A Quiet Time

Jimmy Pryor Jimmy at sunbody.com
Fri Mar 3 06:42:36 PST 2006


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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