Miles' Summary

This week has been largely about exploring the notion of self by questioning the boundaries and characteristics of this body and mind that I call myself.  That can in one moment seem so solid, so obvious, and in others seem nonexistent.  In trying to define the boundaries of my body, there was a realization that this was an impossible task - at what point does my body stop and the cushion begin?  Where does the air/body boundary lie?  In this contemplation, my body becomes very fluid and loose, and a tingling sensation arises throughout it.  In the tingling is a sense of a continuous arising and falling away, in keeping with the scientific understanding of matter as a constant reorganization of energy that has no firm substance.

Piet's comment the other week about changing the "we are" to simply "are" has also been interesting to explore, and informative for the above discussion of self-dissolution.  "We are" or "I am" no longer make sense in this model where I and we are in constant flux - continua rather than things.  What if our language were really just verbs?  No substantive nouns to trick us into slipping back into the comfortable notion of permanence.  Jorge Luis Borges explores this idea in a story called Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, a story of a mythical land where there are no specific substantive nouns; in other words, it, that, and this are allowed, but lake, water, ice, and Michael Jordan are not.  The story in itself is fascinating for its ideas, but Borges seems to lose track in the end when he attributes the whole notion to a world invented by a cult of reclusive 19th century geniuses.  Because this is what exists - just verbs and descriptors.