Knowing and Seeing is teachings given by the Myanmarese meditation master, the Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw, at a two-month retreat for monks and nuns in Taiwan.In strict accordance with the standard Pali Texts, the Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw gives a practical overview of how you develop absorption (jhana) with mindfulness-of-breathing, the thirty-two parts of your own body and that of others (near and far), repulsiveness of the body, the ten kasir:ias and four immaterial states. He then explains how you use the ' strong and powerful' jhana concentration to perfect lovingkindness, compassion, appreciative joy, equanimity, recollection-of-The-Buddha , foulness , and recollection-of-death. Next, he explains how, with the light of jhana, you penetrate the delusion of compactness and see the sub-atomic particles of materiality, and see the ultimate materiality of your own body, that of others, and throughout the universe; how likewise you see the cog nitive-processes of your own mind and that of others; how likewise you examine your materiality and mentality of past lives, your present life and future lives (on this and other planes); and how likewise you develop the remaining knowledges till 'Your mind knows and sees Nibbana directly: it is fully aware of the (unformed) Nibbana as object.' The Sayadaw also answers questions from meditators at the retreat, on details regarding medi tation, related matters, and the Bodhisatta Path etc. Finally, there is a stirring talk where he exhorts us to ' breathe according to The Buddha's instructions' , followed by a talk on the most superior type of offering.This new edition has new charts, an index, additional information, and the layout, etc. has been made clearer.The Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw is abbot and teacher at Pa-Auk Tawya Monastery, a meditation centre outside Mawlamyine in the Mon State, Myanmar. He has centres also elsewhere in Myanmar , in Malaysia and in Singapore.The Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw has given Dhamma talks, and conducted retreats , in also Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea , Malaysia, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Singapore, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.Printed copies of this book are made available for the cost of printing and shipping with zero profit.

From ancient Taoist sages and Sufi mystics to Christian contemplatives and contemporary Zen masters, Seeing, Knowing, Being explores the profound truth behind all the world’s mystic traditions: Living a spiritual life has nothing to do with fixing ourselves. It is simply a matter of awakening to what we already are. The real work of self-discovery-and the answer to our suffering, emptiness, and loss of meaning-is learning to see in a different way. “The mystical adventure is all in the seeing, says John Greer. “From departure to arrival, nothing changes but our eyes. But the process isn’t that simple. In this all-embracing work that is destined to become a classic, Greer artfully traces the steps and stages of the delicate process of awakening. He shows how we can move from society’s hand-me-down version of reality to the wonder of our true nature-from conceptual, habitual patterns of thinking to knowing the truth by being. Like a master artist who captures an image and stirs something deep inside of us, Greer also highlights nearly one hundred evocative metaphors, as varied and colorful as the sages themselves, to kindle your imagination and spark your intuition-to shift your perspective and shake you into an awareness that no amount of explanation can. What Greer shows, with great wisdom and compassion, is that when you put aside the map of the mind, you can follow the compass of your heart. You can move through the details of life-going to work, raising a family, throwing out the garbage-and still experience the wonders and oneness of life with deep reverence, gratitude, and joy. “Books often describe journeys. Seeing, Knowing, Being actually takes you on one. . . . A profound expedition into the true nature of life. -MATTHEW FLICKSTEIN, author and producer of the award-winning film With One Voice

According to Putnam to talk of “facts” without specifying the language to be used is to talk of nothing; “object” itself has many uses and as we creatively invent new uses of words “we find that we can speak of ‘objects’that were not ‘values of any variable’in 1 any language we previously spoke” . The notion of object becomes, then, like the notion of reference, a sort of open land, an unknown territory. The exploration of this land - pears to be constrained by use and invention. But, we may wonder, is it possible to guide invention and control use? In what way, in particular, is it possible, at the level of na- ral language, to link together program expressions and natural evolution? To give an answer to these onerous questions we should immediately point out that cognition (as well as natural language) has to be considered first of all as a peculiar fu- tion of active biosystems and that it results from complex interactions between the - ganism and its surroundings. “In the moment an organism perceives an object of wh- ever kind, it immediately begins to ‘interpret’this object in order to react properly to it . . . It is not necessary for the monkey to perceive the tree in itself. . . What counts is sur- 2 vival” .

What is knowledge? What, if anything, can we know? In Knowing and Seeing, Michael Ayers recovers the insight in the traditional distinction between knowledge and belief, according to which 'knowledge' stems from direct and perspicuous cognitive contact with ('seeing') its object, whereas 'belief' relies on 'extraneous' justification. He conducts a careful phenomenological analysis of what it is to perceive one's environment as one's environment, the result of which is not only direct realism, but recognition that in being perceptually aware of anything we are at the same time perceptually aware of how we are aware of it. Perceptual knowing comes with knowing how you know. Some other forms of knowledge are similarly direct and perspicuous, but not all; a distinction is accordingly drawn between primary and secondary knowledge, and Ayers argues that no secondary knowledge is possible without some primary knowledge. Perceptual knowledge supplies the paradigm to which other cases of knowledge are diversely analogous - hence the notorious difficulty of defining knowledge. These conclusions, supported by a detailed examination of the relations between different grammatical constructions in which 'know', 'believe' and 'see' occur, fuel extended critiques of two lines of thought influential in contemporary epistemology: John McDowell's conceptualist and intellectualist account of perceptual knowledge, and Fred Dretske's 'externalist' employment of sceptical argument. Ayers unpicks the arguments for these other views, explains the failure of recent attempts at a comprehensive definition of knowledge, explores the tight relation between knowledge and certainty, and gives an account of how 'defeasibility' should and should not be understood in epistemology.

"This book is a philosophical treatment of sense perception and examines the work of cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the biological domain. This text includes theories of perceptual similarity, content, and realism"--Provided by publisher.

Knowing and Seeing is teachings given by the Myanmarese meditation master, the Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw, at a two-month retreat for monks and nuns in Taiwan. In strict accordance with the standard Pali Texts, the Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw gives a practical overview of how you develop absorption (jhāna) with mindfulness-of-breathing, the thirty-two parts of your own body and that of others (near and far), repulsiveness of the body, the ten kasiṇas and four immaterial states. He then explains how you use the 'strong and powerful' jhāna concentration to perfect lovingkindness, compassion, appreciative joy, equanimity, recollection-of-The-Buddha, foulness, and recollection-of-death. Next, he explains how, with the light of jhāna, you penetrate the delusion of compactness and see the sub-atomic particles of materiality, and see the ultimate materiality of your own body, that of others, and throughout the universe; how likewise you see the cognitive-processes of your own mind and that of others; how likewise you examine your materiality and mentality of past lives, your present life and future lives (on this and other planes); and how likewise you develop the remaining knowledges till 'Your mind knows and sees Nibbāna directly: it is fully aware of the (unformed) Nibbāna as object.' The Sayadaw also answers questions from meditators at the retreat, on details regarding meditation, related matters, and the Bodhisatta Path etc. Finally, there is a stirring talk where he exhorts us to 'breathe according to The Buddha's instructions', followed by a talk on the most superior type of offering. [From a book published by Pa-Auk Meditation Centre, a Centre of Theravāda Buddhist Tradition]

This book provides an overall theory of perception and much of a theory of knowledge. It explains how we can have justified beliefs and knowledge concerning the physical world, the abstract realm, and the normative domain of right and wrong.