curved literally means curved like the surface of a ball. When discussing the curvature of space, it's not a debate about whether - "viewed from outside" the universe - it looks like a ball or a piece of paper. It's that space, itself, is curved.
To think about this, imagine space as having 3-D grid lines, so you could see how far apart one point in space was from another. Locally, of course, these lines would appear straight, but if you were to "zoom out", so to speak, curved-ness implies that the lines would diverge (or, however unlikely, converge).
A great way of visualizing this concept is by looking at a flat, rectangular map of the world. Perhaps you might notice that Greenland appears huge on these maps, but that is simply a consequence of the stretching of the dimensions when translating the surface of a sphere to a rectangle. The curving of space works essentially in the reverse fashion. Instead of the illusion that space becomes stretched from a curved surface, and put onto a flat one (as with the map-globe analogy), the illusion is that space is flat all around us while the reality is that there is much more surface, or space, in all outward directions.
This is what is called hyperbolic space. M.C. Escher brilliantly conceived of this in a number of woodcuts such as the one below:
All of these flying fish are exactly the same size in hyperbolic geometry, though they appear to get smaller and smaller toward the edge of this circle. The space depicted here is actually infinitely large, yet the circle we see in this representation technically has no real boundary; instead, because of this curved spatial geometry, everything shrinks down to the point of becoming infinitely small to the point that the objects cease to extend out any farther from our center viewpoint. However, if we were to move about in this space, skipping down a few "rows" of fish, we would see the exact same picture because of the very fact that the fish are actually the same size.
Mathematically, hyperbolic spatial geometry is equivalent to a negative-radius sphere: a sort of inverse of the positive-radius spheres which we know and love.
But if that's more than you really wanted to know, I sincerely apologize; I suppose I'm prone to a bit of scientific rambling from time-to-time.
BB
However, as much as this is a fantastic description it is missing my simple point in a way. I was merely stating that as we advance technologically and intellectually, science does too. Obviously we know things today that are a fact, but if you look back in time science does keep correcting itself. It is VERY interesting in my opinion how scientists are staying things in modern times that correlate so much with certain teachings od buddhism
Tom
Okay, now I'm curious, what talent is that??
... But back to the topic ... Great point. IMO, this is the most wonderful thing about science; that despite any predetermined internal or external belief or influence, proven fact and logic trumps all else. Where flip-flopping is considered political suicide, self-correction is really the crux of the scientific experience. I'm not sure who said this, but I love this quote: "When the facts change, I change my mind. Pray tell, what do you do, sir?"
I believe science and Buddhism are two different roads toward ultimate reality - with the pureness of mathematics as the tool of the former, and the pervasiveness of meditation as a tool of the latter. It is said that Plato believed in two fundamental absolutes, the Good and the Beautiful. Where those two ideals converge, the Truth resides. It is truly wonderful that a species as minuscule as ourselves - but a speck of dust on the infinite table of the universe - is able to conceive of such an ideal; and even, daresay, miraculous that there exist these two means of catching a glimpse of it.
BB
I think that mathmatics could lead to great places of understanding, the advances in quantum physics are truly intriguing to me, even as a lay peron who has little understanding of the subject. But tools used in science which are not mathamatics are created by humans and therefore I think cannot measure or observe true reality. It only ever throws up delusion in my opinion..
Anyway, back to topic yes
Response: Whatever it is that you're thinking, that's not it".
My 2 cents on emptiness is that we're always experiencing emptiness, because we're always experiencing things that are not emptiness. Some guy (Alan Watts, maybe?)
said "Nothing is that which brings something into focus". I think it's right in front of us, but we don't always notice it because it's almost too close to us.
A wave is energy that is in constant motion, and thus constantly changing in both it's nature and form. For example, a wave in the sea is composed of moving water, but if the wave hits a cliff it becomes a wave of sound in the rock and air. Maybe people compare a wave to a person's mind because the mind is also in a state of constant flux, never the same thing from moment to moment, but like a wave in the sea it has the illusion of being a distinct object.
Or maybe not.
I've been trying to wrap my head around emptyness too. I think, from what I've read, emptyness refers to an objects inherent lack of permanence and identity. Like, if you have an oak tree we know it grew from an acorn, but it is an acorn no longer, it has been a sapling but isn't one anymore, at some times of year it is a tree with leaves, at others it is only branches. And one day it will no longer be a tree, it will be a dead trunk that is a birds nest or a telephone pylon, or a ship's hull. The "tree" is only the name we gave to one stage in a process.
Or again, maybe not. I think sometimes I think too much.
My all time favorite quote regarding science is from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
@ buddhakai, This thread is 4 years old, and no longer frequented. You may like to begin a new thread in general Banter on quotes unrelated to Buddhism...
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Nice to meet you.