One Bright Pearl Part 1 

Just love that image of Brad and Ziggy, heartwarming. Sending love to you Brad Roshi and love to all ❤️🙏🌺

I'm always reminded about the story of Samuel Johnson's rejection of Bishop Berkley's idealist philosophy when he kicked a rock and stated "I refute it thus!" when I hear this story. One Bright Pearl and Johnson's Appeal to the Stone seem to represent the tension between nonduality and physicalism very succinctly.

gassho 🙏🏻🌎❤️ really enjoyed this. intend to keep the series and reflect time to time...

Uncle Brad your a good Buddha evangelist and however much you think you might have been a not so. good Buddhist teacher. I don't believe it. I would pick you for mentoring any day💛💚🌼🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🙂

Thanks for sharing this … look forward to additional parts! ❤

"All i know... all I know, is that I don't know nothin'" ---- Operation Ivy

Just an aside....Where you in the band in the movie "Billy Madison"?

A jewel lies at each intersection of Indra's net. That's how I always understood it - the use of 'pearl' always seemed metaphorically inaccurate. Viva Ziggy!

I was waiting for Ziggy at the end.

Things are things because of mind as mind is mind because of things. The thought "pink giraffe" cannot be placed onto a table, similarly the tree "out there" only exists as it appears in the mind and that perception, like the pink giraffe has no substantial reality

Thanks a lot, very interesting. I am still fascinated how Zen penetrates the extremes of idealism and realism (in the sense of materialism). Btw one bright pearl sounds to me like the shining Atman or to put it in a buddhist way: the shining Anatmen. Is there a difference?? Greetings!

Uh nodes or intersections

I think i need more alacrity in my diet.

"This body and mind do not exist...but where is this pain coming from?" An extremely crude and clumsy way of approaching idealism. A far more subtle explanation was described brilliantly by Plotinus the leading Neoplatonic mystic of Roman times. Instead of using the metaphor of 'One Bright Pearl' he likens reality to a tree. "That which resumes all under a unity is a Principle in which all things exist together and the single thing is ALL. From this Principle, which remains internally unmoved, particular things push forth as from a single root which never itself emerges. Branching into multiplicity, each single outgrowth bearing its trace of the common source. Thus, phase by phase, there is finally production into this world; some things still close to the root, others widely separate in the continuous progression until we have, in our metaphor, bough and crest, foliage and fruit. At the one side all is one point of unbroken rest, on the other is the ceaseless process, leaf and fruit, all the things of process carrying ever within themselves the Reason-Principles of the Upper Sphere..."