Month: November 2023

• November 2, 2023

  Three Pillars And Three Spiritual Temperaments

  In The Three Pillars of Zen, Philip Kapleau sets out, well, the three essentials of Zen or Chan practice. They are: great doubt, great determination, and great faith. I remember my Zen teacher saying that one doesn’t actually need all three legs of the stool; one–for him it was great doubt–was enough. I think we…
• November 1, 2023

  What Is Nisargadatta’s Understanding Of The Relationship Between Consciousness And The Body?

  Confusion For years, I’ve found Nisargadatta’s discussion of the relationship between consciousness (“I am”) and the body to be somewhat puzzling. The standard Vedantic view is that the ontology is, in the apt words of Francis Lucille, a “one-way street”: whatever is lower is dependent on the higher while whatever is higher can’t be dependent…