The Void, of which it cannot be said that it is or is not, nor that it has consciousness or has none, while it denies absoluteness to any experiential value (alike to being and to consciousness) cannot be identified. And that is the doctrine of not-self (anatta) as I see it in one aspect at present. This voidness cannot be “is-ed” and so introduced into the worldly scheme, except as the denial of absoluteness of all particular values. It has no more effect on ordinary life than the theory of relativity. But just as that theory completely alters calculation of enormous speeds, so, as I see it, this void-element completely alters calculations of extraordinary situations, of death (as killing, suicide or the partner of old age). N.T

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Five specific limitations of the infinite


The so-called seven colours of the spectrum together go to make up what is known as light — what, in other words, the scientists say is no more than a mere fractional band in the whole range of electro-magnetic waves— the only section of the wave-range which the visual sense can directly grasp. Indeed each colour is experienced as a particular limitation of light: light itself appears to be a particular limitation of the electro- magnetic wave-range. So would the five senses seem to be five specific limitations of the infinite— five exclusive ways of screening off, of shutting out the rest. In fact, the "outer world", as known through the senses, seems to be conditioned by — shall one say our knowledge of it depends on —the limiting and sifting qualities of our five senses. By means of sifting and excluding, form could be said to be created from Chaos and thus our five senses are at the same time five creators and five ways of being partially blind. We live, as it were, in a cathedral with stained windows whose, to us, magnificent colour patterns let in a little of the light which the sun sheds indiscriminately outside. (1947)

(Later addition:) But the "sun" would then stand for Chaos in our simile and how would that be wrong ?

Nanamoli Thera

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