Let us consider the following Zen statement.
When you understand a speck of dust, you understand the entire universe.
Although it appears to be a comment about the nature of objects (dust, the universe), it is also a statement of what it means to be aware, fully realized, enlightened. The unmarked emphasis is on the word ‘understand’, and that word has different intuitive meanings in science and Zen.
Scientists have a tendency to interpret this comment as a question about the physical components of a speck of dust. That's because we try to ‘understand’ an object by breaking it down into recognizable pieces. Even something as complicated as a fox is not understood as ‘a fox’ but as a living organism with lots of parts including lungs, bones, hair, cells, adenosine triphosphate and such.
This approach is called scientific reductionism. Something is reduced into its understandable components so that we can try to comprehend the whole object.
If we wanted to know how a mechanical watch works, for example, we would take it apart and figure out what each of its springs, levers, and gear wheels are for. This would lead us to a functional understanding of how the watch marks time.
Compared to a fox or a watch, a speck of dust doesn’t seem complicated. As scientists, we might be able to break it down into a few components with our lab equipment until we got to the atoms. At that point, we would invoke the commonly accepted scientific knowledge about atoms—that they have electrons, protons, quarks and leptons even though we can’t see them—and then complete our description.
In categorical terms defined by humans, we would have developed our ‘understanding’ of that speck of dust. It’s really just a description using our own human labels, but we will think we understand it.
With scientific reductionism, the closest we can get to understanding the universe through a speck of dust is to propose that we are really talking about atoms and the physical laws of our world. The transcription of my phrase above would be, “Understand the atoms and physical laws of dust, and you will understand the atoms and physical laws of the universe.”
That seems a suitable observation to a scientist, who is likely to think the Zen statement says nothing special at all.
There is a snag, though.
Comments like this one are popular among Zen practitioners, and not because we find it profound that a speck of dust possesses the atoms and physical laws of the observable universe. Those attributes are largely put aside when we consider the statement above.
A Zen person might ask, “What is a speck of dust, really? How do we gain a true understanding of dust so that we can gain a true understanding of the universe? And what is a fish? Or a cloud? What am I, for that matter? If I understand me, will I understand the universe?”
We can equally substitute any object in the place of ‘dust’ here because the physical properties of dust are not what we are being asked to recognize.
Let’s consider dust again, but from a level slightly closer to Zen awareness. For one thing, a speck of dust is everything the speck can be at this moment—nothing is missing from it, it is whole and it is perfect. It is also as important as anything else in the universe. This isn’t something science would say about dust, but it is true nonetheless.
Here are some more truths about dust, but ones that are taken for granted by scientists and therefore do not come readily to mind. A speck of dust is a formation of the universe. It is connected to all other things in the universe and is a part of everything. It exists in this moment and it is made of the same ‘stuff’ that makes up the universe.
What is it that makes up the universe, and how is dust a part of it? On one level, we might say it has the quality of ‘emptiness’, and both the universe and dust are empty. Understand that about dust and you might understand the universe.
Remember, Zen helps us understand a speck of dust without reservation, deep in our bones and not just intellectually. A clear realization of what dust is, and all doubt is erased about what the universe is and what This is. Zen wants us to enjoy this awareness of all buddhas.
Awareness doesn’t dismiss the reductionist explanation of dust. It doesn’t reject a scientist’s description of dust. It just puts that explanation within the context of something more encompassing, something unified, something closer to the entire truth about dust.
If we bring awareness to a speck of dust, the universe becomes clear. A speck of dust becomes clear. It doesn’t matter what components we say it has, a speck of dust is the universe.
