Consider the Analogy…

This is just something I was thinking about the other day that I think is cool.

The analogy is meant to be very visual. The basic idea is that life is made out of many different “webs” that connect people and things. Their is a different type (maybe think of a different color) web for each type of connection. Examples of ‘connections:’ the senses (you see/touch/smell/taste/hear it), conversation (you talk with it), memory (you remember it), direct involvement (you work there), relationship (intimate and aloof), global. The composition of all of these webs forms one ‘superweb’ that is life.

When we live our lives we form one junction (or node) the vast ‘superweb’ of life composed of ideas, culture, knowledge, entertainment, emotion, rational, success, education, employment etc.

Although you connect and disconnect from these webs (i.e. people, ideas, experiences) constantly, they continue to exist regardless of how many people are actively participating in them. As humanity processes, we, as a group, add on to these webs and reshape them.

Life is the overall process of shaping and (usually, but not always) expanding the web. You, yourself, are both intrinsically contributor to the web (and thus absolutely essential to the web) but are not a distinct entity with in this web. As Buddha describes reincarnation:

Well, then, we agree that the flame of today
is in a certain sense the same as the flame of yesterday,
and in another sense it is different at every moment.
Moreover, the flames of the same kind,
illuminating with equal power the same kind of rooms
are in a certain sense the same.

We each are like flames that come into and out of existence and connect with the world in a variety of different ways. When we manifest ourselves as connection points in this web, we realize that the we can be change through willed or unwilled change. As an individual you cannot personally reshape the web, but when many move coherently the web can be reshaped.

In the end we must trust Bruce Lee’s wisdom:

“Be water, my friend”

End of Analogy

Does that sound like the internet?

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