I think one of the reasons why people have a hard time accepting or even considering the Buddhist thesis of no-self (that the self cannot be found under analysis) is that they don’t care enough about themselves in the first place in order to find this unfindability. This…
One of the ways one might think about the nonduality of wisdom and ignorance (that there is ultimately no basis for differentiation between the two) is how awe in sublimity can express itself as either wonder or terror. When we’re genuinely in awe of the sublime, we are…
“Samsara” is mindbased on exclusion, affliction, and delusion. “Nirvana” is mindwithout exclusion, affliction, and delusion. Samsara, when seen as not-Nirvana, is experienced as Samsara.Samsara, when seen as just Samsara, is experienced as Nirvana. With regards to experience,it can go one way or the other,but never both at the…
One of the interesting things I’ve learned from working in the 3D scanning/digitization industry is that typically the most precious, fragile, ephemeral and transitory things are the most difficult to capture. Included in this set of things which evade capture are such things like fluids whether liquid, gas,…
From nethermost nescience to the apex of omniscience,each and every mental event is like a magical illusion or virtual hologram:empty of inherent existence yet clearly present as a luminous appearance. Since there has never been a real object of grasping apprehended by a really grasping subject,each and every…
In verses 19 and 20 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā in the chapter analyzing Nirvana, Nāgārjuna states that “There is no distinction whatsoever between samsara and nirvana. There is no distinction whatsoever between nirvana and samsara. What is the limit of nirvana, that is the limit of samsara. There is…
If “Full Communism,” understood as communism brought to its highest measure, is truly superior to all “logically prior” modes of production which historically precede it (such as slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism), then it must “inclusively transcend” them all, which is to say that it must contain them…
There are two ways we can characterize the process of becoming liberated from bondage: Process A (pA): The ground/starting point is other than (is different from) the fruit/goal, and the path/movement from the former to the latter has aspects or elements of both. Process B (pB): The ground…
Unphilosophy is the praxis of undoing philosophy by demonstrating that the transcendental conditions for the very possibility of philosophy are also, at the same time, the ultimate end of its own immanent movement, in order to immediately bring about the self-liberation of philosophy so as to open up…
If I recall correctly, for Graham Harman and perhaps Object-Oriented Ontology generally, an individual cannot be exhausted by any or all of its relations. Thus there is some kind of irreducible essence that is particular to that individual object. But there’s something circular about this idea, because it…