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Many things have changed since the last time I posted — I moved back to the old country (India, and given how much it has changed while I have been away, I should really say, “I moved to a new country”), I…

Yeah, I know, I am being a bit tongue in cheek. At least I didn’t descend into talking about watching TV as a meditative practice. There is a serious purpose here though; which is to pay attention to how knowledge…

Sooner or later, one gets the feeling that introspection does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. Answers to questions like “Who am I?” are far from apparent from a cursory inspection of our own consciousness. On the other hand, the unexamined…

Starting this week, I am going to start writing blog entries that outline my research ideas, both for people to comment and make suggestions, but also to explore the possibility that the internet is a useful medium to conduct research.…

First, a provisional definition of ontology, gleaned from the Oxford English dictionary and the website “ontology a resource guide”. Not that these sources are definitive, but they do seem to represent mainstream thinking about the subject. (A) Ontology is the…

Paradoxes have been used since the beginning of systematic philosophy (Zeno’s paradox, for example) to signal problems where earlier generations might have seen none. The mark of an authentic paradox is the presence of two or more sources of intuition…

Can the Real ever be understood directly, or are we human beings fated to a limited understanding, enfolding the Real in partial perspectives? The ancients, whether Indian or Greek, thought that the Real could be understood, even experienced directly. They…

I was walking across the Charles river in Cambridge on Massachusetts avenue. It is a beautiful walk, the bridge is about half a mile long, with a panoramic view of Boston and Cambridge. While I was walking across, I found…

Here is an exercise, suggested by my friend Piet Hut, followed by my report about the exercise. Feel free to perform it yourself and leave comments! The Exercise. Take a collection of objects in front of you. Become fully aware…

There are several ways in which one could approach the dialogue between science and contemplative traditions (meditation, yoga etc). I can think of three strategies myself: Use scientific methods to study contemplative traditions. In this camp we can club a…