The Dharma, the law underlying the workings of the universe, is quite scientific, mathematically and physically precise. Our bodies and minds are like clay on a potter's wheel. Our bodies are formed from oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and trace metals. These elements coalesce for a while into a body that moves and makes noise at both ends. Then it collapses, "dies," and falls apart. What then? The elements are recycled to form new existences. How old is the oxygen in us? The sodium? Where did the calcium in our bones come from? [sic] We say, oh, from the milk I drink. Before that? From the grass the cow ate. Before that? From the soil? Before that? Trace and small portion of us back and it has been part of countless other lives.
Our minds form the same way, from bits and pieces of thought energy, created by electrical and chemical signals in neurons. Certain patterns of electrical signals-thought-emotion are imprinted by heredity. Then the environment adds its shaping and we become more or less polite, feel more or less shame, anger, and joy.
But all these thoughts and emotions are just energy, coalesced for awhile, moving, and making noise. When we collapse and die, they also disperse. Like the carbon and calcium elements, the thought and emotional elements are still operating in the chain of cause and effect after we die. Thus we can ask the same questions we asked about the body elements. How old is the anger in us? How old is the jealousy, the joy? How many countless lives has it been a part of? [sic]
---Jan Chozen Bays---
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