Quote:
Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  The tree isn't real.
If you can't accept the truth that it is 99.9999999% empty space and the rest of it is blinking in and out of existence .... you can instead look up the alternative Buddhist explanation of interdependent arising which leads to the conclusion of the illusory nature of reality.
From the Buddhist point of view, it's the misapprehension of the nature of reality that gives rise ultimately to all forms of suffering. For example, believing that the tree (or your Maserati, or your mother, or your house, or your youth) is real, is the only way you can experience grief, when the tree falls down, your mother dies, the house is foreclosed, you grow old etc. |
In terms of suffering, the fact that the fundamental nature of everything is essentially empty space isn't, by itself, of any real use. Whether there is 99% space in a rock, or 99% matter doesn't actually make it hurt any less when it hits me in the 99% empty head, nor does it automatically say anything about real or unreal.
The reason the proportion of space in a thing doesn't tell me anything about how real it is, is mostly because I don't have another reference for real. If I was 99% mass and the rock was 99% space, I might have a basis for calling myself real and the rock not real, though if it still hurt 99% I'm not sure I would care about the distinction.
We could conclude that if the one being hit with a rock is 99% space, that might imply that what I am is not that 1% matter, which would be true, but it doesn't actually solve the problem of the rock hurting, or really alter the attachment to any experience that is being had. The only way to do that would be to KNOW that what I am is other than the space man and that I'm not ultimately harmed.