If you think about life in terms of it's parts, and consider the atoms that move in and out of our bodies, with every breath we take- we are already submerging our self in the universe. Every breath sends our essence out into the universe. Pieces of us fall off all the time- we shed dna with every hair that falls out, with every skin flake, and the dna codes all of our information. You could say we are submerged in the universe with every tiny flake of skin we lose. Is it painful? Is it nihilistic? I don't feel it to be so. Do you find the possibility of being part of an endless path of energy and matter depressing? I don't think you do, and neither do I.
I am not at all sure the Buddhists got what Buddha was saying completely right. They are much nicer than most religious folk, but still, many of them are religious. I do not see that as necessary to Buddhism. I see that Buddhism can be a way to merely embrace whatever reality we eventually face- if we do come up against reality at some point in the cycle of our birth, life and death- or to face whatever it is we do come to experience. No other belief system seems so yielding, and pliant- agnosticism, of course, is very nice indeed. But Buddhism seems very close to that- at least in some of the texts, with it's embracing of all that can and will be known. Buddhism embraces the reality yet to be known- in order to do that, one must allow that not everything is known- this seems to me the central truth of agnosticism.
On another note I saw Sunshine today. It is a really marvelous movie. I can also highly recommend Duets (although it's not as good) and Bamboozled, by Spike Lee. |
