Meanwhile, the mind-body split still seems to persist. Prominent modern pundits and spiritual adepts still proclaim that we are born through a spiritual medium as opposed to a physical one, and they insist that our essence has nothing to do with flesh and bones.
But what if both matter and spirit are necessary for our existence? Perhaps they are as inseparable as space and time (space-time), and both are necessary for our soul or consciousness to manifest. Maybe we could think of ourselves as spirit-matter.
And what if we come to believe that our essential identity lives and dies along with our physical body? How might that alter our behavior or our understanding of the value of this life? Without fear of our next-life, would we all lose interest in enlightenment, or run amok, as some eminent Buddhist teachers warn?
I agree that consciousness is a marvel, but for now I don't know, and don't think I can know of consciousness from any perspective or in any context except inside of this body and nervous system. I know that it isn't "my" consciousness, but that doesn't mean it is independent of living protoplasm.
If I could only believe that my "essence" is not tied to this rotting flesh, then I might lose my fear of death. On the other hand, perhaps what I should really be afraid of is another life.
Sub-Atomic Physics
I read in some Buddhist literature (probably the Abhidharma) that the Buddha experienced things changing millions of times in the blink of an eye. (Did he slow down his mind enough to count the changes?)
Meanwhile, inside the subatomic world we find evidence of an impermanence that is so impermanent it makes our ordinary reality seem frozen in time. Way down inside of everything, where the quarks are doing a line-dance inside of an electron, events are occurring in increments far shorter than the blink of an eye (considered to be one 10th of a second). In the subatomic world, time is sometimes measured in what scientists have named "atto-seconds" -- a millionth of a trillionth of a second. It takes an electron about an atto-second to travel all the way around a proton.
Meanwhile, inside the proton, perhaps one level deeper into reality, an attosecond would be regarded as a long nap. Down here time is measured in zepto-seconds -- a billionth of a trillionth of a second. Before you can even blink -- Zepto! -- it's gone.
I think at some point the physicists realized that they had entered a Marx Brothers' routine, where the jokes are coming so fast you begin to see that it's all a joke. So when they started to measure things changing even faster -- in trillionths of a trillionth of a second -- they named it a "yocto-second." Atto, zepto, and yockto. "Hello, I must be going."
By the way, the time it takes for a quark to go around a proton is somewhere between a zeptosecond and a yocktosecond.
All you can do is smile, and let go.
Excerpted with permission from Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! (Stone Bridge Press,) © 2008 Wes Nisker.
Wes "Scoop" Nisker is an author, radio commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher, and performer. His most recent book is entitled Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! (Stonebridge Press). Other titles include The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), the newly edited version of his national bestseller, Essential Crazy Wisdom (Ten Speed Press, 2001), and Buddha's Nature (Bantam, 1999). Mr. Nisker is also the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind.
Mr. Nisker has studied Buddhist meditation for over three decades with teachers in Asia and America, and for the past twenty years has been leading his own retreats and workshops in Buddhist insight meditation and philosophy at venues internationally. He is an affiliate teacher at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, and does regular workshops at Esalen Institute and other venues. Visit his homepage: http://www.wesnisker.com
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