But a closer look will show it to be all shimmering motion, every single leaf rustling in a dance of evanescence. This is the world of dynamic form known to the Hopi, who I m told have no nouns in their language. Instead, things are seen more as the transitory phenomena that they are, and rendered in verb form. Just as the fundamental nature of body is impermanent and thus insubstantial, so can its emptiness be seen in spatial terms, as essentially inseparable from any other thing. This change in terminology, as impossibly cumbersome as it is, would remind us of a unified relationship between self and other that is just as valid as the fragmented picture which our language suggests.
Body is the material aspect of mind, mind the immaterial aspect of body.
In fact, our body may be seen as the condensation of our past thoughts, or more precisely, our thought-emotional habit tendencies. The way we use or misuse our mind can shape our physical appearance over time. Even a newborn is but a product of causes and conditions which precede even the earliest influences of parenting and socialization. To say that the body is mine implies that we have some kind of mastery over it. The body s processes, with all of their mysteries, hum along in beautiful homeostasis.