Knowledge and Being

Never been too sure about this but gave it some close observation while touching a windflower today.

So the problem is trying to experience something 100%. Windflowers are coming to the end of their season and I thought I may not see another this year as I do not plan to go out for a while. So I wanted to touch the windflower 100%, not being distracted so that I could at least have that. This is very OCD type thinking of course too, but illustrative.

When we think "I am not touching something", "now I am", "now I am not" it is very discrete and definite. I know when I am, and I know when I am not. Knowledge is very binary. You either are, or you are not, touching the flower and there is nothing in between.

But if we look at the process as it "is", and we separate what is happening from what we are thinking and knowing we get a very different experience. There is no sudden change from not touching to touching and back again. The "present moment" as it is called in Buddhism, is like a stage on which the world unfolds. It doesn't change, we occupy the "present moment" continuously, but the events change within that present. It is not so discrete. There is looking at the flower, there is the intention to touch it, the motion of the fingers toward it, being close to it but not touching, being close and touching, looking at the flower, looking at the finger, thinking I am touching, thinking is this the actual moment now, is this it, I am definitely touching it, some intention to withdraw the hand, being close and touching, being close and not touching, being far away. But it is seemless. The flower is there all the time, the hand is there all the time, the contact is rather arbitrary in reality. It is only when we think "I am touching it" does some mental stone statue get erected to mark the event and it takes on special significance.

In this way "knowledge" and "being" are quite distinct. Without knowledge things are changing both in themselves but also our perspective on them. One second looking at the flower, the next looking at its petal, its stamen, perhaps it leaf, perhaps the ground, nothing is static and discrete in reality. It is a flowing stream. But when we start to think and hammer the sign posts and way markers in to measure and record the events then we have a completely different process of steps and thinking being something separate and discrete, thins start to be made of parts and these get assembled by thoughts into discrete things.

Some say we shouldn't think because it boxes and distorts the world so much. It forces it into a particular shape and perspective and limits our appreciation of it. But as Hui Neng said in the Platform Sutra, we think you can't stop that. What is to be done however is to watch the process of thinking and see that it is quite different from the world that it is involved with.