An introduction to Buddhism, focusing on the four noble truths and the idea-bursting idea of emptiness, that gets back to its pre-intellectual beginnings. We often think of reality as a mostly finished project. Living thirteen billion years after the Big Bang, we are inclined to suppose that the universe is well on its way toward wherever it's going, whether endless expansion or unending oscillation between expansion and contraction. It's a story already written into the stars, and once scientists produce a grand unified theory of physical reality we will have that story in hand. From a Buddhist perspective, however, the fundamental naivet? of this view lies in its tendency to see the world as a mostly realized entity rather than a dawning moment swollen with embryonic possibility. Buddhism slides back the markers of reality's forward progress to leave things open, undefined, and just barely underway. Still innocent, that is, of what it might yet be.
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