Tolkien is most famous for writing the Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings books, each of which is fantastic in it’s own right.However, there is a fair amount of wisdom in the pages of his writing, and some of it can be used to help us through different challenges and adversities in life.For many, good philosophy is practical philosophy, and the best practical philosophy are those concepts that transcend the situations in which they’re written and apply broadly across multiple areas of life.Here are some of the best quotes of Tolkien:

J. R. R. Tolkien

All that is gold does not glitter,Not all those who wander are lost;The old that is strong does not wither,Deep roots are not reached by the frost.From the ashes a fire shall be woken,A light from the shadows shall spring;Renewed shall be blade that was broken,The crownless again shall be king.

I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

The wise speak only of what they know

“Darkness must pass, a new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer."

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.

“Little by little, one travels far."

Courage is found in unlikely places.

J. R. R . Tolkien is famous for his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Here are some of his best philosophical quotes

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes - Philosophy For Life

Although it is totally necessary at times to go through prescribed motions or instructions to get results- especially as a beginner- it is all the more satisfying to craft your own unique routine. The key to structuring your own routines is finding an intention- that is, a concrete goal or motivation- which you intend to fulfill. Being intentional helps us structure our actions towards our personal goals and values while helping us to avoid mindlessly sacrificing our time with nothing to show for it.

Intentionality Is King

Before you can set intentions, you must have values. Values tend to be less concrete than intentions, and they represent concepts closer to your core identity. For example, if you choose to value fitness or health, then you will have the drive or motivation to set intentions that provide or fulfill this value. Maybe, when going to work, you will set the intention to only use stairs instead of elevators. Alternatively, if you value learning, you may set an intention to read a book at night or read 3 deepstash articles each morning.

Intentions Begin With Values

Now that you have values, you may create intentions that maximize your ‘value fulfillment’ throughout your daily routines. These intentions always have an element of strategy that contains some sort of recipe towards fulfilling some specific intention.

Intentions Necessitate Strategy

Good strategy requires you to break down a routine into its components and then, using your intention, rearrange, modify, or augment the routine to better your outcome. Often, this takes form in identifying the tools of your craft. This could be breaking down an essay into an outline and asking yourself questions such as ‘what do I want to communicate?’ or ‘who is my target audience?’. The tools here are the questions. Or, it could be planning activities into your day, week, or year that help fulfill your value. The point is, good strategy necessitates planning at different levels of detail.

Good Strategists Work On Various Timescales

To fulfill your intentions and come up with new intentions to fulfill your ever-evolving values, you must exercise your creativity in order to optimize your strategies for success. By trial-and-error and systematic study, you will learn the best methods to plan and accomplish increasingly complex routines. I argue that this element of creativity combined with fulfilling your own original intentions is a recipe for a satisfying daily, weekly, or yearly routine. So long as you identify and focus on the elements that are under your control, you will live in harmony with your surroundings.

Intentionality Is Ultimately A Creative Endeavor

Simply going about ‘choosing values’ is a fool’s errand. Whether you are aware of them or not, you have values, and those values structure your decisions about which actions to take. If you are always eating takeout and watching TikTok, for example, you may overvalue instant gratification. Values are something we learn about ourselves and actively cultivate- they should be based on some a priori experimental data- that is, your direct experiences, emotions, and surest knowledge.Our emotions are flagposts for the quality of our values. What activities do you find intrinsically satisfying?

How Do We Craft Appropriate Values? 

Values are complicated. I will explore some pitfalls and better ways to explore your values as well as different strategy techniques in future posts!

More On Values 

Although these ideas are somewhat rough, I find that these concepts have been extremely useful! 

productivity

Productivity

What makes life satisfying? 

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.﻿

Albert Einstein — ‘Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man ...

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

“Great spirits.."

David Hume was an enlightenment philosopher, a historian and an essayist best know for his contribution to modern philosophy.Hume’s philosophy was grounded in scepticism and empiricism, a school of philosophy which suggests that knowledge can only come from what is experiences and observed. Let us look at some of the best quotes from David Hume.

David Hume

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper, but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to his circumstance.

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.

The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.

Men's views of things are the result of their understanding alone. Their conduct is regulated by their understanding, their temper, and their passions.

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the Good and the Bad. But the greatest part of mankind float between vice and virtue.

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an enquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter.

In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

David Hume was an enlightenment philosopher widely known for his theories on Philosophy. Here are some of his philosophical quotes✓.

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

David Hume Quotes: Philosophy For Life

Jules Shuzen Harris, the first African American Zen master, argues that people in the West practice secularised forms of Buddhism or mindfulness, that hide the true meaning of Awakening. He claims mindfulness is also a form of “spiritual bypassing,” avoiding psychological problems in favor of “pretend Enlightenment.”His method is to apply the Buddhist philosophy using not only meditation, but psychotherapy, mainly the Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System (system that regulates mind-body states by calming your default-mode network).

Jules Harris's Beyond Mindfulness

To be aware is not about maximising your state of wellbeing (like in mindfulness), but about about realising (your) true Buddha nature. Our ego puts out a constant fight with us & others, but our true nature is one of connectedness. And every time we sit we re-connect with the true reality of the present moment.Dedicated practice & reaching Enlightenment is a painful process & it's natural to see your ego dissolving as a loss. Quite terrifying actually! It takes a lot of courage & commitment to fight against the ego who is trying to conserve itself.

True Enlightenment vs Mindfulness

For Jules, true enlightenment can still be obtained in the modern world. <ul><li>Understand the Buddhist conception of consciousness and the role of ego in it.</li><li>Understand that clinging to a narrative is how the ego fights back. Know the Skandhas, or the sources of suffering.</li><li>Become familiar with the buddhist realms of existence</li><li>Use the realms to make mind-maps, thus combining Zen philosophy and practice with modern psychology.</li><li>Use the maps as a guide towards deeper investigation and as a starting point in Zazen (Zen meditation).</li></ul>

Jules Harris's Method

Consciousness is unresolved scientific problem. We don't really know what makes us aware. Because it's so hard to define we think of us as made up of matter and spirit. In Buddhism, however, there are 9 level of consciousness:<ul><li>6 senses (touch, hearing, smell, taste, seeing ... & thoughts). Thoughts are considered sensations because they are coming just like the senses.</li><li>Ego: the false feeling there is a static "you".</li><li>Subconsciousness - the part of your mind which operates without your awareness.</li><li>Pure original consciousness based on the Substance. Buddha nature.</li></ul>

Buddhist Consciousness 

We may think Buddhism is about living a world free of desires and pleasures. It's impossible and also not true. Clinging to desire is the problem.Say you are excited about dining at your favourite restaurant, but when you get there you find it closed. It's ok to want to eat your favourite food, but the real problem is when an unexpected event, like its closing, ruins your day.

Desire And Clinging 

In Buddhism, it refers to the 5 aggregates of clinging (the source of suffering). To understand them let's think of hearing a person clapping:<ol><li>form (or material image, impression) - This is the experience of the clapping sound</li><li>sensations (or feelings, received from form) - Is the clap a plesant or displeasing sound?</li><li>perceptions - Noticing the person clapping</li><li>mental activity or formations - We notice he clapped to gain attention</li><li>consciousness - We remember of a story about clapping</li></ol>All of these usually happen in less than a second. Experiences are actually made up of multiple groups.

Skandhas, Why We Suffer

For Buddhists, these 6 realms represent all possible states of existence. They were traditionally conceived as real places, but can also be interpreted symbolically:<ol><li>Heavenly Realm: Life in heaven is a continual round or pleasure, but finite. Gods ultimately die.</li><li>Demigods Realm: semigods are locked into continual struggle with them. They are primarily driven by envy and greed for power.</li><li>Ghost Realm: Ghosts are are described as tormented by hunger and thirst.</li><li>Animal Realm: Animals are run by instinct.</li><li>Hell Realm: The realm of true suffering, which is hate.</li><li>Human Realm: Human beings with agency </li></ol>

The Six Realms of Existence

Jules, proposes to adopt mind-maps (a tool in the I-System) and combine them with the Skandhas and the 6 Realms to get to a better understanding of yourself.<ul><li>Chose a question from one of the realms. Like "What give me pleasure?". Write on the middle of a blank page. </li><li>Using Zazen or simple reflection write how that manifests in you. Unfiltered map. </li><li>Repeat the next day. Over time, as you explore more questions & as you meditate on these issues you will have a repositories of maps that show your evolution in how you describe your reality.   </li></ul>

Using mind-maps in Zen

Jules Harris proposes we interpret the realms psychologically to guide us to make mental maps for ourselves.<ol><li>Heaven (pleasure, comfort): What I am addicted to? What are my desires?</li><li>Demigods (jealousy, arrogance, power): How do I defend my happiness? What am I jealous of?</li><li>Ghosts (lust, hunger): Why am I dissatisfied? </li><li>Animals (fear & instinct): What do I fear?</li><li>Hell (hate): What are the triggers for anger & hate?</li><li>Humans (doubt & change): What's on my mind? How can I improve?</li></ol>You can use meditation to investigate these questions & write the answers as a mind-map.

Using the Six Realms to calm the ego

Zazen, the Zen meditation, can start easy and progress towards complexity:<ul><li>Count breaths & exhalations. Breath in - 1. Breathe out - 2. Do it until you get to 10 & restart. If you notice any thoughts just label them.</li><li>Concentrate on full breath cycle. Count only exhalations.</li><li>Concentrate on "pure" breathing. No counting. </li><li>Shikantaza, or simply resting without any thoughts.</li><li>Study a koan, or a Zen riddle like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?". Ideally done with a teacher.</li></ul>Don't look at these techniques as a progression. You can study koans one session & do counting in the next.

Stages of Zazen

<ul><li>There is no bad Zazen. If you start to appreciate your state or if you get frustrated by your thoughts you are only bringing your ego into the forefront. </li><li>If you get addicted to a good sensation you only get through meditation, you most likely stranded off the path and you should seek support. </li><li>Don't judge your sessions. There is no purpose in Zazen, no good or bad. Just be!</li></ul>

Hints for a better Zazen

A Zen student needs 3 foundational conditions:<ol><li>True Faith: Have faith that everyone has Buddha nature. have faith that you can get to this truth.</li><li>True Doubt: Doubt what seems to be reality. Most of the time the reality are just construct of your ego.</li><li>Powerful Will: Have persistence to keep on the path when you are troubled, worried, frustrated etc. </li></ol>

3 conditions for Enlightenment 

This collection will show you how to direct all of your attention and awareness to the present

health

Health

meditation

Meditation

mentalhealth

Mental Health

mindfulness

Mindfulness

How to Be More Mindful

Jules Harris, the first African American Zen master, makes an argument to go beyond mindfulness towards a more classical views of Buddhism. His method combines psychological interpretation of Buddhist text with psychology.

An effective new approach to Buddhist practice that combines the rigor of traditional meditation and study with the psychological support necessary for practice in modern life. Zen teacher Jules Shuzen Harris argues that contemporary American Buddhists face two primary challenges: (1) “spiritual bypassing,” which means avoiding or repressing psychological problems in favor of “pretend Enlightenment,” and (2) settling for secularized forms of Buddhism or mindfulness that have lost touch with the deeper philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the religion. Drawing on his decades of experience as a Zen practitioner, teacher, and psychotherapist, Harris writes that both of these challenges can be met through the combination of a committed meditation practice, a deep study of Buddhist psychological models, and tools from a psychotherapeutic method known as “Mind-Body Bridging.” Using this unique approach, students can do the real work of awakening without either denying their embodied emotional life or missing out on the rich array of insights offered by Buddhist psychology and the Zen practice tradition.

books

Books

An effective new approach to Buddhist practice that combines the rigor of traditional meditation and study with the psychological support necessary for practice in modern life. Zen teacher Jules Shuzen Harris argues that contemporary American Buddhists face two primary challenges: (1) “spiritual bypassing,” which means avoiding or repressing psychological problems in favor of “pretend Enlightenment,” and (2) settling for secularized forms of Buddhism or mindfulness that have lost touch with the deeper philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the religion. Drawing on his decades of experience as a Zen practitioner, teacher, and psychotherapist, Harris writes that both of these challenges can be met through the combination of a committed meditation practice, a deep study of Buddhist psychological models, and tools from a psychotherapeutic method known as “Mind-Body Bridging.” Using this unique approach, students can do the real work of awakening without either denying their embodied emotional life or missing out on the rich array of insights offered by Buddhist psychology and the Zen practice tradition.

Jules Shuzen Harris

Zen beyond Mindfulness

Curiosity drives most of us to learn something new. However, turning the desire for knowledge into new capabilities requires a plan that consists of small, clear goals. The most effective strategy for reaching learning goals consists of three main elements. ﻿The 3 x 3 x 3 approach<ol><li>Three clear and immediate goals.</li><li>Three months in which to meet those goals.</li><li>Three other people who are able to support and monitor your progress on goals and hold you accountable.</li></ol>

Learning something new

When setting development goals, focus on only three goals at any time. More may be counterproductive and divide your focus and energy. On the other hand, too few may cause you to miss opportunities to broaden your impact and increase performance. For example, a mid-career professional might want to work on being a better coach for employees, broaden her network of contacts in the industry, and improve her enterprise-wide focus in leadership meetings.

Three goals: The Goldilocks zone.

Setting a limited time helps you understand the importance of building a plan and process to achieve the goal you've set. The ideal time may vary depending on the goal. However, three months is often effective for achieving development goals. <ol><li>Three months is enough "runway" time to make clear progress. The period forces us to be specific in our goals.</li><li>Three months aligns with many natural rhythms, such as quarterly reporting or updates.</li><li>Three months forces us to break down longer-term goals into achievable parts.</li></ol>

Three months

We naturally prefer to keep our goals to ourselves. It prevents embarrassment if we don't achieve those goals. However, involving others in our learning is the most powerful way to reach our goals. For example, people find it easier to lose weight or exercise regularly when they're part of a support network instead of trying on their own. There is no limit to how many people you can enlist to support you. However, try to include at least three people. It creates a healthy discipline in understanding what kind of support you need.

Three people to help with your development goals

The 3x3x3 approach is an effective strategy to continually learn, grow, and achieve development goals.

education

Learning & Education

Intentional learning in practice: A 3x3x3 approach

Inert knowledge is learning information without understanding it, which means you have a limited ability to recognise, express or use it. <ul><li>For example, memorising a math formula without understanding its meaning or implication. Students can learn stuff, pass examinations, and not understand what they have memorised.</li><li>Inert knowledge in language learning is memorising a grammatical rule without understanding what the rule means or how to use it.</li></ul>

Inert knowledge: Learning without understanding

The person knows something, but doesn't understand it, and can't do much with it. <ul><li>They don't understand what the knowledge means, its implications, or how it connects to other knowledge.</li><li>When it's presented in different ways or contexts, they do not recognise it.</li><li>They are unable to apply it in practice or don't know how to use it when there are minor adjustments.</li></ul>

When knowledge is considered inert

“You need facts to make sense; they are the basis for understanding, but they are never enough. Inertia as pathology describes those states of mind where people come to know something but simply can’t go beyond the facts, can’t synthesize them, think with them, or apply them in another situation.”

Bloom's taxonomy describes six major types of abilities based on educational goals:<ul><li>Remembering: Recalling the relevant information from long-term memory.</li><li>Understanding information: Interpreting it, summarising, explaining, and giving relevant examples.</li><li>Application: Implementing information.</li><li>Analysing, such as organising it and understanding how these parts relate to each other.</li><li>Evaluating: Critiquing the information and making relevant judgments.</li><li>Creating new things based on the information.</li></ul>

Six types of abilities in the context of educational goals

It is important to understand the difference between knowledge-telling and knowledge building. <ul><li>Knowledge-telling is a shallow engagement with knowledge, generally by reading or memorising without analysing or reflecting.</li><li>Knowledge-building is engaging deeply with study material by analysing it in-depth and looking at it from various angles.</li></ul>

Knowledge-telling and knowledge-building

There are two main approaches in education to avoid inert knowledge: Teach in a way that encourages the development of active knowledge. When teaching students about a certain concept,<ul><li>help them to understand what it means,</li><li>how it connects to other things, and</li><li>how to apply the information in practice.</li></ul> Encourage people to learn in a way that encourages the development of active knowledge.<ul><li>Explain the concept of inert knowledge to students.</li><li>Explain why it is a problem</li><li>Encourage them to ask themselves guiding questions when they learn new material.</li></ul>

Avoiding inert knowledge in education

“Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful—Corruptio optimi, pessima [the corruption of the best is the worst of all].”

The Problem of Knowing Without Understanding – Effectiviology

Every Deep Thinker is more afraid of being understood than being Misunderstood.

A scathing and powerful critique of philosophy, religion and science. Here Nietzsche presents us with problems and challenges that are as troubling as they are inspiring, while at the same time outlining the virtues, ideas, and practices which will characterise the philosophy of the future. Relentless, energetic, tirelessly probing, he both determines that philosophy's agenda and is himself the embodiment of the type of thought he wants to foster.

Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner in Penguin Classics. Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world. This edition includes a commentary on the text by the translator and Michael Tanner's introduction, which explains some of the more abstract passages in Beyond Good and Evil. Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. A powerfully original thinker, Nietzsche's influence on subsequent writers, such as George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre, was considerable. If you enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil you might like Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also available in Penguin Classics. 'One of the greatest books of a very great thinker' Michael Tanner

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

" By three methods we may learn wisdom:First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and Third by experience, which is the bitterest "

461 quotes from Confucius: 'By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.', 'It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.', and 'Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.'

Confucius Quotes (Author of The Analects)

Modern science credits the atomic theory to an English chemist and physicist named John Dalton (1766-1844). However, not many people are aware that a theory of atoms was formulated approximately 2500 years before Dalton by an Indian sage and philosopher named Acharya Kanada.   Acharya Kanada, originally known by the name of Kashyap, is believed to have been born either around 600 BC or 800 BC in Prabhas Kshetra near Dwaraka in present day Gujarat, India.  He was the son of a philosopher named Ulka.

7. Acharya Kanada 

Kashyap displayed a keen sense of detail since childhood and minute things attracted his attention.As a young boy, he once accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Prayaga. He noticed that thousands of pilgrims in the town were littering its roads with flowers and grains of rice which they offered at the temples by the shore of river Ganges. Fascinated by the tiny particles, Kashyap began collecting the grains of rice from the ground while everyone else was busy offering prayers or bathing in the Ganges. Noticing this behaviour from a boy of a well-to-do family, an inquisitive crowd gathered

Acharya Kanada's Childhood 

around him and started wondering why he was acting in such a strange manner. When questioned about why he was collecting grains of rice that even a beggar wouldn’t touch,Kashyap replied that one grain in itself may seem worthless but a collection of some hundred grains make up a person’s meal. The collection of many meals would feed an entire family and ultimately the entire mankind was made up of many families.And for this reason alone,a single grain of rice was as important as all the riches in the world.People started calling him Kanada after this incidence as ‘kan’the smallest particle.

....

It was Kanada who first realized the idea that “anu” (atom) was an indestructible particle of matter.  This theory occurred to him while he was walking with food in his hand.  As he nibbled at the food in his hand, throwing away the small particles one by one until he was unable to break it down anymore and it left a smell on his hands.  He realized that he could not divide the food into further parts and the realization of a matter which cannot be divided further came into existence.

Anu (Atom) Indestructible Particle

He called this indivisible matter, “anu” which literally means atom. He founded the Vaisheshika School of philosophy where he taught his ideas and the nature of the universe.  He authored the text “Vaisesika Sutras” or Aphorisms, pioneering theatomic theory, describing dimension, motion and chemical reactions of atoms. Acharya Kanada considered the atom minute objects invisible to the naked eye which come into being and vanished in an instant; they were indestructible and hence eternal.

Vaisheshika School And Vaisheshika Sutra

Adherents of this philosophy further held that atoms of same substance combined with each other to produce dvyanuka (bi-atomic molecules) and tryanuka (tri-atomic molecules). This devinuka has the properties similar to those of the two original paramanu. Kanada also put forward the idea that atoms could be combined in various ways to produce chemical changes in presence of other factors such as heat. He gave blackening of earthen pot and ripening of fruit as examples of this phenomenon.

Kanada's Atomic Theory

His primary area of study was Rasavādam, considered to be a type of alchemy. He is said to have believed that all living beings are composed of five elements: water, fire, earth, air, ether. Vegetables have only water, insects have water and fire, birds have water, fire, earth and air, and Humans, the top of the creation, have ether—the sense of discrimination (time, space, mind) are one. He theorized that Gurutva (Hindi/Sanskrit for Gravity) was responsible for the falling of objects on the Earth.

Gurutva ( Gravity)

Accordingly, the universe is the interplay of seven aspects or states of material things, namely: <ol><li>Dravyam (matter) </li><li>Guna (Quality) </li><li>Karma (Action) </li><li>Samanya (Generic species) </li><li>Vishesha (Unique trait) </li><li>Samavaya (Inherence or integrated part of the whole), and </li><li>Abhava (Non-existence) </li> </ol>

7 States Of Material Things

<ol><li>Prithvi (Earth) </li><li>Jala (Water) </li><li>Teja (Light) </li><li>Vaayu (Gas) </li><li>Aakaasa (Ether) </li><li>Dika (Direction / space dimension) </li><li>Kaala (Time) </li><li>Maanas (Mind) </li><li>Atma (Soul) </li></ol>Kanada defined‘life’ as an organized form of atoms and molecules and ‘death’ as an unorganized form of those atoms and molecules.

Dravyam (matter) is again subdivided into nine aspects: 

The school founded by Kanada explains the creation and existence of the universe by proposing an atomistic theory, applying logic and realism, and is one of the earliest known systematic realist ontology in human history.Kanada suggested that everything can be subdivided, but this subdivision cannot go on forever, and there must be smallest entities (parmanu) that cannot be divided, that are eternal, that aggregate in different ways to yield complex substances and bodies with unique identity, a process that involves heat, and this is the basis for all material existence.

Systematic Realist Ontology

He used these ideas with the concept of Atman (soul, Self) to develop a means to moksha. If viewed from the prism of physics, his ideas imply a clear role for the observer as independent of the system being studied. Kanada's ideas were influential on other schools of Hinduism, and over its history became closely associated with the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy.

Concept Of Atman 

Multiple Hindu texts dated to the 1st and 2nd century CE, such as the Mahavibhasa and Jnanaprasthana from the Kushan Empire, quote and comment on Kanada's doctrines.His ideas are also mentioned in Buddhist texts attributed to Aśvaghoṣa of the same period.In Jainism literature, he is referred to as Sad-uluka, which means "the Uluka who propounded the doctrine of six categories".His Vaisheshika philosophy similarly appears with alternate names, such as "Aulukya philosophy" derived from the nickname Uluka (literally owl, or grain eater in the night).

Influence And Mentions

Kanada was influential in Indian philosophies, and he appears in various texts by alternate names such as Kashyapa, Uluka, Kananda, Kanabhuk among others.The ideas of Kanada span a wide range of fields, and they influenced not only philosophy, but possibly scholars in other fields such as Charaka who wrote a medical text that has survived as Charaka Samhita.National Aeronautical Laboratory in Bangalore runs a science magazine in this great philosopher’s name called Kanada.

Acharya Kanada, originally known by the name of Kashyap, is believed to have been born either around 600 BC or 800 BC in Prabhas Kshetra near Dwaraka in

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Acharya Kanada: The Father of Atomic Theory

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