« My Problem with Math is that There is Nothing to Count »
Saturday, May 30, 2009 Philosophically, my problem with math is that… there is nothing to count.
“The nature of the phenomena is nondual” is the first verse of the Dzogchen Six Vajra Verses… If the nature of phenomena is nondual, i.e. singular, there is no “phenomena” in plural. All is one. There is no such thing as “two”!
Nor is there a zero… After all, emptiness – as the absence of matter – doesn’t exist. Absence or Emptiness or Void has no proto-material substrate to physically manifest so as to qualify for existence.
If there is no zero, if all is one, there can be no separation, discreteness or heterogeneity. The separation we see is the artifact of our sensorium and of our discursive, dualistic mind. The mind divides the continuous homogeneity of all that exists into “this” and “that.”Even this semantic connective tissue of the word“and” that we insert between “this-and-that" is too in the quotation marks of subjectivity. In the objective oneness of it all there is no “and” that would punctuate the oneness of what exists with the Swiss-cheese holes of emptiness.
So, since there is no nothingness or separateness or discreteness, and since everything that exists is seamlessly interconnected, there are no multiples.
What is there for math to count?!
pavel somov/copyright, 2008