Archive for April 2019
Non-Duality in Action: Compassionate Response
Non-dual teachings sometimes give people license to behave badly or not work on themselves: they can become arrogant or rude, or use it as an excuse to use drugs or do other self-centered things, saying “it doesn’t matter what we do” or “I don’t exist” and “it’s all predetermined” etc. Or they may not look…
Read MoreHow To Stop Thinking
It is sometimes thought, or heard from spiritual teachers, that one needs to stop thinking. Why would one want to stop thinking? The question comes up when it begins to dawn on one the importance of thought and thinking in one’s life and in one’s outlook and happiness. One begins to see how much negative…
Read MoreIs Being an Embodied Being a Fall from Grace?
I was cleaning the living room windows this morning, and noticed I could never get them perfect. They always had some kind of streaks or fog when the sunlight hit them, no matter how much I wiped them. It occurred to me the windows were metaphors of the limits of expression of clarity and the…
Read MoreOn Beyond Two Sides of Existence
The picture we are seeing here—knowing it’s just a picture (a map)—is of two sides of existence: one, the appearance, the phenomenal, the apparent material world, the mortal dream, Body, Mind, and World (BMW) which arise simultaneously to play Maya, or spacetime and matter; and two, “outside” of this world as it were, the spiritual,…
Read MoreSentience, Consciousness, and Vegetarianism
You can’t eat your way to enlightenment. But you can eat in an enlightened way. In this whole discussion about diet, a spiritual path, and health, it’s useful to make a distinction between what we can call “sentience” and Consciousness. If there is sentience, there is the potential for suffering. And while everything has consciousness…
Read MoreWhy Spiritual Teachings Can Seem Contradictory (But Really Aren’t)
“We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.” D.T. Suzuki Preface This essay starts with the assumption that there is one Truth, which I see as a true…
Read MoreThe Central Paradox of Meditation: Being and Doing
The central paradox of meditation is that of being and doing. Doing something in order to realize we don’t need to do anything, or in fact that the doing is taking us away from being. Q: What about programming, conditioning? Don’t we need to undo that? A: Where is it, when is it? It has…
Read MoreBeginning and Advanced Meditation: Meditating on Meditation
There are roughly three stages of meditation, three squares on the field of “spiritual progress” (it’s just a map, and they can overlap). Winning one square allows you to advance to the next, until you are beyond winning and losing, failure and success: 1. Meditation as A Process for a Person: calming the mind, clarifying…
Read MoreWhat Is Maya? What is Real?
POEM What is Maya? Maya is a word. A word is a sound. Sound is Maya. The real question is: what is not Maya? When I know what is deathless and without sound, I will know what Maya is. Every thing. Therefore even Maya is Maya. ESSAY What is Maya? What is illusion and…
Read MoreWhy No One Can Give You Enlightenment
On Beyond Unconscious HabitsThe following are some notes regarding how one must “go the final mile” oneself, and no teacher or guru can hand you liberation on a platter. Enjoy. “A Master is a fully-realized Being. A Guru (or Sat Guru) is a Master who has chosen to help others find their Freedom. God, Guru…
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