Review notes

The Upanishads:
Remember that Brahman cannot be captured by thought. the source of all creation cannot be
reduced to words or images. If that were possible, then the supreme reality would in fact be
nothing more than another finite thing/object.
This is important partly because it helps to alleviate fear and suffering. If there is a basic unity
pervading all things and all persons, then loss is a kind of illusion: all things return to their
source.
Lines like atman, the spirit of vision, is never born and never dies supports the above idea that
we neednt fear death or loss (59). Death, in other words, is a passage from the finite to the
eternal.
This also explains how atman is within each of us. If all things are unified, then we are never
truly separate from the living truth.
Furthermore, intellect alone cannot attain this truth. If that were the case, then we could attain
this truth with only a part of the truth, i.e., the intellectual part. But that would leave out so much.
It would leave out, e.g., our body. But even the body is a part of the whole truth.
Notice how on page 79 that the law of karma, the moral law of paying for ones actions, only
works when we are attached to things. That shows how we create our sorrows through our own
actions. But once we broaden our perspective and embrace fuller truths, then we actually become
happier.
The meditations:
The goal of Descartess research in this text is to ground his ideas in indubitable knowledge. He
proceeds by way of the method of doubt, which is to say that if something can be doubted then it
must not be accepted in his system.
This method of doubt is quite extreme, including the possibility of madness, dreams, and
malicious demons manipulating our minds.
Nevertheless, he discovers a foundation for his system: the existence of the self. He says he must
exist because he thinks it. but cant this be doubted? No, because even doubting is a form of
thinking, a form of immediate awareness. As soon as we think, sense, or feel anything we must
exist.
This implies, moreover, that the essence of the self is thought. We are thinking substances. We
are not primarily bodies, because that could be doubtedand if something can be doubted then it

must not be immediately a part of ourselves. What is closest to us, most directly bound up with
our identity, is awareness itself.
And whatever truths we know about the world will be best determined by the intellect. The
senses can be deceived, in terms of what changes over time, but as with the wax example we
know the essence of something directly via thought.