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Conscious Realism

Find the website dedicated to the view of Conscious Realism based in the work of Donald Hoffman and Nima Arkani-Hamed: https://www.consciousrealism.com/ For the purposes of a contemplative, the idea isn't to take on a new view of reality for its own sake, but to watch as established and established and successful scientific theories (materialism, realism, spacetime) are relegated to secondary positions. For Hoffman, consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality and for Nima Arkani-Hamed it is, perhaps, the amplituhedron from which spacetime itself emerges. This has a revolutionary spirit. Hoffman's discussion of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is really interesting and suggestive of the spirit in Dzogchen non-meditation of simply appreciating the timeless and perhaps endless phantasmagoric cascade of appearances - wonderment.

Professor Donald Hoffman and the Case Against Reality

After following Donald Hoffman for the past couple of years, I'm only more astounded by his ideas derived from the work he's doing with a team of mathematicians and cognitive scientists! Among the many gems in this interview is his take on belief. In Buddhism we talk about freedom from a fixation on views; in Dzogchen we're utterly suspicious of beliefs - the view is no view. Somehow proponents of materialism, naive realism, physicalism, and the rest seem to have leveled the criticism of dogmatism against any and all, yet dodged it themselves.


Roots, Embodiment, Race, and Gender

In seminary talks 2.5 & 2.6, Bruce discussed and read from Susan Murcott's First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening. I recently came across a panel discussion from the Harvard Divinity School's Buddhism and Race Conference hosted by the Harvard Buddhist Community. The panel consisted of Buddhist women teachers and academics, discussing their roots in Christianity, Judaism, Atheism, and African American heritage. I had Murcott's text fresh in my mind while listening to these brilliant women and wondered about the 2500 years between the two sets of voices. Both, clearly, found a transformative depth in the Buddhadharma and both, to my ear, expressed it in remarkably direct terms.

Here is the panel:

Here is the Tricycle article, "Mapping Your Mind: The Original Buddhist Psychology," in which Beth Jacobs compares the Abhidharma to, "...a periodic table of experience." It's an article worth reading.