How would you view the universe from day zero?

[ChiDragon]

If you were the first person on earth, how would you view the universe...??? What is the first thing that you think might see....??? Remember, you have no scientific knowledge at the time. Please feel free to put in your thoughts..!!!

Edited February 4, 2012 by ChiDragon

[Protector]

I don't know, because I know I will forget that moment after it happens

Since I wont have any support from parents or other people, I will probably be the most powerful person there as well.

Kinda like being a baby even if as the first person I was given an adult body. Whatever random rock formation appears in front of me, I will forget it also and just start to become an adult.

Know what, it will be just like Adam in Eden. I will have no choice but to think everything is awesome and the best place ever. Then I will grow up from being a child and start to judge things and that's when I will be kicked out from the garden and will start living in a desert or something.

I will never experience anything better then that place and will never come back there because I grew up and started to think that I understand the world as an adult. The only way back is to become a child again and realize that I'm still in the garden.

[RiverSnake]

Day zero? Never heard of it...

[suninmyeyes]

I think I would feel it as myself.

[ChiDragon]

I have found myself standing on a piece of flat land and I called it "Earth". I called my first day on Earth "Day Zero". I saw something that is round and bright, above me, moving from my left side toward the right side. I called this bright round object the "Sun" in Heaven. I also, see Mountains, Water, Fire, Wind, Thunder, and Marsh. When the Sun goes down, I saw something shiny above and I call it the "Moon".

 

I would like to call myself 伏羲(Fu Xi). I would like to come up with a diagram to represent all of what I saw and called it 八卦(Ba Gua).

[Rishi Das]

From my point of view: your self has nothing to see, no where to stand, and nothing to label; and so it begins, a mystery of sorts at it's finest

Edited February 4, 2012 by don_vedo

[ralis]

Infinite fields of potential!

[Protector]

Infinite fields of potential!

Same as the universe now, eh

[Aetherous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjj6ZnTAeUA

[konchog uma]

hehe the jokes are funny but i think its a pretty cool exercise chidragon. I kinda let my mind go and contemplated what it would be like to make sense of reality without the obstruction of other people's explanations. That alone was a really nice exercise, for which i thank you.

 

I wondered first about the origin of reality, if such a thing can even be said to exist. My buddhist beginningless beginninglessness tells me it can't, but i wondered about beginnings.. if reality came before consciousness, or consciousness came before reality. I decided it was a chicken egg mystery and that i wouldn't know the answer by logical deduction. One could just as well proclaim that they arose simultaneously, a yinyang pair, and maybe some people would believe that. Some people will believe anything as long as it makes sense to their logical minds and someone authoritative says it in their religious voice! hahahah

 

But just waking up on earth one day with amnesia, not remembering anything about anything, i pondered that. I realized that that is (without the actual amnesia) a wonderful zen state in which everything is fresh and new and full of infinite potential, not the infinite potential of entropy, but the infinite potential of the empty vessel; the mind that did not try to explain away everything so that it could nominalize phenomena and then, thinking it knew the name of something therefore it knew something about it. Which is basically what language does on a subtle insidious level that pervades our conscious process entirely until we realize that we might be dreaming, or characters in the divine dream, and all this might not even be what we cling to it being so tightly.

 

So in my imagination i woke up in the grass and saw the sun and just thought it was beautiful and warm. Inevitably, i thought about the conversion of elements in a plasmic furnace, or about solar deities, or UV rays. But i realized that i would just say hello and maybe a prayer of thanks to it and move on to finding breakfast if i were truly amnesiac.

 

I think the best thing i took from your exercise chidragon is the realization that the tabula rasa or "blank slate" is supreme.. the beginners mind of the zen master that doesnt grasp or reject, just acts spontaneously in accord with what it perceives. I am a firm believer that there is something going on here that science can't explain, and that the religions don't perceive, and the spiritual traditions perceive that they don't perceive everything, but they don't perceieve, well, what they don't perceive. So in my own soulbending (and ignorant, and arrogant) attempts to perceive the workings of this vast mystery for myself, i have only seen an unknowable dream, a phantasmagorical mirage of empty phenomenon, some of which are stable enough to be perceived as "real" by the untrained mind, and some of which shift mockingly in front of my face as though the spirit of the All would rather not be seen, and the act of perception inspires it to change into something unknown while the observer watches witlessly. In a sea of time so vast that even a big bang is just a flicker in the ocean of reality, and the end of a reality is no more significant than a dreamer waking up to realize it was just a dream, only to find themselves in another dream, ad infinitum... in a sea of time like that, what we are dealing with when we gaze at the I AM is beyond the comprehension of a silly mortal, a would be seer, basically a charlatan who clings to the idea that they can indeed understand the ultimate reality as if it conformed to ideas and logic.. :D so i have arrived at the conclusion time and time again that the best mind is the empty mind, and that we aren't designed to know or supposed to realize the unknowable and that which transcends realization. The most we can hope for in gazing at the I AM is that we be shocked into the awareness that I AM THAT and just let yourself die its for the best.

 

Anyway if you read all that, i wish i could pin a gold star on your nose, for being so obliging. And chidragon, neat thoughts, thanks again for sharing

[Informer]

Day0 would mean that everything was one. So there is nothing separate to be perceived.

[Astral Monk]

There would be a cacophony of sound, colour, heat, and tingling, along with wave after wave of pleasure and terror. In seeing nothing, everything is seen. In hearing nothing, everything is heard. Until finally, finally, something transfixes itself. A brightness, a clearness, an acuteness. And then, it too fades away, leaving its shadow behind. Soon, the shadow becomes almost as bright as the brightness, as clear as the clearness. But it doesn't leave. It stays and remains fixed. Upon this rock suddenly, without warning, arises I.

 

After intense interest in I its position becomes clear, its isolation inescapable. Fear washes over and over until another Bright, another Clear intrudes upon it. The gaze outward and the reflection inward upon the shadow affect a calmness for a moment as the process becomes the supreme focus.

 

Eventually, I would recognize trees and mountains and streams and clouds and hand and foot and chest and head, but I would never know trees as trees, mountains as mountains, streams as streams, clouds as clouds, or the body as a body. Because, being the only I in existence, I have no language to express these intuitions abstractly.

 

Thus I would know only I and world, and only dimly perceive their connections, lost as I would be in the immediacy of pure sensuality.

 

8)

 

"A day called zero..will be such a busy day..!!"

Edited February 8, 2012 by Astral Monk

[Informer]

Very thoughtful post Chi Dragon,

 

there is much potential for it to help people understanding what is oneness, I think.

[ChiDragon]

I have found myself standing on a piece of flat land and I called it "Earth". I called my first day on Earth "Day Zero". I saw something that is round and bright, above me, moving from my left side toward the right side. I called this bright round object the "Sun" in Heaven. I also, see Mountains, Water, Fire, Wind, Thunder, and Marsh. When the Sun goes down, I saw something shiny above and I call it the "Moon".

 

I would like to call myself 伏羲(Fu Xi). I would like to come up with a diagram to represent all of what I saw and called it 八卦(Ba Gua).

 

The only thing I see, now, that is the Earth is flat and everything above moved around it. On Earth, I see brightness/darkness, motion/stillness, high/low, extrusion/indentation, hardness/softness, light/shadow and etc.

 

In general, I will classify the dyad as Yin/Yang in a reverse order.

Edited February 16, 2012 by ChiDragon

[ChiDragon]

The only thing I see, now, that is the Earth is flat and everything above moved around it. On Earth, I see brightness/darkness, motion/stillness, high/low, extrusion/indentation, hardness/softness, light/shadow and etc.

 

In general, I will classify the dyad as Yin/Yang in a reverse order.

 

I see the sunny side on the south of the hill;

and the shady side on the north.

 

I will attribute the sunny side as "YANG" and

the shady side as "Yin".

Edited February 16, 2012 by ChiDragon

[ChiDragon]

I see the sunny side on the south of the hill;

and the shady side on the north.

 

I will attribute the sunny side as "YANG" and

the shady side as "Yin".

Thank you all for your kind words...

 

Now, I have established what Yin-Yang was/were. I can add more attributes to them.

I would like to consider Yang has the following attributes:

Yang

1. light

2. brightness

3. motion

4. high

5. extrusion

6. hardness

 

Yin

1. shadow

2. darkness

3. stillness

4. low

5. indentation

6. softness

 

If I have to draw some pictographic symbols, I would draw a

SOLID line for Yang; and a

BROKEN line for Yin.

Edited February 19, 2012 by ChiDragon

[ChiDragon]

天(Heaven)

 

_____

_____

_____

 

 

Since Heaven is the Yang-est, I will draw it first with three solid lines.

Edited February 21, 2012 by ChiDragon

[ChiDragon]

地(Earth)

 

__ __

__ __

__ __

 

 

Since Earth is the Yin-est, I will draw it with three broken lines.

Edited February 21, 2012 by ChiDragon

[ChiDragon]

山(Mountain)

 

_____

__ __

__ __

 

 

When I look at a mountain, I see water and land then the tall mountain.

 

By definition, water is soft, therefore, it is Yin. Land is earth, therefore it is Yin. Mountain is high, therefore, it is Yang. To draw a trigram is from the bottom to top.

[ChiDragon]

澤(Marsh)

 

__ __

_____

_____

 

 

 

Water flows from higher place to lower. Therefore, the bottom line is land above sea level which is Yang. The middle line is high mountain which Yang also. The top line is the soft water which is Yin. The idea here was that water is flowing on top of the land or mountain which is a march.

[ChiDragon]

火(Fire)

 

_____

__ __

_____

 

 

Fire is soft which is Yin. It is burning inside a solid stove symbolized by the Yin line in the middle.

[ChiDragon]

水(Water)

 

__ __

_____

__ __

 

 

Water is flowing in a river in motion which is Yang. Therefore, A Yang line was drawn in the middle indicating motion of water flowing in the middle of the river beds.

[dawei]

Let's not get off on the wrong foot... I like what your sharing here... the title is misleading and you have jumped from binary to trigrams and bypassed the four bigram (si xiang 四象); and put this in the general area when it seems more specific to the Taoism subfolder.

 

Would you consider to start a thread in that subfolder and go more step-wise, like you are generally doing, from the binary to bigram to trigram to wherever you want to take this?

 

I think there is a rich amount of information to be gained from what you have shared and where I think you are going. So in either case, I look forward to where this goes.

[ChiDragon]

風(Wind)

 

_____

_____

__ __

 

 

The wind is under the sky and on the tree top but it is invisible. Therefore, it was attributed as Yin by the bottom broken line.

 

 

BTW The trigrams, here, are to represent the observed phenomena of nature. Indeed, there are eight of them; and that is why they are called ba gua(八卦). It is within the subject matter in this thread. I do not wish to jump to another subject at this point.

[ChiDragon]

雷(Thunder)

 

__ __

__ __

_____

 

 

The two Yin-lines represents the clouds and moisture above the sky(heaven). It causes lightning and thunder when the clouds meet.