Seems like once a year or so that I feel drawn to reviewing – and hopefully in some manner clarifying – the tenets of valid cognition. And so it is that I embark once again on this journey … What Is Valid Cognition? The phrase “valid cognition” (Sanskrit: pramāṇa) is one that appears largely in Buddhist philosophy – though there are similar explorations within Yoga and Vedanta. The aspects of …
[Read more...] about Revisiting The Tenets Of Valid Cognition: When Is Knowledge Reliable?
Would it be fair to consider the Tao of Taoism to be more-or-less the equivalent of the Aristotelian “unmoved mover”—the “first cause” of all motion in the universe? Let’s explore .... Why? Most two-year-olds, as they’re first learning how to speak, become fascinated with the question “why?”—which they quickly discover can be applied not only to their initial inquiry, but also—ad infinitum—to …
[Read more...] about Turtles All the Way Down: Tao as First Cause
It’s been a month now, at least, since I first opened this Word file, and typed in the title—Practice Notes: Untouched & Deeply Felt. I expected that (as is generally the case) I’d return, within the next day or two, to complete the essay. Yet that impulse, until today, just never arrived. Somehow, for a long time, nothing else was needed. Somehow, the title in and of itself (with fewer …
[Read more...] about Practice Notes: Untouched & Deeply Felt
As of late, I’ve been enjoying a pair of books, toggling back-and-forth between them in a way that feels quite interesting and enriching. One of them—Insight into Emptiness by Khensur Jampa Tegchok—harkens from the Buddhist Madhamakaya tradition. The other—The Seven Great Untenables by John Grimes—expresses the view of Advaita Vedanta. So, I read a bit from one, then a bit from the other—as …
[Read more...] about Only By Courtesy: Sankara’s Definition of Real
The main way to practice is to see that your disturbing emotions and concepts exist only in relative reality. They do not exist in genuine reality, and ultimately they are self-liberated. See that is is the same for all contradictions and conflicting appearances—they exist only in relative reality. Ultimately, their nature is self-liberated equality. So whatever manifests in your …
Was thinking of unicorns the other day—curious, in particular, about whether their one horn was also called a “unicorn.” It made sense to me that this would be the case, but I wasn’t certain, so set off to explore … A few Googles later, here’s what I had learned: The root of the word unicorn is the Latin adjective unicornis (having one horn)—from uni (one) and cornus (horn). The horn …
