To engage with form from the position of emptiness is to see every phenomenon as a manifestation of the infinite web of relationships. Unique and precious, but impossible to isolate, as the play of light in the jewel of Indra’s web.

the experience of spaciousness and the empty nature of phenomena are related in the following way. As our mind lets go of reification, phenomena arise as continuously interconnected and interdependent, yet without ground in essence.

nyam ne-pa

nyam-nyi

gYo-Wa

the ten thousand things became so catastrophically powerful.

measure of progress is the development of human capacity to undertake this work of transcendence as a conscious endeavour

Bodhidharma is vast emptiness, nothing holy. The way we usually express a version of that is through the idea of no gain, that there is nothing to fix, nothing to accomplish. I particularly try to express that in a psychological sense in which we don’t have to improve ourselves or fix ourselves or remove any underlying defect or fill in any kind of deficit.

Over a few weeks, I came to comprehend that the sound of one hand clapping is an illusion. The hand’s movement mimics clapping, but the only way to make the illusion a reality is to add a second hand. The sound of one hand clapping can be imagined, but the clap doesn’t exist until another hand is present. With that realization, I recognized the koan’s question as a way to understand the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness (śūnyavāda in Sanskrit), which says that no individual thing or person has any intrinsic existence, but exists only relationally, dependent on everything else. The concept of an individual nature is, like one hand clapping, an illusion.

a model of the self that is inherently Collective and flowing

while our predicament is eco-logical (“let it live”), our thinking remains techno-logical (“fix it”). The monoculture's fixation on what I call algorithmic rationality (linear, sequential, goal-oriented problem-solving),

myths are not necessarily untrue they're usually 00:03:33 partly true the danger lies in the part that isn't true and um so it it's partly true we have

what's the point what am i g to get out of this it's the same question actually

you don't meet something head-on you meet it around you meet it within you meet it 00:04:24 totally in ecological systems nothing is happening one thing at a time there's not a solution to a problem

there are many um and that that pulls us into 00:00:26 reaction mode that has been long steeped in industrial responsiveness which is to the first order

Essentially it analyzes the process of an illusion crystallizing out of emptiness and being taken for reality.

According to this law, nothing has independent, permanent, or absolute existence. Everything is part of a limitless web of interconnections and undergoes a continual process of transformation.

he read Buddhapalita’s commentary and came to a full realisation of emptiness

Je Tsongkhapa’s text, ‘In Praise of Dependent Arising’ which emphasises the importance of both emptiness and dependent arising

Perfection of Wisdom literature, among which the Heart Sutra is one of the shortest.

Emptiness implies dependent arising.

But this other kind of anxiety was more like a quiet, unintelligible terror, a distant alarm bell, an uncaused danger

this is similar to the kind of buddhist understanding of emptiness 00:15:22 right there is no abiding self

history is always the result of a lot of causes coming together you know 00:29:22 you have this metaphor of the chain of events and this is a terrible metaphor for there is no chain of events a chain of events imagines that every event is a link connected to one previous event and 00:29:36 to one subsequent event so there is a war there is one cause for the war and there will be one consequence it's never like that in history every event is more like a tree there is an entire system of 00:29:50 roots that came together to create it and it has a lot of fruits with lots of different influences

So Kairotic Flow doesn’t analyse and it doesn’t bring together the results of analysis. Instead, it focuses on relevant scope as a whole, in context, allowing patterns to emerge into our awareness, without taking things apart in the first place.

Phenomenology aims to carryout an exhaustive investigation and reach the root, that is to say, the field where the experience ismaterialized, the "thing itself", as things are for the consciousness

the definition of a double bind is that you have a a problem a bind 00:35:07 in one context and you can't actually solve it in that context because it's caught in another context and so you can't solve it in that 00:35:20 context because it's caught in these other contexts

reductionism can be good okay I would not be here if it weren't for reductionism neither would any of you it's how we build things it's how we learn things 00:19:32 but for so long we've pulled things out of context to study them and not put them back so we have an idea of information that is constantly decontextualized 00:19:46 what happens if you put it back

this is just a hypothesis there's a thing called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics like why is it the case that you go off and you invent complex numbers and quaternions and do abstract algebra and somehow that has something 00:33:26 to say about the physical world still a mystery but there's an unreasonable effectiveness of deep learning there is no a priori reason why DNA and images and video and speech synthesis and fmri 00:33:40 should share a kind of universal shape but they do and I think that's telling us something very deep about the structure of the universe

According to general Buddhist analysis, the individual that may be assumed to exist as a singular, enduring, and controlling self is mere appearance devoid of causal efficacy, and thus epiphenomenal [68]. In the case of a Bodhisattva, this understanding is carried forward so as to encompass a critique of the apparent foundations of cognition: object, agent, and action.

However, knowing the science community has long underestimated climate impacts, it is my judgement that the climate system has crossed a critical threshold. I believe its destabilisation will now trigger cascading and chaotic changes and disruption to human social and economic systems – and do so globally.

spirituality is not even a fourth pillar of sustainability, but is instead the foundation upon which the pillars of people, planet and profit must be constructed. To succeed on the triple bottom line, we must build a strong spiritual foundation. To do that, we must look inwards.

We all wonder about it, but we don’t like to talk about it because it sounds a bit religious and unscientific, but in truth it’s just mysterious.

the problems I've mentioned are being tackled by groups of people 00:11:18 sad thing is those people are often operating in silos just concerned to solve their particular problem not realizing that if they don't have the whole picture they may solve their 00:11:31 problem and cause problems in other places

if you're very poor then you're living in some kind of Wilderness Area you're going to destroy the environment in order to survive let me take for 00:08:05 example Gumby Street National Park in 1960 it was part of the Great Forest built by the late 1980s was a tiny Islander forest and all the hills around were bare more people living there in 00:08:19 the land could support two poor to buy food elsewhere struggling to survive cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or Timber or to make more land grow more food and that's when it 00:08:33 hit me if we don't help these people these local communities find ways of living without destroying the environment we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else so we need to 00:08:46 alleviate poverty

Being Model Humans

there's 00:08:43 nothing there that could be secured and here's the important point I think we experienced that we experience it as a sense of lack 00:08:58 that is to say the sense that something is wrong with me something is missing something isn't quite right I'm not good enough and the reality is I think all of us to 00:09:14 some degree have some sense of that some sense of lack even though we might ignore it or cover it up there's there's some sense of that but because it's mostly sort of unconscious in the sense that we don't 00:09:29 really know where it comes from

the whole world to me is a 00:19:25 kind of um Collision or or Criss-Cross or overlap between past and future

I think this is also part of  our sense of who we are as humans, as ourselves,   and the idea of the self, the individual, and  even the humans as this individual species,   these divisions are arbitrary.

So something about our   process is completely wrong. Something about our  understanding of ecology is completely wrong.   But for me, I look back at, for example,  the Daoists. To me, the Daoists understood   very deeply the complexity. Daoism really starts  with just accepting the mystery and the complexity   00:19:33 of the world and not trying to necessarily  explain it all, and then to pattern behavior   after these natural processes

we're also showing that these tipping elements are interconnected in 00:10:41 so-called Cascades

We will act to save “life on this planet” only if we recognize at a deep level that our “self” includes all beings. We need to recognize and feel at a deep level that ultimately we are not biologists trying to save other species. Rather, we are one emergence of life on this planet trying to save itself.

My overall objective in this paper is to

Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today

‘Running on Emptiness – The Pathology of Civilisation’John Zerzan (2002) All religions have problems with ‘unbelievers’, but that response is insignificant compared to their visceral hatred of ‘apostates’.

there's actually at least one other science fiction book from the 50s written by alice mary norton who used to 00:07:07 write under andre norton pseudonym who talked about a relatively similar concept in the time traders although the idea here was a little bit different here the author explained that pretty much all the signs of modern civilization are going to be completely 00:07:20 erased by the time the next glacial period begins in other words everything you see around you all the cities all the technology every major building every major structure we've ever built will basically be gone there will be no 00:07:33 signs of it left and within just a few million years there will be no one to tell the story and that's of course not really far from the truth as a matter of fact that's exactly what the scientists in this hypothesis propose and explain as well and that's of course why it 00:07:46 makes it so difficult to either prove or disprove this we currently have no idea if any of this is correct here i actually wanted to show you this beautiful illustration by one of the authors we basically have no idea if back in the 00:07:58 day when the dinosaurs were around they also had some kind of a super intelligent species that would drive their own versions of cars have their own versions of smartphones and eventually result in their own demise over time all of this would be gone to 00:08:11 history because of the way that geology works on our planet but in this paper the scientists decided to actually work out any potential ideas or experiments we can conduct on the planet to try to find out if this actually existed and if 00:08:25 it was possible in the past

there's a crucial distinction between what barney called three and four that's what uh captured me so 01:08:55 if you take the mind as fundamental as existing the only existing thing where where the the movie of the world is reflected into i am not happy 01:09:08 my my culture uh rejects then as a useless point of view to do science that's what but there is an alternative much more interesting and i find much more 01:09:21 deep in which which i read in a garage you know which is what uh barry seems to be is calling the fourth alternative in which the mind is not the fundamental thing in which everything is it's 01:09:32 reflected it's just one part of this uh uh uh interdependence now namely it's not the things that not intrinsic existence but mind has intrinsic existence that's not the 01:09:45 the the there's a more interesting answer namely that mind itself has no intrinsic uh uh existence uh and so it's just uh uh 01:09:57 it has an existence but is is it of course it's an existence my mind exists and i exist but uh and and and and if i think in terms of groups to say i mean all sentience being or all 01:10:10 human beings whatever um together uh which is an ideal also some some some some western philosophy that you know um it's collectively that through language and 01:10:22 that would create a vision of the world but i want to think of this as one aspect of the ensemble of things which is existence where uh uh nothing of that has um 01:10:36 uh has intrinsic existence so i want to think about my mind it's my brain my sensation my all my my my love people loving me the the image that people have of me my instead of the set 01:10:48 of processes uh uh which part of the world and it seems to me that the belgian allows me to think at me as part of the world at the same sense of the same ground as the world being 01:11:01 reflected in my consciousness without having to choose one of the two perspective to be the true one the intrinsic existence um 01:11:12 all all perspectives are uh uh empty they're all good but they are um they are not the the one on which the rest is ground they 01:11:24 each of one i can understand dependently on something else so marios you read a a verse or two from the third chapter of nagarjuna and uh let me comment on that

let me comment on your quantum physics i have only one objection please i think it's uh uh it's 01:01:21 what you said about the two uh sort of prototypical uh quantum puzzles which is schrodinger the double slit experiment uh it's uh it's perfect um my only objection is that in my book 01:01:34 i described of course i had a chapter about schrodinger cat but i don't use a situation in which the cat is dead or alive 01:01:46 i prefer a situation in which the cat is asleep or awake just because i don't like killing cats even in in in in mental experiments so after that 01:01:58 uh uh replacing a sleep cut with a dead cat i think uh i i i i completely agree and let me come to the the serious part of the answer um 01:02:10 what you mentioned as the passage from uh the third and the fourth um between among the the sort of the versions of 01:02:25 wooden philosophy it's it's exactly what i what i think is relevant for quantum mechanics for this for the following reason we read in quantum mechanics books 01:02:37 that um we should not think about the mechanical description of reality but the description reality with respect to the observer and there is always this notion in in books that there's observer or there are 01:02:50 paratus that measure so it's a uh but i am a scientist which view the world from the perspective of 01:03:02 modern science where one way of viewing the world is that uh there are uh you know uh billions and billions of galaxies each one with billions and billions of 01:03:14 of of of stars probably with planets all around and uh um from that perspective the observer in any quantum mechanical experiment is just one piece in the big story 01:03:28 so i have found the uh berkeley subjective idealism um uh profoundly unconvincing from the point 01:03:39 of view of a scientist uh because it there is an aspect of naturalism which uh it's a in which i i i grew up as a scientist 01:03:52 which refuses to say that to understand quantum mechanics we have to bring in our mind quantum mechanics is not something that has directly to do with our mind has not 01:04:05 something directly to do about any observer any apparatus because we use quantum mechanics for describing uh what happened inside the sun the the the reaction the nuclear reaction there or 01:04:18 galaxy formations so i think quantum mechanics in a way i think quantum mechanics is experiments about not about psychology not about our mind not about consciousness not 01:04:32 about anything like that it has to do about the world my question what we mean by real world that's fine because science repeatedly was forced to change its own ideas about the 01:04:46 real world so if uh if to make sense of quantum mechanics i have to think that the cat is awake or asleep only when a conscious observer our mind 01:05:00 interacts with this uh i say no that's not there are interpretations of quantum mechanics that go in that direction they require either am i correct to say the copenhagen 01:05:14 school does copenhagen school uh talk about the observer without saying who is what is observed but the compelling school which is the way most 01:05:27 textbooks are written uh describe any quantum mechanical situation in terms okay there is an observer making a measurement and we're talking about the outcome of the measurements 01:05:39 so yes it's uh it assumes an observer but it's very vague about what what an observer is some more sharp interpretation like cubism uh take this notion observer to be real 01:05:54 fundamental it's an agent somebody who makes who thinks about and can compute the future so it's a it's a that's that's a starting point for for doing uh for doing the rest i was 01:06:07 i've always been unhappy with that because things happen on the sun when there is nobody that is an observer in anything and i want to think to have a way of thinking in the world that things happen there 01:06:20 independently of me so to say is they might depend on one another but why should they depend on me and who am i or you know what observers should be a you know a white western scientist with 01:06:32 a phd i mean should we include women should we include people without phd should we include cats is the cat an observer should we fly i mean it's just not something i understand

i got from that book for responding about issues about quantum mechanics where people tell me come on curly you think about quantum mechanics systems how they affect one 00:17:35 another but the two systems should exist by themselves this should exist by itself anything they should think otherwise how could they affect one another and now got an answer to that and i 00:17:47 the second point i am fascinated by the overall uh anti-foundation is with nagarjuna which i found it extremely liberating

i read that book 00:11:08 in the translation by garfield and it was a shock for me it's an incredible it's a it's just a fantastic book so it really blew away my mind and i 00:11:21 spent a while as a a summer uh immersed in that book trying to read everything i could get nakatuna and thinking about that and i ended up with two ideas um which i just would put on the table and to to 00:11:35 discuss one smaller one larger one smaller is that in nagarjuna there are some basic ideas which are helpful uh to make sense of about quantum mechanics not not because the cartridge 00:11:48 knew anything about quantum physics of course it didn't uh but i think that to do science we need we need ideas and philosophy is very useful and uh we get from philosophy uh 00:12:01 conceptual structure way of thinking uh that as usual to make sense of of of better ways of understanding about the world and and and what is useful in nagarjuna is the idea 00:12:14 of uh what you do for quantum physics is the idea that uh it's it's better to think of the world not as entities or substance or or things of god or 00:12:27 whatever matter uh that has its own properties but only um through the interdependence of of things so you don't understand anything by itself if not connected to the others 00:12:39 that's uh in fact it's even more i think what nagarjuna shows that uh if you think that their relations with you think that things affect one another that's the only way of thinking so the idea of 00:12:52 of a thing by itself of things existing uh independently of anything else of a fundamental reality it's uh it's not useful and it's 00:13:08 i think the guardian argues contradictory that's a that's a specific idea this is the bigger idea which i i found uh wonderful and that completely captured me 00:13:20 is that uh this is a for me fascinating philosophical perspective because it starts from the day of separating uh sort of a conventional reality and 00:13:31 and an ultimate ultimate reality uh which is very common uh in in a very common perspective also in science and western philosophy um 00:13:44 you can also read some of the evolution of science or western philosophy trying to search for this ultimate life is that matter is that god is that spirit is that the mind is that language is that there are many other circles is that phenomenology or 00:13:58 the whosoever whatever you want and nagarjuna the book of nagarjuna is not a positive construction it's a negative destruction every chapter takes away something look this by itself doesn't stay together 00:14:12 this there's a state together it takes away it takes somebody takes something and so the suggestion here is that maybe the question is wrong um we should look for the ultimate value the ultimate value doesn't exist in a 00:14:24 sense it's the same thing as a as a conventional reality that i found fantastic it's a it's a dissolving um it's dissolving a fake problem in a 00:14:36 sense and opening up a sudden uh uh coherence as i read it and with all my superficiality it's not denying reality right it is here i mean this pen is his pen 00:14:48 it it denies the fact that this is ultimate reality in this pen or in something on which this pen is based including the mind which is uh there's a superficial buddhism a view of 00:15:01 beauties in the west uh which is just everything is the mind the mind is it's everything is is uh if you think it's a self and everything you know um where you were born in hollywood so 00:15:12 the illusory aspect of the walls i wonder if you got it from buddhism from hollywood i don't know but this is this idea that you know the the world is a big cinema and everything is is in the mind of berkeley 00:15:25 and this is a there's a chapter in in in nagarjuna which denies that completely because the mind itself is not um it's not uh doesn't have an ultimate reality so you cannot found anything on the mind nor on the dharma or the 00:15:39 on anything up to the point and then i conclude so my reason of my fascination throwing my fascination from the guardian on the table in this passage about the view this uh 00:15:51 this comments the emptiness of emptiness which was the real moment in which the guardian captured uh captured me so it's a point in which uh you know translated the way i read it or probably superficially is that all 00:16:04 right so everything is empty in the sense of doesn't not having an intrinsic reality so therefore this emptiness is the foundation of everything and regardless of the words no no no wait this is this 00:16:16 is a this is the view uh which you which is itself empty in the sense that it depends on else this is suddenly extremely liberating i think uh and i found it it hadn't 00:16:31 impacted me intellectually suddenly i have a i have a way to take take away from my intellectual search and anguish finding the foundations uh which i find liberating and even 00:16:43 personally i mean it's thinking about myself not as an entity but as a combination of other things uh has definitely an effect on me on a on a on a human being 00:16:55 and uh so i guess what what finally fascinated me in a gardener is this anti-foundational aspect it's taking away the starting point um it's absolute radicality 00:17:08 uh when he says that nirvana and samsara themselves are sort of illusioned in some sense empty in his own sense devoid of intrinsic reality

First we have to understand that the opposites need each other, revolve around each other, actually make one complete dynamic. Form is on the left and emptiness is on the right of the chart.  Form needs emptiness and emptiness needs form. They are actually not separated but intellectually we conceive them as separate and opposite.

There are no emotions in this game

People think that fighters fight best when they are angry, that singers, actors and musicians perform best when they are high on emotions. This cannot be further from the truth. Studies show that in high-stress situations, we perform when we separate ourselves from our emotions. Like how a cup is only useful when it’s empty, it is only when we empty ourselves that we can become a conduit for our art, transcend our mortal shell, and perform at the highest levels.

We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.”

valley of the Ebro were long and white.