Cowboy Cottage
Cattle Pasture, East Napa, California, USA
April 4, 2025
"Cows go 'Moo moo!', pigs go 'Oink oink!'", chickens go 'Cheep
cheep!', and human beings go 'Blah blah blah!'
... Randy McNamara, improving on Old MacDonald
in that order.
Did
the Buddha
really say suffering occurs in the significance we add to what happens,
not in what happens itself? It sure sounds like something he would say,
yes?
Werner
on the other hand, is on record
reflecting
this theme repeatedly. So before we revisit significance, what we make
significant, and what we add to what happens that makes it
unnecessarily significant, here's something to bear in mind whenever
you make anything significant. "Whenever I make what
significant, Laurence?". It doesn't matter. Anything.
Everything. We are always making something
significant. We are significance-making-machines.
OK, a billion is a thousand million ie 1,000,000,000 ie a
one followed by nine zeroes. A trillion is a million
million ie 1,000,000,000,000 ie a one followed by twelve zeroes. There
are one hundred billion stars in our galaxy ie
100,000,000,000 ie a one followed by eleven zeroes. Coincidentally
there are about one hundred billion galaxies in
the universe.
So if the one hundred billion galaxies each have one hundred billion
stars (which is quite likely), then the number of stars in
the universe
is ten billion trillion ie 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
ie a one followed by twenty two zeroes. Now listen very carefully: you
and I live on one tiny little
planet
orbiting just one ... of those ten ... billion ...
trillion ... stars. That means we're not just
insignificant - because if I said we're in-significant, I would
be implying we've still got a teensy weensy bit of
significance, although not much. No, what's true is we're just not
significant at all.
You're still not convinced? Try this on for size: with a little
imagination,
you're atop a giant Saturn V rocket approaching
the moon.
It's the Apollo 8 mission. You're looking back at our fragile
planet Earth
with your right arm outstretched and your right thumb raised - in other
words, you're giving
planet Earth
the thumbs up (if you will). From this distance,
Earth
is covered by and disappears completely behind your raised thumbnail.
All of history, every
work of art
that's ever been created, every man, woman, and child who's ever lived
and died, every detail of each of every single human being's lives, is
completely hidden behind your raised thumbnail (as astronaut Jim Lovell
may have said). This simple shift in perspective illustrates /
underlines nothing is significant.
Until we add significance, things have no significance. In and of
itself, nothing is significant. The trick is to interrupt ourselves
adding significance. We're the source of the significance in
the world.
We assume entities and events are inherently significant.
If it's true that suffering occurs in the significance we add, and not
in entities and events themselves, then the sooner we interrupt
ourselves adding significance, the less we suffer (as
the Buddha
may have said). And look: adding significance isn't something we can
chose not to do. We're significance-making-machines. We
add significance because it's what human beings do. The
resolution doesn't come from not adding significance. That's not an
available choice. We add significance automatically. The choice we
have in the matter, is noticing when we're adding
significance, then interrupting ourselves doing it ... until the next
time we begin adding it automatically again.
We be born, we do something, we die. There's no significance in it,
aside from the significance we add to it (yada yada yada). Having life
be the source of the significance in the entities and events in our
lives, is a way of passing off blaming the significance we create, to
Life itself.
You don't like that? Too bad. Differentiating between the significance
we add, and any significance already inherent in our lives (there is
none) is the first rung on the ladder to
mastery.