Without Discrimination: some reflections from meditation on the skandhas

Recently I have been studying the nature of the five skandhas or "aggregates," which is a Buddhist classification of aspects of experience broken down into five sets: form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saṃjñā), volition (saṃskāra), and consciousness (vijñāna). Classically, the idea is that what is commonly assumed to be the enduring, substrative Self-identity must in some sense …

Similarity, or Beyond Identity and Difference

On Identity: Generally today it is often felt that an affirmation of difference and plurality is preferable to an existence based on identity and universality, which is negatively evaluated as being characterized by excessive limitation. This is true, for definition by negation is the underlying basis of any sense of self-identity: what one is, is …

Unity-In-Difference

There is no essential difference between Ultimate Reality and Conventional Existence; between Emptiness and Appearance; between Being and Becoming; between Universal and Particular; between Feminine and Masculine. While they can be thought independently, in actuality they arise interdependently, with their cooperative interplay creating this fantastical flux that we call life. It is through their union, …

Beautiful Life

Even in stoic perseverance do mountains erode and cascade into the temporal flux of change... Only in this beautiful life is the ceasing forever ceaseless, is the resting forever restless, by which Being is forever Becoming. Only in this beautiful life does the ceaseless come to cease, does the restless come to rest, from which …