Atoms

Here’s how scientist, Paul Fleischman, M.D., puts it in his monograph Vipassana Meditation and the Scientific Worldview: “All the sensuousness or pain of our bodies, all the delights or turmoil of our minds, are transformation within the atomic molecular substrate of the body.”

And further: “Our bodies are collections of atoms, that are organized into molecules, that function in the activities of cells, that cohere to form tissues, which interrelate to create an organism.  Our bodies are not solid, but are molecules suspended in realms of other molecules, all of which are undergoing continuous biotransformation.”

Crazy, isn’t it?

All of this, all of us, everything in the Universe, from stars to bicycles to toast with peanut butter and jelly, is made of atoms, all of which are whirring around, constantly in motion, and what’s really crazy is that the atoms that are “me” can observe this and by having atoms move around in my brain, think and write about it like this, so that the atoms that are “you” can read what I’ve written by having atoms move around in your brain, too!

So, maybe what’s craziest of all is to imagine that there is a “me” and a “you” at all, when, in fact, all we are—all that anything is—is “just” a collection of atoms that are all made of the same thing as everything else in the Universe—those very same atoms, that is.

This doesn’t mean, I realize, that my atoms don’t identify with themselves in a manner that make “me” identify them as “me,” nor that your atoms don’t do the same thing when it comes to “you.”  Still, if we think about things atomically, it sure does make is strange that there’s so much strife and conflict in the world, since everything, after all, is all the same thing.

But that’s just atoms being atoms, spinning and fluctuating endlessly; I guess we'll blame it on the protons, neutrons, electrons, and quarks.