Point of Origin

      If “I” have a point of origin, what is it?  If the “me” starts somewhere, where is that? Can we trace our “selves” to some beginning point, or is this impossible?  If it is possible, then first there must be a definite knowledge of exactly what this “me” or “I” is. How many people do “you” know who have enquired into what they really are as an “I” and where and how it came to be?  How is this to be done if it is possible?  It might be asked, “What am I not and what is the point of origin of that?”  Either way by means of via positiva or via negativa enquiry, or both, this has to be done, otherwise there can be no real fulfillment; no real truth can be found.   This is the whole axis upon which the wheel of delusion revolves.

      In order to stop this wheel of delusion there are points of insight to be realized. Getting beyond the widely accepted conventional view of dualism will be difficult, but only at first.   Doubt may arise when confronted with the proposal that there is no entity, no object, no phenomenon, no event, no thought that has its own reality separated from the rest of the totality of the matrix of existence.  No action or motion, no speck of dust, no galactic cluster, no thing is a separate substantial entity.    All are composites and all composites are impermanent.  No thing can be accurately defined or characterized or described as having specific qualities or marks that come into being from some definite location or point of time or space. Every thing is open to change, but there can be found no real thing that does change. Change is going on but there is no permanent.   Definite, self-existing thing that changes.   A permanent, definite, self-existing thing could not change into something other or something else. There is no such thing.    And whatever the composite aspects of any thing are, they are not separate permanent entities either.  So no point of origin can be posited for any thing or any part of anything at any place in time or space or presumed causation.  What a mystery!  But what we are is not a separate objective phenomenon, so we need not posit a point of origin for what we really are. What we are is unthinkable and we realize ourSelves when we understand the limitations of mind.

“Becoming’s wheel reveals no known beginning; no maker, no experiencer there; Void with a voidness twelvefold, and nowhere does it ever stop; it spins, forever spinning.”             (~Visuddhimagga)