Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
Abraham’s Simple Marga to Achieve Liberation
The classical path (marga or magga) to reach liberation (or vimutti) is the Noble Eightfold Path. The Sutta Pitaka gives the Noble Eight-fold Path like this: “The Blessed One said, ‘Now what, monks, is the Noble Eightfold Path? Right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration [samadhi]’”…
Journey to the West: By Abraham for You
Journey to the West (Chinese: 西遊記; pinyin: Xī Yóu Jì ), one of the greatest Classic Chinese Novels, was published during the Ming dynasty. It was also made into a 2016 film called Xuanzang. The novel portrays the legendary pilgrimage of the historical monk Xuanzang, (玄奘; 602–664). He travelled from China, through Central Asia, to…
Races and Languages: From Where? Answering Racism
People often mentally categorize others by race. Physical features, like skin color, that distinguish one group of people, a ‘race’, from another, are easy to notice. So Caucasians are ‘white’, while those of Asian and African decent are darker. These traits distinguishing groups of people from each other easily leads to racism. This is the…
Lessons Learned From the Great Flood
The Miao, one of the official 56 minority peoples in China, have been there for a long time. Their origins are the subject of much discussion and speculation. Over the centuries the Han Chinese pushed them further south. Thus a prominent sub-group of Miao, called Hmong, spilled into Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. During the Chinese…
Was there an Adam? The Testimony of the ancient Chinese
The Bible is a remarkable book. For one thing it claims that the Creator God inspired it and therefore accurately records the activities of history. For many this raises questions about the opening chapters in the first Biblical book – Genesis. Genesis records the account of Adam & Eve’s creation in an initial paradise with…
Apparel: Why More Than Just Clothing?
Why do you clothe yourself? Not with just anything that fits, but you want fashionable clothing that expresses who you are. What causes you to instinctively need to wear clothing, not just to stay warm, but also to express yourself visually? Isn’t it odd that you find the same instinct across the planet, no matter…
Confronting the Great Naga-Dragon: History’s Beginning, but Looking To Its End
The serpent or Naga has deeply entrenched itself in Asian folklore, art and mythology. It rivals the dragon which shares many similarities with the serpent in mythology. Both Asian mythology as well as the Hebrew Scriptures group the naga and the dragon together. The Hebrew scriptures also records a confrontation between the serpent/dragon and the…
Sin… Missing the Noble Path
The most renowned Buddhist insight, or prajna, concerns what is often called The Noble Eightfold Path (Pali: ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga; Sanskrit: āryāṣṭāṅgamārga). This comes from Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist texts which preserve ancient teachings of Gautama Buddha. The Sutta Pitaka sums up The Noble Eightfold Path, highlighting that ‘right concentration’ (the samadhi state) is a…
Now Corrupted… Like Orcs of Middle-Earth
We saw how the Bible portrays ourselves and others – that the Creator God originally made us in His Image. But the Hebrew Scriptures record how we then disobeyed the Creator God, giving rise to Kleshas in all of us. The Psalms are a collection of sacred songs and hymns used by the ancient Hebrews…
Mankind’s Duhkha Curse
We saw that ancient Hebrew scriptures record how cravings (Tanha) and wrong thoughts (Kleshas) arose at the beginning of history. But what about the suffering, pain or unhappiness, known as Duhkha/Duhkka? Duhkha and Tanha form the basis of the Four Noble Truths articulated by Gautama Buddha. Similarly, what about Impermanence, called anicca (Pāli) or anitya…
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