momentary rainbow, describing it as a perfect example of something contemplatives call dependent arising—the idea that every phenomenon emerges from the vast sea of causes and conditions that came before it.
In other words, things don’t happen out of nowhere. For example, it isn’t just randomly hot today. It’s hot because certain conditions converged to give rise to that hotness. Certain air masses moved in certain ways last week, and now a big, humid gross one is lying across my little prairie city like a giant tongue.
All rainbows involve at least one retina, a water-bearing planet, and usually a star.
in however small a way—that one day twenty-six centuries ago, something sufficiently disturbed a Nepali prince for him to sit under a tree (or whatever really happened) and resolve to figure out why we human beings suffer so much.
Every single thing that happens to you—your career, your ideas, your friends, your living situation—emerged into reality from its many parent conditions just like that rainbow did. In fact, nothing happens any other way: conditions give rise to a thing that wasn’t there, it’s there for a while, and then it disappears back into the mist of causality.
Yet the way we think about life seldom reflects that reality. We plan and worry and forecast and dread, all with an absurd sense of certainty, like we’re setting up snooker shots and we can see all the balls.
In other words, things don’t happen out of nowhere. For example, it isn’t just randomly hot today. It’s hot because certain conditions converged to give rise to that hotness. Certain air masses moved in certain ways last week, and now a big, humid gross one is lying across my little prairie city like a giant tongue.
All rainbows involve at least one retina, a water-bearing planet, and usually a star.
in however small a way—that one day twenty-six centuries ago, something sufficiently disturbed a Nepali prince for him to sit under a tree (or whatever really happened) and resolve to figure out why we human beings suffer so much.
Every single thing that happens to you—your career, your ideas, your friends, your living situation—emerged into reality from its many parent conditions just like that rainbow did. In fact, nothing happens any other way: conditions give rise to a thing that wasn’t there, it’s there for a while, and then it disappears back into the mist of causality.
Yet the way we think about life seldom reflects that reality. We plan and worry and forecast and dread, all with an absurd sense of certainty, like we’re setting up snooker shots and we can see all the balls.
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