I review Buddha’s Four Noble Truth every day during the headstand. Doing this daily reminds me of the pitfalls I need to be mindful of… and occasionally deeper insight strikes. This morning I was pondering his First Truth, “Birth is sorrowful, growth is sorrowful, illness is sorrowful, and death is sorrowful. Sad it is to be joined with that which we do not like. Sadder still is the separation from that which we love, and painful is the craving for that which cannot be obtained”. I’ve long known that all living creatures experience this push pull tension one way or another, depending on their sentient makeup. This morning I wondered how supposedly non-sentient things like molecules and atoms fit into this picture. After all, every material thing is made up of these.
Wow! Of course! The sorrow causing tension living things feel is simply an emergent property of the push pull tension playing out at the atomic and subatomic level. (See Tao as Emergent Property, p.121.) The beauty of nature for me lies in how utterly efficient nature is. Nature wastes nothing—uses everything in multiple and often incomprehensible ways. Chapter 27 hints at this tangentially and at a deeper level…Always adept at helping people because he discards no one. Always adept at helping things because he discards nothing. Here, simply replace “he” with “she”… Mother Nature.
Of course, one reason much of nature’s workings is beyond our understanding is because our minds are utterly clogged up with ‘common sense’, and ‘common sense’ often misleads us terribly, i.e., the Bio-Hoodwink (p.11, 100). Thus, it can really help to consider this deeper relationship underpinning the life sorrow we feel. Notice, for example, how the pain and ensuing sorrow we experience is directly related to the attractions (need) or repulsions (fear) we experience—or more simply, what we like and dislike. Realizing the profound sameness between that personal experience and that of molecules and atoms can help one rise nearly beyond oneself… as chapter 16 ends…