According to my experience and sensibility, life is not exclusively confined to the organisms and foliage. Rather, life is ubiquitous. It is the very essence that grows the gliding wind, the whooshing ocean and the beaming light; that maintains the integrity of an object like a chair, table or mug; that coalesces into the evolving minerals, the rotation of the earth and the swirling of the galaxies. In our conventional culture, these phenomena would usually be defined as inanimate, yet if we explore the fundamental meaning of the words 'animate', 'existence' and 'life', it is evident that life is, in fact, that which animates, pervades and is the substance of everything that exists.
Brilliant clues to the living nature of the cosmos can be found in the origins of our language. Words are not merely stale symbols. They arose as a way of indicating experience. It is experience which triggered the conjuring of the formulation of language. And so, words also act as portals through which our attention and feeling travels, beckoned into an intimate contact with the reality of experience. For example, when walking in the forest, and I say to my friend 'look at that beautiful tree', this utterance is indeed a collection of sounds and symbols, yet the implicit evocation is not to fixate on the sound or symbol 'tree', but to behold the aliveness of the tree, to experience its nature, its beauty. That is what the 'tree' really is, that to which the word refers.
When I say 'look at that beautiful tree', what is happening in my experience? I behold an absolutely ineffable experience, which by itself is all the meaning there is, and then I attempt to indicate that silent meaning to my friend by pointing a conceptual finger. As the Buddha said, words are like "fingers pointing to the moon." The finger is not the moon, and yes, that is the limitation of words. But, the power of the finger is that it is a portal to the direct experience of the moon. And that is the power of words. They invite us to the experience. The Buddha didn't remain silent throughout all his years of offering satsang. He profoundly utilised the portal of words to evoke the experience of reality. However, he did emphasise that the problem arises when we exclusively fixate on the finger, ignoring the experience of the moon. Only by looking at or actually experiencing the moon does its true meaning shine. Words are attempts to indicate that experience of meaning. They are portals to that meaning.
Exploring the etymology of words may seem like an academic endeavour, akin to reorganising letters in an orderly fashion on a page. But here, we have a different approach, one that is perfectly practical and applicable to experiencing spiritual illumination. We're not so interested in the word itself, instead we dive through the portal. We're interested to discover its fundamental meaning, that is, the direct, raw experience to which it refers. So, with that understanding in our spirit, let's dive into the exploration of some words basic to our experience of 'life', 'existence', and 'animation.'
The word 'animate' derives from the latin word 'animare', meaning 'to give breath to'. This latin origin intimates the breathing of life or the bestowing of motion. Thus, we see that 'animation', 'life' and 'motion' are all united in their underlying meaning. They imply each other, and go together. Accordingly, life must not be considered a fluke event located on planet earth, nor exclusively on planets inhabited by complex organisms. Rather, wherever there is motion, there is life. And so, in this sense, all existence is alive.
'Existence' comes from the latin 'exsistere', which literally means 'to stand out' or 'to emerge'. Existence is a standing out or emergence, which is, by nature, a motion. The sun, the soil, the air, the exponential expansion of the cosmos, exist and are movement. To exist, is to move. They are one and the same experientially. Look now to the total panorama of experience, and try to find something that exists but doesn't move, or that moves but doesn't exist.
We might proclaim to have found an object, like a chair, that evidently exists but is apparently unmoving. However, is that really so? On the surface of our perception, the chair is composed of light hues that continuously shift, the perspective of the chair changes from moment to moment as our body slightly alters its position in reference to the chair, and if that wasn't enough to verify the changeful show going on here, we could ask a quantum physicist to convey his experimentally validated theories, which elucidate the structure of the chair as a vibrating mass of subatomic particles zipping around at lightning speed. Everything that exists moves, for existence is movement.
Where this unity of meaning becomes interesting is in the reasonable inference we can derive from it, and that is, for motion to move and emerge at all it must be enlivened by its source. Hence, the source of motion must be alive or have a life to it. Life is, therefore, the 'giving of motion' to everything that exists, and thus, life is the source of existence. This inference is further supported by the etymology of the word 'life' itself. What experiential wisdom did our ancient ancestors condense into this word? They were having an experience that triggered the impulse to express it in the form of a sound, thought or pictorial representation. So, where did the word 'life' come from?
'Life' has its roots in the meaning of 'remaining', suggesting 'permanence'. If we follow the trail of this meaning to its fundamental import, we find that 'life' refers to the only permanent presence which remains after everything that can vanish has vanished. When everything that exists, that has 'stood out from' or 'emerged', has dissolved, life remains. It is in this sense that life is understood to be independent of existence. Life is alive to itself, by itself, prior to the creation of the foliage, the animals, and the cosmos at large. And when existence begins, life expresses its aliveness in and as all existence.
In our philosophical rhetoric, the source of existence is called 'reality' or 'being' - that which underlies all existence, that which essentially, irreducibly is. For ease of communication in our contemplation I will refer to this source as only 'reality'. Here, then, we are establishing the unity of the meaning of the words 'reality' and 'life', and deeper still we are establishing the one experience of that to which these words refer; an experience we could call 'alive reality'. There is only one source of all that exists. And it is alive! Alive I tell you! And it is you and I. Our reality is the reality of reality. Our life is the life of life.
From this perspective, then, reality is understood to be a living being, a being which is right now growing its body in the form of the atoms and galaxies, the salmon and waterfalls, our human body and our friends, the buildings and brains, the force of gravity and of loving attractions, ad infinitum. And like the garden that grows from the ground of our earth, the cosmos grows from the ground of our reality. Where does the cosmos get all its nutrition and nourishment from anyway? From reality itself; the only life there is.
The understanding of everything being alive is typified in our language when we say succinctly 'life'. This one word refers to one, all-pervasive, homogenous totality of life. Implicit in the oneness of the word is the intuition that there is only life; the substance of our self, of every living creature and of everything that exists. This intuition comes from an experience of feeling. Before this feeling is qualified by thought, it is a naked palpability. We can, again, lay this palpability bare, by following the succinct utterance 'life' to its source, to this living experience now. And one fun way we can precipitate this is to use 'life' as a mantra, seeping the feeling tone of the word through everything, until we feel the palpable aliveness of the totality.
The true meaning of the word 'life' is identical to 'reality'. It is that which originates, sustains and gives life to all existence. In such wise, life is the very substance of the chair, the table, the mug, etc. Everything that we may have previously called 'dead' or 'inert' is, in fact, alive, living. Note that these statements are not intended to prove that everything is alive. Remember that words by themselves are not the experience to which they refer, unless of course I were to say a variation of the statement, "pay attention to these words you are reading right now." When I say that everything is alive and living, I am rousing a feeling of curiosity, inviting our tentacles of sensitivity to play with all the objects, to touch them in a way that experientially reveals the aliveness to which I refer, that I undoubtedly experience, and wish for you to enjoy in the same delight that I do.
Often a precursor to this transfiguration of feeling is the understanding that life, reality and our self are the same one presence. This understanding alone catalyses an opening in which we begin to feel in a way which is synchronous with the truth of this unity. Just as we naturally and effortlessly feel the body pervaded by the aliveness of our self, by the presence of awareness, we can equally feel the totality of life pervaded by our self, and not only pervaded, but actually made of our self, for our substance and its substance are one and the same in essence. The good news is that there is no need to seek or apprehend that all-pervasive union with the acrobatics of the mind or with a fancy wiggle of attention, for that union is already here, as the substance of this current experience. It is all we are really experiencing.
The essential substance of our self is no distance from life itself. They are one and the same living substance, filling our body, mind, the trees, grasses and animals. We simply give our self permission to feel that unity and ubiquity of life. And it is really as straightforward as giving our self permission, like saying to our self, "Ok, I decide right now to play with the possibility of feeling that all of life is myself." "I no longer subscribe to the belief and feeling of myself as a separate, localised entity, and instead I am open to feel myself as everyone and everything." This thought, however insignificant we may imagine it to be in the beginning, is a tremendous tour de force, for it is a foreplay or, as Jean Klein liked to say, a "fore-feeling" of the real union of all life.
The essential substance of our self is already the essential substance of life. So that feeling is not far away. We can open our attention to that feeling right now. We need not travel far to access this feeling, for we are already feeling that we are a living being, that we are alive as life itself. That feeling right there, from which we profess 'I am alive', is the feeling of the living being of reality, the feeling reality has of itself.
Now, how would it be to feel the phenomena, like the tables, chairs, ornaments, etc, as alive?
Play with that. Feel that aliveness pervading the room, throbbing as the flux of the scenery. Feel that reality is alive to itself, breathing existence out and breathing in, dissolving all that exists into itself, into yourself.
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