Originally Posted by
Jundo
Tairin described beautifully the feeling:
"Sit here at the center—not the center of something that has limits, but “the center” being the whole thing."
I would like to say that, the actual physics of the universe aside, it it enough even if such feeling is simply a subjective, emotional, personal feeling in one's own heart and mind. It is not really so important whether a physicist would say that the universe is actually big or small, has limits or no limits, or that the person so feeling is actually sitting at a "center of the universe" or off in some cosmic backwater boondocks.
Why?
Well, human beings typically feel and assess that we are not much bigger than ants living on a relatively tiny world in an unimaginably vast cosmos that is somehow disconnected from us (i.e., that we are tiny ants in a vast world that is just the place we are, not that the vast world is in fact what we are). We feel small, semi-alone and somehow in a "love/hate" relationship with this world and its events, which sometimes give us what we want but often disappoint, sometimes are pleasant and often not, and with which we feels various degrees of friction. (Some human beings go the other way, with overblown egos too, thinking that the world revolves around only them ... but those people seem to have double the friction and disappointment with life when it proves otherwise).
However, such judgments and measures are also largely or exclusively subjective, emotional, personal feelings that human beings form between own own ears. Each is a value judgment that we make about our relationship to the world which is just our subjective assessment, not objective truth. Feeling "disconnected" and "disappointed," that some experience is "pleasant" or "unpleasant," that there is some friction between us and life, that we are alone (as opposed to "all is one"), that we are small (and thus relatively worthless to the "big picture") in a vast cosmos that is somehow separate from us ... all these are not true without our subjectively feeling that they are true.
For example, the universe does not judge which of its contents is significant or insignificant by putting price tags on every mountain or star or grain of sand. There is no law or "economic principle of the universe" that an ant or an atom is somehow more or less precious than a whole anthill or a whole galaxy. The universe does not define what aspects of its contents are separate from it (in fact, no inch of the universe is not the universe by definition). Events are not "pleasant" or "unpleasant" without a sentient heart to judge so (e.g., a volcano or cancer is not objectively a bad thing apart from the judgement of some scared person who stands in their way ... and both phenomena may actually have some positive effects too on an evolutionary scale). A person in Nebraska or Borneo (each a beautiful and amazing place in its own way) might argue whether they are truly "stuck in the boondocks" compared to someone in New York City, or are they each as much at "a center" of the surface of the revolving ball which is this planet earth as a person standing in Manhattan? Likewise for "the boondocks" of the universe, where the universe provides no street signs to point out which pieces are more at the center or vital or valuable than any other bits.
So, in a sense, it is fine if through Zazen and Buddhist insights we simply replace or supplement one set of "subjective, emotional, personal feelings" with an alternative set of "subjective, emotional, personal feelings" about who and what we are in reality and our relationship to it all. Both are perfectly defensible, worthwhile, viable ways to see, assess and experience things. Whether we feel like the "separate wave which is born and dies on the surface of the sea" or "always just the waving sea which rolls on and on and on endlessly" ... depends how we look at our self-identity. Whether you feel like an "insignificant ant" or "a shining jewel in Indra's vast net," as semi-alone and isolated or "one with the universe which pours into one's heart," as "in the boondocks" or "at a center, and also just the center of all without limits" ... each eye of the beholder to determine, whether eye of the "I" or Eye of the Buddha.
Gassho, J
STLah
Zazen Yōjinki - Sitting at the Centre
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