While doing some reading in my Child Psychology book, I discovered a passage that really speaks volumes about the western mind. It reads as follows: "Imagine how chaotic and unpredictable your life would be if you could not distinguish between yourself and your world. This is what the life of a newborn must be like, according to Piaget. There is no differentiation between the self and the world; objects have no separate, permanent existence". "Holy cow!" I thought to my self. "What is wrong with these people? I have been trying to achieve that very state of mind for the last 6 years!" It would seem, according to Piaget, that babies are in fact little Buddhas! What a superb example of Buddha-dhātu from one of the greatest minds of the last century. Recently, I read an article that was talking about how Adam and Eve did not eat from the tree of knowledge. It was instead the tree of conscious awareness that bore the forbidden fruit. It was only after becoming aware of the self that Adam and Eve saw themselves as naked. It was only after believing that they were somehow different, or separate from the natural world that mankind was separated from God. Now, I am certainly not a creationist, but the metaphors in the creation story, when interpreted from a less human speciesist perspective truly make sense. Instead of knowledge, all we gained from that fruit was ignorance. In becoming aware of our self, we became less aware of our part in this vast universe. In doing so, mankind truly lost touch with God, or whatever you would like to label it. There is no denying that we are not separate from our environment. Not just the environment of Ohio, or Europe, or this planet; we are part of a universal environment and what we think of as our individual existence is dependent, as such. That newborn child does not exist in a world of chaos, it exists in a world of absolute bliss. Perhaps that explains why Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven". Also read this, this morning: The Jesuit priest Father Robert Kennedy, who is also a Zen teacher, uses zazen to cultivate a state of deep silence in those present before performing mass. A Zen student who attended an interfaith retreat with him was heard to ask afterward: "I have a much better feeling now for Christianity, but one thing I still can;t fathom is the doctrine of Orginal Sin. I mean, how can it be that at the moment we come in to the world we are already sinful?" "Would it help you to understand it better," replied Father Kennedy, "if we called it Orginal Suffering?" ~ How Original Can You Get? One Bird, One Stone. 108 Zen Stories - Sean Murphy
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 20:38:34 +0000
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