Scott Bradley
Is our perception of the world upside-down? Does our fellow blogger Ta-Wan actually live in the land up-over? Imagine yourself outside this solar system; is the north pole still up? If so, stand on your head or rotate the whole system 180 degrees; isn't it in fact just as easy to see the south as up? Not so easy? Why not?
It's on the left. My left or your left? Is my left your right and my right your left? How can left and right have any meaning? Only because I have a left and a right. Only because you have a left and a right. Talk about self-centeredness!
Isn't this precisely how we understand everything? Everything is boxed according to our perspective; we couldn't know anything otherwise. But do we really know anything at all? We ‘know’ what works for us; what more do we need?
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But if all space is curved, is there any such thing as a straight line? Only in our minds. Is the hypothetical more real than the actual? Idealism thinks so. Is the only other alternative to think not? What would it be like to break all polarities, to experience a third, non-polar way?
What if we could see our entire understanding of our being-in-the-world in the same way we might come to realize that our perception of the up and down of our solar system is really just a convenient fiction? What if we experienced it in our bones? Wouldn't that be something like 'enlightenment'?
You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.
would the 3rd way be polar to the bipolar way? isn't the middle way polar to the extreme? isn't enlightenment polar to the mundane? isn't the non-dual polar to the dual? aren't all 'other' ways polar to the 'common' ways? perhaps the only non dual way is just getting on and not questioning. but then if questions arise.. the non dual way is to answer them and not avoid them.. so the non dual path is to just be whatever is - without trying to be whatever is, or otherwise!
ReplyDeletefor the record, Australian maps often have Australia at top center. Feynman apparently kept himself awake at night wondering how to describe things to remote alien species - he never worked out how to describe "left". :-D