This relationalism is beautifully invoked in the metaphor of Indra’s net. Here is how the religion scholar Francis H Cook described it in 1977: Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each ‘eye’ of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinit

An interesting and thoughtful essay on the overlap and contrast between Marxist and Buddhist philosophy: https://aeon.co/essays/how-marxism-and-buddhism-complement-each-other?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0bc6e8251c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_15_12_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-0bc6e8251c-70392753 At this point, I can only comment that neither Buddha nor Marx was a philosopher. Essays like this tend to delve into "philosophizing" that must be subject to Zen skepticism about words as opposed to experience. Having said that, it seems to me that my own pursuit of what I call "Zen" has political ramifications along with implications as to what kind of society is possible as opposed to what kind of society we would like - the Utopian issue. The overlap discussed in the essay turns on the observation that capitalism causes suffering. Both Marx and Buddha had their own ideas about how to reduce this suffering. As an aside, we run into t

I'm not an expert on Zen, and I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to be an expert on anything, including Zen. With religion, expertise is supported by little more than a circular claim of authority. So with that caveat, let me say something about  Zazen  - Zen "sitting meditation," which is, to many, the very core of Zen "practice." I am amused at all the micro-detail you can find in Zen literature about exactly how to do this. I was impressed by  Osho's  advice on this. It doesn't really matter how you "sit" or even that you meditate at all. Meditation develops self-awareness, which includes the insight that the self is "constructed," ephemeral or, in the thinking of some "fictitious." It is a fact that very few people observe their own thought processes. For most of us, most of the time, we are more or less unconscious following a thought that arises out of the depths of our minds. We don't usually ask of ours

Revolution has been the story of the rich wresting power from them even richer. For a long time, this was at the expense of the King. The revolutions that swept Europe in the late 19th century attempted to limit the powers of the King by some kind of constitution. These revolutions failed until the disaster of the first World War. The story of America is no different. The declaration of Independence listed the grievances of the Colony's wealthiest landowners against the King of England. The "self-evident truths" so famously mentioned were that the King was obviously no better than a wealthy male white colonist. In the Federalist Papers, we clearly see that the constitution was not about "democracy," which we would call "populism." It was based on the faint hope that rich white guys could deliberate together and solve whatever problems came up. "Democracy" was engineered out of that document, when slaves were counted as 2/3 of a person fo