The Buddha ... said that in order to understand, you have to be one with what you want to understand. ...

The French language has the word comprendre, which means to understand, to know, to comprehend.  Com means to be one, to be together, and prendre means to take or to grasp.  To understand something is to take that thing up and to be one with it.  The Indians have a wonderful example.  If a grain of salt would like to measure the degree of saltiness of the ocean, to have a preception of the saltiness of the ocean, it drops itself into the ocean and becomes one with it, and the perception is perfect. ...

Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.  You have to be able to transcend your knowledge ... The technique is to release.  The Buddhist way of understanding is always letting go of our views and knowledge in order to transcend. ... That is why I use the image of water to talk about understanding.  Knowledge is solid; it block the way of unerstanding.  Water can flow, can penetrate.

Originally posted on my main blog http://eric-blue.com

Overview

Last year I picked up a copy of The Integral Vision by Ken Wilber.  I recently decided to re-read the book, and created a comprehensive book summary highlighting the key pieces of information in the book.  The book summary is presented in the form of mind maps for each chapter.

Why am I doing this?

I first stumbled upon Integral Philosophy a couple years ago, and quite honestly became hooked.  Since that time, I’ve read a wide variety of books and have engaged in the exciting and often daunting task of trying to build a comprehensive and well-informed worldview (or map).  There are a number of good intro books that people recommend for first diving into Ken Wilber’s work (e.g. A Brief History of Everything).  Regardless of which book you pick, the fact is for most people (myself included) this is a vast and complex topic.  Distilling a philosophy/worldview/framework into a small but useful text is difficult to say the least.

I’ve personally found The Integral Vision to be the best intro into Integral.  It’s a short, but powerfully-information packed book that definitely does justice to such an interesting and complex topic.  My hope is that others who are just getting into Integral Theory/Philosophy will benefit from the mind map summaries.  My advice would be to get the book, and use the maps as a study or reference guide to help the information sink in.

Overview

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Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Entire Book Summary

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