Chapter 12 Part II Cradle of Civilization

Shattered Void The vastness and boundlessness of the universe is unimaginable to us humans who are used to the size of the earth. When we look up at the night sky in the countryside on a clear and cloudless night, the sky is densely filled with stars as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River. It seems that all the stars are crowded together lively, but in fact this is just an illusion. The distances between the light and heat stars are immeasurable. Assuming we scale down the entire solar system by a factor of 100 million, our Earth would be the size of a grapefruit, with a diameter of four and one-half inches.On this earth, the Himalayas are only three-thousandths of an inch, and our moon is a small ball one and one-half inches in diameter.The tiny moon will orbit the shrunken Earth at a distance of twelve and one-half feet.

In this 100 million-fold scaled-down model, the sun would be a sphere forty-six feet in diameter, a full mile from the earth.And Pluto, the outermost planet in the solar system, would be thirty-seven miles away. This scaled-down model gives us a clearer picture of the size ratio of the solar system we live in, but when we repeat the trick to the nearest other star, another sun-like object, it shrinks The ratio of 100 million times still seems a bit powerless, it will be 160,000 miles away. This is the distance between the stars. Light can go around the earth seven and a half times per second, but if it travels to another star closest to the sun at the speed of light, it still takes more than four years. In terms of the development of space, human beings are now talking about conquering space. Like jumping from one grain of sand to another, and claiming to have conquered the whole earth.

The stars occupy only an insignificant position in the vast and boundless space of the universe. The void is the essence of the universe. The stars are constantly starting and dying, but the void is eternal. May hit a celestial body. The Zen verse says: Brightness is returned to the sun and moon, and darkness is returned to emptiness.We only see the shining stars and think that they are the representation of the universe, but in fact the void is the true self of the universe. Shattering the void, only when the void is shattering can we transcend the universe and escape from the cocoon.