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Monthly Archives: October 2025
Final Integration; The Great Return
The Culmination of the Path
There is a moment in every spiritual undertaking when words grow thin, and concepts lose their persuasive grip. The long road of teachings, comparisons, distinctions, practices, and debates gradually exhausts itself, until the very act of seeking is revealed to have been occurring within what was never lost. This chapter begins in that exhausted hush—an echoing silence in which the Great Return announces itself, not as an attainment, but as the recognition that nothing needed to be attained.
Phenomenology of Awakening
- Introduction: Awakening as Phenomenological Event
To speak of awakening is to touch the most intimate and mysterious dimension of spiritual life. It is not merely a doctrinal assertion, nor only the culmination of metaphysical reasoning, but a transformation in the very structure of human consciousness. Both Unborn Mind Zen and Advaita Vedānta insist that awakening is not about acquiring something new, nor about achieving an external state—it is instead a recognition of what was always already present, though veiled by ignorance, habit-energy, or mistaken identity.
The Function of Practice
The Paradox of Practice in Non-Dual Traditions
The problem of practice is one of the most enduring paradoxes in non-dual spirituality. If the Absolute is already here—if Brahman is one’s very Self, if the Unborn Mind is the ever-present reality—then why should practice be necessary at all? Any effort to “reach” the goal seems already to betray ignorance, for it implies that the seeker is separate from the sought. Yet traditions across the world insist on the indispensability of practice: discipline, meditation, inquiry, devotion, or mindfulness. How can this contradiction be reconciled?
The Role of Language and Silence
The problem of language is as old as philosophy itself, and nowhere is this problem more acute than in the spiritual traditions of India and East Asia. To speak of the Absolute is already to betray it, for the very act of naming establishes boundaries, predicates, and relations that the Absolute does not admit. Yet, to remain wholly silent is equally impossible, for silence alone does not guide, does not liberate, and cannot awaken one who is still lost in the dream of ignorance. Thus the masters of both Advaita Vedānta and Unborn Mind Zen confront an enduring paradox: words must be used, but used only in such a way that they reveal their own insufficiency.
The Ethics of the Unborn and Brahman
Introduction — Why Ethics After Metaphysics?
The philosophical pursuit of ultimate reality—whether expressed as the Unborn Mind in Zen or as Brahman in Advaita Vedānta—inevitably raises a fundamental question: once realization has occurred, what follows? Is the path complete when the metaphysical ground has been uncovered, or does realization carry implications for how one lives, acts, and relates to others in the world?
Liberation (Mokṣa vs. Unborn Realization)
- Introduction: The Soteriological Question
Every philosophy, every spiritual path, carries within it the implicit question: What is all of this for? Why inquire into the deepest recesses of mind? Why wrestle with metaphysics, with paradox, with negations that strip away the scaffolding of self and world? Why meditate, why practice, why endure the relentless peeling back of everything that once seemed secure?
The Dialectic of Presence and Absence
Presence and Absence as the Twin Gates
In every great spiritual tradition, reality resists capture by categories. Language attempts to fix what forever slips through its net, and the mind, which depends on conceptual divisions, cannot help but organize experience into opposites: light and dark, fullness and emptiness, presence and absence. Yet when seekers approach the Absolute, they find themselves confronted with the inadequacy of such pairs. Still, paradoxically, these very categories—presence and absence—become indispensable markers, twin gates through which thought and practice must pass before they are transcended.
Affirmations of the Absolute
Introduction: From Negation to Affirmation
Every path of negation eventually faces a threshold: once all illusions are stripped away, what remains? To stop at emptiness would risk nihilism, but both Unborn Mind Zen and Advaita Vedānta insist that the stripping away only clears the ground for what cannot be denied—the luminous Absolute.
The Practice of Negation
- Introduction: The Method of Negation
Every authentic encounter with the Absolute begins not with affirmation, but with a stripping away. The ultimate reality—whether named as the Unborn, Brahman, or Absolute Nothingness—cannot be approached by concepts, images, or affirmations. To affirm is already to fall into limitation, for affirmation binds Being to a predicate, and predicates belong to the world of phenomena. Affirmation assumes distinction: this is true, that is false; this is real, that is not. But the Absolute stands prior to all distinctions, prior to the very duality of “is” and “is not.”
Appearance and Reality
- Introduction: The Problem of Illusion and Manifestation
Every philosophy of the Absolute eventually encounters the same paradox: If ultimate reality is perfect, self-sufficient, unborn, or absolute being, then how do appearances arise? Why is there a world at all, if the true nature of things is emptiness or Brahman? This question presses equally on Unborn Mind Zen and Advaita Vedānta, albeit in distinct registers.
Posted in The Unborn and the Absolute: Unborn Mind Zen and Advaita Vedānta in Dialogue
Tagged anirvacanīya, Appearance and Reality, conventional truth, Dogen, illusion, Kitarō Nishida, Manifestation, Pāramārthika satya, Phenomena as Shadows, Prātibhāsika satya, Prior-to Phenomena, shikantaza, The Doctrine of Māyā, The Veil of Māyā, Ultimate Truth, Vyāvahārika satya
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