There’s a lovely story – known as the parable of the tenth man – used to illustrate our propensity to overlook what’s most obvious. The inimitable Wei Wu Wei has even used it as the title of one of his books: The Tenth Man. The tale is typically attributed to the Upanishads, though I’ve yet to find a specific citation, so perhaps this part of it is apocryphal? In any case, for those who aren’t …
Advaita Vedanta
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When the mind gives rise to language and we take language and concepts as real and settle inside them, the glory of the world becomes fixed into boxes within the three times of past, present and future. When we are able at first to relax this flow of conceptualisation, and later to understand its own natural purity, then the world remains, even in the interplay of language, open and beautiful. ~ …
All Waves & Ripples
In the previous post, we explored perception through the lens of western science and Buddhist Madhyamaka reasoning. We learned a bit about how the human body-mind records sensory data; and were introduced to some fascinating experiments which offer pretty convincing evidence for nonlocal communication. The Confounding Genius Of Madhyamaka Reasoning Madhyamaka reasoning can seem quite complex and …
Twin Flame
Was burning a candle the other night -- half-beeswax, half-coconut-wax, set in a transparent plastic votive -- while watching a movie nearby. It rested on a shelf, a little bit above my eye-level. Mostly I remained focused on the movie, but every now and again would notice the candle-flame in the background: a pleasing addition to the overall ambience. On one of these occasions what I saw …
The I Behind The Eye
In conversation with a friend, a couple days back, the issue of whether consciousness is one or many – singular or multiple – came to the fore. He was citing the Buddhist six-consciousness or eight-consciousness model(s) as evidence for the plurality of consciousness. And I was aligning with a more Advaitan view in which Consciousness or Awareness (with a capital “C” or “A”) is, if not “singular,” …
Practice Notes: Where Does “Knowing” Reside?
Looking Closely When we look closely, we discover that what we call “my human body” and what we call “my human mind” are simply ever-transforming appearances within Awareness. Because these appearances include patterns that repeat themselves, over time, with a certain degree of consistency, it can be tempting to attribute permanence to them – or to use them as a basis upon which to superimpose a …
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