I was participating in a nonduality discussion forum recently, and there was a question about how genes control our emotions. Since this was a nonduality forum and not a genetics forum, the discussion quickly led to questions about whether consciousness creates the world, and if so, how. Most people seemed to be familiar with the […]
Title of the Text: “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists” Original Date: 1713 Purpose of this Study Guide: To help people wishing to use George Berkeley’s arguments in support of nondual inquiry. Berkeley offers powerful insights against the independent existence of physical substance as an inherently existent thing. I […]
Can our knowledge rest on anything that is simply given in experience? Can we base knowledge on anything secure? This is a topic about everyday conventional knowledge, not nondual knowledge (e.g., “Knowledge = Being”). So this isn’t a topic in which we try to eradicate all belief or cognitive activity. According to the conventional thinking […]
One of Tsong-kha-pa’s students, Gyaltsap Dharma Rinchen (1364-1432), wrote these lines in “Illumination of the Essential Meanings” of (Nāgārjuna’s) Precious Garland of the Middle Way (64a.2). The four levels presented below are quoted in Jeffrey Hopkins’ translation of Precious Garland: Nagarjuna’s Buddhist Advice for Living and Liberation. This is a book presenting the Tibetan Gelugpa Prasangika […]
According to the emptiness teachings, human consciousness is empty because of being divisible into parts. The consciousness involved in looking at a blue vase does not have spatial parts because it is not physical, but it does have temporal parts. It exists as a continuum of moments. Consciousness looking at a blue vase has earlier […]
Do spiritual paths such as Advaita Vedanta and Madhyamika Buddhism lead to the very same truth, the same realization? After all, advocates of these paths have debated each other for centuries. For us in the modern world, with limitless data at our fingertips, we can experience information overload and cognitive dissonance when we confront lots […]