Applied Philosophy
Matter and Acceptance
Matter and the world is an abstraction. What we actually know, directly, is awareness, consciousness, Being, whatever you want to call the nameless formless we Are: what every thing appears in; the continuity behind the change, the solid ground behind the appearance of a body, mind and world. Physicists haven’t been able to find matter…
Read MoreOne Truth
This article is a response to a question about a post I made in my FaceBook group (Group With No Name): You go deep enough into one truth, and all other truths will be revealed. They are all reflections of one Truth. Go into it, meditating on it, for hours, days, weeks, months or…
Read MoreThe Four Seals and Buddhism in a Nutshell
A while ago I wrote an article about the lyrics to a song I loved, Ott’s Jack’s Cheese and Bread Snack. I didn’t know it at the time, but the lyrics are known as the “Four Seals of Buddhism”, or “The Four Dharma Seals”. I’m not a Buddhist, not a Christian, not an Advaitan, I’m…
Read MoreThis Side of Paradise and the Unexamined Self
Last night I watched an old Star Trek original series episode that had come to mind: “This Side of Paradise“. The story in it always intrigued me: artificial happiness and the cult-like dramatic conflict when the agricultural lifestyle colonists encounter the Star Trek crew, as well as the entertainment value of what happens with the…
Read MoreOn Beyond Back-To-Nature Philosophies
Listening to a popular “animal communicator”, I realized the core issue with what she was saying. While I appreciate what they do with specific animals and species, and it touches my heart deeply (I love animals, and plants, and minerals…), there is an assumptions and an attitude about humans and the planet and Life and…
Read MoreOn Beyond Thinking – How To Be Present
How to be more loving and happy and at peace? Be more present. To what is real. How to be present? Quiet down the thinking, the mind, without introducing the doer. Don’t try and stop thinking. Just observe benevolently (with curiosity if it’s there). The doer can’t squelch (forcefully silence or suppress) the doer –…
Read MoreNon-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 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…
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