Evolution

What is the relationship of the evolutionary biology model of life on earth to the perennial philosophy? No, I am not thinking about why Richard Dawkins is wrong, or rather why is it that he misses the key to the whole does God exist argument? Namely that there is no Archimedian point, it's all interdependently originated and he doesn't seem to get the point about the definition of God. If you want to debate first define your terms and all that. But let's not get into that argument, Voltaire is attributed with 'God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.

Evolutionary biology sits comfortably for me within interdependent origination. There seems to be in the void a desire to be, to give rise to as many forms as we see, and there are lots of forms, lots of creatures and lots of things. None of this sheds much light on the ground of being, the nature of the void, the unanswerable question 'is it divine?' It's not just about the mechanism by which forms emerge, the nature of the observer needs to be considered.

Anyway, the question I was thinking about is the relationship between desire and enlightenment. Now, as I understand it, most spiritual traditions can be summed up by the perennial philosophy, which broadly speaking, tels us to practice non-attachment, see the emptiness in things and aim to stop being dragged around by desire. With this approach acceptance or compassion arises and we become an expression of the source, charitable love. Bingo, enlightenment. Would that it were that quick and simple! But, to return to the question, 'what's this got to do with desire, and what's that got to do with evolutionary biology?'. Well, desire to survive is the basis of evolution and evolution seems to have given the universe human beings, the most aware creatures in the material world. You see that I acknowledge the problem of not having an Archimedian point; reality is bounded by our experience, so we can't limit it just to the material, so we can't rule out more aware beings. Indeed, from a spiritual point of view we assume that there are more aware beings, but at this point we move out of the limits of the material world away from form is form. Yet it is in a human life that we have the chance to practice a spiritual tradition, to seek enlightenment. And so the void in generating forms, in generating evolution (including desire) gives rise to the opportunity for enlightenment. Desire being an interesting link, an interesting way to look at things, a frame (which I think of as a device by which we might understand the way the void forms by folding forms over each other), is the driving force behind all this including the opportunity for enlightenment. Unless I've got something very wrong in my thinking. But then I recall, from my post in January on Vitality;

...that in his book 'Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist' DT Suzuki writes about trisna (tanha) as:...more deeply rooted than we imagine, as it grows straight out of the root of karuna.

So I've had this sort of thought running around in my head for a bit it would seem. And why is it of interest? Because, I think it points to a very important question; what is it that one should desire? What is a life well lived?