Mark Forstater's Blog

A Cultivator’s Diary – Part 3 (From my journal 2007)

December 22, 2013 at 3:39 pm Leave a comment

January 25 2007

In the morning, when everyone has left the house to go to work or school, there is a great silence and peace in the house. But at the same time, because there is so little for me to do, a great lassitude comes over me. This reluctance to move but only rest (the desire to read a book or contrarily to go out and buy a newspaper) needs a certain discipline to get me into the yoga room to practise. Once there it is easier- force of habit and the feeling in my body that moving and stretching are what I really need take over and I am into it.

I want to see if my arms/shoulders have changed since yesterday’s work. Is there as much pain in those specific points? Is there more mobility? What effect did this work have on other parts of the body, if any?

Evening:

Reading To Realise Enlightenment by Master Nan Huai-Chin. He talks of how you have to understand that Form is Emptiness and Emptiness Form. Quantum physics also says that Form is Emptiness, that atoms, which make up the Form of the material world, are 99.9% empty once you open them up. What we take to be solid and stable is actually dancing and ultimately empty, separating out into vast areas of emptiness in a tiny space. Since space is relative a tiny space can be a vast space. Inside the atom it certainly acts like one.

So if my body, my Form, is Empty, then as Nan says it is birthless and deathless. What is born is a Form, a baby, developed from a smaller Form, an embryo which grew from a sperm and egg. But if all of these are Forms, however small or large, then all of them are also Empty and once they are all resolved to Emptiness, how is Emptiness ‘born’ and how does Emptiness ‘die’? If we are all Empty then we are all unborn, and our births and deaths just transformations of Form, something which the elements we are made of have been doing from the beginningless beginning of time.

Can you live with a mind that sees that all is Emptiness? Can you put that into practise? How does that relate to your law suit with the Pythons? That is certainly part of the world of Form – it exists as a concept and a thing so must be Empty. I suppose the attitude should be: I’ll pursue my case because people have cheated me and I should not allow myself to be cheated. However if I lose the case I should just walk away from it with no regrets, bitterness or anger. And while it is going on I should feel no anxiety about the outcome, no matter whether I win or lose. In fact Emptiness means that winning and losing do not exist. They dissolve away into an equality of Empty Form.

Entry filed under: My Old Journals, Uncategorized. Tags: atoms, emptiness, form, law suit, Monty Python, Nan Huai-Chin, quantum physics, To Realise Enlightenment.