Imagine … A beautiful ship—named the S.S. Phenom—made exclusively of cedar planks. This S.S. Phenom is a medium-sized steamship used primarily to ferry tourists over the balmy waters of the Caribbean Sea, between island beaches renowned as vacation destinations. The ship’s owners are under contract with a local travel agency, and enjoy a lucrative regular schedule of trips between and around …
Nonduality
A Logical Duet
Every now and again, I find it useful to review logical principles that are central to rational discourse, yet often misunderstood or just botched in the heat of the moment. Here are two all-time favorites … 1. Correlation & Causation Just because two events are correlated doesn’t mean that there is a causal relationship that exists between the two. As pictured above, a hot sunny day may …
Absolute Certainty & Perpetual Transformation
To begin this essay—the latest in a series exploring certainty—let’s recall some questions lingering from a previous post, having to do with the relationship between phenomenal appearances and Awareness, in terms of their certainty: * Is it actually necessary that appearances are less certain than the Awareness within which they arise and dissolve? Is there no scenario in which they are, say, …
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Self-Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness
"Now, when you are introduced (to your own intrinsic awareness), the method for entering into it involves three considerations: Thoughts in the past are clear and empty and leave no traces behind. Thoughts in the future are fresh and unconditioned by anything. And in the present moment, when (your mind) remains in its own condition without constructing anything, Awareness at that moment in …
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Blissfully Unencumbered
This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. Understanding a bit about how human vision works provides a fascinating window onto the deeply conditioned nature of all perceptual processes: hearing, tasting, …
Ways of Knowing
In a previous post—Mercury Rising—we considered various measuring devices—used by scientists to record information about large, medium-sized and very small phenomena. One device briefly considered was the human body-mind itself. Now, let’s continue our exploration by taking a closer look at the human body-mind as a measuring apparatus. In particular, let’s address the question: what counts as …