My philosophy

Now lives at MAP.

A first attempt at something like metaphysics (what is real?) and epistemology (what is true?).

Reality is one, complex, flow.
Our experience creates our reality, it doesn’t describe Reality.
- Perception is participation.
- Concepts are a map, not the territory.
- Our true nature is the context of consciousness, not the contents.

Reality

Reality is one, complex, flow.

Reality is one indivisible whole.
- It’s nondual. There’s distinction, but not division.
- Every thing is deeply interdependent.
- It’s composed of wholes that are parts of other wholes.
Reality is flow, motion, process.
- Life is movement.
- Resistance to the flow is what brings complexity, forms.
Reality is complex, deep, rich.
- It’s fractal. Looking more closely reveals new, more, detail.
- There are no straight lines in nature.

Our experience creates our reality, it doesn’t describe Reality.

Perception is participation.

We don’t have direct contact with reality.
- It’s filtered through our sense organs.
- It’s filtered through our (finite, human) mind.
Perception and thought are nondual.
- Their interaction, superimposition, creates dualities.
We, our bodies, are not in nature, or separate from nature: we are nature.

Concepts are a map, not the territory.

All phenomena are empty, aggregates, exist only by convention.
Layers, divisions, states, stages, are all creations of reality, not descriptions of Reality.
- What we call things depends on the range of the observer.
- In particular: opposites reveal, create, support, define each other.
- In particular: the self is just an idea, a construction.
Concepts are a grasp at reality.
- Grasping creates dualities.
- Grasping causes suffering.
Concepts are many, simple, static. Reality is one, complex, flow.
Reason and debate to end yours and others’ suffering are a means to an end.
- Even though they’re empty too.

Our true nature is the context of consciousness, not the contents.

The self is causes, conditions, patterns. It’s a stream of dependently arising processes interacting to create the feeling of a separate self.
- We maintain our sense of self by editing of, selecting from, experience. By resisting impermanence.
- The feeling of self is what it feels like to be thinking without realising you’re thinking.
- Anything that can be named or located can’t be you: it’s an object in awareness.
Our true nature is “I am” before adding anything, before looking backwards or forwards, before classification, measuring, labelling, before concepts.
- It’s open, spacious, empty, luminous, formless, boundless.
This truth is: simple, not complex; close, not far away; do less, not do more; on the surface, not deep; before thoughts, not beyond them; immediate, not prolonged.

Added 2023-12-29, last updated 2023-12-31.