The Buddha says, “It is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the cessation of the cosmos, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the cosmos” (Rohitassa Sutta).
Indeed, I only ever inhabit my own will, thought, and senses. The “exterior” world is but the echo of my interior, the soul’s reflection, in which I know myself as other. As long as I try to overcome the world, change it, make peace with it, or escape it—I am merely trying to outmaneuver my own shadow. I am the plaything of fate, the victim of circumstance, and prey to the predation of my own ignorance. I stand in the way of my own luminosity and stumble in the dark.
“The eye,” says Christ, “is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)
Indeed, I see as I am. Until I discover my cosmogonic role, my life remains the byproduct of ignorance. And as the Buddha said, the fruit of ignorance is always suffering. But if I remain watchful, I start to perceive the resonance between inner and outer. I see the causal laws that eat away at every boundary. Every self becomes other; every other, self.
The healthy eye is that eye which sees its own seeing. In this seeing, consciousness illumines the whole world and knows it as its own activity. Only then does that freedom arise of being neither within the world nor outside it.
May our eyes be healthy and our bodies light,
Simeon
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
— C.G. Jung
Suggested Reading
The Reflexive Universe: Evolution of Consciousness by Arthur M. Young
In The Reflexive Universe, Arthur Young invites us to see evolution as the cosmos learning to perceive itself. Science and mysticism converge in his vision of light transforming into life, thought, and finally, self-awareness. Order here to support SEEKER TO SEEKER at no extra cost.
This piece on the Buddha’s deepest insights goes into that place where the boundaries between self and world, knower and known, begin to dissolve. Here, the cosmos is not “out there,” but unfolding in this very body, this very moment, as consciousness learning to recognize itself.