Here is a story about a mirror and how we may see life occurring.
It's like a mirror tain, what is put before it, it reflects. In our case, as human beings, our structural configurations dictate some of what goes into the mirror. Structure, along with the accumulated acts of body, speech, and mind--or so we have come to believe--flesh out the images that are placed before the mirror. The mirror then dutifully reflects back what is not only the expected but the novel as well. The novel may be seen as the prevailing conditions of present concerns, anticipations, circumstances, e.g., intention (as desire), lighting, mirror dust, etc., all due to accumulation. This is what we might call, in keeping with the Indian philosophical traditions, karma (action). Past actions plus prevailing conditions--we may draw a fine line between the two--constitute the image. So, the past and present conditions enter the mirror and become a self plus incarnate and meaning-laden circumstances.
The mirror is indifferent to all presentations. The processing of image production is fundamentally important to the intentional concerns only, manifesting as selves who live and die. This body of anonymous intentions driven from beneath us as desire to fill the mirror has no perceivable bottom, no perceivable beginning (an-adi for Sanskritists). Even to ask why life occurs is a question the source of which is on the side of history, i.e., the actions, not the mirror. We find ourselves on the receiving end of the reflection. We are the receiving end of the reflection. What goes in comes out as experience, or more correctly, experiencing. The concern-content has little to do with the mirror, although nothing incarnates, nothing lives, without it. It's a trick, a scam that manifests all the whos, whats, whys, wheres, and hows that history has given each one of us in the movement of living. Yes, it is always and fundamentally each one of us. We believe and live what the mirror reflects. We call this conscious living in meaningful circumstances.
We must, however, realize that we consciously receive and live much less than what goes in, in both human personal terms; it would be quite different for whales and so-called extraterrestrials, individual and species-specific. We are limited to the surface while the depths of history configure in silent and sentient emptiness (shunyata). Our senses of self, circumstances (the lived world) are a reduction of karma to the manageable limits of our historically imposed images. However, we can, with some effort and help, overcome some of the limitations. (This is a discussion, always, for another time.)
Now we have a very basic understanding of the mirror metaphor. There are more subtleties that will be fleshed out as we proceed on this methodos, or way. What goes into the mirror--if you like, call the mirror consciousness or awareness--is both historical and structural. History here means actions of body, speech, and mind that have been constituted by a vast and incomprehensible network of causes that were, at one time or another, embodied in a human form, a universal form. (We will address this universality below.)
It's like a mirror tain, what is put before it, it reflects. In our case, as human beings, our structural configurations dictate some of what goes into the mirror. Structure, along with the accumulated acts of body, speech, and mind--or so we have come to believe--flesh out the images that are placed before the mirror. The mirror then dutifully reflects back what is not only the expected but the novel as well. The novel may be seen as the prevailing conditions of present concerns, anticipations, circumstances, e.g., intention (as desire), lighting, mirror dust, etc., all due to accumulation. This is what we might call, in keeping with the Indian philosophical traditions, karma (action). Past actions plus prevailing conditions--we may draw a fine line between the two--constitute the image. So, the past and present conditions enter the mirror and become a self plus incarnate and meaning-laden circumstances.
The mirror is indifferent to all presentations. The processing of image production is fundamentally important to the intentional concerns only, manifesting as selves who live and die. This body of anonymous intentions driven from beneath us as desire to fill the mirror has no perceivable bottom, no perceivable beginning (an-adi for Sanskritists). Even to ask why life occurs is a question the source of which is on the side of history, i.e., the actions, not the mirror. We find ourselves on the receiving end of the reflection. We are the receiving end of the reflection. What goes in comes out as experience, or more correctly, experiencing. The concern-content has little to do with the mirror, although nothing incarnates, nothing lives, without it. It's a trick, a scam that manifests all the whos, whats, whys, wheres, and hows that history has given each one of us in the movement of living. Yes, it is always and fundamentally each one of us. We believe and live what the mirror reflects. We call this conscious living in meaningful circumstances.
We must, however, realize that we consciously receive and live much less than what goes in, in both human personal terms; it would be quite different for whales and so-called extraterrestrials, individual and species-specific. We are limited to the surface while the depths of history configure in silent and sentient emptiness (shunyata). Our senses of self, circumstances (the lived world) are a reduction of karma to the manageable limits of our historically imposed images. However, we can, with some effort and help, overcome some of the limitations. (This is a discussion, always, for another time.)
Now, as for our mirrors, yes they must be plural despite their common function considered by many to constitute a singularity. Mirrors are often relegated to becoming terms such as consciousness, divinity, sentience, and all sorts of images and estimations. In any case, it is unknowable, futile, and at times, dangerous to characterize with certainty. Oddly enough, the word certain is related to the word crisis--and, as history will testify, certainty has given rise to many. Our mirror only gives us what is put into it. We get nothing from it but life itself, and life is also what we put into it. What's to say? Not much at all. Keeping silent recognition and appreciation, like the mirror itself, allowing it to be present as much as possible, helps us navigate the many realities history lives to become. The mirror mocks it all but provides it nonetheless. Accommodating it is an essential ingredient for the minimization of life's challenges. Call that an epoché or bracketing ala Husserl's phenomenology or just plain meditation.
Now we have a very basic understanding of the mirror metaphor. There are more subtleties that will be fleshed out as we proceed on this methodos, or way. What goes into the mirror--if you like, call the mirror consciousness or awareness--is both historical and structural. History here means actions of body, speech, and mind that have been constituted by a vast and incomprehensible network of causes that were, at one time or another, embodied in a human form, a universal form. (We will address this universality below.)
