The practice of meditation is to become aware of the relatedness, the relatedness between mind and body, between all the cells in the body, between human beings, between human and nature, between human and the Cosmos.
Relatedness is the final and true reality of the Cosmos. All the events and all the elements in the Cosmos are related to each other and are one with each other. There is no separate event, no separate element, and no separate human being as well.
The separation is a passing impression, an impression in which our senses, especially the eyes tend to be trapped. With our eyes, all the things seem to be separate from each other. The mountain is the mountain, the river is the river, you are you, I am I, the head is the head, the arm is the arm.
If we take what we see through the eyes as the final reality, and fail to see the oneness of the mountain and the river, you and I, the head and the arm, our existence in the world will become more and more boring, more and more weakened. Various forms of pain will occur, and death becomes unsurmountable.
Because being trapped in a passing impression weakens the relatedness between each other, blocks the energy flow between each other and debilitate the life.
The energy is not tangible and measurable stuff. It’s simply the experience of the relatedness. It’s the evidence that the relatedness does exist and function.
To experience the fact that all the events, all the elements, including ourselves and the whole Cosmos as well are by their nature related to each other, we need to close our senses, our eyes, return to our being and consciousness as a whole, return to the meditation.
It’s the deepest longing of each life and each human being to become aware of our relatedness with the other beings, the nature and the Cosmos. We can even say that it’s exactly for the purpose of experiencing this relatedness that the life is born out of the nothingness.
Relatedness is the major theme of all the religions and spiritual traditions and the major theme of science and philosophy as well.
With the concept of God, Allah, etc. as the creator of the cosmos, monotheism such as Christianity, Islam, etc. hints at the oneness of the Cosmos, while Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism hint at the oneness of the Cosmos with the concept of emptiness, nothingness, Tao, etc. Oneness reveals the fundamental interrelatedness of the Cosmos.
Modern science is deeply influenced by materialism so that it‘s difficult for many scientists to understand the inherent oneness and interrelatedness of the Cosmos. However, materialism also aims to find the final common basis of all the phenomena in the Cosmos so that their relationship between each other can be fully understood.
Scientists focus their research upon the particular phenomena and are inclined to be solely concerned with the phenomena. By contrast, religion and philosophy shift our concern back to the true nature of life and the Cosmos, in case we lose the consciousness that all the beings are one and related to each other actually.
Our pursuit of truth is about the forms, patterns and modes of the relatedness. Our pursuit of beauty is about the subjective experience of the relatedness. Both truth and beauty are relative and in flux constantly.
Due to our inherent nature of being related and one with the Cosmos, we long to experience this reality, and deepen our relationship with the Cosmos.
Accordingly there is this pursuit of goodness. Goodness is the balance between truth and beauty, the mediation between the objective and the subjective. The practice of meditation is our constant exploration of truth, beauty and goodness, so that we can step by step come close to the eternity, to the final reality of the Cosmos and our existence in the world.
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