Achieving Epistemic Certainty

[Grigoris]

Answer not applicable. The statement by the Buddha quite clearly shows that knowing is part of liberation/enblightenment.

[monktastic]

yes, this is it exactly, except I would perhaps call it "presence" without defining exactly what is present (since all descriptions and definitions are arbitrary). This is the first recognition. The next step is recognizing the context of this recognition. This is harder to talk about, although it can be pointed at by first arriving at astonishment at the fact that there is something (presence) rather than nothing, then "turning towards" that in you which is able to experience the state-of-affairs which enables you to be astonished. It then becomes possible to understand existentially that there is indeed a ground of being (your being, the world's being, it makes no difference, its all the same), that that ground is beyond any particulars (it would be the same for any sentient being of any kind in any possible place and time), that the ground, since it is beyond all particulars, is not a "thing", but that is not a lack of any kind, rather it makes our "thinghood" both infinitely illusory and, at the same time, infinitely profound and beautiful, and at the same time confirms that our real nature is beyond our thinghood and is, indeed, the ground. Neither the Buddha, nor Plato, nor Jesus, was lying.

Wow, this may just be my favorite post ever

I think this hits the nail on the head. There is only one kind of absolute knowing, and this is it. "Knowing" of any particulars (e.g., knowing for sure what color shirt I have on) is just another "thing" happening within the real knowing. Those kinds of "knowing" take the form of thoughts, which are simply arbitrary experiences passing through the actual knowing. In other words, conceptual knowledge that something is true, or that it is false, or that it is neither, are all of one taste, and it is the same taste as that of stubbing one's toe.

OP, you may be interested in doing some research on the term "rigpa" (Sanskrit: vidya, both meaning roughly "knowledge"). It is the knowing whose complete realization is equivalent to Buddhahood, and though I may be a practitioner of little understanding (and thus thoroughly unqualified to talk about rigpa), I think the above post captures its essence insofar as words are able