August 03, 2009
THE DHARMA OF STAR TREK
Three of my favorite sources for reflections on the human condition are
The Lotus Sutra
Shakespeare
Star Trek (original)
Here are some musings on individuality. Please feel free to contribute.
“And what a variety of senses you have.
This thing you call... language, though...
most remarkable.
You depend on it...
for so very much.
But is any one of you really its master?
But most of all...
the aloneness.
You are so alone.
You live out your lives...
in this...
shell of flesh,
self-contained...
separate.
How lonely you are.
How terribly lonely.”
Spock as Ambassador Kollos from Star Trek “Is There In Truth No Beauty?”
“We are all star stuff that has attained consciousness.”
-Carl Sagan
“The fundamental teaching of the Lotus concerning the reality of the universe amounts to this, that every being exists and subsists by virtue of the inexhaustible qualities inherent in each. There are innumerable individuals, and also groups of beings, including Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, celestial beings, mankind, furious spirits, beings in the purgatories, etc. Their respective characteristics are unmistakably distinct, but their qualities and conditions are constantly subject to change, because in each of the beings are inherent the qualities manifest in others, the differences arising simply from the varying configuration of the manifest and the potential qualities. Moreover, even taking the existences as they are at a given moment, they cannot subsist but by mutual interaction and influence. To subsist by itself by no means signifies to be separate from others; on the contrary, to interact one with another is the nature of every particular being. These features of existence are the laws or truths (dharma), and the cosmos is the stage of the infinite varieties and interactions of the dharmas, in other words, the realm of ‘mutual participation’.”
Masaharu Anesaki- Nichiren The Buddhist Prophet
“If our humanity is found and developed within the context of relations with other people, unbridled individualism is a condition stripped of these connections. The respectful acknowledgement of the existence of others is always predicated on the ability to master and rein in one’s private desires, and this cannot be developed except within the framework of human interaction. There is thus an intolerable vacuity at the heart of such extreme individualism, an instability and insecurity that haunts it and proves the extent to which it is estranged from any normal, healthy way of being. It is ultimately incompatible with our striving to be human.”
Daisaku Ikeda- 2006 Peace Proposal
“Both early Buddhist teachings and systems theory emphasize that causation, as the interaction of mutually conditioning phenomena, entails the radical impermanence of these phenomena. Entities are ever-changing, because they participate in and are subject to relationships in a world constituted by relationships.”
Joanna Macy – Mutual Causality In Buddhism And General Systems Theory
“In his life-form the individual is necessarily only a fraction and distortion of the total image of man. He is limited either as male or as female; at an given period of his life he is again limited as child, youth, mature adult, or ancient; furthermore, in his life-role he is necessarily specialized as craftsman, tradesman, servant, or thief, priest, leader, wife, nun, or harlot; he cannot be all. Hence, the totality- the fullness of man- is not in the separate member, but in the body of the society as a whole; the individual can only be an organ. From this group he has derived his techniques of life, the language in which he thinks, the ideas on which he thrives; through the past of that society descended the genes that built his body. If he presumes to cut himself off, either in deed or in thought and feeling, he only breaks connection with the sources of his existence.”
Joseph Campbell- The Hero With A Thousand Faces
“To ‘experience the full realm of Buddhahood’ refers to the doctrine of the ten factors. One comes to fully realize and understand that these ten factors and the Ten Worlds are mutually inclusive, that the causes and effects of the Ten Worlds and the ten factors, the two types of wisdom provisional and true, and the two kinds of realms are all contained
within one’s own life, within everyone’s life without exception, and hence one can fully comprehend the Buddha’s words.”
WND Vol. II page 854
“Everything flows.”
-Heraclitus