Circumscribed Energy

"Form is simply force circumscribed, condensed.
Force is simply form indefinite, diffused.
...

Whether we consider coarser matter which can be weighed and felt, or that more subtle, lively, and active matter we call ether, or again the spiritual principle, which is energy simple, we have then always before us only harmonious collections of forces, symmetrical activities, ordered powers, more or less conscious of the part they play in the infinite concert for which the Creator has composed the glorious music. Let us set aside for a moment the variety of groupings which determine the succession and the manifold aspects of these forces, and there will remain, as constituent principles of the web of the universe, as irreducible and primordial ingredients of the world, nothing but dynamic points, nothing but monads.

The term of the rigorous analysis of phenomena is, definitively, the conception of an infinity of centers of similar and unextended forces, of energies without forms, simple and eternal. We ask what these forces are, and we assert in answer that it is impossible to distinguish them from motion. Force may be conceived, but not shaped to the fancy. The clearest and truest thing we can say of it is, that it is an energy analogous to that whose constant and undeniable presence we feel dwelling in our deepest selves."

- Fernand Papillon (1847 - 1874)
The Constitution of Matter

Starry Space

"Considered from the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite might figure as ‘the infinitely little;’ no blade of grass being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere.

But the earth itself, hitherto seemingly the privileged center of a very limited universe, was, after all, itself but an atom in an infinite world of starry space, then lately displayed to the ingenuous intelligence, which the telescope was one day to verify to bodily eyes.

For if Bruno must needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate knowledge of the earth - the infinitely little; he looked back, gratefully, to another daring mind, which had already put the earth into its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens. If God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds innumerable.

...

And his consciousness of unfailing unity and order did not desert him in that larger survey, making the utmost one could ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in that endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new conditions. The immovable earth beneath one’s feet! one almost felt the movement, the respiration of God in it. And yet how greatly even the physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was flattered by the theorem. What joy in that motion, the prospect, the music, the music of the spheres! - he could listen to it in a perfection such as had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras even."

- Walter Pater (1839 - 1894)
Giordano Bruno

Cosmic Ether

"One does not seem really to have got out-of-doors till he goes to sea. On the land he is shut in by the hills, or the forests, or more or less housed by the sharp lines of his horizon. But at sea he finds the roof taken off, the walls taken down; he is no longer in the hollow of the earth’s hand, but upon its naked back, with nothing between him and the immensities. He is in the great cosmic out-of-doors, as much so as if voyaging to the moon or to Mars. An astronomic solitude and vacuity surround him; his only guides and landmarks are stellar; the earth has disappeared; the horizon has gone; he has only the sky and its orbs left; this cold, vitreous, blue-black liquid through which the ship plows is not water, but some denser form of the cosmic ether.

...

The world is left behind; all standards of size, of magnitude, of distance, are vanished; there is no size, no form, no perspective; the universe has dwindled to a little circle of crumpled water, that journeys with you day after day, and to which you seem bound by some enchantment."

- John Burroughs (1837 - 1921)
"At Sea" in Fresh Fields

Mystic Sea

"The smell of the sea in my nostrils,
The sound of the sea in mine ears;
The touch of the spray on my burning face,
Like the mist of reluctant tears.

The blue of the sky above me,

The green of the waves beneath;

The sun flashing down on a gray-white sail

Like a scimitar from its sheath.

And ever the breaking billows,

And ever the rocks' disdain;

And ever a thrill in mine inmost heart

That my reason cannot explain.

So I say to my heart, ‘Be silent,

The mystery of time is here;

Death's way will be plain when we fathom the main,
And the secret of life be clear."

- Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906)
The Mystic Sea

Fathomless Becoming

"As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,
I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.

O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,

Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,

Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me
I have not once had the least idea who or what I am,

But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me
stands yet untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,

Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,

With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,

Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.

I perceive I have not really understood any thing,
not a single object, and that no man ever can,

Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me
to dart upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
...

Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,

Buoy’d hither from many moods, one contradicting another,

From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,

Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,

Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,

A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random,

Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,

Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,

We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you,

You up there walking or sitting,

Whoever you are, we
too be in drifts
at your feet."

- Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
"As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life" in Leaves of Grass

Elemental Exchange

"The mountain range
the stones in the water
all are strange and rare
The beautiful landscape
as we know
belongs to those who are like it
The upper worlds
the lower worlds
originally are one thing
There is not a bit of dust
there is only this still and full
perfect enlightenment.
...
Without a speck of dust being raised,
the mountains tower up;
without a single drop falling,
the streams plunge into the valley."

- Muso Soseki (1275 – 1351)

Indra’s Pool

"In one single mote of dust
Are completely seen all worlds.
If living beings should hear about them,
Their minds would be confused and go insane.

As within a single mote of dust,

So, too, it is in every mote of dust.

All world-systems enter within them.

It is in that way inconceivable.

In every particle of dust

Are Dharmas of the ten directions and three times.

The destinies and kshetras are all limitless,

Yet can be known with all their differences.

In every particle of dust

Are limitless kinds of Buddha kshetras.

Of their various kinds, all limitless,

Not a single one remains unknown.

Everything within the Dharma realm,

With all the varying characteristics

And types of destinies, each having differences,
Can all be discerned and known."

- Indra's Net / Avatamsaka Sutra
(late third or the fourth century CE)

Nested Worlds

"Whence it appears that in the smallest particle of matter there is a world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls. [...] Each portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond full of fishes. But each branch of every plant, each member of every animal, each drop of its liquid parts is also some such garden or pond. [...] And though the earth and the air which are between the plants of the garden, or the water which is between the fish of the pond, be neither plant nor fish; yet they also contain plants and fishes, but mostly so minute as to be imperceptible to us. [...] Thus there is nothing fallow, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe, no chaos, no confusion save in appearance, somewhat as it might appear to be in a pond at a distance, in which one would see a confused movement and, as it were, a swarming of fish in the pond, without separately distinguishing the fish themselves. [...] Thus, although each created Monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specially pertains to it, and of which it is the entelechy; and as this body expresses the whole universe through the connection of all matter in the plenum, the soul also represents the whole universe in representing this body, which belongs to it in a special way. "

- G.W. Leibniz (1646 - 1716)
Monadology

Ephemeral Vastness

"Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot become firewood again. However, we should not view ash as after and firewood as before. We should know that firewood dwells in the dharma position of firewood and has its own before and after. Although before and after exist, past and future are cut off. Ash stays in the position of ash, with its own before and after. As firewood never becomes firewood again after it has burned to ash, there is no return to living after a person dies. However, in Buddha Dharma it is an unchanged tradition not to say that life becomes death. Therefore we call it no-arising. It is the established way of buddhas’ turning the Dharma wheel not to say that death becomes life. Therefore, we call it no-perishing. Life is a position in time; death is also a position in time. This is like winter and spring. We don’t think that winter becomes spring, and we don’t say that spring becomes summer.

...

When a person attains realization, it is like the moon’s reflection in water. The moon never becomes wet; the water is never disturbed. Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass. Realization does not destroy the person, as the moon does not make a hole in the water. The person does not obstruct realization, as a drop of dew does not obstruct the moon in the sky. The depth is the same as the height. [To investigate the significance of] the length and brevity of time, we should consider whether the water is great or small, and understand the size of the moon in the sky."

- Dogen (1200 - 1253)
Genjōkōan

Stillness Without Seeing

"...Stillness without seeing,
Not moving in a dark room.

Wakeful without wandering,

The mind is tranquil yet bright.

All phenomena are real and eternal,

Profuse, yet of a single form.

Going, coming, sitting, standing,

Don’t attach to anything.

Affirming no direction,

Can there be leaving and entering?

There is neither unifying nor dispersing,

Neither slow nor quick.

Brightness and tranquility are just as they are.
They cannot be explained in words."

- Niutou Farong (594-657)

Fluid Becoming

“The body pre-eminently—that which we are most justified in isolating within the continuity of matter, because it constitutes a relatively closed system—is the living body; it is, moreover, for it that we cut out the others within the whole. Now, life is an evolution. We concentrate a period of this evolution in a stable view which we call a form, and, when the change has become considerable enough to overcome the fortunate inertia of our perception, we say that the body has changed its form. But in reality the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form: form is only a snapshot view of a transition. Therefore, here again, our perception manages to solidify into discontinuous images the fluid continuity of the real."

- Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941)
Creative Evolution

Liquid Mirror

"How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink—But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it’s very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through—” She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist."

- Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Psychedelic Visions

"The moment that I closed my eyes a vision of celestial glory burst upon me. I stood on the silver strand of a translucent, boundless lake, across whose bosom I seemed to have been just transported. A short way up the beach, a temple, modelled like the Parthenon, lifted its spotless and gleaming columns of alabaster sublimely into a rosy air--like the Parthenon, yet as much excelling it as the godlike ideal of architecture must transcend the ideal realized by man. Unblemished in its purity of whiteness, faultless in the unbroken symmetry of every line and angle, its pediment was draped in odorous clouds, whose tints outshone the rainbow. It was the work of an unearthly builder, and my soul stood before it in a trance of ecstasy. Its folded doors were resplendent with the glory of a multitude of eyes of glass, which were inlaid throughout the marble surfaces at the corners of diamond figures from the floor of the porch to the topmost moulding. One of these eyes was golden, like the midday sun, another emerald, another sapphire, and thus onward through the whole gamut of hues, all of them set in such collocations as to form most exquisite harmonies, and whirling upon their axes with the rapidity of thought. At the mere vestibule of the temple I could have sat and drunk in ecstasy forever; but lo! I am yet more blessed. On silent hinges the doors swing open, and I pass in.

...

It is this process of symbolization which, in certain hasheesh states, gives every tree and house, every pebble and leaf, every footprint, feature, and gesture, a significance beyond mere matter or form, which possesses an inconceivable force of tortures or of happiness.

...

Perhaps one of the most difficult things to convey to a mind not in the hashish delirium, by the symbols which there teach the manner of its process, or by any others, is the interchange of senses. The soul is sometimes plainly perceived to be but one in its own sensorium, while the body is understood to be all that so variously modifies impressions as to make them in the one instance smell, in another taste, another sight, and thus on, ad finem. Thus the hashish-eater knows what it is to be burned by salt fire, to smell colours, to see sounds, and, much more frequently, to see feelings."

- Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836 - 1870)
The Hasheesh Eater

Buddha Lands

Water is not concerned with past,
future, present or the phenomenal world.
Even in a drop of water, innumerable 
buddha lands appear."

- Dogen (1200 - 1253)

Scenery of Spring

 "In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are

of themselves, some short,
some long."

- Ryōkan (1758 - 1831)

Terrestrial Gaze

"Seeing. One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing - if not ultimately, at least essentially. To be more is to be more united - and this sums up and is the very conclusion of the work to follow. But unity grows, and we will affirm this again, only if it is supported by an increase of consciousness, of vision. That is probably why the history of the living world can be reduced to the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes at the heart of a cosmos where it is always possible to discern more. Are not the perfection of an animal and the supremacy of the thinking being measured by the penetration and power of synthesis of their glance? To try to see more and to see better is not, therefore, just a fantasy, curiosity, or a luxury. See or perish. This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence. And thus, to a higher degree, this is the human condition."

- Teilhard De Chardin (1881- 1955)
The Phenomenon of Man

Gentle Pulsing

"Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Walden

Present Memories

"We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time."

- David Deutsch (1953 - )
The Fabric of Reality

View Nowhere

"Powerful as it has proven to be, this bleached-out physical conception of objectivity encounters difficulties if it is put forward as the method for seeking a complete understanding of reality. For the process began when we noticed that how things appear to us depends on the interaction of our bodies with the rest of the world. But this leaves us with no account of the perceptions and specific viewpoints which were left behind as irrelevant to physics but which seem to exist nevertheless, along with those of other creatures. Not to mention the mental activity of forming an objective conception of the physical world, which seems not itself capable of physical analysis. Faced with these facts one might think the only conceivable conclusion would be that there is more to reality what can be accommodated by the physical conception of objectivity. But to remarkable numbers of people this has not been obvious. The physical has been so irresistibly attractive, and has so dominated ideas of what there is, that attempts have been made to beat everything into its shape and deny the reality of anything that cannot be so reduced. As a result, the philosophy of mind is populated with extremely implausible positions."

- Thomas Nagel (1937 - )
The View From Nowhere

Original Face

"The Sixth Ancestor was pursued by Ming the head monk as far as Ta-yü Peak. The teacher, seeing Ming coming, laid the robe and bowl on a rock and said, 'This robe represents the Dharma. There should be no fighting over it. You may take it back with you.' Ming tried to lift it up, but it was as immovable as a mountain. Shivering and trembling, he said, 'I came for the Dharma, not for the robe. I beg you, lay brother, please open the Way for me.' The teacher said, 'Don’t think good; don’t think evil. At this very moment, what is the original face of Ming the head monk?' In that instant Ming had great satori. Sweat ran from his entire body. In tears he made his bows saying, 'Beside these secret words and secret meanings, is there anything of further significance?' The teacher said, 'What I have just conveyed to you is not secret. If you reflect on your own face, whatever is secret will be right there with you.' Ming said, 'Though I practiced at Huang-mei with the assembly, I could not truly realize my original face. Now, thanks to your pointed instruction, I am like someone who drinks water and knows personally whether it is cold or warm. Lay brother, you are now my teacher.' The teacher said, 'If you can say that, then let us both call Huang-mei our teacher. Maintain your realization carefully.'"

 - Dajian Huineng (638 - 713)
Case 23 of Mumonkan