The Greek philosopher-sage Parmenides -- born in 514 BC -- proposed what he referred to as "Being" as a kind of unitary ontological ground that, to my ear, seems more-or-less equivalent to the "Tao" of Taoism and the "Dharmakaya" of Buddhism and the "Brahman" of Hinduism and the "Pure Awareness" of Advaita Vedanta. In the following poem, translated by Francis Lucille, Parmenides describes the …
Western Philosophy
Mind & The Objects That Appear To It – Commentary #4
In relation to mind and the objects that appear to it, Lonchenpa continues: Here, ordinary people, who being unlearned, are as pretentious as they are mistaken, say, “The apprehended are the things that appear, mountains and so on. The apprehender is one’s own mind.” Away with the ideas of such foolish cowherds! In the experience of noble beings, who have eliminated the duality of apprehended and …
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Real, True, Trustworthy
Tangled Hierarchy There’s something of a tangled hierarchy between basic categories and the more nuanced insights that, down the road, they facilitate. A budding mathematician first learns algebra, then geometry, and then calculus – but many report that even though algebra was a necessary building-block for geometry and calculus, they “truly understood” algebra only after mastering the …
On Saying True Things About The Ineffable
How often does one find an essay penned by a western philosopher -- that opens with a quote by Nagarjuna? Graham Priest's fascinating Beyond true and false becomes one of very few, when it begins by citing the illustrious Buddhist philosopher-sage thusly: The nature of things is to have no nature; it is their non-nature that is their nature. For they have only one nature: no-nature. What …
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Revisiting The Tenets Of Valid Cognition: When Is Knowledge Reliable?
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, here on the cusp of June, 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 …
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Equality, Justice, Fairness: Reflections on Sharing a Cake
The Scales of Justice: Dream-Like or Eternal? Are “equality” and “justice” and “fairness” archetypes that have some kind of actual (subtle transpersonal) existence, perhaps in the mode of Platonic Forms? Or are they bona fide attributes of the Divine: qualities that flow forth spontaneously via a bodymind that is fully transparent to its eternal Source? Or are they merely conceptual …
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