Scientific Meditation (0 18): What is the reality? What is in the universe? )
Based on your understanding of my past articles, we are about to begin a mysterious and pleasant spiritual journey. During the trip, I will think synchronously with Buddhist scriptures, psychology, brain science, life science and physics, and think about the so-called Tao, mind, original mind, Tathagata and three bodhis. To pursue the essence and ultimate meaning of life, the universe and everything!
At the same time, I am a little worried about whether you can keep up with my thoughts in a very short time, but I will try my best to "cut" the most complicated and difficult things in the most concise and clear way. This investigation itself is the process of your further understanding and integration of life science and Buddhism. This process will help you learn how to control your life function, make your body and mind healthier, and finally let you know the most awesome mystery in the universe.
What is the reality?
The Buddha made it very clear: "If you see the opposite, you will see the Tathagata" and "Reality has no opposite". Buddha pointed out the direction for people to think and understand reality. At the same time, it also clarifies the standard of enlightenment: seeing the Tathagata when you see the difference (Tathagata is sincere, that is, the real reality).
Although the Buddha made it so clear, we still think that "if people talk about food, it will never be enough" (it is useless to listen to others' talk about food). Furthermore, if you just struggle to understand that there is no phase and no phase in an empty space, and ultimately you can't achieve "no phase and no phase", then everything can only be "nothing".
In fact, when we ask what reality is, we will encounter a big problem: although people have been asking what reality is repeatedly, they just have a vague concept of what reality is. For example, people are chasing "five aggregates, six dusts, Buddhism, illegal aspects", or just making names, and never see the truth of things (monsters, qi pulse, spiritual power, etc.). There is nothing wrong with the concept in Buddhist scriptures, but people don't grasp the "key point". Questioning these vague concepts reminds me of a story:
In front of a restaurant on the roadside, every time a car passes by, there will always be a dog barking behind the car and trying to catch up with it. A nosy man said to the dog owner who was standing at the door of the hotel watching all this, "Can your dog catch up with the car?" The owner of the dog said, "I don't care if it will catch up. What I want is what it will catch up with when it catches up with the car?" Throughout the ages, people have "buried" many people in pursuit of many meaningless "problems"!
So let's not ask what the reality is for the time being, but simply ask: what reality? In other words, what can be questioned in the universe? The last question is simple: what is in the universe, that is, what can be questioned in the universe?
Section one, what's in the universe?
I remember the autumn when I was eight years old. One night, my children and I jumped around in the straw and played catch. One of them was careless, and his feet were empty, so I jumped forward and fell headlong from a height of three meters. After landing, I only have one feeling: my eyes shine! I had a bad fall and lay helpless on the ground for a long time-if it wasn't so fierce, I wouldn't have such a deep memory today. When the Venus in my eyes dispersed, I suddenly noticed the real star in front of me-the vast starry sky, which made me think for the first time: what is a star? What's on the star?
1998, in order to think about the mysterious universe, I once drew a long and flat galaxy on a big oil painting paper with red ink, and then I stuck it on my ceiling. This painting makes me think about what life is. What is the point of living? Why does I exist in the universe? Once everything is destroyed (a person's death, everything is destroyed for him. And everyone on earth will be wiped out in 100 years. What are we? How small are we and what is the ultimate meaning of life?
In order to understand what is in the universe, let's first look at how big the universe is and how many stars there are. Because the universe is made up of galaxies, let's first look at our galaxy: how big is the Milky Way?
Do you know how big the earth is? You will say, the Yangtze River and Yellow River, seven continents and four oceans, the earth is so big! Do you know the speed of sunlight? Any kind of light, such as the light, light and candlelight of a flashlight, can travel 300,000 kilometers in one second (next time, shine the flashlight into the air for one second, wow! 300,000 kilometers away! )。 The diameter of the earth is 12700 km-that is, if you shine a flashlight in one direction for one second, the light will cross the distance of 23 earths. Look how fast light travels! For light, the earth is like an apple in your hand, so the earth is not big!
How big is the solar system? There is an image metaphor: if the earth is reduced to the size of a grape grain (with a diameter of1.3cm), the sun will be reduced to a fireball with a diameter of1.5m, and the "earth" is 50 meters away from this fireball/kloc-0. According to this distance ratio, if the earth is nearly one centimeter away from the "solar fireball" or one centimeter away, human beings will either be roasted to death by the "fireball" or freeze to death, then on the other hand, how, how difficult it is for us to exist!
Of course, it will take a whole year for this "little grape" to make a circle with a radius of 150 meters around the "fireball". During this period, this "little grape" turned itself 365 times, which is what we are most familiar with and experienced every day.
Although light travels 23 earths in one second, it takes 8 minutes for a beam of sunlight to reach the earth from the sun. If this beam of light wants to continue out of the solar system, it will take four years, not an hour, not a day or a month.
When the diameter of our sun is 1.5 meters, the nearest "fireball" (the star in the Milky Way) is 40,000 kilometers. It's like saying that a person who is 1.5 meters high has his closest friends three worlds away. So, the next time you look at the stars in the sky, don't think they are very dense. Actually, every star is very, very lonely.
Of course, this loneliness also ensures that after the birth of the sun 4.6 billion years later, I still haven't been near another "grandma sun". Otherwise, even a slight blink of an eye on the earth will be evaporated into the air!
In fact, no matter how far away, the sun has a subtle connection with the nearest star and the farthest star. Without this connection, the Milky Way would not have spiraled for 654.38+03.6 billion years, and it would have become a "fragmented sand" long ago. Moreover, galaxies and galaxies are not only divided into their own galaxy clusters, but also move in the same direction in a unified and coordinated way. Since we are divided into groups and have a common "goal", this shows that there are also subtle connections and interactions between galaxies. It can be said that all the stars in the universe are interrelated. The universe is not only a whole from the beginning, but also will return to a whole in the future: everything will eventually be "destroyed" and return to the ontology of the Tao-starting all over again.
It takes 1/23 seconds for a beam of sunlight to pass through the earth, while it takes four years to escape from the solar system. So how many years does it take to cross the galaxy? Of course, it won't be ten years, a hundred years or a thousand years, but a hundred thousand years. In other words, the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is100000 light years.
Imagine that it takes eight minutes for a beam of sunlight to travel from the sun to the earth. Crossing the earth can be said to be instantaneous, because it only takes 1/23 seconds. During the crossing of the Milky Way galaxy after four years' escape from the solar system, human beings experienced 20 "up and down five thousand years" of civilization history. So, the Milky Way is too wide. So big that we don't know what to compare, and finally we can only express it with numbers.
How many galaxies are there in the universe?
You can look at the night sky outside now. Please note that many stars you think are "stars" are actually galaxies. So how many galaxies can we see with the naked eye? The answer is: about six thousand. And each galaxy has 1000 billion solar systems. Every solar system has many planets like the earth, so aliens exist anyway!
You can't see many stars with your eyes alone. How many stars are invisible to people?
For a better understanding, let's use an analogy: now we don't compare the earth to grapes or the sun to a fireball 1.5 meters high, but shrink the whole galaxy with 1000 billion solar systems into a small refined salt. Then the galaxies in the night sky that can be seen by the naked eye add up to only the spoonful of refined salt you put in the soup-there will be 6000 refined salts.
How many "refined salt grains" are invisible to the human eye? The answer is that it will be filled with a sphere with a diameter of three kilometers.
The evidence is that from September, 2003 to June, 5438+October, 2004 10, scientists used Hubble Space Telescope to aim at the darkest small area in space-as a result of continuous enlargement, this area is only a small point in the night sky that is several billion times smaller than the needle tip (in the words of scientists, it is like looking at the egg-sized area on the moon with their eyes) and taking photos. The photo taken as a result is the following photo.
(Figure omitted)
(In the photo, there are more than 10,000 galaxies. In other words, there are so many galaxies in every dot we see in the night sky.
In any case, astronomical figures are huge. Therefore, the next time you describe someone as rich, don't use "astronomical figures" because you exaggerate his wealth.
How small are we in this proportion? And how small is greed and money for everyone? What is the meaning of money?
Excuse me, who is the richest today? A: Bill Gates. Who is the richest in history? A: Qin Shihuang. We don't mention the Great Wall of Wan Li. The Epang Palace, which is only a few hundred miles away, is "a mountain of treasures and a myriad of beautiful women" (Xiang Yu burned it for three months-absolutely unprecedented), but now "the Great Wall of Wan Li is still here today, but Qin Shihuang is not".
So what are wealth and money? When you think "it" is very important, money is just a symbol, just an illusory number in the bank card, and money is nothing! When you think money is not important, it can save dying lives; Let the children who can't afford the tuition show their smiles; Let the hungry get food; Let the cultural concept spread more widely-for a nation, education is above all else, thus promoting social development, relieving people's inner pain and making the world full of love!
So, recently, before his death in the western world, Bill Gates wisely donated all $58 billion to the society, leaving no money for his children (it seems that Bill Gates really understands that he will die if he is not born, because after all, Bill has made practical actions, and more people just spit on reporters). In 2008, Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world, was not stupid. As early as 2005, he made a statement: He was willing to combine his wealth with that of Bill Gates to jointly fight against the diseases of people in third world countries.
What is in the universe? Quite simply, there are only stars in the universe. What are the stars? Or we can ask further, what's on that star?
What's on the star?
We ask what is reality from what is reality. Then we see that there are only stars in the universe. Therefore, the reality we demand can only be the reality of the stars. So what are stars? What can be questioned on the stars? In order to understand the problem more clearly, let's first look at how many kinds of stars there are in the universe and what's on them.
Simply put, there are only four kinds of stars that humans can see now: stars, planets, satellites and comets. Next, the analysis begins with a cosmic dust.
First of all, a needle-tip-sized cosmic dust will collide with molecules in the atmosphere at a distance of 100 times-72000m/s from the earth's surface, and then burn and glow. Such a small piece of matter is called a meteor. If humans want to see a dazzling meteor with the naked eye, this cosmic dust must be bigger than a mung bean.
If the cosmic dust is big enough to fall to the earth before it burns out in the earth's atmosphere, this meteorite is called a meteorite. Meteorites are usually stones smaller than fists, and of course they weigh several tons.
When the cosmic dust is relatively large, such as a kilometer in diameter, it is called a comet before it hits the earth. I hope we don't bump into each other, or I'm afraid that once the dust keeps the earth in darkness for a long time, most of the existing life on the earth will be extinct. For example, 60 million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of 7 kilometers fell on the surface of the earth, causing a big explosion, throwing a lot of dust into the atmosphere, forming a dust fog that covered the sky, leading to the temporary suspension of photosynthesis of plants and the extinction of dinosaurs.
If it were any bigger, it would be called a comet. For example, the diameter of Halley's comet is a strange stone with a diameter of 10 km. Although the head of a comet is 10 km, its tail is 1 100 million km long. There are more than 1000 billion comets in the comet cloud outside the solar system. And has been preparing to rush to the sun, of course, there is also the danger of hitting the earth.
When many comets collide-as long as there are enough collisions, they will collide into "big comets". Because the more matter there is, the greater the gravity will be, and the tail of the comet will be forced to fall on the head of the comet, so that the big comet will become a ball. We call this "comet" a planet-a star orbiting a star. For example, the earth is a planet. And a planet smaller than the earth, when it revolves around another planet, we call it a "satellite"-the star that defends this planet. For example, we are no longer familiar with the moon, and there are many small stars orbiting Saturn, all of which are satellites.
When one day the moon suddenly left the earth and revolved around the sun, the moon changed directly from the "grandson" of the sun to the "son". Therefore, whether it is a planet or a satellite depends not only on the size of the comet, but also on who it revolves around.
When the planet is further enlarged due to the impact of celestial bodies, for example, there are 3 18 "Jupiter" as big as the earth, it is still a planet. Just because it is bigger, it has a few more "sons" than the earth (Jupiter has four satellites).
If a planet wants to be the "father" of many planets, that is, a star, it must be as big as130,000 earths. Because only such a large pile of matter has enough gravity to attract planets, trigger internal thermonuclear reactions, and make itself glow. Our sun is made up of 654.38+300,000 earth materials.
The sun is 4.6 billion years old this year and will live for 5 billion years. But how long can a star 10 times larger than the sun live? It is not 1000 billion years as we thought, but it is 1000 times shorter than the sun, that is, it will only exist 1000 million years. Then it explodes into a neutron star the size of a city, or its fragments recombine into a smaller star.
For example, the sun was re-formed from "small pieces of matter" left by the explosion of a very large star. When a star 30 times larger than the sun burns out, it will become a "black hole" that people talk about because of gravity. A black hole will instantly devour all the materials near it, even the sun. But it is smaller than a grain of sand. The biggest black hole near us is the center of the Milky Way. This supermassive black hole is really big enough for 1000 billion stars of the Milky Way to revolve around it regularly.
So how big is the biggest star in the universe? In the 1960s, astronomers discovered a strange star body, whose brightness is 1000 times that of the Milky Way, and it is the brightest star in the universe that human beings have ever seen. Its mass is not the mass of millions or tens of thousands of suns, but the mass of a galaxy-it's really super big. However, its diameter is only one of the 36.5 million molecules in the Milky Way, which is the distance from day to day. The diameter light of the Milky Way will travel 654.38+ million years). Because scientists can't give a clear explanation for such a strange and huge star today, they can only use a star-like term to name it-quasar.
As can be seen from the above, the reason why stars are divided into stars, planets, satellites and comets depends on "quantity"-that is, as more and more substances are attracted together, with the increase of substances, with the increase of gravitational intensity, this pile of substances is shaped into stars with what characteristics under the corresponding gravitational intensity.
What's the use of listing so many daily data on it?
When we suddenly found that there were so many planets and galaxies in the "sky", we felt infinite surprise and wonder. Then we began to imagine that those immortals who know their names and those who don't know their names may live in mysterious and gorgeous palaces on a certain planet. Then speculate that our "social behavior" on the earth will determine the planet that sublimates to a certain level after death; Or enter the mysterious space of the fifth, sixth or ninety-ninth dimension to live in peace.
However, in addition to trying to imagine what to do (such as the Sun Temple), we have to accept the cruel fact that there are no Chang 'e and rabbits on the moon, only the unbearable heat and cold alternating day and night, and the moon rock that carries all this. There is no sun god or palace in the sun, but only gas boiling to 20 million degrees.
Where are the other stars? If you go to a neutron star, it will weigh several trillion tons (heavier than the Himalayas)-you have already pushed yourself into a neutron star. Black holes are places of death. Of course, it is also an eternal place. Because black holes end the motion of matter, thus ending time and space. So there is nothing in the black hole, nothing. What about quasars? I can't find a chance to catch my breath in such a high temperature.
So the gods in the sky are not in the sky, nor are the hell and the devil, because the core is magma and molten iron as high as 5000 degrees.
Where is the Elysium in the West? "Amitabha Sutra" says: "Cross this ten trillion land". If we take the earth as the standard and measure the distance of "10 trillion land" to the west, we can't see anything, just encounter a few more galaxies. We can't find the western paradise, or God, or angels and fairies in "paradise" at all.
We are miserable, because unless we are willing to fantasize about the existence of immortals in a certain planet or space (which is meaningless because we can't prove it), we have to accept that something we have always believed will exist in our hearts, or that the eternal sustenance (Elysium, Buddhism) that we have been trying to prove will suddenly disappear! Although we have been pursuing their truth, this pursuit seems to exist only in the "creation" of human brain from the beginning. Our inner spiritual pillar has been halved!
Are we in a corner? In fact, we knocked down a door, a door that made us know how to pursue and realize reality. Everything described by the Buddha exists, but it never exists in people's fantasies and fabrications. Where does it exist? Exists in reality.
Seeing this, if you don't confuse the pain, it means that your research on Buddhism is not deep enough. Unless you "go deep", no matter how deep you study Buddhism, there will be many "prejudices" that will become your "obstacles".
At the same time, I want to say to you solemnly: don't think that "enlightenment" is simple, but at this moment I am giving you the clearest method. Of course, this method will destroy a lot of "knowledge" you already have and make you painfully unwilling to accept it! But you can't go to hell or heaven
To put it simply, people always like to "look down" and try to find heaven, Buddha nature, Tathagata and sincerity outside the body. And this kind of search is like people looking for an ethereal, trance-like, fluttering and mysterious realm, which is the imaginary realm of meditation. They are all looking for fish at the edge of the forest.
In the end, where will we find reality? What is left in the universe that can be questioned by us?
Remember: "point to the moon, point to the moon" is not just a sentence, but also everything the Buddha said.