All

All living beings —whether born from eggs,

from the womb, from division, or spontaneously;

whether they have form or do not have form;

whether they are aware or unaware,

whether they are not aware or not unaware—

eventually, I will lead all living beings to the final Nirvana,

the true ending of the cycle of birth and death.

And when all these living beings, in their unfathomable,

infinite number, have all been liberated,

in truth, not even a single being has actually been liberated.

—Buddha Shakyamuni, Diamond Sutra

No Power To Cleanse

Better than the slaughtering of animals is the sacrifice of self.

Those who offer up their unwholesome desires

will see the uselessness of butchering animals at the altar.

Blood has no power to cleanse,

but the giving up of harmful actions will make the heart whole.

Better than worshipping gods is following the way of goodness.

—Buddha Shakyamuni, Digha Nikaya

The Fractal Nature of Reality

“Life is about floating on the seas of turbulence, drifting on the eddies and currents, flowing, and along the way, learning: whatever that may look like for each of us currently experiencing a mortal life.” ~Joanna Hunter

Each of us (the animate and inanimate, the sentient and the purely material) is part of one inconceivably large, unfurling fractal entity that constitutes everything, and when taken as a whole is the equivalent of what some may call “God”.

This entity does not exist within some surrounding vacuum but rather twists and folds back on itself so that it is boundless. The concept of “nothing” is therefore a logical fallacy, an impossibility.

We, as parts of this great unfurling fractal cosmic entity, are eternal, though the notion and form of “I” is temporary and in fact the “all” we are participating in exists outside of time.

“What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.” ~ Alan Watts

 

Evolution is the fundamental process at work within this greater “all”, along with its opposite, entropy. Evolution utilizes energy to increase complexity and information over time, whereas entropy dissolves structural patterns, flattening everything out into evenness.

Evolution gives birth to difference, entropy soothes into sameness. Evolution is life, entropy is decay. They are two sides of the same coin and without them nothing would ever happen. Similarly, one cannot exist without the other.

“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.” ~ John Muir

A System Governed by Flow Dynamics

The whole system of our universe is essentially governed by flow dynamics or the physics of turbulence. Turbulent systems are characterised by the eddies, currents and vortices of “flow”. Vortices are self-sustaining energy structures that occur everywhere naturally. They exist at the core of the Möbius torus shape.

If you think about almost any life form, you can see it is a variant of the Möbius torus and fractal dynamics. Equally, all life forms are holarchies of many lower level Möbius tori. E.g. apple seed, apple tree, apple. All are expressions of Möbius tori.

Atom, blood cell, human body, brain, womb, heart, lungs, eye: derivations of Möbius tori and fractal mathematics. Temporary, self-sustaining physical manifestations of vortices in the flow dynamics of the enormous unfurling cosmic fractal everything.

“I seem, like everything else, to be a center, a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself. Each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable.” ~ Alan Watts

Finding One’s Life Purpose as a Part of the Flow

So if that is what reality looks like and how it works, what is our purpose within it? Our purpose is to participate consciously and continue the journey of evolution and entropy.

To be expressions of creativity that keep the whole thing unfurling rather than descending into a flat field of sameness.

Life is about floating on the seas of turbulence, drifting on the eddies and currents, flowing, and along the way, learning: whatever that may look like for each of us currently experiencing a mortal life.

Out of this universal process, meaning emerges. In this way, we are all meaning-making entities, part of a boundless unity, which is itself a system of creativity, evolution and meaning.

So the purpose of our mortal lives is to flow, to wonder and to learn – to “spin out” this meaning into ever more beautiful shapes and forms.

All contributing, all dancing as part of this one, unfurling, fractal whole. And so it will go on, and has always gone on, eternally.

by Joanna Hunter

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float” ~ Alan Watts

“We are travellers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” ~ Paulo Coelho

 

“Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.” ~ Parker Palmer

 

 

“…from out of the sexual organ of every woman there came another cord, with another woman or man at the end of each one, and all of that, millions and millions of times over, turned into an enormous tree, a tree formed from the infinity of bodies, a tree whose branches reached to the sky.” ~ Milan Kundera

 

 

 

 

 

Real Monastics

Neither going about naked, nor with matted locks,

nor filthy, nor fasting, nor lying on the ground,

nor smearing oneself with ashes and dust,

nor sitting on the heels in penance,

can purify one who has not overcome doubt.

Even though one be well attired, yet if one is poised,

calm, controlled and established in the holy life,

having set aside violence towards all beings,

one truly is holy, a renunciate, a monastic.

―Buddha Shakyamuni

Eating meat does not promote any virtues, and produces many faults

The roots of the Dharma are loving kindness and compassion. Do you have real love and compassion in you? How can anyone trained in compassion consume meat?

Look at the suffering is caused by eating meat! The consequences of our own acts will ripen on us, and there is nothing that the Buddhas of the three times can do about it.

Eating meat does not promote any virtues, and produces many faults: it is the source of the four hundred classes of disease, the eighty thousand obstacles, and the eighty four thousand afflicted emotions.

―Nyala Pema Dündul