This Spiritual Life Wiki

An encyclopedic hub for the ideas, lineages, and people gathered around the theme of This Spiritual Life developed by Zayin Cabot, Ph.D.

Start Here

For an introduction to Zayin Cabot's 3 + 1 Participatory Model start here. Then read about how the event-based ontology at the heart of Zayin Cabot's fourth way philosophy both builds on earlier traditions while offering something unique.

Overview

This Spiritual Life (TSL) is a research and publishing project created by Zayin Cabot, Ph.D. that inquires into the nature of this spiritual life. It seeks to offer a cross‑cultural inquiry into topics like spirituality, religion, science, the nature of consciousness, embodiment, comparative ritual, freedom and agency. It operates as a collaborative commons, devoted to comparative scholarship, while seeking to co‑create and crowd‑source the meanings of “this spiritual life” across traditions, disciplines, and lived practices, welcoming contributions from scholars, practitioners, technologists, and artists. The TSL Wiki organizes key terms, concepts, thinkers, and traditions across a wide diversity of subjects.

The Wiki serves as a reference-style index to This Spiritual Life materials: the TSL podcast, TSL YouTube, and the TSL Substack which includes essays and other works in progress.

Cabot's own work can be understood as a participatory realism that emphasizes pluralism over dualism or nondualism. His work is grounded in 3 + 1 philosophy based on a triadic understanding of reality — Being / Belonging / Becoming — together with an apophatic Fourth (Beyond) that encourages agency and and embodied liberation.

Quick facts


Project	This Spiritual Life (TSL) Wiki
Founder / Editor	Zayin Cabot, Ph.D.
Core Model	Participatory pluralism, 3 + 1 Participatory Model (Being / Belonging / Becoming + Beyond)
Focus Areas	Comparative philosophy of religion; Neoplatonism; Trika Shaivism; Buddhism; Process philosophy; Nonmodern Ritual; Embodied Spiritual Traditions
Signature Themes	Participatory pluralism; the Myth of Enlightenment; the importance of time, concrescence, and a 3 +1 event-based ontology; ritual and mythic participation; embodied liberation; agency and the freedom to inhabit; ecologies of participation
Key Works	This Spiritual Life (podcast); Ecologies of Participation (book); The Myth of Enlightenment (book, in-progress)

About Zayin Cabot

Zayin Cabot, Ph.D. is a scholar-practitioner whose work bridges philosophy, comparative religion, and embodied spiritual practice. Trained in comparative philosophy with an emphasis on Indian, Buddhist, and Process thought (B.A., University of Hawaiʻi) and in comparative philosophy of religion (M.A. and Ph.D., East–West Psychology), Cabot combines academic rigor with direct initiation and practice across traditions. A former professor of history of religion and comparative philosophy, he brings decades of expertise in how ancient wisdom traditions inform contemporary life. His projects include the podcast This Spiritual Life and the books Ecologies of Participation and The Myth of Enlightenment (forthcoming). Alongside his scholarship, he practices within Buddhist and Trika Shaiva communities and was initiated as a diviner and elder in the West African Dagara tradition by Malidoma Somé. This dual approach — academic study paired with embodied ritual practice — shapes Cabot’s participatory realism and underlies the frameworks curated in this Wiki.

The 3 + 1 Participatory Model

TSL’s central framework is a triad + apophatic fourth:

Being — Noetic Presence (Light) Ontological clarity, intelligibility, and shared order. Typical emphases: contemplation, form, insight. Portals: [[Portal:Being]], [[Myth of Enlightenment]], [[Nous]], [[World-Soul]], [[Prakāśa]].
Belonging — Mythopoetic Participation (Love) Relational meaning-making, ritual participation, and shared cosmology. Portals: [[Portal:Belonging]], [[Myth of Origins]], [[Ritual Participation]], [[Cosmopoiesis]], [[Vimarśa]].
Becoming — Evolutionary Vitality (Life) Process, transformation, embodiment, and skillful action. Portals: [[Portal:Becoming]], [[Myth of the People]], [[Concrescence]], [[Kriyā]], [[Physis/Phōsis]].
Beyond — Apophatic Agency (Liberation) The ingress of novelty; the freedom to inhabit; return through interruption and creativity. Portals: [[Portal:Beyond]], [[Myth of Liberation]], [[Apophasis]], [[Agency]], [[Samāveśa]].

Spectrum of participation (per myth):

Participatory ⇄ Non‑participatory ⇄ Rigid/closed modes, used to diagnose where a discourse sits and how it can reopen to the others.

Navigation

Use the Portals for deep dives, or start from Entries by Category for alphabetical indices.

Portals

[[Portal:Being]] — Nous, form, intelligibility; critiques of universalist monism; light metaphors; comparative "noetic" traditions.
[[Portal:Belonging]] — Ritual, mythic cosmologies, communal practices, meaning‑making; mythopoesis across cultures.
[[Portal:Becoming]] — Process, embodiment, practice, skill; Whiteheadian concrescence; vitality and change.
[[Portal:Beyond]] — Apophasis, novelty, agency, freedom; the “Fourth‑way” logic (name triad → invite interruption → receive novelty → return).

Entries by Category

Key Ideas

[[3 + 1 Participatory Model]]
[[Participatory Pluralism]]
[[WEIRD vs. weird]]
[[Triads and the Apophatic Fourth]]
[[Concrescence (Whitehead)]]
[[Khōra and the Relational Middle]]
[[Demiurgic Function in Every Event]]
[[Myth of Enlightenment]]
[[Direct Path (critique & integration)]]
[[Spectra of Participation]]

Terms & Comparative Glossary

[[Nous]] · [[Theurgy]] · [[Poiēsis]] · [[Ecstasis]]
[[Prakāśa]] · [[Vimarśa]] · [[Pratyabhijñā]] · [[Samāveśa]]
[[Icchā–Jñāna–Kriyā]] (Will–Knowledge–Action)
[[Spanda]] (vibration; dynamic pulse)
[[Satcitānanda]] (sat–cit–ānanda)
[[Cosmopoiesis]] · [[Mythopoesis]]
[[Agency]] · [[Apophasis]] · [[Return (Nivṛtti)]]

Thinkers

Pre-Socratics

Thales · Anaximander · Anaximenes · Xenophanes · Heraclitus · Parmenides · [[Zeno of Elea]] · [[Melissus]] · Pythagoras · [[Philolaus]] · [[Alcmaeon]] · Empedocles · Anaxagoras · [[Leucippus]] · [[Democritus]] · [[Protagoras]] · [[Gorgias]] · [[Hippias]] · [[Prodicus]] · [[Antiphon]] · [[Diogenes of Apollonia]] · [[Archelaus]] · [[Hippo of Samos]] · [[Theophrastus]] (doxographer)

Socrates & Company

[[Socrates]] · [[Plato]] · [[Aristotle]]

Neoplatonists

[[Plotinus]] · [[Porphyry]] · [[Iamblichus]] · [[Syrianus]] · [[Proclus]] · [[Damascius]] · [[Hierocles of Alexandria]] · [[Ammonius Hermiae]] · [[Simplicius]] · [[Olympiodorus]] · [[Philoponus]] · [[Maximus of Tyre]] · [[Sallustius]] · [[Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite]] · [[John Scotus Eriugena]] · [[Marsilio Ficino]] · [[Pico della Mirandola]] · [[Ralph Cudworth]] & [[Cambridge Platonists]]

Hermetic & Gnostic

Hermetic People

[[Hermes Trismegistus]] · [[Zosimos of Panopolis]] · [[Poimandres]] · Asclepius · [[Marsilio Ficino]] · [[Giordano Bruno]] · [[Paracelsus]] · [[Cornelius Agrippa]] · [[John Dee]]

Hermetic Texts

Corpus Hermeticum Chapter I: Poimandres ** Corpus Hermeticum Chapter XI: Mind Universal ** Corpus Hermeticum Chapter XIII: The Secret Sermon on the Mountain

Gnostic

[[Valentinus]] · [[Ptolemy (gnostic)]] · [[Heracleon]] · [[Theodotus]] · [[Basilides]] · [[Carpocrates]] · [[Monoimus]] · [[Marcion]] · [[Sethian texts]] · [[Mani]]

Nondual Śaivism (Kashmir/Trika)

[[Vasugupta]] · [[Kallaṭa]] · [[Somananda]] · [[Utpaladeva]] · [[Abhinavagupta]] · [[Kṣemarāja]] · [[Bhāskarakaṇṭha]] · [[Jayaratha]] · [[Maheshvarananda]] · [[Lallā]] (Lalleshwari) · [[Swami Lakshman Joo]]

Buddhist Thinkers

Early/Theravāda

[[Buddhaghosa]] · [[Dhammapāla]]

Mahāyāna

[[Nāgārjuna]] · [[Āryadeva]] · [[Asaṅga]] · [[Vasubandhu]] · [[Śāntideva]] · [[Dignāga]] · [[Dharmakīrti]] · [[Śāntarakṣita]] · [[Kamalaśīla]]

Mādhyamaka

[[Nāgārjuna]] · [[Āryadeva]] · [[Bhāviveka]] · [[Candrakīrti]] · [[Śāntarakṣita]] · [[Tsongkhapa]] · [[Gorampa]]

Yogācāra

[[Asaṅga]] · [[Vasubandhu]] · [[Sthiramati]] · [[Dharmapāla]] · [[Xuanzang]] · [[Kuiji]]

Triadic/Polyadic Theory

[[Tiantai]]’s Threefold Truth (Zhiyi) · Yogācāra’s Trisvabhāva · [[Huayan]]’s Fourfold Dharmadhātu (Fazang)

Vajrayāna

[[Padmasambhava]] · [[Atiśa]] · [[Tsongkhapa]] · [[Longchen Rabjam]] · [[Jigme Lingpa]] · [[Mipham]] · [[Sakya Paṇḍita]] · [[Gorampa]] · [[Butön]] · [[Dolpopa]] · [[Tāranātha]] · [[Tilopa]] · [[Nāropa]] · [[Marpa]] · [[Milarepa]] · [[Gampopa]]

Chán/Zen

[[Bodhidharma]] · [[Huìnéng]] · [[Shénhuì]] · [[Mǎzŭ]] · [[Línjì]] · [[Huángbò]] · [[Dòngshān]] · [[Cáoshān]] · [[Hóngzhì]] · [[Dōgen]] · [[Hakuin]] · [[Bankei]] · [[Ikkyū]] · [[Takuan Sōhō]] · [[Kūkai]] (Shingon)

Tiantai/Tendai

[[Zhiyi]] · [[Guanding]] · [[Zhanran]] · [[Saichō]] · [[Ennin]] · [[Enchin]]

Christian Mystics & Esoteric Thinkers

[[Pseudo-Dionysius]] · [[Evagrius Ponticus]] · [[Gregory of Nyssa]] · [[Maximus the Confessor]] · [[Augustine]] · [[Meister Eckhart]] · [[Johannes Tauler]] · [[Henry Suso]] · [[Hildegard of Bingen]] · [[Julian of Norwich]] · [[The Cloud of Unknowing]] · [[Teresa of Ávila]] · [[John of the Cross]] · [[Jakob Böhme]] · [[Angelus Silesius]] · [[Jan van Ruusbroec]]

Sufi Mystics & Esoteric Thinkers

[[Junayd of Baghdad]] · [[al-Ghazālī]] · [[al-Hallāj]] · [[Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz]] · [[Ibn ʿArabī]] · [[Suhrawardī]] · [[Shabistarī]] · [[ʿAṭṭār]] · [[Rūmī]] · [[Ḥāfiẓ]] · [[Niffarī]] · [[Aḥmad Sirhindī]]

Medieval Christian Thinkers

[[Anselm]] · [[Bernard of Clairvaux]] · [[Hildegard]] · [[Bonaventure]] · [[Thomas Aquinas]] · [[Meister Eckhart]] · [[Catherine of Siena]] · [[Walter Hilton]] · [[Julian of Norwich]] · [[The Cloud Author]] · [[Ruusbroec]]

Early Modern Mystics & Esoteric Currents

[[Jakob Böhme]] · [[Paracelsus]] · [[Cornelius Agrippa]] · [[John Dee]] · [[Giordano Bruno]] · [[Emanuel Swedenborg]] · [[Jane Lead]] · [[William Law]] · [[Franz von Baader]]

Early Modern Philosophers

Rationalists

[[Descartes]] · [[Spinoza]] · [[Leibniz]]

Empiricists

[[Locke]] · [[Berkeley]] · [[Hume]]

Idealists

[[Kant]] · [[Fichte]] · [[Schelling]] · [[Hegel]] · [[T. H. Green]] · [[F. H. Bradley]]

Materialists

[[La Mettrie]] · [[d’Holbach]] · [[Diderot]] · [[Marx]] · [[Engels]]

Monists

[[Spinoza]] · [[Bruno]] · [[Ernst Haeckel]]

Panpsychists/Precursors

[[Fechner]] · [[William James]] · [[Peirce]] · [[Whitehead]]

Continental Philosophy

[[Husserl]] · [[Heidegger]] · [[Merleau-Ponty]] · [[Levinas]] · [[Ricoeur]] · [[Marion]] · [[Henry]] · [[Derrida]] · [[Deleuze & Guattari]] · [[Jean-Luc Nancy]] · [[Agamben]]

Pragmatism & Process

[[Peirce]] · [[William James]] · [[John Dewey]] · [[Mead]] · [[Whitehead]] · [[Hartshorne]] · [[Bergson]] · [[Rescher]] · [[Griffin]] · [[Cobb Jr.]]

Esotericists & Spiritualists

[[Emerson]] · [[Thoreau]] · [[Blavatsky]] · [[Olcott]] · [[Besant]] · [[Krishnamurti]] · [[Steiner]] · [[Gurdjieff]] · [[Ouspensky]] · [[Crowley]] · [[Dion Fortune]] · [[Yeats]] · [[Allan Kardec]] · [[Phineas Quimby]] · [[Emma Curtis Hopkins]] · [[Ernest Holmes]] · [[Mary Baker Eddy]] · [[Findhorn Community]]

Kabbalah & Jewish Mysticism

[[Moses de León]] · [[Abraham Abulafia]] · [[Isaac Luria]] · [[Ḥayyim Vital]] · [[Moses Cordovero]] · [[Baal Shem Tov]] · [[Dov Ber of Mezeritch]] · [[Schneur Zalman of Liadi]] · [[Nachman of Bratslav]] · [[Abraham Joshua Heschel]]

Additional Categories

Hermeneutics, Symbolism

[[Schleiermacher]] · [[Dilthey]] · [[Cassirer]] · [[Eliade]] · [[Henry Corbin]]

Comparative Religion (modern)

[[Ninian Smart]] · [[Steven Katz]] · [[Jonathan Z. Smith]] · [[Catherine Albanese]] · [[Leigh Eric Schmidt]] · [[Jeffrey Kripal]]

Phenomenology of Religion

[[William James]] · [[Rudolf Otto]] · [[Karl Rahner]] · [[Lonergan]]

Myth & Ritual Theory

[[Durkheim]] · [[Mauss]] · [[Lévy-Bruhl]] · [[Lévi-Strauss]] · [[Victor Turner]] · [[Catherine Bell]] · [[Ronald Grimes]]

Consciousness Studies (contemporary)

[[Evan Thompson]] · [[Francisco Varela]] · [[Thomas Metzinger]] · [[Michel Bitbol]] · [[Iain McGilchrist]] · [[Galen Strawson]] · [[Philip Goff]] · [[Hedda Hassel Mørch]]

Traditions & Lineages

[[Neoplatonism]] · [[Hermetica]] · [[Christian Mysticism]] · [[Gnosticism]]
[[Trika Shaivism (Kashmir)]] · [[Pratyabhijñā]]
[[Buddhist Triadic Logics]] (e.g., [[Tiantai]]) · [[Zen]] · [[Tibetan Buddhism]]
[[Sufism]]
[[Process Philosophy]]

Comparative Maps & Matrices

[[Matrix: Neoplatonism × Trika × TSL 3+1]]
[[Matrix: Icchā–Jñāna–Kriyā ↔ Being–Belonging–Becoming]]
[[Matrix: Nous–Theurgy–Poiēsis–Ecstasis ↔ Light–Love–Life–Liberation]]
[[Timeline: Pre‑Socratics to Late Antique Platonism]]
[[Glossary: Sanskrit (IAST) & Greek transliteration]]

Method & Practice

[[Fourth‑Way Logic of the Model]] — name triad · invite interruption · receive novelty · return.
[[Ritual Participation & Communal Healing]] — grief/trauma, ancestor work, anthropological research.
[[Critique of Static Metaphysical Models]] — beyond determinism and universalist monism.

Projects related to TSL Wiki

[[Podcast: This Spiritual Life]] — seasons, episode guides, scripts, bibliographies.
[[Book: Ecologies of Participation]] — process, participation, and agency.

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