One of the definitions of conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya) — that domain of truth that ordinary sentient beings like you and I occupy — that Candrakīrti gives is that it conceals the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) of things — that domain of truth that is the exclusive purview of awakened or enlightened beings: “Because delusion obscures the true nature, …
Śūnyatā qua Niḥsvabhāva
It's always been curious to me that svabhāva the sort of thing that we can accurately hypothesize about (i.e. make claims about the various properties or qualities that must obtain by an entity with purported svabhāva or the consequences which are entailed if an entity really had svabhāva ) even though under Madhyamaka analysis it is revealed to be impossible and …
Does Process Philosophy Occupy the Third Limb of the Tetralemma?
Late modern scholars of Madhyamaka Buddhism have called Nagarjuna's dialectical negation of conceptual opposites (and other widely deployed Madhyamaka techniques such as the neither-one-nor-many argument) a "bi-negation" which negates both a thesis and its negation (and by implication, any possible combination of the two). Critically, the Madhyamaka bi-negation is distinguished from the fourth limb of …
Continue reading "Does Process Philosophy Occupy the Third Limb of the Tetralemma?"
Process Buddhism: Two Truths or One Truth?
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?"
Notes on the merits of a Process Buddhist synthesis
Here are some random thoughts I'm having while I'm finishing up an essay on the same topic: Part of the merit of a Process-Buddhist synthesis is that it can help resolve some deep aporias or internal inconsistencies in each of the traditions when they are considered in isolation. In Mahayana Buddhism there is a tendency …
Continue reading "Notes on the merits of a Process Buddhist synthesis"
Probative and Imaginative Modes of Engagement in Buddhism and Process Thought
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"
On Global Fictionalism
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 …
Negative Dialectics and Dialogical Process Semantics (Cursory Notes)
In order to disclose the nature of the actual world (equivalent to the settled facts of the immediate past) as openly-empty (meaning, being empty or without an ultimate foundation) we deploy the method of negative dialectics whereby presuppositions of an inherently existent entity, process or relation that could serve as the ground of the actual …
Continue reading "Negative Dialectics and Dialogical Process Semantics (Cursory Notes)"
The Two Truths are One Truth
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 …
Buddhas are Mere Hypostatizations
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 …
Holopoiesis 