Started blogging again after ten years
MARCH 1, 2024
I've just started writing a new blog called Dispatches from The Equilibrium at The Coronzon Press site.
Sublime Light is out
JANUARY 25, 2024
Sublime Light came out a couple of weeks ago. Available as a free ebook.
The Curlew in the Mist is out
APRIL 30, 2023
Available as a free ebook.
My new book Form & Void is out
SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
Form & Void is a philosophy of the void, available now from The Coronzon Press as a free ebook. I've also brought out six other works in digital form, including an ebook of World of Dust, which was published in paperback in 2013 but is now out-of-print. There are more audio recordings too.
The solution of the King Wen sequence?
NOVEMBER 17, 2019
I've just put up a new review article on the Yijing Dao site. József Drasny reviews Richard S Cook's Classical Chinese Combinatorics. Cook claimed in 2006 to have solved the mathematical reasoning behind the King Wen sequence of hexagrams, but his work has gone unexamined since then. Until now.
Suchness
MAY 9, 2019
The Chinese term for tathata, 'suchness', is interesting, in that 真如 though it's normally translated in a general way as 'real unchanging truth' if you take the actual characters very literally you could read it as 'true likeness'. Now that's very interesting, in that it's saying that what appears is a true likeness of what is real, which is exactly the case, this is the form that is emptiness and the emptiness that is form. This is the form that is formless, as opposed to the form that is an object. The suchness or as-it-isness of the void. There is no other void.
In The Awakening of Faith the word suchness is regarded as a word to put an end to words.
You know the Zen idea of mountains and rivers:
Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers once again rivers.
This is hardly ever explained very well but look at it now in terms of suchness. First there is name and form. Objects. Then one realises everything is void. Then finally one realises everything is suchness.
Suchness is the void, but it's the 'true likeness' of the void. Everything is reality as it is. There is no separation, but you can say that is ivy and that is a tree. Their nature is void, but as ivy and tree that is their suchness. Objects have disappeared but suchness is just as it is. It will not remain looking like anything in particular, but its suchness as whatever it looks like will be the same, it will not change. Fundamentally, it's the void, but this can seem very abstract compared with suchness.
You might say well why aren't objects suchness? Because their objective nature is illusory and the antithesis of their true void nature, and it is their void nature that is their suchness, mistaken as separate objects. Their objective nature is nothing but a mental overlay, though that mental overlay enables one to say that is ivy and that is a tree, as if they were different. This sorting of forms is essentially a projection for the 'exterior' manipulation of thought in a dimensional environment as if they were objects, even the dimensions that give rise to life and the universe itself are this same projection.
Sometimes objects of great natural beauty are appreciated momentarily in their suchness without an appreciation that everything is void or that this is the void, still maintaining the objective structure of a supposed self-existent world, but suchness shines out in that particular place without necessarily revealing the scale or the reason. A pale yellow rose, for example, or a beautiful full moon. This is indeed suchness if it's caught right, but the entire universe is this suchness, because it's the void. Obviously few grasp its real import, the moment passes, and the void remains something on the edge of nihilistic misunderstanding.
It seems the void, as an intelligence, is processing. Or, hyperdimensionally speaking, we have caught it at one particular space-time incidence. In that, we are the void 'looking in'. We are already the void and everything the void has accomplished. One could not possibly be 'realised' or 'enlightened' if it wasn't already the case, and that's what realisation shows you, that it is already the case. You are the singularity. If you weren't, there would be no realisation, no enlightenment. Somehow, the void is perfect, and this is what realisation or enlightenment reveals. While it is looking in on itself here and now naturally it may seem to fall into the objective illusion, dualism, which is merely its tool. Is it even trying to achieve anything? Look around, all this is from nothing. Is it conceivable that it is all for nothing too? If it's merely a demonstration, a kind of proof of concept, then possibly it has exceeded its remit. But there is no sense that any of this was difficult for it. Does it even understand itself? It all breaks down. It is beyond explanation. But one thing you realise is that you're in for the long haul. This is you doing this, and, thankfully, you appear to know what you're doing.
Dead Posters Society Forum
NOVEMBER 2, 2017
I haven't written much in this journal since 2013, instead I've been writing on the forum. Now the forum is coming out of seclusion a little, in that I haven't linked to it for a while.
It can be found here: Dead Posters Society.
As it's been going four years now there's quite an archive of discussion on the nature of reality and self-realisation, not to mention psychonautical exploration and other more everyday things.
At first the forum was visible to anyone without signing in and it was indexed by search engines, but for the past few years it seemed better to carry on our discussions in private, so all the content has only been readable by members. But it's free to join and everyone is welcome.
Interview with me
FEBRUARY 15, 2017
Gyrus has interviewed me over at Dreamflesh.
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