The Neglected Whole: or The Ugly Side of Unity

“Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.” --Albert Einstein (HAPPY BIRTHDAY to A.E. today!!!)

I have heard many new-age gurus, inspirational teachers, and poets espouse methodologies that ascribe a philosophy of divine perfection, perfect unity, & perfect love as the nature of our reality.

I even read a blog post today, by tribe.net friend, Sean:
"Wherever you are, is perfect. There is an infinite number of Universes out there and you have chosen this incarnation and its scenarios in absolute perfection. This is all part of the Divine Order. Accept this. Be. Smile, and live in YOUR bliss right now."

Here are some other quotes that I have quickly gathered that resonate along these lines:

"So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.”
Baha'u'llah

"Everything is perfect in the universe - even your desire to improve it."
Wayne Dyer

“Unity is the secret of social progress, and service to society is the means to promote it. ”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“The significance which is in unity is an eternal wonder.”
Rabindranath Tagore

The language of the unity discourse seems so unfairly POSITIVE toward what I am now considering should be a more integrated, and impartial, whole. However, I do wonder, as I tend to wonder, and wander through the maze of language and its fanciful immersions. I wonder if many of this ilk of cosmic bliss-machines consider all of the so-called 'evils,' 'vices,' and 'ugly' things that we associate with existence truly in alignment with the perfection of the universe that they espouse? Are rapes and murders and mutilations and utter chaos on all levels examples of beauty and absolute divine order that these gurus and hopeful masses celebrate? Are dreadful solitudes as wonderous and grand as joyful partnerships? May I frown and suffer equally wrapped in the robes of the enlightened? And if so, how do we integrate and adjust, or is there even an action required more than simply all kinds of being = unchanging cosmic love in its most evolved iteration?

“Organized hatred, that is unity.”
John Jay Chapman

I have always had a penchant for this principle of unity. I am compelled toward knowing it and feeling it. However, I tend to pair it with the concept of the unknowable, an almost ineffible transcendence of all the things we associate with concepts of 'good' and 'evil.' The buddhists call enlightenment, "Nirvana," which means "no wind" or "no breath" as I understand it. At times this has sounded so dismal to, practically nihilistic. Far from the ecstasy and bliss that I want to pair with knowing and actualization. But our ego deludes with its subtle knives to observe the 10,000 blessings and 10,000 curses. We are led to believe that we can grasp and know a unity that is destroyed by the acknowledgement of any discrete occurance or separation. How can you divide that united whole without leaving something out? And yet the buddhists also encourage us to take action toward the erasure of the ego, to make more actions by intentionally moving toward non-attachment. This only seems to compound the issue as I see it: why make any action, is not all action or perception fostering MAYA: or ILLUSION? So there is nothing to be attached to in the first place! There was nothing to do in the first place. How silly of us! There's nothing left to complete. There is no evolution or progression. There is no perfection to make any comparion to when everything's perfect and unchanging. No breath. No death or life, no left or right, no right or wrong. This is the tune of the UNITY SONG.

“Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two...”
"He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye."
--Two from the Buddha man himself

Thanks again for the inspiration from those kind-hearted and compassionate souls and teachers--to gather thoughtful air into the lungs of my spirit, or maybe thanks for this conspiracy--this "breathing together." That somehow seems better or closer to the truth of the matter.

And yet, I am still left gasping.

Justin *ZED*
every sin is sacred

“It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.”
-Albert Einstein (just let the birthday boy have the last word...)

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**NEW RESPONSES** 3/15/2006 (Mostly from TRIBE.NET)!

Sinead said:
" I don't think of "unity" and "perfection" in that sense from my Buddhist studies.

First of all, suffering is from wanting things to be different from the they are, and this arises from ignorance (typically ignorance of the impermanence of things)...which can be said as "striving to perfect that which is perceived as imperfect" and the abolition of ignorance comes when one accepts that the imperfection is just how it is...note that asymmetry and imperfection are high ideals in sabe and wabe (Japanese artistry of sorts).

Second of all, unity as in "all is one, one is all" type dialectical statements seem inconsistent with the idea of pratityasamutpada (dependent co-existence) which states that everything is mutally co-existing...this doesn't translate as "unity" as an ontological statement but rather more like the apocryphally popular notion of the "butterfly effect" and dynamic systems with critical points. This is reflected in the skandhas (the 5 compositions of personal identity) that although they change through time, there is a wholeness that gives this illusion of personal identity. Here, I would say that "wholeness" is not a identity statement with "unity." It is more like comparing a set of numbers as belonging to a "set" as opposed to saying that all members of the set are identical.

Thirdly, "one"ness and "unity" are constructs that have been examined in phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty does a good evisceration of the Cartesian cogito, Buber talks of the I/Thou versus the I/It, and Sartre is existential about how "other people" make him aware of his own separate existence.

To me, the bigger question is about why is our individual existence filled with alienation from the world and society, when all of science, religion and philosophy hints at a truer nature apart from the real experience."

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Professor Plague said,
"

the zen of global feudalism/literacy

As to why we are alienated as individuals, especially to the degree we see in Wester society, has to do with our media. When I say 'media' I don't mean news and entertainment outlets. I refer to 'media' as the plural of medium, defined as a technology which extends a human function out from the body. This is the basis of all technology; the extensions of human abilities (thanks, Marshall MacLuhan). As the wheel is the extension of the foot, the spear the extension of the claw or tooth, the written language a visual extension of the oral. Even spoken language itself, the first technological revolution, could be considered an extension of the central nervous system. It is this technology, the reduction of the physical world into abstract sounds, which is the foundation of human culture. By this way of thinking we could loosely define culture as our collection of technologies and our shared uses for them. We certainly define cultures by the 'level' of technology the have accumulated (i.e. Stone Age, Industrialized, etc)

In any case, what I'm getting at is that each new technology is another layer between the natural state of the human animal and the direct experience. Some are more profound than others, of course, but they all affect the degree to which we use each of our senses, the "sense ratios" . MacLuhan argued that the phonetic alphabet, and its dominance after the invention of the printing press, created the Western concept of the individual, as well as nationalism, the 'objectivity' of the scientific method, and the modern market system. The reason is that phonetic literacy, unlike, say, Chinese ideograms (whose characters represent concepts, not sounds), breaks down reality to meaningless sounds, then attempts to reassemble it.

It's sort of like this. You take a picture of a tree with your digital camera. The camera catches an image of the tree (not the tree itself). This is broken down into discrete parts (in this case a multitude of ones and zeroes), and then builds up an image of the tree. Culturally we recognize this as representing the tree. We don't think of it as symbolic. But if you ask someone from a culture without cameras or digital technology, they will not recognize it. 'Where is the fruit?' they will ask. "Where are the birds singing and the smell of the bark?"

You see, we have reduced this complete part of experience to an image, separate from all else, a purely visual experience to represent part of reality. This is what written language does, and it has an effect on your world view.

Here in the West, we tend to think of ourselves as individuals, meaning discrete units. For us, the universe seems composed of billions of little separate, unrelated objects. Here is a tree, there is a person, there is a planet, here is an idea.

Nonliterate cultures (and those with more ideogam-oriented alphabets) tend to think of a universal whole, of fields and waves, as opposed to building blocks. We are isolated largely because of our technological orientation.

However, MacLuhan (as well as Einstein and James Joyce) would argue that since the advent of electric (instant) technologies like the electric light, radio, and airplanes, this trend is beginning to reverse itself, which is partly how our scientific discoveries have led leading thinkers to describe the universe in almost Oriental/mystical terms:
"The East shall shake the West awake/and have the night for morn" -Joyce

This tightening spiral of instant tech revolution (spurred by the internet, an extension of our collective central nervous system) is bringing us closer together regardless of geography. It is also dissolving like an acid the old abstract bonds that held the West together, like the State and the Ten Commandments. Today is a time of intense reorganization, and the guiding principle is data, not money or gods. Money has become simply another form of data. Information is both the battleground and the ammunition. Why else would 3000 deaths on Sept. 11 mean anything to a country of 300 million. It is symbolic and was broadcasted globally for a magnified effect. That's why people film beheadings. It's control of data flow.

Corporations are the real winners in this, and small, ideology-driven networks (terror cells, grassroots political movements, etc.) because they are not bound by traditional boundaries. And these groups will gradually replace the State mechanism as we know it.

I predict a coming age of global corporate feudalism. I have posted about this before in my blog, and I suppose I will again. I've poisoned myself with MacLuhan and there's no hope for me now.

Sorry to hijack your blog, Zed. Too much coffee. I got carried away."

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Jai said,
"

Distinct Ways of Knowing

You seem right on the money Professor. There are word lessons and there are world lessons. Experinece and descriptions of experience, and never the twain shall meet.

As for your comments about globalization which is what i hear when you say "the corporations win," you sound like you have read or might enjoy books by (the name is not a joke ;-) Jerry Mander.

Best to you,

Jai (MojoMan) who has experienced ecstatic states of perceiving the underlying unity and perfection of all things but only for momentary glimplses and who is too clumbsy with words to bring back any word lesson that would remotely hint at what they were like."

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And Makita said,
"In my opinion, unity is a dodgy word from a semantic/philosophical standpoint. It implies that there is also a seperateness. What if there is no seperateness?

If you assume that individuality is an illusion, then there is no seperation, hence no unity. Two fingers on the same hand are not unified, however they are part of the same thing. The same is true of people. Like fingerprints on a glass, they appear to be seperate, yet are aspects of the same thing.

Think of when you dream. Some dream analysts believe that characters that appear in our dreams are different parts played by own psyche. Consider the possibility that this is also true in real life. This extents beyond just people.

Anything definable can be reduced to a number of discrete, dualistic descriptions, it is either red, or not red, it is two inches in depth, or it is not. If you put enough of these building blocks together, you can sufficiently describe a grand piano, or the Taj Mahal.

If you go a step further, and assume that the difference between these polar opposites are also an illusion, you eliminate the ability to comprehend and convey information entirely, at least the way we conventionally do. This begins to describe Nirvana. It is a state of liberation rather than a state of being. It is the recognition of something that by its very definition is indefinable.

Indefinable is not the same thing as nothing. There are things that need to be learned, accomplished, and overcome in our lifetimes. We do not always know what they are. Buddhism teaches that you will continually be faced with obstacles related to these things until you have finally overcome them.

These obstacles relate to our individual self (or ego) and its interaction with the phenomenal world. It is not a passive process, as commonly thought. It takes a constant effort to disentangle one's self from the tedious tape loop of death, rebirth, and suffering.

To loosely tie this back into the studies of Einstein, I have been watching with considerable interest the study of Zero Point Energy, something that somebody with a name like Zed might enjoy. I won't give away the fun for you, but it's an interesting concept, which may validate things that certain people have been trying to tell us for thousands of years."

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My friend Jesse also responded directly to this thread!

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Many thanks to you all for your insights and discussion on the topic!

Justin/ZED