Welcome to my weekly blog, Friday
Feelings!
I have a feeling that discussing #
169 from our Insights Archive is going to be the most difficult blog of all - I'm
having difficulties explaining it to myself! J
As promised last week, here's the
complete couplet from the old Zen poem, The
Jewel Mirror Samadhi (the poem is
still chanted as a sutra in some Zen monasteries in Japan, I believe):
Like
gazing into a jewel mirror, form and reflection view one another;
You
are not your reflection, but your reflection is clearly you.
But
what does it mean?
Phew!... The monks understand it
intuitively, I'm sure; they don't have to put it into words.
In the past hundred years, however, quantum
physics has made it easier for us in the western world to understand the second
line. Oops! Sorry!...
I'll have to re-phrase that:
In the past hundred years, I am led to believe that quantum physics
can help us understand that second line. There's no way that I understand quantum physics, I just have to believe it, I have to believe the physicists; after all, every
physicist in the world says it's the most accurate science ever - even though
none of them has ever seen at atom!
According to quantum physics, the world
as we know it does not exist - it's just a fuzz of vibrations - until we
'collapse' it into existence, just by being our conscious selves. (Speaking of vibrations, by the
way, where/when does a vibration begin or end? J)
Quantum
entanglement states that there is no separation at all, in time or in space!
The physicists have been telling us for the
last hundred years that we are intimately connected with everything in
existence. And that we - and everything else in existence - are 99.999% empty
space. (I can hear those Zen monks chanting, Shunyata! 😊 )
But let's park that for now.
Three
million.
Think of that number for a moment.
3,000,000.
Think of three million children. Three
million children in a huge playground. Imagine the noise, the delight, the
fun, the shrill clamour of spontaneous joy and giddy excitement!
Currently, at least three million children die every year because they don't have food.
Sometimes, the headlines grab our attention for a while when they state that a child dies every ten seconds for lack of food, even there's more than enough food in the world to feed everybody.
So who or what is responsible for
this? Climate change and crop failures? Partially. The governments involved?
Partially. Greed, inequity, capitalism gone
mad? Partially. We ourselves, reading this blog? Partially.
But then, it's not necessarily about responsibility
for others; it's about responsibility
for ourselves. You see, one could
actually say that we ourselves are the
children.
"But I'm not the children!"
you respond, defensively. "I'm me!"
Of
course you are you. As you rightly say, You are not your reflection. Very true.
But your reflection is clearly you.
You
are also the children.
You are the mindless terrorist, you are
the hapless victim, you are the bereaved family, mourning the loss of your
loved one.
The 17th century English poet, John
Donne, wrote, 'Any man's death diminishes
me because I am involved in mankind...' He could equally have said, 'Any child's death diminishes me because,
even though I'm me, I and the child are one'.
We are not the children, of course. But the children are clearly us.
Even a recognition of this fact will help
create real change. You don't have to
do anything at all; you don't have to work with any of the large number of national
and international organisations addressing the never-ending problem of hunger
in an unjust world.
That's what Gandhi meant when he said Be the change...
You see, when you change, your reflection changes. And then everything changes.
Well, that's my feeling anyway.
What do YOU think?
