What Does Paradox Have To Do With It?
Jun 27, 2006Question I'd really like answered for a future talk: What, if anything, would be the best thing humans could do to make the world a better place? Please leave an answer as a comment to this blog or email me directly.
In this post we explore paradoxes and logic and point out where we'll find them in learning about stillness.
One interesting paradox is "This sentence is false." Another might have to do with using language to define impossible situations. The logical mind doesn't like paradoxes.
The most common paradoxes we will find in these talks tend to come from different levels of experience clashing against the same thing, or the idea of the same thing. Normally those two experiences come from a mind that feels separate from the moment, and the mind that feels at one with the moment. If you have no concept of what being one with the moment feels like, it is simply when we are doing anything without critique. That's stillness in it's simplest form.
Another example of paradox, as I'm defining it here, is the good/bad dilemma. Having something that seems bad turn out to be good. Or learning something from a bad thing, and finding good value in that learning. Then the thing is good and bad, etc.
What I am really trying to describe is the problem with being "away" from reality. The normal existence of man feels separate from life. We feel distinct and separate from other people and things. I'm trying to discuss the sense of oneness, and how a separate mind will often not find logic in discussing oneness. In that lack of logic we will often come to paradoxes.
All spiritual traditions seem to be based, or at least discuss oneness. In Christianity, the original sin is about mankind leaving stillness, or oneness, to come to knowledge. We obtained the knowledge of good and evil. It's man entering duality.
In Christianity they say that after death we go to heaven. Is it possible that all that needs to die is the self? Because there is no self in stillness, can we come to a heaven on earth? Taoism speaks of everything being the Tao - that is their reference to oneness. Buddhism speaks of stillness and oneness frequently as well. This is all mentioned only to point out that oneness seems to exist, even though our normal experience is a separate one.
So are we OK with paradox? Can a mind see that paradoxes exist, and move past them? Can we put down the discerning mind to come to peace?
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