Table of Contents
Preface to the Second Edition xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Paradox and Confusion 1
The Problem 3
What's It All About? 5
Part I Nobody Knows What's Going On
Chapter 1 Belief 15
The Trouble with Believing 15
How Our Beliefs Change 17
Confusing What We Believe with Truth 18
Truth Cannot Be an Object 21
Belief Implies Doubt 24
The Illusion Problem 27
Eye, Ear, Nose and Mind 30
Belief Cannot Reveal Truth 32
Great Doubt 33
Doubting the Ground of Common Sense 34
Ergo Sum? 37
Truth Cannot Be Believed 41
Chapter 2 Knowledge 44
Going to Zero 45
Science as a System of Belief 46
The Religion of Science 48
Here It Is, but What Is It? 51
An Objective World Cannot Be Discerned from What Is Subjective 55
The Insubstantiality of the Physical World 56
The Phenomenal World Reveals Only Relative Truths 58
Mind Is Moving 59
Chapter 3 Contradiction 62
A Contradictory World 62
How Can We Live in a Contradictory World? 64
"Genuine" Paradoxes are "Common Sense
Is Wrong" Paradoxes 67
The Double Slit 70
A Real Live Dead Cat? 77
The Thomson Lamp 81
The Complexity of Simplicity 86
Ami My Brother's Keeper? 88
The Bizarre Mundane World 89
The Incomplete Law of Identity 94
Chapter 4 Certitude 98
The Science of Religion 99
The Tetralemma of Nagarjuna 100
Scrutinizing an Object 101
The Point of Departure 109
Part II At Ease with Inconceivability
Chapter 5 Chaos 117
What Is Chaos? 117
The Fragmented View of Reality 120
Boundlessness 125
Boundless Mind 127
Boundaries of Infinite Complexity 130
Infinite Complexity in Finite Space 142
The Immediate Experience of No-Boundary 145
Merging with Your Object 147
The Two Truths 149
Just Seeing 150
Chapter 6 Consciousness 153
The Strange Familiar 154
The Primacy of Mind 157
Consciousness, Contradiction, and Creation 158
What Is Consciousness? 161
The Measurement Problem 161
The Unmeasured Solution 164
What Is Measurement? 165
The Measurement Trap 167
On Not Becoming Obsessed 169
The Conversion of Consciousness into "Thing" 170
The Awareness of Wholeness 171
Order Cannot Be Established 173
Chapter 7 Immediacy 178
Reality Without Locality 178
Something Doesn't Hit the Mark 186
The Body Fallacy 187
Long Ago and Far Away 190
How This Moment Alters the Past 192
The Graded Stream 195
You Are "That" 197
Now 198
Now Is Ungraspable 201
Large and Dimensionless Numbers 203
The Large Number Hypothesis 206
How Old Is the Sky? 207
The Anthropic Fallacy 209
About Time 211
Part III What Matters
Chapter 8 Inertia 217
Spin 217
The Bogus Forces of Spin 220
Spin and Self 222
The Grand Symbiosis and Opposition 225
Ultimate Opposition 229
The Hierarchy of Opposites 232
Scrutinizing the Third Aspect of Opposition 234
Chapter 9 Becoming 240
Nothing from Something 240
Something from Nothing 242
Much Ado About Something 243
The Marks of Existence 246
A Self Cannot Be Apprehended 249
The Common View 251
Being Here 253
A Self Like Cantor Dust 254
Chapter 10 Totality 258
Becoming and Fading Away 258
Taking Action 261
Ending the Story 263
Epilogue 267
The Paradox of Suffering 267
Beyond Dissatisfaction 268
Notes 273
Appendix - A Note on Mathematical Symbols as They Relate to Mind Objects 287
Selected Bibliography 290
Index 294
About the Author 305