The doctrine of the two truths is a principle tenet of the Madhyamaka path, serving not only to show the non-contradictory coherence of the Buddha's different teachings but also serving as a support for the practice of achieving liberating knowing. The doctrine distinguishes between the conventional truth of phenomena as interdependently originated and the ultimate [...]
From Monologue-about to Dialogue-with Reality
The desecration or desacralization of the "enchanted real" that constituted premodern and indigenous world-views by the coruscating potency of modern reason results in a "disenchanted real" where previously held assumptions about the relationship between the cosmos and meaning is thoroughly undermined; the previously enchanted real, where universe and meaning where intertwined in a unity within [...]
extracts from an “exchange” with a “Quantum Buddhist” aka Western Buddhist Idealist
Me:I have a question sir. Is there a particular tradition that your practice is embedded in? Currently I follow the Vajrayana based Shambhala Path, though my personal theoretical orientation is closer to the Prasangika-Madhyamaka of the Mahayana. Graham Smetham :I have...noted something you mentioned about the ground of being and Capitalism which I think is [...]
On Becoming Real in the Face of Flux
To be real is to be independent, self-grounding, self-sustaining and self-motivated. Yet careful attention to the manifold totality of sense-experience reveals any given thing to be marked by impermanence, incompleteness and indeterminacy. Nothing in experience, whether classed as a cognitive, mental or physical factor, escapes definition by these three marks or traits. Things exist, in [...]
Ascending Truth
There are two ways of understanding truth: as adjective and as verb.We often use "true" as an adjective, whereby we qualify the degree to which a proposition adequately corresponds to a given state of affairs, about which the proposition is giving attention. That a statement is true, in this sense of the word true, indicates [...]
∞
A holon is a singularity that is also a universe unto itself, simultaneously both part and whole, and irreducible to being counted as one. Though it cannot be counted as one, it still is.
The Material and the Ideal are Mutually Implicated
Critical materialism seems to have an ideal: the real apprehension of existence in terms of causes and conditions, rather than in terms of concepts and ideas. But there's an extent to which some self-professed "materialists" only proceed with their investigations of reality through a kind of fetish for materialism, which makes them ignorant as to [...]
