There has been a tremendous upheaval in our understanding of what constitutes our universe and, to a certain extent, our place as embodied beings within it.
One current and intriguing problem is precisely how to account for evolution—specifically the intrinsic connectedness between those structures of physical systems which are amenable to description in terms of reversible processes (formalized in classical mechanics) and those structures of biological, especially sentient systems (such as human beings) which seem to be constituted by relatively irreversible encodements of greater and greater degrees of negentropy—so that certain high-order emergent phenomena such as scientific discovery, new paradigms, and cultural-aesthetic achievements are not only possible but inevitable.
Man was seen as a connected facet of an infinite universe—yet not just as some sort of isolated animate stuff in an otherwise relatively insensate environment, but as a rather special facet embodying a participatory dynamics poorly termed “mind.”
It is in this latter sense—the body as an experienced-experiencing interactive system—that the Tibetan tradition has focused its creative research. The body is seen as a pivotal orientational point in terms of which and around which the world is experienced (structured and organized).
Nowhere is there a collocation of granular entities which can be indexed as “subject,” “object,” “observer,” or “observed.” These terms are useful in common speech but are really at best only pragmatic concepts.
The emphasis on wholeness implies that any separability into discrete facets (even if they are interacting) is itself a conceptual analysis—it is an incidental abstraction from the whole which is always of an all-encompassing order.
The point is to highlight what is easily overlooked and consequently forgotten—namely, that this very intelligence which allows us to image and speak of a universe, a world, and world versions, is itself inseparable from the whole as that which we would image.
The playfulness in which the intelligence of this universe engages carries with it a certain indeterminacy. In playing (with itself) the universe performs a kind of experiment on itself.
The overall pattern of overcoming lower-ordered regimes through an interactive dynamic which engages in self-experimentation is termed the “path” (lam). For those trained in a Western scientific tradition, the path seems to be primarily the overcoming of old paradigms. The value, necessity, and inevitability of such activity is certainly acknowledged within the Tibetan tradition. Yet this tradition would also add that the very possibility of such an activity of overcoming is due to the inherent playfulness of an always intelligent universe, and that the progressive realization of this fact constitutes the greatest challenge, adventure, and satisfaction of being human.