Over the years I've developed a more open and soft orientation to "Secular Buddhism," a movement that aims to return to what it thinks is the original intent of the historical Buddha, namely, the practice of mindfulness to attain a state of supreme eudaimonia without dependence on any so-called "supernatural" or "superstitious" beliefs, rituals, mediators …
Continue reading "On the Authentic Revisionism of Secular Buddhism"
The Bodhisattva's Bodhicitta — the energy which drives her mind-body vehicle towards perfect awakening — inclusively transcends both Nietzsche's Will to Power and Nick Land's Thirst for Annihilation, disclosing them as abstract, partial and one-sided (i.e. open-empty) facets of the total jewel that is her own resplendent nature. As she progressively and inexorably ascends to …
Continue reading "Neither Will to Power Nor Thirst for Annihilation"
Financial capitalization has a certain uncertain relationship to uncertainty. On the one hand, it has to be somewhat certain about the future income stream it expects from its present investments, otherwise there would be little point (from the capitalist's perspective) to engage in the productive activity; it would be deemed too risky. On the other …
Continue reading "Capital, Buddhism, and the Open-Empty Future"
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 …
Holopoiesis 