Zen answer to question: How many people are there on Earth? OR God vs Man

This is one I struggle with, but got a good insight yesterday. We know that there is exactly one universal entity (sort of), and we know that everything originates from this entity. This is "fact" (ish).

Religions express this fact in many ways. The simple version is God the Creator. This is especially the Jewish (Abrahamic) idea that is the basis idea of Judeism, Christianity and Islam. Science is tainted by this view combined with Plato where God becomes Truth: there is exactly one Truth but it is hidden by all the data that must be put together to find the universal laws of creation (obviously where those laws - and science itself - comes from is beyond the scope of Science! q.v. SRH). True science which purely hypothesises and discovers endlessly is not a religion - it is a machine. Other views are more nuanced. In Hinduism the "creator" part is separate from the "universal" part. Brahma created the world, but the universal he created is divided by illusion into Brahman and Atman which are the same, but the true universal origin greater even that Brahma is represented by a sound Om. I make reference to Buddhism below which brings the most subtle ideas to the table.

The Hindu version gets close to the answer to the question of how many people there are. In the realm of thought there are about 7 billion. In the realm of ego there is one. But in realty there are none. What does that mean.

There is a self. But if we examine our self, our egos, closely we run into problems. Firstly we know that there are other people. We live in a world of other people - they taught us almost all we know for example including the language that we use in our thoughts. I did not invent "English" or these characters that I write. It is true no one may ever read what I write here, but it doesn't matter because the thing I am doing in thinking and writing is learned and given to me by my community of people. Writing itself is evidence that there is more to this world than myself. So we hypothesis that other people are exactly like myself - give or take. Yet in relation to others I know that I have a special relationship with myself (or so it appears). When I sense the world I am in the front row of the experience, and while I can share this with others, each of us seems to be in front row to their own experience. Certainly when I try to describe something that only I saw, I run into this problem that clearly this is something for me. When I fall in love it is useless trying to share this with others, because it is I that is in love, and they are spectators on my experience (and probably more concerned with their own loves for which they are front row).

But this apparently solid state of affairs of being front row on my own life crumbles just as easily as the ego on inspection. But this is where it gets complex because the ideas which follow are not present in English. English is great for living the life of English culture, which is a private property, clearly defined selves and public interactions, friendships and families. But it goes no further.

The new idea is from Buddhism and is called sunyata in Pali language. It is transliterated into "emptiness" or "suchness" in English. I prefer Emptiness but with the caveat it could just as well have been called "fullness". Either way it is to do with the "heaviness" of the world and the answer is not that it is heavy or light but neither. In English the world is heavy, so we naturally antidote this in the West by saying that Sunyata is "lightness" (of being) or emptiness. But if you go too far then you need add a bit more heaviness, and then keep playing around with the scales until you no longer notice the "heaviness" or "lightness". The goal is the keep adding cold and hot water to the bath until we don't notice the temperature any more, lightness and heaviness until we are free.

Returning to selves we have got to the situation where there are 7 billion individuals all front row in their lives and sharing more or less their lives together. But now we look deeper.

We cannot deny that there is one Earth. There may be 7 billion bedrooms, or 3.5billion if we all share a bed with a partner. sibling or friend. But, all these bedrooms occupy the same planet. Where does the space come from to have 7 billion front row seats? How when we all occupy the same world do we each have a different view of things? Now we need to start exploring sunyata and moving into the centre (middle path in Buddhism). Some say our brains have a model of the world in which we inhabit (Matrix style - Richard Dawkins has argued this). Some take this as far as to say that our own experience is an illusion (Daniel Dennett). But the majority go the opposite direction and say that it is the world that is an illusion (George Berkeley the most extreme in the West). I like Hegel who realises that what we call the world is actually just ideas, and when we try to think of how this comes about we are like an astronomer using his telescope to find out how a telescope works. Kant tried to find out if the telescope worked, but all the while using the telescope. (This is the first example of SRH I can think of in literature.) So "the world" being ideas (don't underestimate ideas) makes it not so very different from what we previous called "ourselves" in this view. Loosely some kind of mental stuff - like a computer software in modern analogy. So what in fact is the difference? Surely only an idea. But clearly that isn't the end of the quests because we just kicked the ball into the question what is an idea?

To short circuit many thousands of years of pondering this question and my realisation yesterday. As we examine the Atman (the sense of self, and being front row in our lives) we chip away at what we are. Initially we reject the physical world as not us: I am not actually my car even tho it is mine, or my house or any material thing except possibly my body. But I can lose my arms and legs: they aren't really me. And we quite easily get to the brain and sensory apparatus (these thought experiments were being had thousands of years before modern science told us of brains and neurons so it doesn't really matter what we think - it's the journey that counts). So then we get more philosophical and realise that what we "see" really belong to our eyes and brain rather than us - easily provable if we go blind. When I close my eyes I don't lose myself, or more extreme go blind. In fact what can't we lose and still be our self. We can lose everything is the shock realisation! I can lose my car, my job, my partner, by legs, my eyes and people will still meet and talk with me (returning to language again). Even if I get dementia and lose my memory and my ability to recognise things, people will still meet and talk with me. I can even die and become mummified and people will come and see me. At which point I realise they are not talking to me at all!!! I can become an online avatar and people will still meet me. All these things that they talk to are not me. So what is me? The point is that there is nothing there that is me!! This is what Buddha called Anatta (non-self).

But!!!!! don't go extreme on this. Back to Sunyata and the balance. In English the world is heavy, there is very much weight. When we see that we don't carry any of it, and that we are nothing we explode and go to the extreme of feeling light having dropped the burden and spin off into space. Warning! A person who carries nothing is as useless as someone who carries it all. We probably need to start loading up with stuff again if we get too light with this view. If we are nothing then how are these experiences right now, my life actually going on: how am I reading! I didn't just evaporate, nothing has changed! In fact since I am writing, and who ever is reading this, it is mostly just an idea anyway.

So back to the question of how many people. There are 7 billion people to speak to, or which I am one. But I am a special one because this part of the world shines bright for me, while other parts of the world are just imagination for me. But I am wrong if I think that this means that there are 7 billion souls out there, none of us equates to these people in reality. Once we examine in depth we see that no one equates with their body or their thoughts, because taking the world at face value of bodies and thoughts means that we are all separate - like monads. Yet there is one world with a single mass of atoms made into people. The solution lies in the middle. The special brightness of my own life and existence is not down to me, there is no me here after all. Everything I could name as part of me is something in every way I can lose, even my consciousness I lose every night when I sleep, and one day I will die. None of this is me. But the same is true for everyone else. The more I give up, the more alike everyone else I become. If I hold my name then I am different from everyone with a different name, if I hold onto how my face looks I live independently until I meet someone who looks like me, if  hold on to my ideas I am individual until I meet someone with similar ideas, if I hold on to my experiences I am individual until I meet someone with the same experiences and so on. I can even donate parts of my body to others. None of this is me. If I gain power from the "value" of these things like I have a noble family name or title, or learned ideas, or great experiences then I lose that power when I meet someone better.

Yet if I see all these things as not me, but don't go too far so as to identify with the void or nothingness or vacuity so that I go to the other extreme and feel worthless and irrelevant. If I balance the scales and let go of the heaviness of being all these things, and reject the other form of heaviness of rejecting and not wanting all these things. If the scales are perfectly balanced then I find I can abide with other people as if they were myself. There is no vast void between us, we are not separate but we are not the same. This "sunyata" balance is so important. We juggle our ideas to grasp it. We probably swing from "we are separate each living out own life", to "we are are the same all mixed in a cosmic soup" and oscillate back and forwards. We may get really smart and decide that we are both separate and joined at the same time, or wrestle with the idea that we are neither separate nor joined. But Buddha makes very clear "sunyata" is none of these. Purely mental ideas fail us.

The approach is more with heart than mind (but actually both). We can feel our way into the space between ourselves and others, looking closely we see that the walls all break down. But we don't reassemble new walls to demarcate our new understanding. Understanding is something I have, and you don't. If I demarcate understanding and ideas then I am different from you. I can argue with you to make us agree, but the divide is there to bridge or separate. The goal is to let go of these things, so ideas are not the goal.

We feel ourselves into the gap, realising that all the things we call ourselves are indeed there, but they are not really us because there is "no me" or is "no" me in there (neither quite balances the scale). Anything I find I can stand aside from. In doing this I feel I lose, but in reality if I make it, it brings me closer to reality, what is there and what previously I called other people.

In this way there is just "one" reality. I write with a small "one" because when you start to see it, its not demarcated from other things like a "king on his throne" but gentle resting there between the heavy things and the 7 billion named people of this world.