The Buddhist in me has always been attracted by this paragraph from the book Fields of Force by William Berkson.
“Helmholtz proved that once a vortex is put into a perfect fluid, it is eternal: there is no way the fluid's action alone could destroy it. William Thomson suggested that perhaps all atoms are vortex atoms. A vortex atom is something like a smoke ring in shape and behaviour, and it followed from Helmholtz's theorem that once such a vortex ring had been created, it could not be destroyed.”
From this we can reason that in addition to the vortex being eternal, so is the fluid from which it arises. Taking one more step in reasoning, this fluid or medium is made of what Buddhists who follow the Lankavatra Sutra refer to as Mind-only or the same pure Mind (cittamatra).
Given that we are fundamentally this Mind and the phenomenal world is its unlimited expression, all that we have to overcome is our blindness which binds us to the ever changing display of phenomena. Put another way, we have to overcome the illusion that the enlightened nature, or pure Mind, does not exist—which is no simple undertaking. (Especially for the materialist or physicalist, there is no pure spirit like Mind. All comes from matter.)
The only way to accomplish this realization is by, let us say, attending to the zero phase of phenomenality which again, I must say, is no simple undertaking. When our Mind links up with Mind which opens to us in the zero phase of phenomenality—wham! One instantly steps into the Buddha’s world. Our former world is recognized to be a continually moving and unfolding expression of absolute Mind (ekacitta) like waves are to water.
From this vantage point, whatever Mind perceives or experiences is really only itself just as the vortex is an expression of the eternal fluid.
This is perplexing.
Posted by: Mistaken Moon | May 20, 2012 at 11:51 AM