If a tree falls in a forest...

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Everything Begins With a Thought

The process of materializing what you desire and imagine starts with a thought

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and knowledge of reality. "

Does observation affect outcome?"

"Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind. One said, "The flag moves." The other said, "The wind moves." They argued back and forth but could not agree.The Sixth Ancestor said, "Gentlemen! It is not the wind that moves; it is not the flag that moves; it is your mind that moves." The two monks were struck with awe."

Appearances are one's own mind. From the beginning, mind's nature is free from the extremes of elaboration. Knowing this, not to engage the mind in subject-object duality is the bodhisattva's practice."

One day the monks at Huang-mei monastery were instructed to write a stanza in order that their master Hung-jen might decide who would inherit the dharma throne. All of the monks assumed that a certain senior disciple Shen-hsui would win and thus didn't even bother writing stanzas. Shen-hsui assumed he would win too, and wrote the following stanza on the monastery wall:

The body is a Bodhi tree
The mind a standing mirror bright.
At all times polish it diligently,
Aand let no dust alight.

Due to the danger surrounding him if he were to openly challenge the senior monk Shen-hsui, Hui-neng went out one night while it was completely dark and wrote the following stanza in secret:

Bodhi originally has no tree.
The bright mirror also has no stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing.
Where could dust arise?

Later, master Hung-jen saw this stanza and reaffirmed that he who had written it had indeed opened his mind's eye. Finding it was Hui-neng, master Hung-jen then gave Hui-neng the secret dharma teachings of their lineage, which Hui-neng says completely opened his mind,

"The mind is like akasa (space). Just as there are the objects in the akasa, so there are thoughts in the mind. The akasa is the counterpart of the mind and objects are of thought. One cannot hope to measure the universe and study the phenomena. It is impossible. For the objects are mental creations...The universe is only an object created by the mind and has its being in the mind.


Everything Begins With a Thought

The process of materializing what you desire and imagine starts with a thought. Every skyscraper that you see, was once only an architect's plan. Even the world itself is said to have started as a thought of the Divine Creator. Everything material starts as a thought. What happens between the time that you form a thought and the time and place that it materializes?

There is the idea that thought creates reality. In everyday life the evidence of this can be shown in the construction of a building for example. First it is planned out and then it is constructed. The plan, the idea, always comes first. At least that is the basic premise for this discussion.

If you agree with that (and hopefully you have experienced how a thought, or dream, or wish or plan that you had has come into reality) then you know what I am talking about. That is what Edgar Cayce, the famous psychic, meant when he said "mind is the builder".

That is what Buddha meant when he said, "we are what we think, all that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. "

So if I think that I would like to have a million dollars in my bank account right now, then why doesn't that happen, instantly and without effort? If I get in the car and I am afraid that I am going to have a terrible accident, why doesn't that happen every time?

Why do some thoughts make it all the way into reality, and some don't? Answer that question, and you will understand a great deal, and accomplish a lot. For one thing it matters a lot where you put that thought once you launch it.

Thoughts are things and if you throw them out in the physical universe without knowing what you are doing they do have influence, but it can be like trying to throw a ball through a brick wall. It just bounces back, or worse, it can come back distorted. Some people throw out their thoughts with such force and power but they still hit a brick wall, better known as " the real world".