At face value, Alfred North Whitehead's Process thought and the view of Madhyamaka Buddhists seem to characterize reality in diametrically opposed manners. Whitehead's view, that all events go through a process of "concrescence" culminating in a final satisfaction that passes into objective immortality, seems to contradict the Buddha's teaching that all conditioned things, which are …
Continue reading "Probative and Imaginative Modes of Engagement in Buddhism and Process Thought"
From a Madhyamaka Buddhist perspective, if all things are unreal and illusory because they are open-empty (i.e. without an ultimately real foundation), then ostensibly "true" propositions are actually, in a sense, "false." But because they are not entirely false (because otherwise this would assume the existence of a real truth posed in contrast to ostensible …
I think when you analyze the relationship between the two truths, they necessarily lead to the implication that there is actually only one truth. In this way the two truths themselves are relatively conventional in contrast to the one truth which is their ultimate nature. Anything which can be said to exist, not exist, both …
Instead of thinking that a Buddha is either an omniscient being who has simultaneous cognition of all truths, or an insentient being with no mind or mental processes whatsoever, let us consider that a Buddha is not a being at all but a mere hypostatization: a virtual projection of the mind based on avidyā/agnosis/ignorance; an …
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 not even the finest gap to be …
Continue reading "On the Symmetrical Logic and Asymmetrical Causality of Samsara and Nirvana"
There's something paradoxical or even ironic about the concept of the conventional (saṃvṛti) being understood as a kind of "truth" (satya), since in some interpretations of the two truths the conventional is understood as false in contrast to the ultimate (paramārtha) which is alone true. Generally, according to these views, often associated with the Sakya …
Continue reading "Variations on the Two Truths: Distinct, Identical, or Coalescent"
Bodhi, (which is Sanskrit and Pāli for “awakening”) can be said to be the highest possible attainment for any being, but it cannot be said to be the ultimate reality, which itself is categorically inexplicable. Paradoxically and figuratively speaking we can say that Bodhi is the mind who cognizes ultimate reality, and this cognition is …
In contemporary Buddhist Studies (which refers to the mostly Western, semi-global academic study of Buddhism, and not the indigenous systems of actually existing Buddhadharma) the Madhyamaka is often rendered as a form of philosophical anti-foundationalism, which is opposed to totalizing, metaphysical forms of thought based on self-sufficient first principles or self-grounding foundations which pretend to, …
Consummate Buddhahood is like an alien intelligence from the future assembling itself entirely from the past and present afflictions of sentient beings, transforming this afflictive basis into remedial elements more conducive to the eventual and inexorable realization of this perfected body of wisdom and bliss. Cosmically speaking, humanity becomes known as being, and as having …
Continue reading "Buddhahood at the Terminus of a Thanatropic Humanity"
At absolute polar extremes of the radical left we have on the one hand, an anarchist primitivism which considers the erection of class society and the development of technical civilization as an unjustified contingency initially resulting in the death of freedom and the birth of domination, and on the other a communist prometheanism that considers …
Holopoiesis 