Enlightenment - that magnificent escape from anguish and ignorance - never happens by accident. It results from the brave and sometimes lonely battle of one person against his own weaknesses.
Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano
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Hello Kate
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The older I get and the more I try to grasp and understand the things that are the most important to me, the more I realize that they are easily within my reach. So then why is it I don't have universal wisdom safely tucked into my back pack?
Nyanasobhano, who is an American born, Dartmouth educated, former actor, Buddhist, says it is because of my weaknesses. I ponder that and I can't identify my weakness itself, but I can see the effects of it. Principally it is the common human desire to find easy explanations for things, to try to accept things as they only appear to be, to avoid the fearful task of looking for the reality behind the masquerade. Nyanasobhano implies in his writings that if we really understood the Nature that we take for granted we could find a universe of peace and beauty hiding there. But, in fact, it isn't hiding. It is just that we have put up veils in front of it.
It was veils that hid from the Israelites the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle and allowed only the high priest to enter.
It was a veil that hid the face of Moses from his followers because his skin shown from his own understanding of truth and reality. And it frightened them.
Veils hide the faces of beautiful Arab women, and it was veils that Salome cast off of herself when she danced for Herod.
It was the veil of the Temple that was torn in half when Jesus was crucified.
What's with these veils?
A veil is nothing, it has no power, no intelligence. It's just used to hide things. We all have our own veils. What we see, hear, feel, etc., the senses are our veils. The geologist is staring at a chunk of moon rock. Is it just a rock, or is it a path, a journey to knowledge and then to understanding and maybe then to wisdom, enlightenment? A man can make a silly, ugly noise vibrating his lips together. But when he does it into the mouth piece of a horn out the other end comes a beautiful tone. What is that tone? What does it mean in the overall cosmic scheme of things? Is it just a tone, or is it a journey? Is Nature explaining it's true self to us in a language we can't understand because we don't look past what we think it is?
My ignorance resides in my avoiding the brave and lonely battle with my weakness, with my failure to look beyond the veil, to dare, to question, to imagine, even to plead for the real truth of things.
DB - The Original Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Autumn is moving along.
Only 5 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answers.
DB
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Showing posts with label moon rock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moon rock. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Quantity Quest 7/09/09
Healthy is the conflict between the limits of our understanding and the need to gain more.
DB - The Vagabond
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Come with me.
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One day, some years ago, I went into the Museum of Natural History on West 79th Street in New York City, a place I enjoyed visiting frequently since I was a boy. On that day, just inside the door, there was a table draped in black cloth with two armed guards next to it. On the table was a box made out of bullet proof glass on all four sides and the top. Inside the box there was a pedestal. On the pedestal was a small tripod. And sitting on the tripod was an object about the size of the end of your thumb. It was well lit from all directions. It sparkled innocently.
What was it? A fabulously valuable diamond? The key to paradise? A winning lottery ticket?
It was none of those, or all of those. It was a gift to the Museum from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was a piece of the precious cargo brought back to earth by the Apollo 11 astronauts.
MOON ROCK
I stared at that wee pebble for quite a while. "It's just a rock. What's the big deal?" Imagine what Socrates, Copernicus or Galileo would say if they could have looked that stone in the eye. They could tell you what the big deal is.
NASA has a TV program about the Apollo 11 mission which they show occasionally on their TV channel. In it there's a picture of a scientist studying a moon rock. Is he a geologist, a chemist, a physicist? Seeing that picture I hear the rumblings of centuries of scientific curiosity, investigation and discovery. I hear the silent high tide waves of everything that scientist knows as he peers in awe at a bit of the universe he has never seen before and ponders it's secrets.
We can never understand enough. How exciting it is to discover some new knowledge, to have the freedom to discover. There are those who would clamp down a lid on investigation and innovation. We may even do that ourselves. What a shame.
But as long as we exist we will walk on the starscapes of the mind, pick up the rocks and discover their secrets. We have only just begun.
DB
______________________
May joy fall on your head.
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DB - The Vagabond
----------------------
Come with me.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
One day, some years ago, I went into the Museum of Natural History on West 79th Street in New York City, a place I enjoyed visiting frequently since I was a boy. On that day, just inside the door, there was a table draped in black cloth with two armed guards next to it. On the table was a box made out of bullet proof glass on all four sides and the top. Inside the box there was a pedestal. On the pedestal was a small tripod. And sitting on the tripod was an object about the size of the end of your thumb. It was well lit from all directions. It sparkled innocently.
What was it? A fabulously valuable diamond? The key to paradise? A winning lottery ticket?
It was none of those, or all of those. It was a gift to the Museum from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was a piece of the precious cargo brought back to earth by the Apollo 11 astronauts.
MOON ROCK
I stared at that wee pebble for quite a while. "It's just a rock. What's the big deal?" Imagine what Socrates, Copernicus or Galileo would say if they could have looked that stone in the eye. They could tell you what the big deal is.
NASA has a TV program about the Apollo 11 mission which they show occasionally on their TV channel. In it there's a picture of a scientist studying a moon rock. Is he a geologist, a chemist, a physicist? Seeing that picture I hear the rumblings of centuries of scientific curiosity, investigation and discovery. I hear the silent high tide waves of everything that scientist knows as he peers in awe at a bit of the universe he has never seen before and ponders it's secrets.
We can never understand enough. How exciting it is to discover some new knowledge, to have the freedom to discover. There are those who would clamp down a lid on investigation and innovation. We may even do that ourselves. What a shame.
But as long as we exist we will walk on the starscapes of the mind, pick up the rocks and discover their secrets. We have only just begun.
DB
______________________
May joy fall on your head.
*************************
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