Paul,
Where is the you that perceives and touches. Does it begin at the
boundary of your skin? A skin encapsulated consciousness?
Is the light of the sun old light? Or just light that left the sun 9
minutes ago? Where does the sun begin and end? Since we are effects
of the sun, could we say that we are part of the sun's body? (Hence
the name of my business: SunBody.)
Thich Nhat Hanh says that we are "I" am composed entirely of "non-I"
elements. All of the elements of my body came from somewhere
else. And when I read your email, you're thoughts become part of
me. "This is not my body, my body is not me."
In a Buddhist conception of mind and consciousness, there is the type
of communication that you describe in which our perception of the
other is mediated through light and thought. But, there can also be
be unmediated direct perception. This doesn't fit well with
Newtonian physics, but quantum physics does recognize this.
One way to express all this is to say that the idea of a separate
self located in a particular time and space is an illusion, whereas
we really interpenetrate - inter-be as Thich Nhat Hanh says. We are
all each other all the time. That is not to say that hugging and
touching is not enjoyable and beneficial.
Jimmy
At 03:24 PM 3/2/2006, you wrote:
When we we see an impossible-to-fathom galaxy far, far away, we
don't really know that it exists in our now because it took millions
of our years for the light from that galaxy to reach us. Millions
of years of linear time have passed for that galaxy. It is really
*
*
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