What is your #1 favorite question?

Hmm?

How much will you pay me?

What is purple?

What is 42?

jack

How do I get outta here?

What?

Why?

Oh?

Huh?

I had an herbal medicine teacher who taught the question "what do I know for sure," as a way of forestalling assumptions and preventing jumping to conclusions. It was very effective and spilled over into other areas of decision making in my life, ultimately dove-tailing very nicely with Vipassana practice.

Sorry to break up the repartee.

This also reminded me of a story I heard the poet Robert Creeley tell shortly before he died. He was an examiner for an oral test of undergrad philosophy students and asked them, "what truths to you are self-evident," referencing, of course, the declaration of independence. He said they all answered "none." I thought, annicca.

"What is 42?

jack"

Jack, yours has the best answer

I'm curious what Gary was looking for. For some reason, I wonder if it was inspired by this talk by Ken McLeod -- he's asked the same question.

www.unfetteredmind.org/sutra-session-35

My young nephew used to have a question that I fell in love with and still use:

(must be said with a dramatic disdainful look): "What does that even *mean*???

How do you mean f+++ y++?

I'm pretty sure Gary had something like the McLeod topic in mind when he started this thread, but ti was impossible for me to resist the open ended nature of Gary's query

Eh?

I wanted to let this thread run it's course as an experiment to see what it would turn into if I just left it wide open. Thanks to the people who participated. I'll just add my 2 cents.

When I posed this question here, I did have a #1 favorite question of my own but it changed as I worked with it. I like questions and inquiry more than knowledge. I did look up Ken Mcleod's question too, which I liked. I admire Ken Mcleod a lot, and I had not read that yet. His question posits a relationship, and a responsibility. (What am I looking for?). I wanted that quality in my question. I did not want a passive question.

I came up with this question: How can we evolve together?

When I think about the word evolve, I also think of love, celebration, and play. I like what Jane Benyus says about nature, that "life creates the conditions conducive to life" while having a great time doing so. Point 12 on this TED talk.



How can we evolve together?

I remember doing a 10 day retreat with Shinzen Young out near Tuscon Arizona. My first 10 day all silent retreat. My body rebelled and my mind rebelled. Not only against all the painful sitting and silence and seriousness, but also the dusty dry environment which triggered my allergies.
I remember sitting, sitting, sitting, and identifying with the woman sitting on my left and the woman sitting on my right. The woman sitting on my right also obviously suffered from the type of allergies I had by all the sniffling and scratching I noticed her doing. Well "obviously" I just assumed that.
I also assume I can tell a persons level of suffering by how much they move. If they don't move at all, I just can't tell. Shinzen sat as still as a statue.

When you get down to brass tacks sitting is war.

I started to bond with the women beside me, identifying with them as comrades in the trenches of this war. It gave me inner strength to hold that idea, that meaning, and become more and more still, not just for myself, but for my "buddies".
That spirit inhabits my question. That in this moment, I don't do my practice and center my self in living mindfully for just my own evolution and fulfillment, but for the evolution and fulfillment of all my relations. Not in some future time when I become fully awakened, but in each moment I practice.



How can we evolve together?
For me, I asked this question and looked for how fully I could land in my life, in my relationships, in this job I work at, in this house where we live, with these entertainments and toys, with these cars, with these choices, with these responsibilities, with these foods, with these politics.
But you have to ask your own question.
You have to wrestle with it and make it your own.

ask your question.
find the inner truth of your own being
fight your fight.

Remember this though: If you ask a pretty question, you'll get a pretty answer. For example, I like this question "How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?" Asking it really helps center me in the present moment. But the question only includes one half of my experience of reality. Or maybe one third.

We have the I and we have the It. If you get rid of the I and become a zero, then you only have the It. No worries, right? I don't live my life. "It" lives my life. What happens to purpose? The It has the purpose. The universe lives me. We can get "It" purpose from the now but CAN we get "I/It" purpose from the now? Gary Weber says we can, without relying on thoughts of past and future. Without a "self". Staying completely in the now, with only 1/3 of the PPF for cues, he appears to live a highly functional and exemplary life. Has he reached the apex of human development with his no-self, no thought state? I don't know. I just prefer my questions to his answer.

To take my question further, when I ask "How can we evolve together?" I don't mean just we humans, I mean we "life", I mean we "universe". I mean both the I and the It. I and thou. So think about this. I want to make a question whose answer elucidates the complete journey.
Not just "my purpose" as Mcleod's question does.
Not just "It's purpose", as the HAIETMOBA query does.
But both. I and the It.

How does my present experience and various purposes align with the configuration and purposes of my reality, and how can I further both sets?
Too complex.
What now want do now what?
Closer.

Purposes call me from within, but also purposes call me from without. "Everything is talking to you." said William Burroughs. How do I hear both callings and respond in ways that fulfill both?

Can I make the world a better place WHILE I make myself a better person? (and have fun doing both)?

To make a better world, can we ask a better question?

Am I?

a) feels
b) senses
c) thinks
d) does

What ______ this?

Where is the center of the world?