Success Bombing’ Is the Awkward Friendship Issue That No One Talks About
Success bombing is a symptom of some increasingly narcissistic cultures, and it’s having a negative impact on friendships. We’ve all got that one friend in our lives who constantly blows up our WhatsApp chat with endless stories about their own success (and, if you don’t, there’s every chance it’s you). From long missives about the […]
Short Definitions
Abhidharma Literally meaning “higher knowledge,” Abhidharma refers to a collection of Buddhist scriptures that pertain to psychology, phenomenology, and cosmology. anatman Literally meaning “no-self,” anatman refers to an important Buddhist teaching according to which any notion of an eternal principle that is thought to constitute the real self of our existence is rejected. arhat Literally “foe destroyer,” arhat […]
The Chinese Room Argument
The argument and thought-experiment now generally known as the Chinese Room Argument was first published in a 1980 article by American philosopher John Searle (1932– ). It has become one of the best-known arguments in recent philosophy. Searle imagines himself alone in a room following a computer program for responding to Chinese characters slipped under […]
Absurdism
This article is about the philosophy. For an extremely unreasonable, silly, or foolish thing, see Absurdity. For absurdist humour, see surreal humour. For the literary genre, see Absurdist fiction. Sisyphus, the symbol of the absurdity of existence, painting by Franz Stuck (1920). Absurdism is the philosophical theory that existence in general is absurd. This implies […]
GENERATING THE ALTRUISTIC MIND OF AWAKENING
The ceremony for generating bodhicitta, the altruistic mind of awakening. Among the audience, those who are practicing Buddhists can participate fully in this ceremony. Those who are not Buddhists can participate in the ceremony as a means to strengthen your commitment to the ideals of compassion and altruism. Before you participate in the actual ceremony, […]
Eight Verses on Training the Mind
n essence, the short text entitled Eight Verses on Training the Mind presents the practices of cultivating both conventional bodhicitta, or the altruistic aspiration to attain buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, and ultimate bodhicitta, the profound insight into the ultimate nature of reality or “the ultimate mind of enlightenment.” The first seven stanzas […]
Reality
Also known as “meat space” to differentiate it from cyberspace and regular space, which is a vacuum. “How can this chair be a chair and also a quantum probability and also mostly empty space? How do those different realities co-exist? How can the same “object” follow one set of physics at a conventional scale […]
For driverless cars, a moral dilemma: Who lives or dies
BOSTON — Imagine you’re behind the wheel when your brakes fail. As you speed toward a crowded crosswalk, you’re confronted with an impossible choice: veer right and mow down a large group of elderly people or veer left into a woman pushing a stroller. Now imagine you’re riding in the back of a self-driving car. […]
THE THREE HIGHER TRAININGS
Higher training in morality, in meditation, and in wisdom. The teaching on the Four Noble Truths, which was the Buddha’s first teaching following his attainment of full awakening, represents the foundation for the practices of emptiness and the cultivation of compassion. This teaching underpins everything that the Buddha taught subsequently and helps us to establish […]
The 7 Levels of Sapience
Self-awareness is ranked as Level 5 information integration and above according to the following criteria: Level 0 – Inanimate Objects Note: At this level, there is no capacity for experiencing pain or suffering. No information integration: Inanimate objects; objects that do not modify themselves in response to interaction – e.g., rocks, mountains. Level 1 – […]
