Tag: spirituality

What’s the Point of Consciousness?

“If a general theory of reality has no place for consciousness, then that theory cannot be true.” – Philip Goff, Galileo’s Error

“Consciousness is also nature.” – Guy Armstrong, Emptiness

Two Views of Mind

Science has shown, time and again, that the workings of our world are rarely intuitive. We inhabit a universe with no centre, where time passes relative to motion, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and half the cells in our bodies aren’t even human. At the frontiers of knowledge, common sense holds no sway.

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The Logic of Rebirth and Karma

“Offered to us as the irreplaceable means of deliverance, the Dhamma does not seek mere intellectual assent, but commands a response that is bound to be fully religious.” – Bhikkhu Bodhi, Two Faces of the Dhamma

“Why, if experience continues anyway, is it so terribly important that it continue within this set of personal characteristics, memories, and body?” – Tom Clark, Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity

Strange Relics

When I started meditating, ten-odd years ago, I didn’t think much of Buddhism. Whenever neuroscientists wrote about the absence of a solid self, I was intrigued. When Alan Watts waxed lyrical about the ideological assumptions underpinning materialism, I was enthralled. But when Buddhists spoke of the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, or the Three Characteristics, I glazed over. Even though Buddhism was the primary source of my newfound interest in spirituality, it often read like a painfully detailed way of stating the obvious in dry, arcane terminology.

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