One of the "innovations" of Process Buddhism is a certain democratization and pluralization of the function of "God" in Whitehead's original articulation of his process-relational metaphysics. Rather than there being a single divine element offering the value hierarchies by which we can drive our own development, there is a continuum of divinities which can inform …
Continue reading "Democratizing Divinity with Process Buddhism"
As I research and design Process Buddhism, I've come to understand the unity of the two ultimates of open/emptiness and inclusive-transcendence in three different ways, where the two ultimates are different aspects of a "third" ultimate: holopoiesis (my own novel concept), power, and love. I came to these different results from different angles, but there …
Continue reading "Notes on The Third Ultimate in Process Buddhism"
I think there is an implicit ontology baked into capitalist social relations, and it's a contradictory "practical ontology" that simultaneously upholds a dualism between subject and object, self and other, the intensive and the extensive, mind and matter, etc. while unfolding through time as a tendency towards a monist subsumption of the former (subject, etc.) …
I would consider Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka works (the "yukti-corpus") to be "trans-philosophical," which is to say that he (as the prefix "trans-" suggests) goes “beyond" or “across” philosophy. His works are not philosophical, because they do not attempt to build a system of thought that speculatively induces or transcendentally deduces the conditions of experience formed as …
Continue reading "Nāgārjuna, Trans-Philosophy & Becoming-Sophianic"
I believe that any and every instance of power is an empowered process empowering others to participate in the "creordering" (creative re-ordering) of a given social organization — power is not a "thing" that a single, isolated individual or even group of individuals can "possess,"; it is a relational nexus or matrix of processes of …
Under conditions of hypermodernity, sedentary life predominates over nomadic life, and our asses suffer as a consequence. During hypermodernity, both production and consumption are predominantly cognitive or intellectual in nature rather than physical or manual, and they are increasingly mediated by the use of "computer terminals" (broadly construed, which includes your smart phone). Increasingly much …
Capital's drive to diminish industrial labor inputs to absolute zero while infinitely accumulating value from itself alone through financial speculation can be seen as a real historical instantiation of an ancient patriarchal dream of transcending the flesh by appealing to the mind's supposed innate affiliation with the divine order ("logos" or "dharma"). The separation of …
The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming manuscript, Process Buddhism & Ecofeminism: Freedom from the Master Mode. — The most generic features of Process Buddhism are the two ultimate principles of Open/Emptiness and Inclusive-Transcendence. The principle of Open/Emptiness is the basic principle that nothing can exist that does not depend on prior (causal) and extant …
Continue reading "Open/Emptiness and Inclusive-Transcendence"
One can interpret contemporary expressions of vitalism in the form of some process philosophies or object-oriented ontologies as a kind of metaphysical expression of commodity fetishism — it has been critiqued that way before. I am all for continuously uncovering all the ways in which our discourses contribute to the mystification and obscuration of the …
In Buddhism we have the idea of the Two Truths: conventional truth and ultimate truth. In Process Buddhism, in contrast, there is only one truth. Conventional truths (saṃvṛtisatya) are what is true in terms of everyday ordinary experience, which ranges from truths about the most basic things of everyday life (pots, tables, cats, cars, houses) …
Continue reading "Process Buddhism: Two Truths or One Truth?"
Holopoiesis 