Hello,
Welcome to Luminous.
Meditation Aid the reality of the world.
In our previous meditations.
We recognized our essential nature of simply being.
We discovered the nature of being is peace and happiness.
And we recognized that we share our being.
With all people and animals.
In this meditation.
I will suggest that we not only share our being with all people and animals,
But also with all things.
In other words.
Consider the possibility that there is a single,
Infinite and indivisible whole,
Or totality,
From which not only every one,
But everything derives its apparently independent existence.
Ultimately.
This one reality cannot be named.
Because all words have evolved to describe its separate parts.
However.
As a concession to our desire to explore and speak of these matters,
We may refer to it as consciousness,
Awareness,
Being,
Spirit or love.
The religious traditions refer to it as God.
Spirit.
The DAO.
Allah,
The Buddha,
And so on.
In order to understand that everything that exists shares its being.
Let us consider the meaning of the word existence.
Existence comes from two Latin words,
Ex meaning from or out of.
And systere,
Meaning to stand.
Thus the word existence implies that anything that exists,
A thought,
A body,
A tree,
An atom,
A planet,
Anything at all.
Stands out.
Stands out from what.
From the background of pure being.
Being is the common background.
Within which everything arises.
In which everything exists.
And into which everything vanishes.
Anything that exists.
Has a name and a form.
Universal Being is nameless and formless.
Being is in the same relationship to all existent things.
As a screen is to a movie.
Just as the screen never appears as an object in the movie.
Although it is its background reality.
So being.
Never appears as an object that exists.
But is the reality of all objects.
It is that within which everything emerges and exists.
And of which everything is an appearance.
As such,
Being cannot be seen.
And yet everything we see is its appearance.
Being is felt inside each of us as our essential sense of ourself.
It is the amness of ourself.
The feeling of I.
The same being is experienced in the world as the Is-ness of all things.
We have been conditioned to believe.
That the being we essentially are on the inside.
Is separate from not only the being of all other people and animals.
But also of all things.
The essential understanding contained and expressed in all the great wisdom traditions,
Suggests that we share our being not only with everyone but with everything.
The recognition that we share our being with all people and animals.
Is the experience we refer to as love.
The recognition that we share our being with all things.
Is the experience of beauty.
That's beauty.
Is never the property of an object.
It is the felt sense.
That at the deepest level.
What we essentially are.
And what the object essentially is.
Are the same.
It is the experience of oneness.
A beautiful object.
Is one that has the capacity to collapse the distinction.
Between ourself and the object.
The knower and the known.
It has the power to reveal our shared being.
For many people nature has this capacity.
It has the capacity to soften the feeling of separation.
And restore the felt sense of oneness with all things.
A work of art is also an object that has the capacity to either expand or dissolve the apparent distinction between the perceiver and the perceived.
And thus reveal our shared essence.
In the painter Paul Cézanne's words.
The purpose of art is to give us a taste of nature's eternity.
That is,
To give us a taste.
Of that which lies ever-present behind and within the changing face of nature.
Before you know anything about a particular object.
Feel that it simply is.
Feel that it's essential being.
Is your essential being.
Being is one.
Although its appearances are many.
Just as numerous characters and objects in a movie appear on a single screen.
And just as the distinction between the objects and characters in a movie.
Do not divide the screen into separate parts.
So the apparent multiplicity and diversity of people,
Animals,
And things.
Do not fragment or divide beings.
Being is one.
Indivisible.
Complete.
Being in its purest form.
Is experienced as peace and happiness on the inside.
And as love and beauty on the outside.
Nothing is ever added to being.
Or removed from being.
Only its names and forms change.
In the Bhagavad Gita it says.
That which is never ceases to be.
That which is not.
Never comes into existence.
Being eternally is.
No object or self ever comes into existence with its own independent reality.
In other words,
Ultimately.
Nothing that is no thing exists.
Everyone and everything borrows its apparently independent existence.
From that which alone truly is.
Eternal,
Infinite being.
This is not a nihilistic statement.
Or a denial of the world.
On the country.
It is an upgrading of the world.
It redeems the world from the belief that it is just a collection of meaningless,
Unrelated fragments.
Made out of dead,
Inert matter.
It restores the world.
In the filmmaker Pasolini's words,
To its original sacred significance.
The world as it appears to us is an illusion.
However,
This does not imply that it is not real.
It simply implies that it is not what it appears to be.
What does it appear to be?
A multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves.
Each with their own independent existence.
Separate from us.
Separate from one another.
And separate from the ultimate reality of the universe.
Sorrow on the inside.
Conflict on the outside.
And the degradation of the environment.
Are an inevitable consequence of disbelief.
What is the world really?
The appearance of the same single,
Infinite and indivisible whole or reality that we essentially are.
Whose nature is being.
Consciousness.
Spirit.
