Emptiness

For anyone lost in the unfamiliar verbiage, the general idea of Emptiness is that reality is a constantly shifting, evolving process in which everything influences everything else. The key point is that our minds, because of the way they are formed and the way they work, sort out conceptual structures for things and label those structures. Thus, I am seen as an animated body and labeled "man" even though this barely scratches the surface of what I am.

The usefulness of this is determined by what the observer considers as significant in the observation. There is, for instance, no practical reason to consider the dead cells lysing in my body, or the new cells forming, when trying to project my next move in heavy commuting traffic.

Emptiness, in the sense used here, can be considered to refer to the utterly conceptual nature of the structure created to represent me. I exist as a constantly changing process of physiological activities, mental processes, environmental influences and so on, but your mental image of me, which is the reality you interact with, is simply a snapshot of me from your point of view.

As children, we all saw things as bright and new and fascinating. Over time, we reduce our world to these mental snapshots and see things as repeated or bland or worn-out in a familiar kind of way. Yet the realities, upon which we based out models, continue to churn and evolve and grow, this way and that, depending upon the influences exerted on them. The reality changes, the snapshot model often does not keep up. Many traditions suggest it is beneficial to relearn to see the reality through the illusory models.

In a recent discussion on the way we see certain locations as sacred or special, the significance is that we do so because we build models of them that represent them so. The question I asked was whether all reality is sacred and we are the ones which build models that make some of it seem profane or ordinary. This captured my feelings of relativity around this subject.

My own thoughts are that sacredness and other labels are relative. Not insubstantial or without worth, but simply relative to individual perspective. Someone once said he could see the whole world in a grain of rice. Everything is sacred, of "ultimate importance", as James Livingston put it in Anatomy of the Sacred.

In the book The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, the lead character expresses an epiphany on this subject with the revelation that "there are no ordinary moments!" I've always liked that thought...:).

There are indeed no ordinary moments, nor any ordinary objects, places or happenings. Unless, of course, we choose to filter and label them so!

D