Steven > Recent Status Updates

In these previous few pages, Tsongkhapa refutes the essence of phenomena in both temporal and grammatical senses. Temporally, an action does not inherently exist because it once it stops, there is no more action to be found. You cannot find it in the past, present, or future. Grammatically, neither the agent nor the action can essentially exist, because otherwise they would have to be identical to one another.

It's taking me quite a while to finish this book because the subject matter is very heavy. I'm not going to force myself to read it on days where I don't want to kill my vibe. It's obviously an important book but reading about genocide is not for the faint of heart

Tsongkhapa makes a further point saying that while capacity is the agent of activity, the substance is not. The capacity for an action belongs either to the noun or the verb as a referent, but not both. Because activities themselves lack an inherent substance, they can only be determined by their effects, and subsequently by identifying the proper predicate as a mental deduction.

Tsongkhapa makes another complicated grammatical argument here: he says that if either a noun or a verb is connected to a referent, then it is impossible for the other to be connected to the referent. In other words, they cannot belong to the same continuum--If "going" can only be found in relation to space-time, then it cannot be found in the "goer" in any inherent sense of the word.

Tsongkhapa makes an interesting observation here: he says that the referent of the word "going" does not refer to the object that is moving, but instead the space or interval being gone over. In other words, you can only determine motion interdependently based on an object's position in space-time. Therefore, motion does not exist essentially, but only relationally.

Tsongkhapa refutes coming and going by making two arguments: One is that since two things cannot arise and fall away at the same time, motion has to be understood as a continuum of infinite moments where there is, in fact, no essential motion to be found. The other argument he makes is actually rather flimsy in my opinion, and it has to do with the non-existence of the front and back of the foot as well as the path.

Tsongkhapa explains that Buddhist scriptures which proclaim the unarisen nature of all phenomena do so in the sense of their ultimate, non-inherent arising rather than their conventional compound arising. If everything were simply non-arisen, they would not have a modality by which to appear in one's consciousness, which would be like something perceived by the son of a barren woman. This is not a Buddhist teaching.

Every part of this story so far is horrific, and the book hasn't even gotten to the mass atrocities yet. Imagine the worst, greediest, most manipulative people you know, and give them unlimited power and money, and that's who colonized the Kongo

The more I read about colonial history the more I understand just how much of a backwater Europe was after the fall of the Roman empire. It was a place where violence and negligence by the ruling classes won the day--The conditions were so horrible that it's no wonder that many people wanted to leave. Unfortunately, the consequence of that migration was that it exported European violence elsewhere.

This is the definitive study of colonial Belgium's genocide in what is now the DRC, formerly the "Congo Free State." By some estimates, this genocide had a higher number of fatalities than the Holocaust, but it is hardly ever talked about. I was incredibly surprised to hear that the author directly witnessed a CIA agent bragging about the murder of Patrice Lumumba. A very promising read for sure

I'm a little surprised that the author didn't mention Andrea Dworkin in the section about lesbian feminism?? She's like, the ultimate lesbian feminist

I've been wanting to read this one for a very long time. It's perhaps the most widely-read book about dream yoga in the English speaking world, besides Tenzin Wangyal's book. Namkhai Norbu was a Nyingma master, whereas Tenzin Wangyal is a Bon master, so I am interested in getting a view of the practice from the Buddhist Dzogchen perspective. Om mani padme hum