Monism and dualism Is the world made of many things or only one thing that can be fashioned into different shapes or appearances? This can be called the problem of one or two (or many).   Monism views everything as one even if things appear different. Philosophers define different types of monism. Here we will be mostly concerned with substance monism which asserts that everything is made of one basic substance or priority monism which states that everything is derived from a

T he world makes no sense, so why are we here? The world we are in makes no sense. We live in impermanent bodies that are destined to fail. The impermanence itself makes it an imperfect existence. However, on top of that we have our fabricated existences, with the made-up self-identities that we cling to. All this produces a world that while it may have some nice things in it to distract us is imperfect to the core and not on balance a nice place. One can accept these as just

The world as an illusion We are ignorant of certain fundamental characteristics of the world as it is. These can be broken down into the...

I’m not sure why the Book of Job is in the Bible, but before we get to that let’s review the story of Job.   Job’s story First, we’re...

The Oxford Languages Dictionary defines a thought as “an idea or opinion by thinking or occurring suddenly in the mind; the action or...

This chapter continues the discussion of the soul begun in Chapter 6, turning to notions of the soul in the West. Before about the 6th...

The soul The concept of an entity similar to the soul arises in the Hindu Upanishads between 800-500 BCE, a little before the ancient...

This chapter expands on the discussion of epistemology begun in Chapter 2 focusing on science and mysticism. First it is perhaps worth...

Three principles that guide the spiritual journey: 1) See the world the way it is 2) Give up all attachments 3) Return to the Source. The...

Ontology and epistemology in the spiritual journey Ontology is the study of being or the nature of being. It investigates what entities...

What is the problem? Before one gets to the solution to a problem, one must agree on what the problem is. I will argue that the...

Why am I writing this? In what I intend to be a serious of posts, I don’t plan on saying much about myself. However, I think a reader...