It’s very nice to see all the activity these last few days, and to see the vigor with which you are pursuing inquiry. Reaching back to what’s been posted since my last post, here are some comments:
Christopher, I’m glad you’re able to join us again to comment. You write about being astonished at the possibility of “nothing” and then raise the very interesting question: why is the conceptual mind astonished again and again over the years. I suppose is that the conceptual mind is precisely the one that can’t allow for “nothing at all.” It’s a bit like being astonished at how alive and beautiful the world is each time you leave home after recovering from a cold.
Arthur, your comparison of thoughts to food (as many thoughts in the world as tastes of food) is good. And you are right to treat that as something impressive, not as a question of indulgence. To answer your question: when I wrote that the thought-world is a world without space, this is not a limitation on space, which is indeed inexhaustible, but a limit on thoughts.
Bruce, you point out that it is often “only afterwards” that we see how a story catches us up. This goes very much to the heart of the practice we are doing here. First we notice something about how stories work by re-flecting–looking back on–our experience; later we find that we can at least sometimes notice the story as it operates. What you say about stories being ’embodied’ (I often say ‘lived’ in contrast to ‘told’) is also so central. It’s the stories we live and embody that we don’t notice.
I believe in keeping posts fairly short, so I will end this one here, but post another very soon.
Jack