April 29, 2024
[This is an excerpt from my book Radical Dzogchen: The Direct Way to En-Light-enment, which is available in Kindle and paperback at Amazon, and from other book sellers.]
Can you clarify the definitions of Dharma, Dharmakaya, Dharmadhatu, Dharmamegha, and Dharmata?
Dharma, when capitalized, means the True Condition of a thing. When not capitalized, dharma means a thing or existent. Dharma, when capitalized, is also a synonym for Truth Teaching. Hence, the Dharma, or Doctrine, taught by Gautama was about realizing the True Condition of Reality, Nirvana.
The Dharmakaya is the Truth, or Reality, “Body,” or Dimension. It is timeless Awareness, or Mind, the ineffable Self-Existing, Self-Conscious “Substance” underlying and transcending all dharmas, or things. When the Dharmakaya is referred to as the “basic space of phenomena,” it is called the Dharmadhatu. But Dzogchen errs when it conflates the Dharmadhatu with space; for, in reality, the “space” in which phenomena arise is spaceless as well as timeless. Hence, Dharmadhatu is simply the term for the Dharmakaya as spaceless Awareness, the universal Context of all content, or phenomena.…
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April 22, 2024
Introduction
The Story of This Book
After completing and publishing Zen Mind, Thinker’s Mind and Radical Dzogchen in 2022, I decided that my next writing project would be a Kabbalah book. While beginning work on it, I found myself spending my free time watching YouTube videos on nonduality and Consciousness (or Mind)-Only idealism. This inspired me to read some contemporary books on these subjects. In short, neither the books nor the YouTube videos impressed me; so I decided to put my Kabbalah book on hold and first write Nonduality and Mind-Only through the Prism of Reality.
Because the Mind-Only idealism that I subscribe to involves explaining emanation and creation, I knew that I’d also be able to integrate my seminal Kabbalistic insights into my thesis and paradigm, effectively killing two birds with one stone. I also knew that by adding Kashmir Shaivism metaphysics and Hegel’s phenomenology of Spirit to my paradigm, I would be able to provide a unique and profound description of the “prismatic” intermundia between unmanifest Mind, the Supreme Source (of emanation and creation), and the terrestrial world we humans inhabit.… Read the full article