Ocean of Samsara

     Watching the sea, with its choppy water, I had the sense I was observing some alien form of society.  The way the crests and valleys would dance with each other, changing places, it seemed like the water was communicating with itself in a manner unintelligible to conscious thought.  I witnessed populations continuously manifesting and dissolving, imbued with a latent intelligence, carrying forth living and dying in a drama that was all their own.  This life was merely the result of energy, abundant and mysterious, on the surface of the ocean, the surface of the physical realm, not dissimilar to humanity in this respect.  We are intelligent, yes, but how much of this human drama is no more than the interplay of energy (karma?) in the medium that is sentient biological lifeforms? Scientists and mathematicians can describe the action of waves, outlandishly intricate and random though it may be, with vectors and calculus and algorithms.  Though there may be orders of magnitudes more variables involved, it seems that, by and large, a sufficiently smart, talented, and studious collective of scientists and mathematicians (perhaps a hyper-intelligent, non-human species) could describe our human drama with high math and vectors and algorithms as satisfactorily as we describe the movement of the sea.  Human fluid dynamics.  Then again, when it comes to nuclear physics, although scientists are able to predict with a very high degree of accuracy the time it takes for half of a sample of a given nuclide to decay away and what manner of decay it is likeliest to undergo, they are not (yet?) able to determine WHEN or WHY any given atom of said nuclide will decay or how.  Humanity may be like this, instead of like the ocean.

      I may be wrong about a couple points.  It may not be possible to completely account for all the variables involved in the interplay of energy in the sea.  And for all I know, some scientists may have already started to crack the code of individual atoms' fates.  But I am pretty sure that we will not ever arrive at an accurate, satisfactory explanation for human behavior.  Even if sociologists and psychologists can predict that one in ten people will steal the spare change from the dish at the convenience store, and even if they can further explain the indicators which made this action more likely in the tenth person and unlikely in the previous nine, I doubt very much we can ever know for certain WHY people do or do not do any particular thing.  Zazen, the spiritual life generally, can have a transformative effect on karma.  I think the impulse to seek the great self is universal, but listening to that small whisper inside is not.  Why do some people listen and some do not?  Why do some people keep following the trail of breadcrumbs and others walk away?  How revolutionary is the path that goes against the stream if a high degree of proclivity is the threshold for seeking it out to begin with?  Christians may answer these questions with "the grace of God", and I think more than a few Buddhists may answer with something similar.  More and more, I feel like I can count myself among them.  Because really, I don't fucking know.  And I don't think I can know.  I think subjects like these lie beyond some philosophical event horizon, past which the mechanisms for understanding just do not function.  Like atoms, like waves, humanity is to some degree predictable, and to some degree a baffling mystery.  I think most of the universe may be that way.  That's fine.

      As an afterthought, I recently had the opportunity to ask a zen teacher a question, and I asked "what is free will really like?"  His eventual answer was something to the effect of: you need to stop taking for granted the framework which gives rise to this question; as the relationship to this framework changes, the question can't continue to exist.  I feel like this is a modern form of "the question does not suit the case".  I'll square with you: I am bothered by the things I do, sometimes, and I don't really understand why I am the way I am, and this troubles me often.  This is one reason I have been trying to sort this issue out.  Another is my concern for human beings' future as a whole.  The concern is big.  I realize, though, that troubling myself over esoteric, philosophical conundrums does nothing but muddle me about.  Maybe I should instead try to make peace with the limits of reason and speculation and put my efforts into seeing beyond this framework or whatever.