A question not often though about but can perplex even the most skilled thinkers in philosophy. I would typically ask this question to people who feel down, meaning those who indulge in suffering, bathe in self torture and those who turn a blind eye to the miracles of life. What would you answer? People that consider them selves happy will still feel a atomic retch when someone mentions mortality. The fear of the unknown, the certainty that we cannot fathom causes our egos to fire up and then find a means to control what is within our power. It is important to understand however that when we try to control the world around us, it is paradoxical as we truthfully lose grip of the one method of control we do have. The absolute truth of reality. The control of the ego will cut your reality with a sword into tiny pieces so our brains can make more sense, whilst conceptually labeling the combination of wood assorted in a particular way a table has many benefits, it helps us communicate, it is also important to understand really what that table really is.
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It once was a seed, partnered by water that rose from the seas and valleys to the sky, persuaded by gravity to fall upon that area of soil that contains the seed. The seed then grew into a sapling, its thirst grew stronger and with its biological methods was able to seal its companionship with the sun. Years pass of the truest friendship, unconditional love, nothing but nurture. Now standing as a great tall tree, wood as sturdy as its deep roots. A human with an interest to then use that wood, used a means of cutting it down with whatever tools that were present in his life, that wood then became more refined with more tools which share the same journey. Then the human would construct the wood in a particular framework, one that can with stand pressures of the habits that wish to help the maker in the pursuit of convenience. We then name that such construction a table. But what is it absolutely? My words point in the direction of what it truly is but we cannot word the entire process of the interconnected nature of everything, so you must watch the ‘table’ in silence with the understanding that it is more than just the label you gave it.
Now apply the same methods of understanding to yourself. Are you your name, your body, your thoughts, your clothes? You’re none of these things truthfully, relatively yes of course those things may all be yours but think of yourself the way you think of the wood, as an unattainable boundless assortment of matter derived from every act of change that the universe has ever felt. We cannot comprehend the extensive magnitude of where everything came from nor how to control it, but you can experience the unknowing. As you can vividly imagine an image in your head, you can experience reality without your eyes and without thought. That is where you lay, the constant in your life that continues to live, you cannot derive a true self based upon memories your mind chooses to remember or forget, that is a delusion. The source of your awareness, your experience itself is what we all are. Ask yourself this; How are you aware you’re reading these words? Now, who is watching the thoughts and listening to the voice in your head? Breathe, understand and watch your concoction of matter that makes up your body and mind that then tries to conceptualize the world move and fluctuate.
You are what makes you want to live, your mind will try to cut down your experience and dull its sharp point. Whilst it is a great tool and we should use it to find harmony with our body, earth and the cosmos. It is experience itself that is the life force that wants you to live, because it does not know destruction, experience knows only how to keep experiencing, this is why the water droplet that helped the seed is a perfect example of the true non-egoic nature of everything continues to live.
You know only how to live but we delude ourselves with the egoic minds ways of trying to control a uncontrollable reality, an inevitable fate. Look and feel beyond labels and your delusion will begin to subside. The water droplet never dies and neither do you, as you’re made of the same thing. Experience.
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Green Dharma 