Taking "everything changes" too literally?

[snowyowl]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

What doesn't change?

Top of my list would be fundamental physical constants like the speed of light in vacuum, gravitational constant, etc.
Then there's mathematical results, the value of pi, 2 + 2 = 4 etc.
Having said that, getting evidence for this is a bit tricky. Isn't it an assumption that the speed of light was the same at the big bang as it is now? We can't go back in time to check!

Originally Posted by snowyowl

Top of my list would be fundamental physical constants like the speed of light in vacuum, gravitational constant, etc.
Then there's mathematical results, the value of pi, 2 + 2 = 4 etc.
Having said that, getting evidence for this is a bit tricky. Isn't it an assumption that the speed of light was the same at the big bang as it is now? We can't go back in time to check!

The speed of light is only constant in a vacuum so it's not absolute.

In base three 2 + 2 = 11. Now you might say that's a technicality because 11 in base three is 4 in base ten however depending on which base one is operating in at a minimum representation and perception have changed so again there's a part of the system that's not absolute, not universal.

Beyond this physics and mathematical equations break down in an intense gravitational field resulting in a singularity which really means we can't come up with an answer. We simply don't know. Physics and math as we understand fail.

[snowyowl]

Hi JustASimpleGuy, I knew my suggestions were a bit suspect ha ha! I thought I was talking about things which don't change, rather than absolute or universal. Are those the same or different from unchanging? Hmm, I'm not sure.

In any case, my ideas rely on abstractions like numbers & maths, which could be regarded as a human creation (founded on laws of logic etc) rather than a natural phenomenon, and as we know human's haven't been around that long in astronomical time.

My other candidates:

Time. Is time as a whole permanent or impermanent? My limited understanding of current theory is that the space-time continuum came into existence at the point of the big bang - meaning that space-time exists within a bubble of reality, which we can't get outside of to take measurements about its nature. There is no external starting or ending points to use our cosmic stopwatch so to speak.

Love. This relates to psychological time rather than physical time, but when I have an experience of pure love, beauty, non-duality, then time as a process in mind seems to stop and I'm in a timeless state. Like in the Neil Young song "That perfect feeling when time just slips, Away between us on our foggy trip". While I'm in that state (only really glimpses) it seems unchanging, but then I'm back into regular time. I wonder if I'm glimpsing something permanent underneath my dualistic ego-centred experience (like doing a scratch card) or if it all exists in time.

Originally Posted by snowyowl

Hi JustASimpleGuy, I knew my suggestions were a bit suspect ha ha! I thought I was talking about things which don't change, rather than absolute or universal. Are those the same or different from unchanging? Hmm, I'm not sure.

In any case, my ideas rely on abstractions like numbers & maths, which could be regarded as a human creation (founded on laws of logic etc) rather than a natural phenomenon, and as we know human's haven't been around that long in astronomical time.

My other candidates:

Time. Is time as a whole permanent or impermanent? My limited understanding of current theory is that the space-time continuum came into existence at the point of the big bang - meaning that space-time exists within a bubble of reality, which we can't get outside of to take measurements about its nature. There is no external starting or ending points to use our cosmic stopwatch so to speak.

Love. This relates to psychological time rather than physical time, but when I have an experience of pure love, beauty, non-duality, then time as a process in mind seems to stop and I'm in a timeless state. Like in the Neil Young song "That perfect feeling when time just slips, Away between us on our foggy trip". While I'm in that state (only really glimpses) it seems unchanging, but then I'm back into regular time. I wonder if I'm glimpsing something permanent underneath my dualistic ego-centred experience (like doing a scratch card) or if it all exists in time.

My suspicion is Miss H is driving at the fountainhead of all that is.

Einstein shot both time and space down with relativity. Concerning spacetime no one really knows exactly what that is. It's the noumenon and we perceive the phenomena (space and time) that arise from it. Since spacetime is an unknown scratch it as a viable candidate.

If we're going to go with physics I suppose we can posit it's the Unified Field but until we have a Theory of Everything it's undefined and can't be considered a candidate either.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

My suspicion is Miss H is driving at the fountainhead of all that is.

I thought we'd have fun getting there!
Gravity? Love? Time? 2+2?
I don't see any of those as constant, unchanging.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by snowyowl

Assume being the operative word. We're brought up with a model of physical reality made of solid objects (nouns) and processes in time (verbs) as separate. It's tricky to disentangle my direct perception from this conceptual framework. I came across a talk by Alan Watts where he gives an example of a language without nouns, just verbs (I can't remember which language). I'm contemplating in terms of phenomena = process = space-time. Not time and things as separate, connected by a truth of impermanence, which seems negative, and giving me the idea of some kind of permanence in Nirvana. But, perhaps it's process all the way down.

Yes we'd probably be surprised how much of what we think we know is really only base assumptions, but we basically have live in a model of how we understand or make sense of the world. The debate as to if there is a real world, which implies some nature of enduring substance; or if the universe is and illusion, which implies a lack of enduring substance, really only points to a deeper query as to whether continuity depends on an enduring substance or not.

In the Buddhist philosophy 'self' or 'ata' has different meanings. It can apply to a fundamental soul or personal identity or it can apply to a fundamental substance. 'Anata' then means not-self with respect to and identity or soul or it means no-self or non-self with respect to objects or the universe. However, the the implied subtext suggests all nature of theory as to self or not-self is delusion and self-theory will lead to distress. It's just that people are strongly identified and have deep attachments, so saying objects, thoughts and feelings are 'not me' in the sense that there is no fundamental-self apart from the collation of these, and saying there no self or no fundamental substance apart from the collation of properties, is not an objective statement of truth per-se, but a perspective opposed the self-theory which causes so much unnecessary distress.

The truthy stuff is left for insight, so rather than the knowledge of 'no-self' being objectively true, meditation is an investigation that reveals 'the-way-in-which' it is true, and that subtle nuance from the 'objectively known' to 'the sense of it' shifts the knowledge base away from the noun and toward the verb.