Buddhism, Emptiness & Idealism #2
Panel discussion on how Buddhist thought meets analytical idealism
Date: 29 April 2025
Duration: 2h 44m
0:00:00 Buddhism and idealism: a wider conversation
0:05:32 Beyond one interpretation of Buddhist emptiness
0:10:06 What if emptiness means openness?
0:15:10 How far can logic take us?
0:20:01 Philosophy and meditation: different questions?
0:25:22 Buddha nature without clinging to an essence
0:35:50 Empty of independent existence
0:40:24 Is compassion intrinsic to awakening?
0:45:02 Bernardo’s account of mind beyond the individual
0:50:06 Why idealism insists on a ground of subjectivity
0:55:11 Luminosity and the nature of awareness
1:05:44 Individual minds as whirlpools in one lake
1:15:31 Where infinite regress becomes a sticking point
1:25:02 What remains without sensation or autobiography?
1:30:21 Is pure subjectivity the great void?
1:35:47 States we may mistake for pristine awareness
1:45:14 Could dismantling concepts prepare us to see?
1:50:12 What does practice add to the argument?
1:55:07 Can different perspectives sound contradictory?
2:05:14 Awareness knowing itself without splitting in two
2:10:11 Can language avoid inventing a separate agent?
2:15:22 Is metacognition the same as reflexive awareness?
2:25:33 Deconstruction in service of liberation
2:30:07 Emptiness, luminosity and pervasive care
2:35:37 Does nature express a universal mind?
2:40:21 A spiritual path to where?
This was a deep one - and really started to flow about 90 minutes in, so we stuck around for a bit longer than usual, discussing the schools within Buddhism that are closer to Analytic Idealism, and have their own refutations for the kind of critiques that we've heard from Jay Garfield and others.
The panel included:
Michael R. Sheehy, a PhD in Buddhist Studies who specializes in the Kālacakra and Dzogchen meditation traditions is research associate professor and director of research at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Karl Brunnhölzl is an international teacher and translator of Buddhism, focusing on Yogācāra, buddha nature, Vajrayāna, Mahāmudrā,
Andrew Holecek is a frequent subject in scientific studies on meditation and lucid dreaming, after completing a 3 year retreat. He is Resident Contemplative Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, and a research consultant for the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at Northwestern University
All the speakers have seen the debate with Jay, so this will be useful to watch before joining this session, if you haven't already:
Bernardo Kastrup
Analytic idealism
Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director of Essentia Foundation and Founder/CEO at AI systems company Euclyd BV. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence).
As a scientist, he has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years, having founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Most recently, he has founded AI company Euclyd BV.
Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured in Scientific American, the magazine of The Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. His most defining book is Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics.
Explore Bernardo’s work →Go deeper
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