Spirituality for Living

If you’re new here, seek and you will find…and subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!People speak of temptation when they experience instinct and they say it is a distraction. This nature. Why supposedly is this nature unholy? This instinct. Why supposedly is there no wisdom in it? I think that it is our [...]

What can be said about paradox? Literally everything, that is the essence of paradox. It is why seeking one truth, proclaiming there to be only one right path…well, it just never really works. There have been atheists who are more altruistic than the more religious types. Very materialist types that espouse a spiritual paradigm for [...]

What are the big attachments? Money is one and many find that no amount of money is enough. Is supposedly a good thing, but they make themselves miserable in the pursuit of money. Money isn’t evil but attachment to it is. Same is true of knowledge. Learning is a good thing, but there is a [...]

In the Egyptian book of the dead they speak of death as a journey. One of the signs on that path is a mirror. The path is a mirror. You grow in the way you are, not in the way you are told you are. Many dogmas stunt people, trap them. Is regrettable, but they [...]

Thinking gets you where you are and often gets you stuck and keeps you there. Do your passions arise from thinking?
Can you be angry and out of control and be aware that you are angry and out of control? If you are truly aware, then are you out of control? We are alive first, thinking [...]

With any facet of life, in the light of awareness there is a mirror image. For every truth, an equal and opposite truth. We often revile the negative as destructive. We say that is the opposite of what we want, when in fact it’s a mirror image of the thing desired. This is why attachment [...]

For any light you have a shadow. The truth of any spirit is found not in the object of the senses nor its opposite, but in between. But often we see only what we choose to. We declare one small facet of reality ‘truth’, and refuse to see it very deeply. People refuse to see [...]

The secret of conflict is that there is no conflict. We perceive ourselves to be in opposition. But the one who opposes you, do they oppose “you”? Or has their way run afoul of yours? They seek something in opposition.
Imagine an auto accident …is nothing about opposition, just nature interacting with nature. And adaptation is [...]

Can people have a healthy relationship with religion? Yes, they can. The word religion comes from the latin word “religio” meaning a body of practices. Religion is like meditation. It’s the social aspect of factionalism. It is false identification, to use a Buddhist concept, that is toxic. The interfaith movements are a powerful force for [...]

It is a commonly mistaken notion that Buddhists see the Buddha as especially divine. There is a school or two that does, but in fact the majority of Buddhist sects are almost agnostic as it regards deities. Zen would be one of these.
There are two branches of thought in Buddhism. One is that enlightenment is [...]

There are stories where the Zen master says something, and the student is said to be ‘enlightened’.  In that moment the words didn’t matter as much as the students thinking, and what will do that for any student differs. This is why you see the symbol of the dorje or lighting bolt in Buddhism, because [...]

It is safe to say that both mortification of the flesh and the stock market crash are manifestations of something. We learn by testing. We learn by trial, and in the past there have been trials of all kinds. Now we are putting our trade on trial. People want to feel safe and will create risk [...]

Yes, I have changed. I have reached a personal crisis, and it is here that I have had every idea or belief reduced to a bottom line. My instinct is fear.  Now I have transcended that fear and thus transcended my old self, but I didn’t get it from being a good boy and believing [...]