Milestones

These ideas seem to be of fundamental importance:

1. The world “just is"

2. I am part of the world, see #1

3. Shit happens

These would seem so trivial and obvious, but the fact is that they do not play a part in the way most people see the world. To many, they are open for debate. To others, their flat denial forms a cornerstone of an entirely incompatible world view.

Virtually all religions challenge the fundamental reality of the world we perceive by adding some kind of mythical meta-world that his somehow more real than the one around us. For example, Heaven and Hell are added, or this world is considered to be a dream of Brama, or reality is considered an illusion to be overcome by years of rigorous training (or un-training) of the mind.

In common parlance, “religion” is a word we used for mythological frameworks that are not dead (yet). All mythological frameworks, both dead and alive, seek to “explain” the existence of the universe, rather than just accept it. Such “explanations” commonly accept the pre-existence of the meta-universe from which sprang the world we see (or seem to see). Of course, this leaves us wondering where that universe came from but we never seem to be comfortable with the fact that we are right back where we started, with a universe that “just is”. Even modern Cosmology drifts in this direction, seeking to “explain” the Big Bang. I’m one of those who considers such modern speculation as more akin to Theology than Science.

Being human, we drag time into this discussion and insist that whatever there is must have had a beginning or perhaps it’s always been here. This is a separate question and a distraction. We have no idea how long the entire “cosmos” has been here or whether we know enough about time itself to answer questions that may involve infinite amounts of it or parallel universes etc. The fact is, that what we know and what we must accept is that the universe is here now.  

Showing up in this world seems to be so amazing and incredibly improbable that it inspires as much myth-spinning as the first mystery. Where did I come from? Where will I wind up? Especially the Western religions tend to separate this mystery from the first, claiming that I “have” a soul that is not really part of the universe. My “soul” needs to be adorned with all kinds of implausible attributes, such as immortality and original sin. Such mythology is part of the tangled pattern of “explanations” for human experience, such as “why bad things happen to good people” — denial of the third principal above, that stuff just happens. The Universe does not care about human suffering or balancing the scales of human justice.

In fact, our existence requires no “explanation”. Like trees and galaxies, we just exist. If we want to take a larger view, we may say we exist because our ancestors existed too (a necessary but not sufficient cause). In the pursuit of a stupid question, we wind up with silly “answers”. Even evolution can be boiled down to the observation that “creatures who exist exist, creatures who fail to exist, fail to exist”.

In my own experience, it has taken the prodding of Zen to shake off all the claptrap that has been installed in my head as a result of Western “education”. It then took awhile before i could start looking around and actually feel the impact of these three principals. Reality actually looks very different once you see unfiltered by “explanations” or the need for “explanations”.

Once you “get” these three ideas — really see the world clearly, the Zen interpretation of events makes more sense. In Zen, things do not happen for a reason. Reasons are a human creation — an “explanation” for things that just exist. Explanations are always selective over-simplifications, made for a human purpose — a story - teller’s project. Most notably, this applies to events that “matter”, like death, destruction, good or bad fortune. Bad things happen to good people in just the way that sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t. People who love to say “there is a reason for everything that happens”, sometimes as the last vestige of a coherent mythology, are making the same mistake as the deniers of principals #1 and #2 above.

When people say to me that this is so totally obvious that it’s not worth discussing, I know that they really don’t get it. It’s like the huge volume of Zen writing that deals with the unimportance of human opinion. It really is pretty obvious, but it requires endless “explanation”.

In passing, there are some fundamental problems with logic and language here. For example, Descartes’ famous statement doesn’t really say much. “I think, therefore I am” is really just saying “hi” to the universe. There is no need to pile on the ability to reason (“therefore”) or even the need to think. Trees and even rock exist, unless, of course, you deny principal #1.

A better word for “Universe” is “Cosmos”, which is everything that exists, ever has existed and ever will exist. So Cosmos exists by definition. It’s makes little sense to say anything like The Cosmos Exists. It’s circular and nonsensical. 

In both cases, the Zen attitude (inherited from Taoism) is to step away from language and embrace the experience of reality. Shut up and enjoy the show.