…entire cosmos. You should read if you want to get the real inside joke about this, the summa confidentialis by sir Thomas Aquinas, where it is all made perfectly clear. It's a fantastic intellectual exercise and you come away staggering with the thought of…

…up the teachings of Buddhism in the same way that you could look up the teachings of Hegel, Kant, Spinoza, Jesus Christ, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle and so on. They don't exist they've never been written down. All that has been written down is the dialogue…

…person that's described as the person or at least the created agent as an agent. One of the important contributions of st Thomas Aquinas was the affirmation that the secondary agent, that is the creature, is real and is an agent, a responsible agent and…

…without nothing. Nothing is tremendously important. It's the mother, it's the womb of the universe and it's space. It's, as st Thomas Aquinas put it the silent pause which gives sweetness to the charmed. Did that serene space you're in touch with, did you…

…of the sky. Now I don't want to offend anybody, but there are very probably some of you here who have studied st Thomas Aquinas and have a very, very profound, deep conception of the Christian God. Or you may have studied kabbalah or hasidic Judaism and…

…up the teachings of Buddhism in the same way that you can look up the teachings of Hegel, Kant, Spinoza, Jesus Christ, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle and so on. They don't exist they've never been written down. All that has been written down is the dialogue…

…approve of the religion they were teaching because they were teaching it in a very superficial way. I didn't know about st Thomas Aquinas or about meister Eckhart or about John Scotus Origina and all the great fathers of the church. They never told us…

…I suppose as one might regard shadow in painting or just shadow in general. Without shadow the light is not shown. Even st Thomas Aquinas said that evil was necessary to the good as in singing, quote it is the silent pause which gives sweetness to the…

…without nothing. Nothing is tremendously important it's the mother, it's the womb of the universe and it's space. It's, as st Thomas Aquinas put it the silent pause which gives sweetness to the chant. Did that serene space you're in touch with, did you…

…without nothing. Nothing is tremendously important. It's the mother, it's the womb of the universe and it's space. It's, as st Thomas Aquinas put it, the silent pause which gives sweetness to the chant. Hmm, did that serene space you're in touch with. Did…

…appear to be in restricted spaces or ample spaces, and silence that goes with sound corresponds to space. And even st Thomas Aquinas, that old Catholic Theologian said that good derives its virtue from evil, just as it is the silent pause that gives…

…out group. Who are the damned, the awful people who live the other side of the tracks who are in hell even st Thomas Aquinas gives away the secret that the saints in heaven occasionally walk to the edges of the battlements and look down at the…

…it that he was the first bishop of Athens and was martyred in Gaul where he's known as st Dennis. But st Thomas Aquinas looked upon the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite as having the highest authority. And you could, if all the texts of Dionysius…

…of the sky. Now I don't want to offend anybody, but there are very probably some of you here who've studied st Thomas Aquinas and have a very, very profound, deep conception of the Christian God. Or you may have studied kabbalah or hasidic Judaism and…

…can always point out that that position is an extreme. For example in scholastic philosophy in the middle ages, when st Thomas Aquinas fastened on the idea that god is fundamentally ends or being a Buddhist philosopher would point out that he had settled…

…that we make not out of wood and stone, but out of ideas and concepts. You see an idea is abstract, so st Thomas Aquinas for example, defined god as necessary being, he who is necessarily. Now that is a philosophical concept god is being. But that…

…And in this way all social groups with claims to some kind of special status must necessarily create aliens and foreigners. And st Thomas Aquinas let the cat out of the bag one day when he said that the saints in heaven would occasionally peer over the…

…take what is called the negative approach, which used to be known long ago in the middle ages as apophatic theology. As st Thomas Aquinas said to proceed to the knowledge of god it is necessary to go by the way of remotion, of saying what god is…

…that god is just like that. Therefore if you get more sophisticated, you believe that god is, say if you follow st Thomas Aquinas, you think of god as necessary being. Or if you think with Buddhists, you think of god as the undifferentiated void or…

…Christian Theory of the universe, this is the way god is operating. Do you realize that according to the theology of st Thomas Aquinas, God is personally aware with his full total consciousness of every atom of existence? That is to say, a mosquito's wing…

…approve of the religion they were teaching because they were teaching it in a very superficial way. I didn't know about st Thomas Aquinas or about meister Eckhart or about John Scotus Origina and all the great fathers of the church they never told us…

…god has made that is less than god. So again you approach in a Christian Context said in such a way that even st Thomas Aquinas bought it, that you can't impute heresy to it, because everybody's got to agree that god is the witch than which there is…

…powerful than logical ideas you can firmly believe with Paul Tillich that god is simply the ground of being, or with st Thomas Aquinas that he is necessary being, or with f s c northrup that he is the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum. But those images…

…not have an ulterior motive, it is the kind of activity that is done for its own sake. And according to st Thomas Aquinas, this is peculiarly characteristic of god because he says, quoting the book of proverbs, where the wisdom of god is personalized and…

…an impermanent manifestation of the witch from which there is no witcher of the root and ground of the universe which, as st Thomas Aquinas would say, is what all men call god, atman brahman. And I think it's fun to know that, not merely as a theory,…

…are the apophatic language. And so these people held that the apophatic language was the truer language of the true. Even st Thomas Aquinas who nobody reads anymore said: in order to speak of god it is necessary to proceed by the way of remotion, because…

…You might think that Dionysius was actually Shankara the great advaita or non dualist vedanta interpreter. Actually Shankara and st Thomas Aquinas are just about contemporaries and if they had ever been able to meet they would have understood each other…

…every single secret thought that you had was an open book and was watching it all the time. Because according to saint Thomas Aquinas, God the father creates the universe by knowing it. In other words you see a flag flapping out there which you would…

…understand the meaning of not to be. You cannot understand the meaning of good unless you understand the meaning of evil. Even st Thomas Aquinas saw this, for he said that just as it is the silent pause which gives sweetness to the chant, so it is…

…the whole possibilities of philosophy. In other words this would be the person who is a realist like, say aristotle or st Thomas Aquinas, who equates the ultimate reality, god, with being. But this on the other hand, would be a sort of humean standpoint…

…can always point out that that position is an extreme. For example, in scholastic philosophy in the middle ages, when st Thomas Aquinas fastened on the idea that god is fundamentally ends or being, a Buddhist philosopher would point out that he had settled…

…can always point out that that position is an extreme. For example, in scholastic philosophy in the middle ages, when st Thomas Aquinas fastened on the idea that god is fundamentally ends or being, a Buddhist philosopher would point out that he had settled…

…into Latin by John Scotus Origina, who was a scholar at the Court of Charlemagne. He was deeply studied by st Thomas Aquinas in fact if the writings of the arapagite had been lost they could probably be reconstructed from st Thomas Quotations. But…

…god has made that is less than god. So again you approach in a Christian Context said in such a way that even st Thomas Aquinas bought it, that you can't impute heresy to it, because everybody's got to agree that god is the witch than which there is…

…of the early fathers of the church, the great theologians like st clement, Gregory of nyssa, st John of Damascus, even Thomas Aquinas, They're not interested in the historicity of the Bible. They take that sort of for granted but forget it. They're…

…sort of a someone out there. He is very naive in a way because he could have taken huge quotations out of st Thomas Aquinas, Out of the great fathers of the church, from Oregon, from clement of Alexandria, from st Gregory Nazianzus, from st John of…

…image: when a sculptor makes a figure, he does it entirely by removing stone, taking something away. So in the same way st Thomas Aquinas said: because god by his infinity exceeds every idea to which the human mind can reach, the best way to speak of…