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E. Raymond Rock - EzineArticles.com Expert Author   RSS

My background includes 28 years of meditation practice that has taken me across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where I practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. I have trained with Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Maha Boowa, Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Tui, Bhante Gunaratana, Roshi Kennett, Seung Sahn Sunim, Trungpa Rinpoche, the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco. Presently I am cofounder ... [More]

[View E. Raymond Rock's Extended Author Bio]

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  • Loving and Hating
    [Relationships] Do you love and hate? If you do, then you are very normal. If you just hated, or only loved, there would be consistency, but when you do both, the mind finds itself in conflict all the time, and this produces stress. So if you want to find the underlying cause of your stress, look no further than those things that you hate. And what you love, too.


  • Martial Arts Training - Balancing Mind and Body
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Martial-Arts] A very special kind of training is critical in martial arts because martial arts is about life and death. In one split second, your life will be either spared or taken, and that outcome depends entirely upon your preparation.


  • Dying to Everything
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] As long as there is hope, there will be despair. As long as there is experience, there will be death. Yet fervently we seek both.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - The Final Chapter (Part 6) A Promise to Keep
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] They remained by the side of the road; the day was ending. The king held the jailor's lifeless body as passersby shook their heads at such a sight as two apparently drunk, old beggars trying to prop each other up.


  • The Article From Hell
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] Now, it's not easy for an article, like myself, to go to hell, because I didn't start out that way. (You just don't jump into a "hand basket" and arrive at hell - most articles have to work at it!)


  • Freedom is What We Already Are
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] When we strive to be free, when we try to release ourselves from the burdens that we have laid upon ourselves, we miss the point: we are already free. We simply forget that we are free. We forget by becoming bogged down in our difficulties, by pitting ourselves against others, and fighting for what we want.


  • Images of Life
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If you are a Hindu, you have been taught to worship Brahma, the creator of all reality, or Vishnu, the preserver of all of the creations, or Shiva, the destroyer. And as a Hindu, you find a tremendous source of security and peace in that. It is the one thing that you can count on when the going gets tough.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - The Final Chapter (Part 4) A Promise to Keep
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "You will never find the key in this lifetime," he said with finality. "There is no reason for you to waste the few years you have remaining with this fruitless quest."


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - The Final Chapter (Part 3) A Promise to Keep
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Weepasa then gave me a fierce look, "Do you finally understand everything I have explained?" I resignedly nodded "Yes." "The Source is very close, and the key is within reach," said Weepasa, "but this is your final instruction. Now it is entirely up to you whether or not you will slay the dragon. There will be no further meetings."


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - The Final Chapter (Part 2) A Promise to Keep
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I could see how my senses were double-edged swords once I was born into them. The things that make me happy, which are pleasurable stimulations, become my nemeses because when they disappear, I want them back. I could clearly see that this was why the seeds of discontent are always buried in every pleasure.


  • How Do You Escape?
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] If we don't like our job, our house, or if we are generally unhappy with about our position in life, we naturally try to change our circumstances. When we are uncomfortable with any situation, we instinctively attempt to escape from it. We might feel angry inside, or frustrated thinking that something external is the problem - maybe our job or our situation, and we think that if we can just change the situations, we will be happy internally.


  • Creating a Universe in Your Mind
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Scientists say that everything began in the emptiness of space when a pea-sized piece of intensely dense matter and energy exploded into what has become our universe. In the Zen Buddhist religion, it is said, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - The Final Chapter - A Promise to Keep (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "Know? You want to know? You foolish, ambitious man. Do you not understand? Can you not see that to know, to find answers means that you do not know? Answers and knowing are dead! They are history, locked in the mind by your pathetic, false, little 'self' preventing you from ever being in this immense, eternal moment.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 14 - Seven Days (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "But do not succumb to fear. Don't be concerned about your physical health either, for if you are, you will constantly scheme to keep yourself safe, and this will generate thought and break your mindfulness. You truly must be a fearless warrior to reach the key, for you can easily die from the exertion here. But so be it. The effort will serve you well in the next lifetime."


  • Get a Grip on Yourself!
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Sure, ignore the reality of life, which is death, and be totally unprepared when things happen. Good advice, like ignoring chest pains!


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 14 - Seven Days (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Unfortunately, the things of which I speak are unintelligible to those who have not experienced the inner work. How could they begin to understand the immensity of the Great Source within us?"


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 14 - Seven Days (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Never mind. Your clumsy, but persistent, efforts so far in your quest might have qualified you for intensive instruction even though you have little wisdom. But, if I decide to teach you, this is the last time you will talk with anybody, except me, for many years, as you put yourself in a concentrated training situation. Are you willing to do this?"


  • The Most Discouraging Things in the World
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] A glass half-empty is discouraging, but not as discouraging as how misled people can be when a glass half-full is perceived as brimming over the top. War is discouraging, too, especially wars that seem to go on forever. It's as if the countries involved grow to believe that everything is dangerous and foreboding while the rest of the world goes on about business as usual and relatively unscathed. Some countries seem to draw violence toward them, and others don't. Why is this?


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 14 - Seven Days (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Conqueror, my mystical horse, was not getting any younger. He had lived well beyond a normal lifespan and I wondered how many trips he could still make. Was that old, robed man, who brought an enchanted colt to the Kingdom of Ayatana those many years ago, the sorcerer?


  • A Tear Drops
    [Relationships] She waves to a worker cleaning the floor, but he doesn't see her; she is old now and people just don't notice her any longer. She quietly slips out of the restaurant into a cold night, turning up her collar and putting her hands in her pockets. And as she walks down the street, a sweet memory of what was suddenly appears somewhere in a little backwater of her mind... and a tear drops.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 13 - When the Dust Blows Away? (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] He became quiet for a moment, looking back again toward the hut. The conversation was about to escalate out of control. "There is no need for violence," he bargained. "You, more than anybody, understand power and the corruptive influence it has on those who fall under its spell. I am just a messenger who must follow orders."


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 13 - When the Dust Blows Away? (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I stood in the rain for only a few minutes before he came down the steps. When he saw me standing by his horse, he stopped dead in his tracks and quickly glanced back toward the safety of Weeja's hut. He knew who was standing there, and he also knew my reputation as a cold blooded killer.


  • What Interests You Most?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] This is a very important question; what interests you most, because your answer to this question determines your destiny. So before you answer, look carefully at all the options and decide which is truly the one thing that interests you more than any other.


  • How to Make a Mess of Your Life
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] Everyone wants happiness. Happiness is the driving force behind almost all of our actions, and even when we are unhappy, we are involved with somehow changing that unhappiness into happiness for ourselves.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Chapter 13 - When the Dust Blows Away? (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Can you imagine yourselves beyond consciousness, or envision timelessness? Can you grasp the immensity of eternity? These things you will be able to know fully with the inner work but you will never be able to experience them or utter a word about them to anyone, as there are no words to express them.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Unexpected Surprises - Chapter 12 - (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "The cause of this constant discontent is wanting and craving," continued the sage. "There is a cure for this constant wanting and craving. The way to realize this cure is to follow a life conducive to opening oneself to the Source of all there is. In this new life, you must first acknowledge your own discontent, realize the cause of this discontent, believe that there is a solution, and embark on a quest to achieve this solution.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Goodbye, My Son - Chapter 11 - (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] The beast slowly uncovered its eyes, and for the first time in its tortured memory looked at a dazzling, golden sun hanging in an azure sky, with majestic clouds of cotton slipping by over deep, green forests. The creature was overwhelmed and began to weep, and as its tears splashed to the ground, each one changed into a small white dove that flew away. Its whole body then began to shrink, smaller and smaller until it transformed itself into a beautiful white tiger.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Goodbye, My Son - Chapter 11 - (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I sat in silence waiting for the hell being to make its decision. Would it continue down its path of certain destruction, or would it embark on a difficult journey to certain freedom?


  • Something to Believe In
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] It's not easy to find something to believe in these days. There is so much information on the internet that whatever we believe in can be very effectively debunked in a heartbeat, leaving us with doubts at best, and at worst; total disbelief.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Goodbye, My Son - Chapter 11 - (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I had no fear of this thing; only a curiosity of what was coming my way, so I shined the lantern toward it. Towering before me was a giant, grotesque beast that was dragging a dead tiger in one of its huge claws as if the tiger were a rag doll. The creature looked at me with its blood red, intelligent eyes for a moment, and then dropped the tiger as it began a low, guttural growl, smiling and drooling yellow slime through its large, sharp fangs.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Goodbye, My Son - Chapter 11 - (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I had to convince this beast to see beyond his cave, but the creature was not the least bit inclined to cooperate. It would only believe what its limited awareness revealed, and it stubbornly remained in its dark world, which was at least familiar, while things beyond its understanding were not. No matter how wonderful the sun might be, it was not comprehensible to the creature, and was probably even a bit frightening. This cave was its familiar prison, and it could not imagine the freedom of a completely new world that could easily be found with only some effort and faith. It refused to even attempt to look, for it was afraid to see.


  • Our Aspirations
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] The way we live is key to describing what we are, which can be quite different from our lofty ideals of what we are. And if we consider what we should be, what the loftiest ideal for a human being would be, perhaps what Thomas Kelly suggests (as off the wall as it appears) is the answer: "The life that intends to be wholly obedient, wholly submissive, wholly listening, is astonishing in its completeness. Its joys are ravishing, its peace profound, its humility the deepest, its power world-shaking, its love enveloping, its simplicity that of a...


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Goodbye, My Son - Chapter 11 - (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Conqueror limped stiffly but was always eager to begin a new journey, loving the spontaneity of adventure as much as I did. Occasional wafts of warm air greeted us as we made our way down the mountain persuading me to take off my fur wrap and tie it to the horse. I wasn't sure where we were headed except to follow the holy man's map, but I did know that there were two hints regarding a cave; one by Sahmad and one by the holy man's sketch, and since caves were cold and damp, the coat could come in handy...


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Only a Mild Interest - Chapter 10 - (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Evening again approached. I watched the sun ease down into a million golden diamonds reflecting off the hard-crusted snow, and far off in the distance, I thought that I heard a far off "tinkle." It was faint, and I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but I was convinced that it was soldiers from the city searching for us. Conqueror's white body was almost invisible in the snow, so I hid behind him and held my breath. I didn't want to kill these soldiers.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Only a Mild Interest- Chapter 10 - (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Sahmad dispatched one of his attendants to summon a physician, while another stayed behind as an interpreter. Sahmad then instructed me to lie down, and he lit two large cones of incense, carefully placing them on my bare chest. He told me to concentrate on the pain that would soon come, as the incense burned down to my skin.


  • Are You on the Right Path?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] There are telltale signs, but before they can be acknowledged, a determination must be made regarding your purpose for treading a path in the first place. Most people don't tread a path through the woods. Instead, they prefer to wander about at will, doing whatever they fancy.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Only a Mild Interest - Chapter 10 - (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] It was an unimaginable, terror-filled night. My mind ran wild with uncontrolled, random scenes in vivid colors, several flashing every heartbeat, while the top half of my body was on fire, and the bottom half was cold as ice. My heart was pounding and fluttering so severely that it would actually stop beating for long periods of time, producing a feeling of intense fear and impending death.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Deeper in the Valley - Chapter 9 - (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] More years passed, and although the young man and I became the closest of friends, I could never tell him that his father was dead . . . or that I was the one responsible. All he could talk about was finding his father someday; he wanted so badly for his father to know that his only son had become a key seeker as well. I would have to tell the lad eventually, and then he would hate me, but I could never quite find the courage as each day we became more inseparable, akin to a father and son ourselves.


  • Five Roadblocks to Meditation and How They Apply to Westerners
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The first hindrance to meditation is desire for sense stimulation. This can range from obsessive sexual lust, to compulsive socializing, to addictive intellectual pursuits. In the West, we tend toward the addictive intellectual pursuits because we have usually disciplined ourselves regarding lustful sex and compulsive socializing before becoming interested in meditation.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Deeper in the Valley - Chapter 9 (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I returned to my room and eagerly examined the paper Sahmad had given me, but I could not make sense of the ancient markings, so I carefully folded it back into my fur robe for safekeeping. It was definitely a clue of some kind - and I had a feeling it was an extremely important one.


  • Meditation - The Deeper Aspects
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] When we begin meditation, we might begin with a mantra, or a word, or perhaps we concentration on the breath. We do this to replace the never ending cycle of thoughts and emotions that circle round us day and night. We replace our everyday thoughts with one new thought so that we can break this cycle of a very coarse mind.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Deeper in the Valley - Chapter 9 - (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I pulled the warm fur that I found covering my body a little closer, and looked out the window again. Everything was muffled, stillness; the snow hiding the scars and sins of the mountain and insulating its inhabitants from sound. Only the quiet popping of the steady fire softly interrupted this sacred silence, as I began my inner work as well.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Blue Shadows - Chapter 8 - (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] How could I describe this new sensation - contented happiness, bliss, unification of mind? No words could ever approach this experience.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Blue Shadows - Chapter 8 - (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I am well aware of your repute as a warrior," it snarled, "killing many men without blinking an eye. What makes you think you can now turn your back on this and become a key seeker? I say once a killer, always a killer. It is in your blood, and no matter what you do, when the time comes, you will gleefully kill again." I was taken by surprise!


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Blue Shadows - Chapter 8 - (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Impatiently, she blurted out, "All I know is that my husband and my children are my world. How could I search for this 'deeper happiness' and not compromise my feelings toward them, even if my family is temporary? I don't see what you are getting at.


  • Affairs of the Heart, and the Ending of Sorrow
    [Relationships] Maybe it's a new relationship, after many failed ones. But we think that this new relationship is different - until our old problems, and our partner's old problems, creep back into the equation. Problems such as our constant grasping at things, our aversion toward other things, and our delusions of life.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) Blue Shadows - Chapter 8 - (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "Now our worldly minds become frightened, faced with the fact that nothing lasts and everything changes. Unable to find security, this insubstantiality causes discontent, which is intensified when we discover that no fundamental reality can be found behind anything, including ourselves."


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 7 - A Step Above Oblivion (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I noticed when he said goodbye that his vacant eyes revealed an unusual compassion. He had always cautioned me about attachment, but right now as I closed the door to my hut, my heart went out to this funny, little man with the constant grin that had brought me so far.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 7 - A Step Above Oblivion (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] It must have been around one o'clock in the morning when I heard a soft rustle behind me in the leaves. Then something bumped my leg. Something was crawling into my lap! I was petrified! Was it the skeleton; was it the baby, the skull? I couldn't move a muscle except for my eyeball, as I slowly looked down.


  • The Secret of Being
    [Self-Improvement:Goal-Setting] When we cannot just "be," then we have to be "something," and when we have to be something, we have to set goals. When we set goals, however, we are never satisfied until the goal is reached, and therefore, it is only when there are no goals that we can just "be."


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 7 - A Step Above Oblivion (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] What was strange was that I could swear at first glance that the baby's eyes were open and staring at me, but the instant I swung around and looked at it directly, its eyes would be closed as usual. This was unnerving, but like the smiling skulls, I again thought it was simply my imagination.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 7 - A Step Above Oblivion (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] He again turned to Moosawa, "Have you ever walked through the forest and noticed how the leaves dance along with you, or is your mind too busy with other things? Wouldn't you say that sensitivity is more important than gold?"


  • Interdependent Origination
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The Buddha introduced a number of things that are unique to all religions and spirituality. Two of these are The Four Noble Truths and Interdependent Origination.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 7 - A Step Above Oblivion (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] My body was exhausted that first night. My leg became swollen to twice its size, and as I slipped in and out of consciousness, my mind drifted to the young maiden in the village with eyes like almonds and hair shining like black silk. She was distracting me from my quest, I knew that, but I felt so empty and alone right now as death was closing in, and I desperately needed her, if only in my mind.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 6 - Skeletons and Snakes (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] My breathing became labored, and as the poison worked its way into my heart, I wished that I had begun my quest when I was much younger, before the wars. I also wished I had paid more attention to the robed man who warned me to sweep the path! When key seekers speak, it is never for conversation or amusement.


  • Ever Wonder What Buddhist Monks Are Chanting?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] To give you a tiny sampling, a flavor of what Theravada Buddhist monks chant every morning, following are a few stanzas of the Buddha's exact teachings in his native Pali language (with translations), which have been precisely kept intact by his order of monks for over 2500 years, or since three months after the Buddha's death. Chanting these words as a group insures that the words never become altered or embellished over the centuries, assuring that these words are what the Buddha actually spoke.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 6 - Skeletons and Snakes (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] A John's gripping question flashed in my mind: "Are you ready to die at any moment?" And I realized that I wasn't. I could not accept this tragedy; I had so much more to do! How could I know what awaited me in another lifetime, or if I would be fortunate enough to encounter somebody in that next lifetime that was familiar with this incredible key? I was so close, and now . . . so far.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 6 - Skeletons And Snakes (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "We were very happy," he quietly continued. "We had a little boy and another child on the way and were so in love, you know, and looking forward to a simple life in our village, raising our children and growing old together." He stopped scraping and searched my eyes, "We weren't asking for too much, were we?"


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 5 - Fertile Soil (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] A John began by instructing me to sit cross-legged on the ground, while he stuffed some straw just under the tip of my tailbone, but not too much - he cautioned that too much straw would surely cause my legs to fall sleep. Then he tucked my left heel between my legs and placed my right foot on top of my left calf while pushing both my knees down so that they remained on the ground, locking my legs in place and straightening my back into, what he said, was the correct posture for doing the inner work.


  • The Times Are a Changin'
    [News-and-Society:Pure-Opinion] Once Middle America understands that it should be running this country, instead of a few lobbyists, politicos, and corporations, and understands that their voice can be heard with the right leadership, then look out! All you have to do is really consider who and what you are, and see if you have been cleverly fooled by those in power.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 5 - Fertile Soil (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Addressing her unspoken inquiry of whether her prayers were important, a John replied, "Your prayers were well intentioned, as your helper beings always listen to all pleas and heart-felt desires. Your empathy and your prayers for your fellow soldiers were from a good place inside of you, but until these men found a way to understand their situation in the human realm, they would be subject to uncountable battlefields in many lifetimes. It was their destiny."


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 5 - Fertile Soil (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] My previous sphere was caught up in constant warfare. Nothing was solved without violence, no country was willing to give in, or share its wealth. Greed, hatred, and fear ruled peoples' hearts, spreading like a disease among all the countries. There was never compromise, just killing. Each country was as aggressive and ambitious as the other was, and as violent as well. There was never any peace.


  • Looking For The Only Happiness
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] When a Buddhist monk or nun ordains, they give away everything. They give away their relationships, their families, their business career or job, house, car, clothes - everything.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 5 -Fertile Soil (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] One day, a horrible weapon fell upon our country and we retaliated against the ones we believed were responsible with our most powerful weapons. But the response was misunderstood by many other countries, and they in turn unleashed their weapons. Then, because of our honor, we had no choice but to unleash ours as well.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4 - Nothing Left To Lose (Part 7)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I thought you were going to the community," a John said, his eyebrows Raised. "Yes, yes, I am on my way," Moosawa stammered, looking surprised. "But isn't it in the other direction," a John inquired.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4 - Nothing Left To Lose (Part 6)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] My instincts told me to slowly back away and move toward the denser part of the forest, but just as I took a step, I felt a pinch. It didn't feel at all like an arrow, but sure enough, there was an arrow through my side with its feathers sticking out near my naval and the tip protruding from my back.


  • Political Evolution
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Therefore, it might be a good idea to see where we were before this evolution began. Let's look at our comfort zones; God, country and family, cherished values that are so key to our security.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4 - Nothing Left To Lose (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] My instincts told me to slowly back away and move toward the denser part of the forest, but just as I took a step, I felt a pinch. It didn't feel at all like an arrow, but sure enough, there was an arrow through my side with its feathers sticking out near my naval and the tip protruding from my back.


  • What Lies Beneath Our Consciousness?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] As this emotional subconscious bubbles up to the surface, we become ensnared in its power to pull us in certain directions. We might be extraordinarily attracted to something or someone for no apparent reason, and can no more disregard the attraction than we can go against our very nature. Our subconscious is what we are.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4 - Nothing Left To Lose (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Suddenly, I remembered a John, and looked back to where he was sitting. He had not budged, even though a monstrous tiger was standing not more than a few paces from his tree.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4 - Nothing Left To Lose (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] The soldiers stood motionless, as the confidence visibly drained from their faces. They knew that the slightest move would unleash a blood bath. I smiled, because I knew exactly what these cowards would do. They were interested only in the reward, this was not something they truly believed in, and as such, were not willing to risk their lives for.


  • Three Secrets to Happiness
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] Part of wisdom is seeing clearly that the one who was so concerned with itself was the one that was keeping him or herself from true happiness. It's as simple as that. It's as simple as losing yourself to something so much greater, something so immense that all of your problems are as small drops in a great ocean of healing water, an ocean that is as accessible as your next breath.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4 - Nothing Left To Lose (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "Where is he?" the warrior in charge curtly demanded. "He is right there, in the bamboo grove," said a John innocently, and with his invariable grin. If he was afraid, he certainly didn't show it.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 3 - Broken Wings (Part 6)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "Someday you will understand all that has just been said, but until then, you will have mountains of silence to climb, rivers of tears to cross, jungles of confusion to wade through, and dry, arid deserts ahead. You will travel a very difficult road, my king, but if you persevere, you can be certain of one thing; that you will finally meet yourself on the trail someday. When that happens, self-experiencing will end. But in the meantime, good luck, my friend. Oh, and beware of the temple!"


  • Buddhism - From the Top, Down
    [News-and-Society:Religion] In some religions, faith is paramount, or perhaps study, meditation and prayer. In Buddhism, however, faith is preliminary, and study and meditation but a method. The goal in Buddhism is transcendental wisdom.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 4, Nothing Left To Lose (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] My laughing abruptly stopped. How did he know that I was searching for the key? I studied this strange, diminutive man a little closer, noticing that his eyes were curiously empty, yet very alive, as if they were looking through my solitary eye and focusing on the meadow behind me.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 3 - Broken Wings (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "You must use your senses to look, my king, but not to find. You will solve this riddle yourself someday. And you can forget about your weapons of the world, for they are useless. The dragon laughs at them.


  • Are We Really Hiding Behind Our Religions?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If our entire identity is predicated on what we believe, then because there are 4,000 different religions in the world, somebody must necessarily be hiding behind something that is quite false, since every religion claims to be the one and only truth except for that one religion that you, the reader, belong to! All others must be false, which means that they are all hiding behind a falsehood.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 3 - Broken Wings (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Conqueror was lying motionless next to the black horse that was trying to get up on his broken legs. I knew their injuries would eventually be fatal, but it would take many long days of agony before they died...


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 3 - Broken Wings (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] This was all spinning out of control. The deep feelings I had for her could not be denied, and to further complicate things, it was apparent that her life was in danger because of this maniac fiancé. I didn't know what to do, but I had to come up with something.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 3 - Broken Wings (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Powerful feelings overwhelmed me. I suddenly realized that I would willingly give my life for this maiden, even though I had only known her for such a short time, and as I softly kissed her tears away, I tasted that sweet, salty nectar of desire... and we embraced as lovers have done in the primal forests since the beginning of time.


  • Buddhist Breath Meditation - Seven Steps
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Phra Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo explains fundamental Buddhist breath meditation that can not only lead directly to enlightenment, but on the way cure emotional, psychological and physical ailments. (The words in quotation marks have been changed in the text to clarify the instructions).


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 2 - Ariya (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Weeks drifted by with no sign of Ariya, or anybody else for that matter, but the silence was eerie, compelling me to look over my shoulder more often now. I was back where my enemies might find me, and my life was definitely in grave danger. They knew that I was still alive.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 3 - Broken Wings (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I was captivated by her nerve; I could see already that she was a lot like me. But then that small, still voice in my heart, for some mysterious reason, began pleading with me to leave this maiden alone; to turn around immediately and get out of here.


  • Obama Gets It
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Obama gets it. He is unusual, visionary. He understands that our only hope is the middle class coming together, regardless of our differences. But he faces an uphill battle. The old politics of division and hate, the politics that have gotten us into this intractable situation where nothing is being done, is still admired by the vast majority of Americans; the idea that you fight for what you want and you smash your adversary.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 2 - Ariya (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable "thunk" of a crossbow, followed by that unique sound an arrow makes as it zips through leaves. Before I could react, however, I found myself in a vast desert surrounded by stars and silence. The constellations were strange. I could make out the "Southern Cross" that I had seen drawings of, sketched by mariners who ventured to the far southern reaches of the world, but I had no idea where I was.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 2 - Ariya (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Still nervous, Conqueror led the way back into the shadowy forest that now felt as if it had eyes behind every tree. During the solitary years in these woods, there were times I could swear I was not alone, and although that feeling was as strong as ever tonight, I dismissed it and curled up to get some sleep. If soldiers from the kingdom were hot on my trail, it was only a matter of time before they found me, and when they did, it wouldn't be to welcome me back.


  • Why People Lie to Us
    [Relationships] Lying is a kind of "get out of jail free" card. We can do bad things, lie about them, and we're off the hook. Or it seems that we are. But really, we're just setting the hook deeper as we begin to believe that we can get away with almost anything, and our conduct becomes increasingly unwholesome to the tenth degree.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 2 - Ariya (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Only after my best efforts were exhausted would she come, she promised, and yet she was nowhere to be found. I knew now that she wasn't coming, and my only concern was for my trusted friend; what would happen to Conqueror? It was cold and raining hard again that night, and as my good eye began to close, I began slipping away.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 2 - Ariya (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I could have gone back, it wasn't too late. But soon it would be when the power-vacuum that I created began to flood with ambitious men, then I would become a threat to whomever had an eye on my throne. But "going back," and "retreat" were not words that this warrior had ever understood.


  • The Kindness That's Inherently Obama
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Of all the things in the world that we can think of, kindness is the one that cuts through all barriers. Since Barack Obama has been running for office, people of color have begun feeling good about themselves, and white people have begun feeling good about people of color. Maybe soon, people of color will begin feeling better about white people, but if that takes awhile, it's understandable.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 1 - One More Journey (Part 5)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I sobbed uncontrollably as the sequence of events over the last fourteen years took its justifiable toll. Visions scorched my brain of the innocent men I ruthlessly killed on the battlefield, soldiers who were only defending their families from a brutal invader. I could hear their death gurgles, see their eyes glaze over, feel my adrenalin rushes, feel the power I held over life and death . . ., and feel the wild anticipation toward the next kill. All of this smashed into my consciousness, coming as a terrible shock.


  • What is Our Soul?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Ask anyone about the soul and more often than not, you will get a blank stare, or the soul might be explained as a spirit, a part of God, our basic being, or our true essence. But there has never been a good, logical explanation. So here goes!


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 1 - One More Journey (Part 4)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I became mortified, my face lined with anguish, as I tried to reconcile years of selfishness. I wanted to say that I was sorry, for everything, but I couldn't find it in my heart to express even those simple words to a dying father.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 1 - One More Journey (Part 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Now he found himself in a real quandary. He had no doubt that I would fight, and fight hard, and although he certainly could not risk killing a Prince, he had to win. If he didn't, it would appear as if he were holding back; and that would be a sure ticket to the dungeons, from which nobody returns!


  • Stress Relief Without Drugs - Walking Meditation
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Walking meditation can be done in many ways and for many purposes, but I have found this technique to be outstanding in relieving stress. It's easy to do, and you should feel a distinct benefit from the first fifteen minutes of trying it.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 1 - One More Journey (Part 2)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] "My dear prince," he began, "you have everything your heart desires, except for what you truly crave. You see, only one thing will in fact make you happy, and I can grant that one thing," "Kill my father?" I said jokingly. As self-centered as I was, I couldn't have my own father killed, even though he was standing between my destiny and me. The sorcerer only smiled.


  • The Key (A Fairytale) - Chapter 1 - One More Journey (Part 1)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] I watched him make the long walk through the great arches and columns, and as he approached my throne, I realized that all these commoners were the same. I could tell no difference. They had that look about them, haggard, confused, and greedily jumping on the slimmest opening to release them from their hells, whatever they imagined them to be.


  • Sell That SUV?
    [News-and-Society:Pure-Opinion] What exactly are we supposed to do? We hear about change all the time, but instead of motivating us to do something, our politicians only know how to complain - with few real solutions. I'm afraid that it is up to us to make the moves, not our politicians. But make what moves? This is where we become confused.


  • The Most Dangerous Relationships - Three Signs
    [Relationships] When we fall in love, we are blinded from these three signs. This is Mother Nature's way of making sure that babies happen! After about two years, however, we regain our perspective, and these three signs begin to show up.


  • Give Up Religion and Get Peaceful?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If religion is only a convenient hideout and subterfuge from our real nature, which seems to be violence, what if we dropped religion completely so that we could see our true nature without rationalizing or denying it? Maybe we only pretend to be religious?


  • Happiness Guaranteed
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] How can anyone guarantee happiness? Well, they can't. But we can. We can guarantee our own happiness. In order to do that, however, we must first eliminate those things that make us unhappy.


  • Measuring Each Other
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The mind is a blank pallet, which takes on the colors and textures of the brush as our karma creates the brush strokes. However, painting a different picture involves something other than our karma holding the brush; it involves no brush, no pallet, no mind. It involves eternity, measurlessness, that which can only be touched when mind is completely stilled.


  • How to Untangle Fishing Line - And Our Lives
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] When I was just a little tyke, way before open-basket type fishing reels; we had to put up with spool-type reels. Instead of the line freely flowing from the end of the reel as it does now, it would unwind mechanically, a very inefficient method for bait casting though still used for fly-fishing. In order to keep the spool from getting ahead of the line, we fisher people learned how to slow the spool by dragging our thumbs on it so that the line wouldn't become tangled.


  • If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Many Zen sayings cause a double take. At first, they seem pretty far out and ridiculous, but when their deeper meanings are explained, and better yet actually experienced, profound personal transformations can result. It is natural for anyone practicing Buddhism to become deeply indebted to the Buddha because of the freedom one attains.


  • The Hope of Humankind
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] A drop falls into the ocean. Does the ocean notice? Does the drop keep its identity?


  • Why Politics and Religion Don't Mix
    [News-and-Society:Politics] As long as men and women harbored delusion within their hearts, where they thought that power over others and violent ambition would make the world better place, they knew that all political experiments would eventually fall prey to an individual's greed regardless of their altruistic ideals. Governments and systems are merely macrocosms of that microcosm we call our "selves."


  • How Often Do You Use The "I" Word
    [Relationships] When we talk, or when we write articles, the number of times that we use the word "I" can indicate the level of confusion we might have in our minds about ourselves. This wouldn't ordinarily be a problem if we are not attached to ourselves emotionally, and only use the term conventionally; however, when we home in on only our personal problems and ourselves and feel emotional about them, we may set ourselves up for the opposite of happiness, which is stress. The "I" which we speak about and write about doesn't exist; that's the ...


  • Global Swarming
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Global swarming is a phenomenon far more impending than greenhouse gases. Global swarming involves the very fabric of our lives, and therefore how we handle global swarming will determine the quality of our future on earth.


  • How to Find Yourself (How to Look Within)
    [Relationships] Understanding oneself, one's drives, one's emotions, the way in which one's mind works, is the minimum requirement for successful relationships. Without this understanding of oneself, without taking the time to learn about oneself, relationships can be merely a tug of war between two independent egos, instead of a coming together.


  • Why Christians Practice Buddhism
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Therefore, according to Einstein and the Buddha, one should not fear that Buddhism competes with one's beliefs, because it doesn't. Gandhi once said a very wise thing; that one could find the deeper roots of one's own religion by looking to other religions, and then returning to one's own faith with new eyes.


  • Profiles in Truth
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] What is truth? We are told what we should believe by advertisers depicting beautiful bodies, and we are told to believe it is truth. We are told what truth is by our modern Gods, and we believe it, and repeat it like parrots. But is this truth? Are our bodies beautiful? Or should we look more closely rather than just believe?


  • Meditation - Balancing Concentration and Mindfulness
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] If you have ever tried to walk with only one leg, you have discovered, for yourself, the importance of two legs. Likewise, when we meditate, two aspects of meditation are necessary if our practice is to be balanced.


  • Somethin's Gotta Give
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Somethin's gotta give, because my friend is not an isolated case in middle America. Many down here in Florida are facing even more dire circumstances. Auto dealers are experiencing customers driving their almost new cars, SUVs and trucks up to the showroom window and leaving the keys on the hood. People are leaving their homes with the keys in the door. People are just leaving.


  • Seeds of Partings
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Poetry] Meetings of yesterday - seeds of tomorrow's partings Planted as hope - the sadness I know, Growing straight and strong for so long, And now fallen down in an ocean of tears. Had I but known of the heartaches ahead, And if I did, what matter? What escape from this velvet noose, This loneliness of night, That draws me ever closer.


  • If Easter is a Pagan Holiday, Who Was Jesus?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] CAUTION: This article and the information it contains is not for Christians who simply believe and look forward to enjoying a peaceful Easter, which is such a beautiful, spiritual holiday. If this is you, please stop reading now. If you are still here, In addition, this is for the parents of Christian children who want to be relatively certain that their children are getting the straight story, because if they aren't, they will certainly be disillusioned when they become teens and learn differently from all the various sources that out ...


  • Don't Let Your Children Grow Up to be Hippies!
    [Home-and-Family:Parenting] They knew how to chord a guitar, how to live together, how to relax, and how to live on a shoestring (and off Mom and Dad mostly!) And they didn't know about money or power - that would have been way too square!


  • Guns, Butter, and Social Injustice
    [News-and-Society:Politics] An old man with shaking hands counts out some crumpled bills to a receptionist in a doctor's office. The sign above the cashier's window says: "If you are a Medicare customer you will be required to pay your $135 deductible before service is rendered."


  • Needing Each Other
    [Relationships] "I need you," is not something we hear too often these days. When we do hear it, however, it touches a very deep chord in the depths of our being. To be needed, to be necessary and important means so much, because as human beings, we will always need each other.


  • Death is the Doorway to Life - Three Ways to Prepare (Part 3 of 3)
    [Home-and-Family:Death-Dying] The other worry is the separation from loved ones, from one's possessions. Of course, if we've contemplated this before, it's a lot easier. We know that to come together implies separation. That's all life is, a meeting and a separation. I came to Melbourne two months ago, in a few days I'll be leaving. That's just the way it is.


  • Death is the Doorway to Life - Three Ways to Prepare (Part 2 of 3)
    [Home-and-Family:Death-Dying] This is how the contemplation of death helps to break this habitual way of living, where we take so much of life for granted, constantly overlooking the present and looking to the future. That is one of the foolish aspects of the way we live when we're not contemplating the reality of death.


  • Death is the Doorway to Life - Three Ways to Prepare (Part 1 of 3)
    [Home-and-Family:Death-Dying] Approximately 100 million people die every year. That's a lot of people. Death is a common occurrence, but we hide from death's reality in many ways.


  • What Middle-Class America Doesn't Understand, and the Fed Does
    [Self-Improvement] Let's say that a caveperson makes some baskets. Other cavepeople like the baskets, and trade some fruits and berries for a basket. This is legitimate.


  • The Last Five Steps of Sainthood
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] And since they have given up the idea of themselves and can only see the needs of others, all of the conceit, pride, and arrogance that they may have had at one time now depart. All forms of assessing, judging, and self-righteousness disappear because a saint has nothing to compare what he or she knows with anyone else since in essence the saint no longer exists.


  • When We're Not in the Moment
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] What is it like to live without projections and memories; without the past and the future? Have you ever tried it? It's scary.


  • Climbing Mountains of Mist
    [Relationships] A relationship can be a misty mountain, covered in a mysterious shroud that we can't quite seem to touch and penetrate as fully as we wish that we could. It remains aloof in many ways, and the fullness we wish it to be is only a vapor; too ephemeral to embrace. We count on it to be our mountain, but when it evaporates during the heat of the day, we cannot understand. We forget that it was only made of mist.


  • Sociopathic Relationships
    [Relationships] Although you may never know it, people you look up to, love, and respect could easily be sociopaths. They give themselves away by exhibiting strange combinations of controlling behaviors, such as being charismatic, calculating, extremely confident, and warmly embracing those who fall under their influence, while quickly dismissing all who disagree with them. Their ingenuous good natures and smiling faces hide sinister agendas which they disguise in their hearts as friendship and love.


  • Fighting For What's Important
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] The most tenacious fighter wins. This is true in war, politics, religion, and all aspects of human relationship.


  • Sainthood - The Two Intermediate Steps
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Have you ever wondered what makes a saint, a saint? We have heard expressions such as, "He has the patience of a saint," but what other qualities do saints have that sets them apart from us normal people, and how have they attained these qualities?


  • Seven Indicators That Meditation is About To Go Mainstream
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Although meditation is thousands of years old, it is relatively new in the west. Here in America, new ideas seem to introduce themselves at three levels. First, . . .


  • First Steps Toward Sainthood
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The first steps are not ones we typically think of; therefore, they can only be understood from a perspective of the deepest understanding of human nature. Having nothing to do with being nice, being compassionate, doing good works or feeding the poor, they involve something more subtle; which is transcending our common reactions to life. This first steps are not easy ones; otherwise, we would all be saints!


  • Religion - Last One Out, Please Close the Door
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The Gnostic Gospels could disrupt a Christian's old time faith, but if the Church father's claim of Jesus' divinity was somehow manufactured. Truth always prevails, then the whole emphasis of Christianity will at some point shift to a religion of personal training and action in order to attain the levels of enlightenment and super consciousness that Christ attained. This is a revolutionary, exciting opening; a real possibility that Christians may actually become Christ-like, which is compassionate, open-minded, peace loving, generous, loving and accepting, rather than divisive and separatists.


  • Meditation - What's In It For You?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] What can we expect to gain from meditation? Nothing, in the beginning, except for a somewhat annoying practice that always seems to get in the way of our doing something more important! If we are half-way serious about our practice, however, we will persevere, and eventually get to a point where we can stand back from the many thoughts that trouble our mind.


  • The Man Who Knew
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] One day, the two men met on the road and began talking about life and the afterlife. Soon, they discovered that they didn't agree at all, and that one of them must be wrong. Since each man was certain that he was right, the men parted company thinking that the other was crazy.


  • An Article About Nothing
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The goals of yesterday are now only mist, slowly rising from our heated ambitions, meaning nothing, marching toward that anonymity that we recognize in the pit of our being, but hide from because we are not quite ready yet. But it's harder to hide now, running out of places to hide, running out of reasons to hide. We stand naked more and more.


  • Seven Warning Signs - Is Your Organization Becoming a Cult?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] We all remember the Jim Jones tragedy, which resulted from a deadly combination - a charismatic leader who knew how to influence and control people, and weak willed followers who couldn't discriminate between fact and fiction. In the cramped confines of a cult, rationality goes out the window. The authority, which in many cases is a compelling leader, has convinced his or her flock that anyone outside of their group, or of another religion, or a different political party is destined for hell and is the enemy.


  • Made in China
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Here is a recipe for disaster: China and other Asian countries, being pressured at home by rising inflation, is forced to raise prices on all those goodies we buy at Wal-Mart, but not high enough to encourage us to compete again. This would be a formula for runaway inflation along with job shrinkage, or the perfect storm for stagflation.


  • Compromise or War - You Decide
    [Relationships] But what if we dig our heels in and never compromise? This is where many find themselves now; unwilling and deathly afraid to bend principles.


  • The Obama Phenomena
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of capital. Our rewards are in direct proportion to our efforts - no free lunch here. If you are energetic and intelligent, connected and educated, you should do fine.


  • The Third Level of Education
    [Reference-and-Education:Future-Concepts] Our schools and educators have not advanced beyond systems developed 5,000 years ago. Thought, obviously necessary to educate our children, turns out to be the problem fatale at a deeper level that keeps humanity stuck in the quasi-animal world of self-inflicted violence.


  • New Frontiers in Spirituality
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] People of all religions and spiritual persuasions are attempting to get at the root of their faiths. They are doing this by deepening their awareness and examining religious beliefs instead of just reading more books.


  • The Old and New Politics
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Something quite dramatic is happening in the political arena - a new vision nothing like the old politics of greed, hatred, and spin. Accustomed as we are to division, bickering, and animosity, this will take some getting used to and may not happen in this cycle - but it is coming.


  • Our Basic Problem
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] This is an article about the root problem that forms the basis of our many problems, from the shooter who randomly kills on campus, to the worry that plagues us daily; to the restlessness we feel when we are bored. This problem is seldom explained adequately. Tragedies are usually explained by shrugging our shoulders and guessing that a compassionate God allows these things to happen because he lovingly grants us free will.


  • Is Your Spiritual Life Working? Seven Areas to Monitor
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] These seven areas are not necessarily the ones we think of or connect to when discussing the spiritual life. They are not only unusual, but authentic measuring sticks if we truly want to determine what progress we have made. Some of the terms may be unfamiliar, but their strangeness doesn't mean that they are invalid. Actually, the opposite is true; it is when we become aware of these things in ourselves that we can say that our spirituality is progressing at very deep levels.


  • The Edible Bible
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Years ago I thought of manufacturing and selling edible Bibles. The book would be condensed, including only the most frequently quoted scriptures with pages made of a thin, wafer material similar to Catholic Holy Communion hosts. The idea was to cut out your favorite scripture and then eat it, after which it would mystically go deep inside where you would actually live that scripture.


  • A Step Beyond Positive Thinking
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] A positive attitude is a great benefit. With a positive outlook, we can psychologically reap the advantages of happiness without relying on necessarily positive results. Even if things fall apart, our positive outlook regarding how good things will be in the future keeps us satisfied. For example; if we are successful, we have been blessed. If we have bad luck, it's God's will and there is a good reason for it. Either way, with a positive attitude, we remain psychologically happy all the time. It's a win-win situation.


  • Obsession With Food - And Other Reasons Why Diets Don't Work
    [Health-and-Fitness:Popular-Diets] Counting calories, ordering special diet meals, measuring out portions - these are indications that we are remain mesmerized and captivated by food. It has taken over our entire lives with no escape; food is an addiction no different from heroin, and maybe more dangerous because we think that food is cute. Actually, when we think of all the dead little bodies of plants and animals, that slide by our teeth, it is disgusting. We must somehow end our love affair with food.


  • Meditation Practice - Managing the Insights and Energy
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] A common mistake made by new and intermediate meditators is the frittering away of the insights and energy that results naturally from meditation practice. Unless a meditator knows how to manage this energy and insight, he or she will fall into the trap of a premature re-embracing of the world. This re-embracing appears to be from a more lofty approach, but in reality is nothing more than an extension of the same delusions.


  • Future Life - But No Past Lives?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If our spirit has not lived before, from whence did it originate? Where did it come from? If we didn't have the momentum of either a collective or individual spiritual past life to propel us into this one, are we therefore only accidents of nature; random romantic moments between eggs and a sperms? Dust to dust?


  • The Donkey and the Elephant (A Fable)
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Once upon a time, in a magical land far across the sea, there lived together a donkey and an elephant. This was very difficult, because they both had such different ways. The elephant loved to trample trees and make a lot of noise, while the donkey nibbled on lowly grasses and said almost nothing.


  • A Day in the Life of a Buddhist Forest Monk (Evening)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Evenings are a blessed relief in Thailand; warm, but without the smothering heat of the day that gratefully surrenders to the night's relative coolness. If I wasn't in my solitary hut meditating in the evenings, I would be in the main hall at dusk chanting along with the other monks, or maybe sitting out in the jungle meditating (hoping to high heaven that a snake wouldn't crawl in my lap, or that a rabid village dog take a bite out of me).


  • A Day in the Life of a Buddhist Forest Monk (Afternoon)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] There might be a cremation in the afternoon. . . . The cremation fires remain busy. The first cremation I witnessed involved a small girl, six years old perhaps, so beautiful, her long, black hair combed so carefully with a pink ribbon tied on the side. She looked as if she were only sleeping.


  • A Day in the Life of a Buddhist Forest Monk (Morning)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The narrow, half-mile trail through the forest is about 930 steps, which I have counted many times on my way to the main hall. I direct my lantern a few yards ahead in case a banded krait, cobra, or Russell Viper might be lying on the path. The morning is pleasant, no torrential rains or mud today.


  • The True Purpose of a Relationship
    [Relationships] No, it's not to make babies! Although making babies is a very important consideration regarding the propagation of our species, especially in Europe and the United States where the birth rate is plummeting, it's not the prime purpose. And it's not to keep you company. Or make you financially or psychologically secure. Or to help the other person get by in life, or any other of those kindhearted, empathetic reasons.


  • What Do You Do the Day After Your Life Changes?
    [Relationships] We were afraid of losing, afraid of winning. Afraid of relationships, afraid of not having one, and we were afraid of ourselves.


  • Meditation - The Interesting Quirks of Access Samadhi
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Regarding visions; I recall four while meditating in Mckenna, Washington with Roshi Koshin. The first was three shafts of brilliant white light - a tall one, a short one, and a middle sized one - all surrounded by black space.


  • In Darkness There is Light
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] St. John of the Cross; saint and Doctor of the Catholic Church, coined the term "Dark Night of the Soul." This title is one of his poems that described his journey into spiritual development and the steps he took toward union with God. Broken down further into a Dark Night of the Senses and a Dark Night of the Spirit, his Dark Night of the Soul is a description of the psychological changes one goes through during a serious spiritual journey.


  • A Glimpse of Eternity
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Sometimes we can catch a fleeting glimpse of eternity in a wood, where the pungent odor of wet pine and a timeless stillness calms our troubled minds, for just a while. Or in a wondrous sunset, where we lose the burden of ourselves, for a precious moment. Or when something happens so suddenly and forcefully that our minds lose control, for only a second, and our concerns vanish like a morning mist.


  • Meditation Practice and the Chameleon
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] "Becoming" is a word used to describe, among other things, striving to attain states of transcendence in meditation practice. We intellectually figure out a goal, and then imagine that we have somehow attained that goal. This is the trick of a clever ego; a chameleon in the ways in which it can conceal itself.


  • A Clever Valentine's Day Gift
    [Relationships] So what will his gift be to his wife, the most important person in the world to him. What can he give her that would be better than a car, a cruise, or a box of candy? Maybe he has given her the cleverest Valentine's gift of all.


  • Crumbs From God's Table
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Endless enticements overwhelm us. They make their way into to every nook and cranny of our lives - but their allure is waning. No matter how good it gets; it's only so much, and only now are we beginning to wake up to what St. John of the Cross knew; that true happiness can only be found within, while all the worldly pleasures that we experience, we experience from without.


  • What Should We Be if We Could?
    [Self-Improvement] This is a profound question, "What should we be?" Should we be aggressive and ambitious, or compassionate and passive? Should we be a little of both? Or maybe something completely different from aggression, ambition, compassion, and passivity?


  • A Little Mid-Forties Depression?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] When we hit our mid-forties, our bodies stop fooling around and become serious about disintegrating! It can seem at times as if we age 20 years in the span of one or two years, which can be quite a shock if we have been so caught up with life that we haven't noticed the subtle, almost invisible changes going on!


  • Generation Xers Could Shake Things Up, In A Surprising Way!
    [Self-Improvement] Generation Xers, born in the sixties, seventies and eighties are not typically liberals or conservatives. Even though they may termed Reaganites, they pretty much distrust about everything that they have been taught, including spiritual values, and unlike their Boomer parents, have a disdain for any blind faith in anything, including the economic system.


  • Why $100 Probably Won't Make the World a Better Place
    [Self-Improvement] If you are a normal person, you will serve your family and your country by trying to do what's right. This necessarily involves ambition and goals while you try to solve your problems in life. As you settle into your career, whatever it turns out to be, your government in turn tries to equalize the burdens of society so that the country holds together as a cohesive unit.


  • Being In The Right Place At The Right Time
    [Self-Improvement] The underlying consciousness of the people are always in the lead. There are never great men and women, only men and women who personify the will of the people at the right time.


  • How Long Does it Take to Become Enlightened?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] When suddenly it all becomes empty; nowhere to go now, no place to hide, no one evolving. The evolution is ended; it never began. All is, as it always has been and ever shall be. No beginnings, no endings, no changes, no sufferings, no delusions. Only the void now, the endless and comforting void, where all is stillness in the chaos.


  • Spirituality - Three Requirements
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Spirituality is an innate quality we all have in various degrees. For that spiritual quality to move from an innate to an active mode, however, depends upon three things. If any of the three are missing, spiritual tendencies could be smothered by our instinctive reactions of greed, hatred, and delusion.


  • Hard Times on the Horizon?
    [Self-Improvement] As I reflected on the awful things that could happen; such as a worldwide depression that would be unprecedented in scope, I thought I caught a glimmer of some silver lining. Regardless of what happens, it might all be good.


  • Top Ten Relationship Mistakes (Complex - Part 3 of 3)
    [Relationships] Relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself in reflection. You may think that you are a certain way, but relationship will reveal the true you every time. Therefore, the real purpose of relationship is to understand yourself. Once you understand exactly what you are, then there is a real possibility of personal transformation. And personal transformation is what a successful relationship is all about.


  • Top Ten Relationship Mistakes (Advanced - Part 2 of 3)
    [Relationships] A relationship is an opportunity to give, rather than take. If one or both partners have plastered on their forehead, "What's in this for me," things will get dicey. The key to a successful relationship is always uncompromising trust, and trust encompasses many aspects of a relationship such as trusting that each partner has plastered on their head, "What's in this for my partner?"


  • Top Ten Relationship Mistakes (Initial - Part 1 of 3)
    [Relationships] If we know ahead of time the mistakes we typically make in our relationships, we might avoid some of them. This series looks at thirty of the worst, ranging from initial, to advanced, to complex.


  • When Did Church Become a Form of Entertainment?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Good friends of mine, Catholic friends, recently confessed to me. They said that although they occasionally attend their Catholic church, they have found a community church that makes them feel better. My smiling friends went on and on about their newfound community church and all the new friends and business contacts that they have made, and as they continued gushing, I found myself reflecting upon something that a great Catholic saint; St. John of the Cross, once said.


  • What Does "I Am A Christian" Mean?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] When we say that we are Green Bay Packer fans, that doesn't necessarily mean we play football. We are usually only fans; armchair quarterbacks at best. While real football players are risking their lives and sweating it out on the field, we are more than likely eating popcorn in front of our big screen TVs.


  • Looking in All the Wrong Places
    [Self-Improvement] Unfortunately, most religious practices are concerned with only the surface, conscious level; "Be good!" appeals only to our conscious awareness. We will consciously see how a good person acts and attempt to mimic that. No subconscious change takes place where our actions will be naturally good.


  • Things We'll Never Understand
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The reason we will never know some things is that these things are not knowable. They are at a completely different level of reality, a plane from which our organic minds and physical awareness can't respond.


  • Don't Worry, Be Happy?
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] So if we are unhappy, and only pretending to be happy, or wishing to be happy, then we are faking ourselves out. The the only way to get real is to discover the happiness of being unhappy, and relaxing into that, instead of fighting it.


  • Discovering Your Personal Creativity and Vision
    [Self-Improvement] Creativity and vision are what distinguish the exceptionally successful person from the ordinary person. Once creativity and vision are established, energy, passion, and leadership follow. To acquire these is surprisingly easy because we are all naturally creative and visionary. Some of us, however, have covered up our creativeness with a mind full of external trivia, and the vision that we inherently possess never gets off the ground.


  • Fulfillment, Self Expression and Compassion
    [Relationships] The subjects of this article are cherished goals. What could be more rewarding than a life fulfilled, or expressing ones deepest felt emotions and thoughts? The problem is; one person's fulfillment might be another's tragedy.


  • Eight Simple, Interactive Activities Toward Union With God
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] St. John of the Cross claimed that all the pleasures of the world are as crumbs from the table of God. Hmm, saints must be experiencing something pretty outstanding! Actually, meeting God, face-to-face in this very lifetime, no differently than the prophets of old did, is not only possible but becoming a popular pursuit for even us everyday sinners!


  • Seven Things That Can Wreck Your Life
    [Relationships] Sex ... Money ... Power ... Fame ... Good Looks ... Ambition ... Success. If any of these Seven become tangled up in the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride), look out! Otherwise, they are simply to be enjoyed, but not to bet the farm on.


  • Make the World Better Place Because You are a Part of it
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] To make sure that your future beyond this world is going to be the best it can be, make each day a little more meaningful than the last. That's it! Make each day just a little better, just an infinitesimal amount better than the last.


  • Three Simple Steps to Becoming a Compassionate Human Being
    [Self-Improvement] A mounting problem exists both in our schools and in our culture. Teens gone wild, reckless spending and irresponsibility by adults, it's all coming to fruition in an economy and culture teetering on the edge of a serious downturn.


  • Help Change the World - Change Your Socks
    [Self-Improvement] I know - it's your day off, so you drag yourself out of bed and throw on the same clothes you wore yesterday. What the heck, you'll be working around the house all day anyway, why even take a shower, you can take a shower and change clothes later. You grab some coffee, stumble into the media room and turn on the TV just in time to hear CNN complaining that congress is taking a vacation without passing any important legislation - again.


  • How Psychotherapy Possibly Gets it All Wrong
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] Maybe someday therapy will include a proactive participation where patients that are capable of relative sanity become grounded in a true reality. This would certainly benefit the patient, and create a sense of real accomplishment upon which true, compassionate professionals thrive.


  • The Secret to Winning Every Religious Argument!
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The important thing is to never lose a religious argument, and this article will tell you exactly how to do that - beginning with the first rule: Don't make the usual mistakes! The usual mistakes include circling arguments. You will be challenged on circling arguments every time because they are easy to detect and easy to dismiss.


  • Personal Transformation - What's Really Involved?
    [Self-Improvement] Just as a fire is built by lighting small twigs so that they can in turn ignite the larger branches, we make the world a better place by changing ourselves first. This change, this transformation, must be mental, because all things begin with the mind, and mind is none other than our thoughts and emotions - these rule our lives. Two universal truths rule our lives as well; the rule of change, and the rule of conflict.


  • Being Born Again is a Good Beginning!
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] Being born again is a great start, but if you are finally ready to complete this "work in progress," here are seven areas to monitor: Is there any lingering ill-will toward others that may not agree with you? Are you self-righteous? (I'm right; you're wrong!)


  • Seven Reasons We Don't Become Enlightened
    [Self-Improvement] Faith is one of the most important aspects of enlightenment; however, faith must be always balanced by wisdom and effort. This is because, unlike faith-based religions that believe, regardless of the facts, meditation opens our eyes to illusions, as well as the circumstances of human existence. This is a very good instigator of faith as well as an incentive to escape the human circumstances.


  • How We Intimidate Each Other
    [Relationships:Conflict] A Thai farmer is in a ditch planting rice in the searing, Southeast Asian heat. He is old, uneducated, ill, toothless, and his body is small and frail, weathered from years of hard labor. Is this old, useless farmer less than you? You, who are educated, beautiful, healthy, relatively young, strong, and live in the most advanced country in the world?


  • Why We War Over Religion
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The statement, "I am a Buddhist" smacks of pride. We are proud of what we are. On the other hand, it's difficult to be proud of being loving, or caring, or peaceful. The ego only builds itself through creating conflict, and then winning that conflict, therefore, conflict is the important thing. This is why religions have always resulted in conflict; it's not the religion's fault, but the nature of human beings.


  • Christian Meditation - Phase Two
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Contemporary Christians are discovering the deeper aspects of meditation. Previously, many Christians who have experimented with meditation misunderstood the real benefits of meditation by mistakenly believing that meditation is simply a relaxation technique, or a way to think about and worship God.


  • Meditation - 11 Reasons Why People Begin
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Men and women, seeking spiritual answers they can't seem to find in Western culture or traditional religious pathways, are trying meditation. A large (and growing) number of people are taking up the practice, including open-minded Christians and undocumented millions of seekers who are unaffiliated but have privately taken up meditation for personal growth or physical relief. From relaxation, to healing, to restructuring personal lives, meditation has become a hot topic.


  • Life is a Ball! Or is It?
    [Self-Improvement] You never thought about how this experience of life hangs on such a thin thread, how heavily it depends on your physical senses. And now you understand, but it is too late; you have not prepared yourself, and this is beyond what you can manage. The isolation is unbearable.


  • What is Heaven?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Some people get a glimpse of where they are headed just before they die. My sister-in-law did.


  • Shopping at the Spirituality Supermarket
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Sometimes we can feel as if we are in a spirituality supermarket, everything looks so good, so enticing. We put a little of this in our baskets and a little of that . . . and check out. We go home, try a little of this and a little of that, and have lots of fun. Everything is interesting and keeps us busy and absorbed, and we really believe that we are making some kind of transformation.


  • Seven Indicators That Your Life is About to Take a Turn
    [Self-Improvement] Life seems to take turns suddenly, but there are always signs... It's just not working out the way you had planned. Even when it does work out the way you plan, it still doesn't work out . . . somehow.


  • Calculate Your Candidate Based on the Issues
    [Self-Improvement] This is fun! Just score each issue, add up your score, and see who's your man... or woman!


  • Five Things That Hold Us Back in Life, Love and the Afterlife
    [Self-Improvement:Goal-Setting] Other than outright bad luck and unforeseen circumstances, whenever we fail to reach our goals, it's a good bet that one of these five culprits had a hand in it. Taking our eye off the ball: The easiest way to get sidetracked from our goals is to become distracted by a good time. A "good time" usually involves a pleasurable experience that seems to be more fun than our goal, and it always has to do with our 6 senses -- our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body pleasures, and mental escapades.


  • Eightfold Path and You (Part 8 of 8 - Right Concentration)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The Buddha is talking about deep stages of concentration meditation, called jhanas. In beginning meditation, the mind is still caught up in the busyness with thoughts gone wild, and one practices by applying initial application, which is a continual application of the mind to a meditation object. The mind holds the meditation object for a moment, but soon the mind drifts away from the meditation object (for example, the breath), and it and begins to daydream again. Therefore, the initial application must repeated time and again, over and over.


  • Ten Benefits of Meditation
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] This is an opportunity to explore your own inner world, and possibly understand what spiritual enlightenment and coming face-to-face with God is all about. Instead of merely reading about enlightenment, you can actually work toward it. It is an amazing road, which is ultimately ineffable yet arguably the most important thing one can do for oneself and all other beings. It's where great things for humankind begin.


  • Eightfold Path and You (Part 7 of 8 - Right Mindfulness)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Trying to alter our reactions to life by trying to change ourselves through a new religion, or a new outlook of some kind, are still only playing with life's symptoms rather than understanding the core problem. To get to the core requires a revolution inside our hearts.


  • Whispers of the New Christianity
    [News-and-Society:Religion] This will be a new awakening, and an exciting inner journey. It will begin, and actually has begun, as a grass roots movement, a changing consciousness within Christianity.


  • Eightfold Path and You (Part 6 of 8 - Right Effort)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Right effort always involves balance - not too strong, not too weak; just right. If we try to storm heaven, we will find some kind of heaven all right - but not the real one - we will overshoot the real one.


  • Buddhists - What Do They Believe?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Growing up in the Catholic tradition, I believe that I can understand some of the feelings that Christians, Muslims, and Jews might have about people who don't believe in a creator God! And Buddhists are guilty!


  • Who Wants to be a Coward?
    [Relationships] When we read books or articles on how we can improve, or self-help books that tell us how we can help ourselves, we are in a twilight zone of assumptions and speculation. To get real, all we need to do is look at ourselves - what we are doing now and how were we acting yesterday - this is where we learn.


  • Eightfold Path and You (Part 4 of 8 - Right Action)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] For a Buddhist, action characterizes karma, so Right Action involves our karma not only in this lifetime, but past lifetimes and future lifetimes as well. A Buddhist defines karma as a record of our actions that continues after death, but unlike a Christian soul, the karma is impersonal, and never eternal.


  • Worry - Who Needs It?
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] Why is it that some people, with the same pressures and concerns as ours worry not at all while we wring our hands constantly? What do they know that we don't? This would be important information for us, wouldn't it?


  • How Can I Deepen My Spirituality?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] "You learn that if you sit down in the woods and wait, something happens." - Henry David Thoreau.


  • Eightfold Path and You (Part 2 of 8 - Right Thought - Goals)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Those kinds of goals protect us until we can achieve the real goal, the goal of goalessness. As the Buddha once said; his Four Noble Truths and his Eightfold Path are merely methods in which we travel from this shore to the other. Once we arrive at that other shore, which is enlightenment, we no longer need to carry the methods on our backs, just as we wouldn't carry a raft on our backs once we traverse the river. Then we are free.


  • The Stifling, Claustrophobic, Neurotic Results of Religion
    [Relationships] The horrible slayings at the New Life Evangelical Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the suicide of the young shooter is a heartrending and sad story. To me, his emails prior to the tragedy begged for help, as he apparently found himself enclosed in a world that left him with no room to breathe or even think on his own.


  • Eightfold Path and You (Part 1 of 8 - Right Understanding)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The Buddha was called the great physician. In his quintessential teaching: The Four Noble Truths, he took us under his wing, as a good doctor should, to care for his favorite patients. In his First Truth, he diagnosed us as being very ill. In his second, he explained exactly what was making us ill. The Third Truth went on to say that there was definitely a cure for our disease, and the Fourth prescribed the medicine - The Eightfold Path.


  • The Four Noble Truths (Part 4 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Once this inquiry begins in earnest, our lives begin to change. Every aspect of our lives, in their many details, begins to change, and suddenly, we find ourselves walking the eightfold path without even knowing it.


  • How to Be a Hero
    [Self-Improvement] What are those unique qualities we call bravery; those almost subconscious qualities that we can't readily put our fingers on whenever we see a hero in action, but somehow recognize every time someone does something out of the ordinary? It's almost as if what they do is superhuman, yet their qualities are far from that, they are qualities we all have to one degree or another - it's only a matter of perfecting them.


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 7 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Who knows where decisions come from, or which decisions lead to delusion. We can only go as far as our karma permits us, and then maybe push that envelope just a little.


  • The Four Noble Truths (Part 3 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] It's a matter of either accepting life as a never-ending struggle where we mechanically seek pleasure by attempting to satisfy our sense desires constantly, or discovering exactly where that struggle begins. Simply put, when we stop wanting, we stop suffering, but to stop wanting is not easy because the resulting empty spot hurts.


  • Buddhism - What is It?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] What exactly is Buddhism? A religion? A philosophy? Actually, Buddhism is a religion, but then again, it really isn't! Is Buddhism a philosophy? Yes and no!


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 6 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Whatever it was, it was on my porch breathing heavily. I slowly cracked open the door to have a look, being extremely cautious, after all, the whole kuti shook like an earthquake when it came up the steps! What I saw made me quickly close the door and think, "what the hell is that"? I had never seen anything like it in my life!


  • The Four Noble Truths (Part 2 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The self will generally crave three important things. Second Noble Truth: (The origin of suffering) "It is craving which gives rise to further rebirth and, bound up with pleasure and lust, finds ever fresh delight, now here, now there - to wit, the sensual craving, the craving for existence, and the craving for non-existence.


  • How Shall We Choose to Live?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The question is; how many bottom liners could read what was just written and not laugh out loud? This is where we are in the world today with all of our fantastic advances. Is the human spirit and soul being destroyed in the process?


  • The Rich Man and the Beggar
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] And the rich man stops for a moment, he doesn't know why, and looks into the beggars eyes. The rich man has never done this before.


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 5 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I listened closely with my heart in stop mode, but there were no further sounds... except for heavy breathing, and it wasn't human breathing. Whatever came up my steps was now silently waiting on my porch, and this was eerie.


  • The Four Noble Truths (Part 1 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The Buddha would have made a great CEO. He was all "bottom line," and the bottom line was freedom, or enlightenment. If something didn't contribute to this directly, then he didn't teach it.


  • Nothing Matters - Unless it Matters
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Janet and I were training in a Zen monastery back in the seventies when a Zen master said "Nothing matters." My reaction at the time was, "This Zen master is crazy! If nothing matters," I thought, "what in the hell were we doing here living like recluses when we could be enjoying ourselves?"


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 4 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] These words and visions didn't really fall into the realm of normal existence. You would have to experience them to see what I mean. They indicated that much more is going on than my limited physical senses could detect. To believe that there is nothing out there except what we can perceive must be the ultimate conceit of a self-enclosed, runaway ego!


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 3 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] He was an interesting monk, his three-page letter back to me was hand printed and spaced with such precision that I was positive it was done with a fancy computer font, but upon close examination (under a magnifying glass years later), sure enough, tiny microscopic dissimilarities could be seen between the characters. A monk's routine in rural Thailand varied little no matter where he stayed.


  • The Ultimate Gift for Christmas
    [Home-and-Family:Holidays] But what about the people who seemingly don't have the capacity to give any of these, or anything for that matter - the downtrodden, the ones with the slow minds or disturbed souls that cannot cope with this life of ours in the fast lane? What about them? What do they have to offer? What they have to offer is the ultimate gift.


  • 88 Percent of Evangelical Children Leave the Church After High School
    [News-and-Society:Religion] This quote from Monday Morning Insight indicates what we are faced with. What are we doing wrong? Perhaps nothing. Our traditional reaction has been: Burn the Harry Potter Books! Quickly!


  • Galileo, the Catholic Scientist
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] We can almost picture Galileo in his laboratory, surrounded by globes, charts, and telescopes, struggling with a faith that dismissed everything his logical mind was telling him. Should he continue with this heresy, or should he give in to the Churchs' wishes and stop this nonsense. He was gambling with his eternal life.


  • Cooperative Games for Children
    [Home-and-Family:Crafts-Hobbies] Janet and I decided play a little tennis recently to get a cardio workout. The last time we played was almost 30 years ago when we first met, so we knew the fundamentals but were, to say the least, a bit rusty! At 56 and 66 respectively, Janet and I aren't exactly Serena Williams and Roger Federer!


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 2 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] My kuti was deep in the forest, about a half-mile from the main hall and situated on the upper end of a massive, flat rock. There were large flat rocks on both sides, with deep ravines separating them (havens for cobras), and surrounding everything was dense jungle


  • Ten Best, Inexpensive Gifts For The Holidays
    [Shopping-and-Product-Reviews:Gifts] Here are ten great, innovative ideas for your holiday season. They are not expensive, you can find them almost anywhere, and they will be remembered long after the holidays are only a fond memory. (For the ones that are very hard to please!)


  • Getting Over Yourself - A Big Relief!
    [Self-Improvement:Motivation] We all seek power. We try to push ourselves up and in the process, many times attempt to push others down. It might begin with a feeling that we have been wronged, which means that our ego has been hurt, and in order to right things we might begin a verbal confrontation with the offending party. This is called revenge, and although it has been said that revenge is sweet, it is never long-lived.


  • Meditating in 1997 Thailand (Part 1 of 7)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Janet made herself right at home in Thailand again, living out in the jungle with nothing but a small bamboo platform and a mosquito net. Her meditation deepened quickly, walking for hours back and forth alongside her little "tent," and somehow protected from the cobras that roamed the gardens that she weeded.


  • Meditating in New Zealand (Part 6 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Then, one day the phone rang, and I had a strange feeling -it was the nursing home. The nurse on the other end sounded sad, and said that nothing more could be done for my mother; the congestive heart failure was about to take her, and it would be best if we came as soon as possible..


  • You Might Be a Psychopath If
    [Relationships] if you have poor judgment and failure to learn from experience. (Wow, all of our teenagers are psychopaths. And most voters!)


  • Meditating in New Zealand (Part 5 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I stopped dead in my tracks. My blood ran cold and chills ran up and down my spine; something supernatural was taking place... she already knew that dad was gone.


  • Going Around in Circles
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] This morning, Janet and I were taking our three-mile walk around our neighborhood when we met another couple walking in the opposite direction. The woman smiled and said in passing, "Ever feel that you're going around in circles?" I looked back over my shoulder and quipped, "That's life!" Then I glanced at some grass on a neighbor's lawn and this article formed in my mind.


  • Meditating in New Zealand (Part 4 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I vowed to hold both my parents' hands when they drew their last breath no matter the inconvenience to my life, and as things turned out, it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. It was something that's done with no thought of personal advantage, just something that would help another human being feel that he or she was not alone when their time came.


  • Religious Intolerance - Why It Happens To Us
    [News-and-Society:Religion] We all run so swiftly, dashing here and there, and only when we tarry do our fears begin as we cower in our shadowy places. We know, deep down, that life is but a slender thread, easily broken, and we protect this precious life of ours whichever way we can, even in our projections of when it is gone.


  • Meditating in New Zealand (Part 3 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] In this spiritual life, everything was there always at the precise time that I required it, but never before, and I discovered that I must really need it, yet never count on it. And when it wasn't there, then I learned my greatest lessons of life.


  • Meditating in New Zealand (Part 2 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] These experiences often triggered emotions, where I would weep as an astonishing joy lifted me to heights I never realized existed . . . Everything was gone, then there was the brightness, then the incredible clarity . . .


  • 12 Metaphysical Questions and Answers
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If there is a god, he, she, or it, or neither he, she, nor it, would not exist. A god could never be caught within the fabric of existence as we are. A god is Reality, unborn, uncreated, undying, and therefore could not exist, and therefore since we exist, we cannot be real.


  • Looking for God's Face
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] At the end of a rainbow, And the start of the journey. And the end of a lifetime, With the last breath of your one and only.


  • Meditating in New Zealand (Part 1 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The Wellington weather was worse than Washington State or the U.K. The rain was intense, unremitting, and usually came down sideways in sheets, making my nocturnal trek from the meditation hall up the mountainside to my cabin a study in courage to say the least. Then one miserable night it happened - halfway up, my flashlight went out.


  • God and the Green Bay Packers!
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] From the bible, we learn all kinds of things about God. What we don't know about God, however, is things like; what does He do on Sunday afternoons? Since we are created in His likeness, He must like the same things we do. Doesn't that make sense? So, He must like football games! Go Packers!


  • Meditating in the Forest (Part 6 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Leaving the protection of the wat at this fledgling stage of our practice was setting us up for headaches. People would call us stupid and useless back in the States and we would be scorned by those of every walk of life.


  • True Seekers That We Are
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] With every generation, a handful of hearty souls are willing to give up everything for this quest to find enlightenment, or God, and when they do, everything else pales for them. To most of us, God is an abstract thing, so isn't it curious that we fight over our differences concerning God?


  • War and Peace - How We Lose Our Happiness
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] War is the opposite of peace. When we say that we wage war in order to secure the peace, this is delusion, this is being ignorant of the truth of the moment, which is war, and replacing it with an ideal for the future, which is peace. It is a shell game.


  • Meditating in the Forest (Part 5 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Can real love be directed toward only one person? Surely it can't. If it flows at all, its unconditionally would have to encompass every creature, unlike clinging love that confines and limits, where I might think that I love one but then hate another.


  • A Million Ways to Find God (Part 1 of 1,000,000)
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Who knows, we might begin changing a "me" world, into a "we" world? (Part 2 coming soon!) One good way to find God is to lose yourself! Which is easier said than done, because in order to lose yourself, you must first discover what your "self" is! Once that discovery is made, then you can decide which is more important; yourself... or God?


  • Meditating in the Forest (Part 4 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I found myself coming closer to the truth I so desperately sought, but could clearly see how my mind tenaciously continued to resist, making every previous fight I have ever been in seem like child's play. I struggled to deepen my meditation.


  • Holi-Daze - Is Here Again!
    [News-and-Society:Religion] It all began in our childhood, when our minds were filled with Santas and Rudolphs, snow and pine trees, holly and gingerbread men . . . and actually, it hasn't changed much since then. We still overload our senses and our stomachs during this over-the-top season, overeating, overstressing, and over reacting to what proves to be only a temporary escape, as we look back at it from the dark days of February (when the credit card bills come in)!


  • Meditating in the Forest (Part 3 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I experienced many precious moments in Thailand where fear could not find me, moments during which everything in this beautiful forest was perfect. Tomorrow, there might be fear, but so be it; that moment would be perfect as well, because I learned that wherever I was - that is exactly where I must be.


  • The Next Election Will Be About Fear
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Everything built up will fall, and all that falls will rise again - this could be called the cycle of existence. When things are about to fall in this cycle, there are premonitions that wash through our hearts, and the premonitions have definite signs...


  • Now That She's Gone
    [Relationships] It's too quiet now. No one there to say, "HI Babe; how was your day?" Just the mocking silence.


  • The Pause That Refreshes!
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Tired of the same ol' same ol' - the political rhetoric, the condemnation of others, and the double standards? Tired of leaving your place of worship angrier than when you when in? Tired of having to believe what someone else insists that you believe, read what they tell you to read, and only watch the "approved" movies or TV shows?


  • Meditating in the Forest (Part 2 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] What was it that was keeping me from freedom? Not conventional freedom - traveling the world, or doing whatever I pleased - but freedom from myself?


  • Affirmations - What Are They?
    [Self-Improvement:Affirmations] "I am the greatest!" If we repeat this affirmation to ourselves enough times, we will begin to believe it. Then we will begin to act out "Being the greatest," and soon, in our mind, we will be. It doesn't matter what we repeat, it's the repeating that counts, sort of an internal brainwashing.


  • Play Your Own Guitar
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Learning to play our instrument flawlessly is very important. We should be aware of the sound that it makes and how the sound affects others. Is it pleasant, soothing, putting others to sleep, is it harsh and abrasive, causing them to close their ears and walk away, or is it perhaps mysterious and intriguing, so that others become interested and want to hear more? But more importantly, is the sound true?


  • Meditating in the Forest (Part 1 of 6)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I walked outside and began cleaning my bowl in the stream alongside a Thai novice that had seen what happened. He looked at me with a mischievous smile, and what he said I will never forget...


  • Untangling the Tangles
    [Relationships:Conflict] No, this is not an article about dissolving a third marriage! This is about untying the knots that we make in our minds. Whenever we tie ourselves to someone or something, we make a knot. Over time, these knots accumulate, and our minds become nothing but large balls of tangled twine.


  • A Road Less Travelled
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] So what is this road less traveled? Maybe it is time to speculate, because we will be hearing a lot more about roads less travelled in the future.


  • Oh No! What if Peace Breaks Out?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] I'm afraid peace just wouldn't work. For one thing, what would we watch on CNN or FOX? It's all pretty boring without a good televised war, I mean, fires and hurricanes don't cut it, they never live up to a good, live shooting war. What drama, huh?


  • Understanding Ourselves
    [Self-Improvement] How do we go about understanding ourselves? This is a very important question because if we don't understand ourselves, how are we going to change?


  • Christian Meditation - Why It's Becoming Popular
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Of course, some just wait around for God to bless them with grace. This is fine, but if you find that your worries and concerns are not abating, and that your life is becoming more complicated and stressed rather than simplified and content, maybe God is waiting for you to get off your duff and take some action yourself; to show Him that you are willing to go that extra mile! You know, "God helps those that help themselves, etc."


  • Hurt, Loneliness and Lies - What's Behind Them?
    [Relationships] Some people don't need other people for stimulation. They have their research, their profession, or some other pastime that keeps their mind busy. Others need people, but not people who bore them; they need people who stimulate them.


  • Meditation Can Help Depression
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] WASHINGTON (AP) -"People who tend to the elderly, change diapers, and serve up food and drinks have the highest rates of depression among U.S. workers. Overall, 7 percent of full-time workers battled depression in the past year, according to a government report..."


  • Do It Yourself Series # 24 - Build an Ego in Three Days!
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] HINT: To complete the job, we also must plant something around the edges that will enhance the ego, such as a little envy or pride, or a nice grouping of judging and comparing, which works well for that very important overall look.


  • Test Your Faith (Take the Quiz)
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Find out how strong you faith really is! Score your answers as follows...


  • More Adventures of a Buddhist Monk and Nun (Part 4 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] I would find myself struggling to hold back tears. Something in Thailand went directly to my heart, and although my mind could not discern what it was, my heart felt it, and I found myself becoming emotional quite often. With the exception of an episode or two at the Abbey, I had never felt this level of awe and wonder in the States.


  • The Seven Levels of the Bible
    [News-and-Society:Religion] They say the Bible has seven levels. If the level at which one understands the bible determine one's status in the next world, or heaven, one's understanding is very important. So, at what level do you understand the Bible?


  • How to Beat Loneliness
    [Relationships] And you know it's there. That's what's so frightening. No matter what you do, you know it's there, waiting -- at the end of the road. And no matter how long that road is, no road is long enough; you may be married fifty years, but at the end, there could be crushing loneliness.


  • How to Change the World - You and I
    [Relationships] We are the world. You and I. How we treat each other; with respect or hatred, how we work things out together and compromise, this will determine the future of humankind. Can you see this? We are the world.


  • More Adventures of a Buddhist Monk and Nun (Part 3 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If that wasn't strange enough, there was something even stranger about this baby. Whenever I entered the dark sala in the wee hours of the morning to light the candles, I could swear, in the dim glow of my lantern, that at first glance the baby was staring at me with its eyes wide open!


  • How to Uncover the 5 Hidden Lies
    [Relationships] To begin with, lying is when we say something that is blatantly not true. "Did you steal the car?" "NO!" These kinds of deliberate lies usually come to mind when we say that we never lie. However, there are other "lies" that we commit, that might go completely unnoticed by even the one that is doing the lying!


  • Judging Others - What's Behind It?
    [Self-Improvement:Anger-Management] What I just said may not register with a person who is in a present judgmental state of mind, simply because the person may be escaping their own problems by focusing on someone else whom they are judging. Fear, the basis of anger, is always connected with the past or future.


  • More Adventures of a Buddhist Monk and Nun (Part 2 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] I stumbled along for awhile, half-asleep, and was about to take a step when I glimpsed a leaf moving. I threw myself into meditation that night, not sleeping at all.


  • More Adventures of a Buddhist Monk and Nun (Part 1 of 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] One early morning, in the shadowy darkness just before the beginnings of dawn, I was doing some walking meditation in the back of the sala (meditation hall) when I felt as if I had stepped on a hot needle! I had no doubt that a snake had crawled into the sala and nailed me.


  • 2012 AD - The End?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] But then again... there is an almost palpable feeling that something big is about to happen, and maybe this is the real basis of our out of control anger, because what might be about to happen could foster the greatest of fears.


  • Metaphysics, Politics, and Religion
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Metaphysical arguments go nowhere, no different from political or religious ones! What does make a difference, however, is how we treat each other. I may be a Buddhist and you may be a Christian, yet if we both treat each other with respect, how crazy can that be?


  • Four Degrees of Evil
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] As I thought about the fate of these baby alligators, I couldn't help but reflect on something that St. John of the Cross said back in the 16th century. Something about how the world grabs us, and once it does, how our fate is sealed.


  • Religious Terrorism
    [News-and-Society:Religion] These are the facts, no matter how we sugarcoat them. Look into your own mind and admit how you feel about other religions, especially strident ones who insist it's their way or the highway! We like to think that we simply feel sorry for the ones who don't understand "the truth," as "we" do, but really, we hate anyone who dares go against our beliefs.


  • Should We Question Authority?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Some people, however, have a natural contempt for authority. They are labeled antisocial at best, and treasonous at worst, but this never stops them - the first inkling of unfairness and they go into action. They seem to have their antennas out all the time, looking for an excuse to rebel.


  • How to Stop Worrying in Ten Minutes!
    [Self-Improvement:Stress-Management] Worry is simmering fear. In the old days, we would just run like hell when we were scared, but nowadays, we bubble away in our little pots of worry.


  • The Most Important Person in the World
    [Relationships] Some say that moms are the most important people in the world, after all, where would we be without moms? And dads too. We wouldn't be at all!


  • A Good Deed Never Goes Unpunished!
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] Performing any deed, good or bad, has repercussions. A bad deed obviously sets us up for a load of bad karma - and bad luck. But how could a good deed, that sets us up for good karma, punish us?


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 7 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] The rain that had begun as barely a trickle was now a torrent. The vast heavens again opening their floodgates to unleash angry clouds and storms that drove across menacing, slate-gray skies, and with crashing thunder and blinding lightening as my solitary companions, I returned to my hut.


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 6 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] I vividly recall the fire becoming extremely hot once the branches were lit, and in only moments, her shiny black hair sizzled, and then was gone. Next, the skin on her face blistered, and was gone as well, exposing the white skull underneath. The little body blackened quickly, its limbs curling up into a fetal position, and then it began cooking.


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 5 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] After the fire got roaring again, we gathered some large, dead leaves to protect our hands and carefully picked up the infant's hot, small, half-cremated torso, and placed it back on the fire. The contact with the monks at the Zen monastery in California, our experiences with the monks and nuns here in Thailand


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 4 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] This was not Bangkok, where city monks took on the robes only to gain merit for relatives, or for reasons other than dedicating their lives to meditation and enlightenment. This was the real-deal at Wat Pah Nanachat, and I wondered if the stories of narrow escapes with death at these wats were exaggerated. I had a funny feeling we were about to find out.


  • Purpose, and the Religious Left
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Christianity in America is beginning to lean left, where, arguably, Jesus stands - toward love, harmony and cooperation - instead of hatred , division, dissonance, and contention.


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 3 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] The smiling British monk wished me luck, then turned and disappeared down the trail. I waved, while at the same time glancing nervously in all directions for signs of snakes, scorpions, or mad dogs, and then made myself at home in my little kuti, that to me was more beautiful than a mansion with gold-plated faucets.


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 2 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] The ancient train clicked and clacked grudgingly through Bangkok's innards, miles of dilapidated buildings leaning toward the rickety tracks, populated with on-the-edge people surviving on next to nothing, with many of the old and infirm sitting hopelessly beside their makeshift dwellings, waiting for what? Death perhaps?


  • Life in a Thai Monastery (Part 1 of 7)
    [Travel-and-Leisure] My sheltered, middle-class yuppie concepts were being shattered in the naked reality that was Thailand, and the cold truth, that Janet could die here, hit me in the pit of my stomach. I promised myself that I would not let that happen.


  • The Internet of Our Mind
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] Thoughts get in the way when we first attempt to access the internet of our mind. Think of them as spam. Then, the thoughts calm down, and we begin to see something beyond those thoughts, beyond imagination, but now we need firewalls.


  • A Flower
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] This morning, I walked through my garden as usual, but the sunlight on the flowers was different, so extraordinarily brilliant. And suddenly, I realized that the sun was falling on me too.


  • Oil and Monks Don't Mix! (Part 3 of 3)
    [Business:Ethics] One day I looked at the creek that ran through the property and noticed that everything in it, all the frogs and fish and water spiders, were dead. Soon, drilling and fracking rigs were running up and down the newly cut-in roads, popping in wells every couple of acres.


  • Oil and Monks Don't Mix! (Part 2 of 3)
    [Business:Ethics] Before we knew it, however, bulldozers were cutting roads through the hardwoods and depositing the downed trees in huge piles near our trailer, providing firewood for the winters. It was exciting, but we had misgivings as we watched the dozers.


  • Oil and Monks Don't Mix! (Part 1 of 3)
    [Business:Ethics] After being questioned, rather roughly, we were left sitting in an interrogation room with the door locked, and we thought for sure that we would never see the Good ol' States again. We weren't drug dealers - honest!


  • The Question
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] When we hit middle age or thereabouts, it's not unusual to begin asking questions. Before that, we are busy with kids, careers, and all the things that, as we become older, begin slipping through our fingers like water - without our even realizing it at times.


  • Anatomy of a Spiritual Illness (Part 5 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Regardless of the illness, however, and perhaps because of it, my willpower mysteriously intensified and became stronger than ever. I now understood with my heart that nothing of this world would ever satisfy me again, and I was determined to find truth no matter the cost, and was willing to risk my life a hundred times over if need be; my determination had become that powerful.


  • Five Roots of Religious Intolerance
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Arguing religion or politics is tantamount to beating one's head against a concrete wall, or so they say, and when I scan the online public posts at the end of controversial articles, I can only agree.


  • When I Meditate
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] When I am meditating, I am alone. No one else is here, but I am never lonely. My desires fade, my interests in the world die away, my heart lightens. The conflicts of the human race, they don't touch me here;


  • Anatomy of a Spiritual Illness (Part 4 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] A week later I found myself lying on his table, as he passed small vials of assorted substances over my chest... My meditation practice at this time actually instilled some lucidity, and this clarity kept growing until I really could see with new eyes.


  • Why I'm Not Rich
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] This is the indication I got while watching one of the financial cable channels recently. "Do you have enough money for retirement?" "Are you using your money to its best advantage?" Don't be left behind while others are becoming wealthy!


  • Anatomy of a Spiritual Illness (Part 3 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] He warned that I must stop practicing meditation immediately or risk killing myself, but then consoled me by saying that not everything about this illness was bad. Three different doctors checked me out, scratched their heads, and couldn't come up with a diagnosis.


  • Heartaches at First Sight
    [Relationships] We meet someone, like them, want to see them again, and soon we are forming a deep relationship. This seems like a very natural, innocuous, and innocent thing to do, and we do it every day. What we seldom realize, however, is that we are also forming a psychological attachment.


  • Anatomy of a Spiritual Illness (Part 2 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Are life's disappointments connected to expectations? I dreamed about how it should be - and when it wasn't, my sense of fairness in some strange way seemed violated. What would it be like to have no expectations? Dull? Perhaps boring? Maybe I enjoyed my roller coaster trip of vicissitudes, and subconsciously caused them myself just for the ride. But what happens when the excitement stops? I was about to find out.


  • Anatomy of a Spiritual Illness (Part 1 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The emergency room was packed, and I had to wait an interminably long time. About three hours later, a male nurse wheeled me into an examining room and hooked up an EKG. He glanced at the tape and said, "Wow! Stay cool man, I'll get some help!"


  • When I Was a Hippie (Part 5 of 5)
    [Relationships] I was climbing mountains of mist, or so it seemed. New relationships, different clothes, jobs, houses, towns - holding on, letting go, waiting . . . for something.


  • When I Was a Hippie (Part 4 of 5)
    [Relationships] I finally reached town, and brazenly walked into a bank; full beard, dirty clothes, mismatched socks and all, and talked them into letting me make a collect phone call to Janet. . . . No answer; phone disconnected. Oh no!


  • When I Was a Hippie (Part 3 of 5)
    [Relationships] Late one night, not long after the roach episode, we woke up to the sound of a chopper overhead and somebody yelling, "Eat your stash, eat your stash," referring to our personal supplies of psychedelic mushrooms. The Tennessee National Guard and the Tennessee State Police were raiding our commune!


  • When I Was a Hippie (Part 2 of 5)
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] Well, I thought it was all over for this bunch of hippies. The cops usually had no compassion for druggies, and when the driver dove back into the van and rummaged through the glove box looking for non-existent papers, mumbling that we would all have to get out, I knew we were finished!


  • When I Was a Hippie (Part 1 of 5)
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] A couple of miles later I was still walking and I wondered if I might have taken the wrong road - again. But then ahead I could see a rundown garage-type building in the middle of nowhere. God! This wasn't The Farm, was it?


  • The Weight of the World
    [Self-Improvement:Stress-Management] Our hearts have flown away, to a place of which we cannot speak, but a place where the weight of the world is no more. And this is where we dwell.


  • Eat When You Are Hungry, Sleep When You Are Tired
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] When we set goals, which limit us to time, it is as if we plan out our lives from some lifeless set of blueprints; a draft that we can never deviate from no matter how our vision of life expands. Actually, goals prevent our vision from expanding, because goals are always set by yesterday’s mind, and all our yesterdays are dead


  • If You Are Not Happy Now, You Never Will Be
    [Relationships] The greatest charity, the greatest gift we can give, is giving up ourselves. When we can do that, we will have an incorruptible happiness in our hearts, simply because no matter what happens to us, we no longer count, only the other counts. Can we look beyond our egos to see the logic in this?


  • The God Question (Part 3 of 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] Therefore, he never said that God neither exists or doesn't exist, only that whether God exists or not matters not at all, what matters is our understanding of ourselves, which is so hard to look at.


  • The God Question (Part 2 of 3)
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] This all came as a terrible shock to the sheltered young man who had been shielded from life's realities by his father, for his father feared that the young man's exposure to the realities of human existence would cause his intelligent son to quickly see through the illusions of wealth and power, and embrace the spiritual life. As it turned out, his fathers fears were well founded!


  • Catching a Falling Knife, or - Advice to a Serious Meditator
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The kilesas are very clever. You might think that your valuables are put away in a safe, but the kilesas know all the combinations to all of your safes, and will steal your things without your even noticing.


  • Mother Teresa May have Gone Through These Seven Stages
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The growing soul needs much courage here. There will be many trials and tribulations. There will be opposition from others, i.e., praise, which becomes a trial, severe illnesses, fears of being on the wrong track or rejected by God, anxiety and depression. This can be sprinkled with delights as well, however, and there is also much joy and humility, and a rejection of things of the world.


  • The God Question
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] Many Christians wonder if Buddhists believe in God, an interesting and relevant question and one that I will attempt to address here. To give you a little background of the culture into which the Buddha was born, well have to go back 5,000 years to the cradle of the great civilizations.


  • What Being Harmless Means
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] When I first arrived in Thailand in 1981, the profuse tropical flowers gracing the forest enchanted me. I couldn't help myself and had to pick a few every day to adorn my kuti (hut) with their subtle fragrance.


  • A Question of Values
    [Self-Improvement:Techniques] Our values define who and what we are. Values could be defined as beliefs in which we have an emotional investment.


  • Is Your Life Unbalanced? Seven Signs
    [Health-and-Fitness:Alternative] It's important to balance our lives because an unbalanced life is full of risks. If we become so busy that we become lost in petty details and lose our perspective of the overall quality of our lives, it's only a matter of time before this lack of attention seriously affects our mental and physical well-being.


  • Three Gateways to Freedom
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] These very special gateways are usually spurned by just about everybody. When the gateways conspicuously pop up in our lives, as they regularly do, we do back-flips to get rid of them. They are distasteful, in some ways frightening, and make us feel absolutely miserable. So why should we bother discussing them at all?


  • Low Cost Health Insurance
    [Health-and-Fitness:Alternative] Proactive things we can do in the face of health care costs that are escalating out of control.


  • The Wrong Way to Enter a Zen Monastery! (Part 5 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Of the many things I learned at Shasta, the most penetrating was this whole idea about life, and how life involves going beyond limitations - the restrictions that I only place on myself.


  • The Wrong Way to Enter a Zen Monastery! (Part 4 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] "Another shitty day," I said, under my breath (more to myself than to my monk friend). He turned the water off for a moment and joined me at the window, looking out at the rain-drenched forest. "It's the only one I have," he whispered to himself.


  • The Wrong Way to Enter a Zen Monastery! (Part 3 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Only much later in life did Janet's sister divulge how their mother would go into their tiny utility room in their government-subsidized project house and pound the floor with a hammer, so that the children wouldn't hear her screams when the pain became unbearable.


  • The Wrong Way to Enter a Zen Monastery! (Part 2 of 5)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] I dashed off a letter to Janet revealing my whereabouts and inviting her to join me, but I addressed it just "Rock". I didn't want the mailroom at the Abbey to know her name (I had a plan).


  • The Wrong Way To Enter A Zen Monastery! (Part 1)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The spiritual life sometimes begins with unlikely candidates, in unlikely situations! Not long after Janet and I made our dash out west in 1978, the bill collectors got serious about my wild spending. They repossessed my car, harassed me at the furniture store where I was working, and made my life as miserable as only they know how.


  • Natural Cures for Constipation and Diarrhea (Don't Try These at Home!)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Alternative] The jungle was pitch-black that time of night when all kinds of things crawl around, and with no convenient change of clothes...


  • A Glass Half-Full
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] If in this thinking process we envision a favorable result of our problem solving, this is called positive thinking, but during the actual process of problem solving, we are in conflict - we must be; otherwise, there would be no need to think at all, we would just act!


  • Credit Without Cash Backing It Up Spells Depression!
    [Finance:Personal-Finance] Turn on the TV for a few minutes and 20 commercials later, really look at each commercial to see how smooth lying can be - and how increasingly accepting we are of being lied to. We know that the car advertised for $12,000 doesn't exist, and that it really costs $18,000, but what the heck, with a wink and a nod we accept the fact that car dealers are crooks!


  • Hold Her Tight, Tonight
    [Relationships] Many of the words in this poem just came to me, out of the blue so to speak, as much of my writing does. After I scribbled it down and then went back and read it carefully, I realized that it has different levels that could apply to many situations.


  • Red Lights and Shoplifters
    [News-and-Society] Have you noticed that more and more people are going through red lights in their rush to compete in this frantic world, and that no cops are there to stop them. We have only a token representation of police to give the impression that we are being protected. It's an illusion.


  • Anicca - Nothing Lasts
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] If this is what you prefer - being lulled to sleep so that truth can sneak up and whap you 'side the head when you're not looking, then fine, but at least understand what you are doing to yourself. To ignore this is childish. Not only is it immature, but there is no ultimate freedom in it, just the same ol' same ol'.


  • Do You Have a Speculative and Intelligent Personality - And What Does That Mean?
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] Our personalities, it could be said, fall into six categories: Faithful, greedy, hateful, deluded, speculative and intelligent, and if we tend toward the speculative and intelligent, it's a good bet that our spiritual life will progress in fits and starts because we outsmart ourselves.


  • Jealousy - Don't Buy Into it!
    [Relationships] When we think of jealousy, what comes to mind is a dramatic triangle where people are so insanely jealous of each other that they are literally at each other's throats, but jealousy hits much closer to home than that. In fact, jealousy is probably the most common emotion that we feel.


  • Finding Our Freedom Within
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] If our inherent freedom to live our lives freely, or practice our religion as we choose is threatened in any way, we dig our heels in and either openly or surreptitiously find ways to free ourselves from any yoke of oppression. This natural inclination is our human nature.


  • Defining Good and Evil
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] What is good and evil? There are good people everywhere, but how do we define good?


  • Postmarked - Yesterday
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Don't know why I did what I did, Hurt some fine people. Didn't seem to care at the time, Guess I do now, though. Can you tell them, somehow, that I'm sorry?


  • What To Do Until the Guru Arrives
    [Health-and-Fitness:Mental-Health] Whoa! What are you going to do now! You rush to the phone to call your spiritual coach, but oh no! You don't have a spiritual coach! Now what? Frantically typing "spiritual awakenings" into your browser, you search the web all day, looking for answers.


  • Love - What Are You?
    [Relationships:Love] Love. What are you? I need you. Please don't go away. Stay!


  • Catching the Essence of Honey Dreams
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] An enigmatic poem about our lives, and how one thing inevitably leads to another. We think high and low, we think we know! We think, we think, we think.


  • Seashells, Beaches, and Eternity
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] I picked up one of the smooth, shiny shells and wondered if anyone knew that the little animal that once belonged to it was born... and died. Probably not, there are millions of them on the beach.


  • Five Obstacles to Meditation Practice- And to Life as Well
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Five common roadblocks to a balanced life.


  • Do You Have HITS Syndrome?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The problem with H.I.T.S. is that few symptoms are recognizable - until it's too late!


  • Can You Recognize The Ten Traits Of An Enlightened Person? Take The Quiz
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Living in a hustle-bustle world can limit our awareness of how we are with others. These Ten Perfections, over 2500 years old, are therefore an excellent guide to improving our day-to-day relationships. When we are able to express these ten traits in our daily lives, good things happen to us because these traits naturally attract similar people, and anyone who exhibits these traits would be someone you would want to be around!


  • The Danger Of Truth
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] Truth flows beautifully every moment, but we can seldom keep up with it because we get sidetracked so easily. We get sidetracked because we are under the misapprehension that we can actually control truth.


  • Are You Enlightened? Take the Quiz
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Are you already enlightened? Take the quiz!


  • The Double Whammy of Questioning our Beliefs
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] Questioning our beliefs is a very difficult thing to do. We all do it, but we just don't like to admit it.


  • The End Of Experience
    [Self-Improvement] This unconscious awareness is the other world. This means that as a human being, you are one of those rare individuals, like the sages and saints - the visionaries - who have touched the other world, who have touched what some call God.


  • Christian Mysticism
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Although I was raised as a devout Catholic, I knew nothing about Christian mysticism - it was quite mysterious! Only years later, after I had left the Church, did I stumble across Christian mysticism, and I wondered why it was kept under wraps so secretively.


  • Is My Truth Better Than Your Truth?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] Current divisive issues are good examples of strong wanting - wanting things to go our way. Typically, we see only one side of a disagreement simply because of the strength of our convictions. The question is - are our convictions truths, or merely opinions? If we see them as truths, how can compromise be possible?


  • Healthcare - Giving or Greed?
    [News-and-Society:Politics] Hospital emergency rooms are no longer "emergency" rooms - they are waiting rooms, crowded beyond belief with the poor and uninsured. Where else can they go? If it wasn't for hospital emergency rooms, a large segment of our population would have no healthcare at all, something that does not happen in any other industrialized country in the world.


  • Why Can't We Sleep?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Sleep-Snoring] But changing the way we live doesn't have to be drastic, all that is required is that we approach life in a different manner, a new approach that involves discovering the very things that cause our sleeplessness . . .


  • The Simple Meaning of Life
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] The farmer found the mare lying on her side near the edge of the pasture. She was lying peacefully, almost as if sleeping; only occasionally raising her head to look back at where her first-born was soon to meet this wondrous world. It was as if she had done this many times, and perhaps she had, in the recesses of that mysterious mind of her species.


  • The Deeper Meaning of Life
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The meaning of life is not a commodity that can be captured and sold. It is fleeting and different for each of us, changing moment to moment, and just when we become comfortable with what we believe our meaning of life to be, it will change again, unless we doggedly hold on to a concept and refuse to see each new moment as it is; beautiful, free and many faceted. Then we will be as good as dead.


  • Never Being Hurt Again
    [Relationships] These are feelings we all have when we are hurt; the feelings that populate the doctors' couches. The problem is that the psychiatrists and counselors rarely get to the root of our problem, merely playing around endlessly with the symptoms, which only prolongs our confusion. If these feelings are not resolved, we will be caught in a world of hurt and uncertainty our entire lives.


  • Where a Simple Thing Such as Breath Meditation Can Lead! (Part Two)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The results of this practice of breath meditation are manifold. The practice itself changes the practitioner into a harmonious and loving human being, sensitive to others, and therefore in harmony with them. The practitioner’s life becomes simplified, happy, calm, and contented. The long term results for the practitioner, according to the metaphysical aspects of Buddhism, are what's quite interesting - ten distinct benchmarks in our practice which point toward our destiny in the next world.


  • When I Was a Christian
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The church was huge, or so it seemed then, a veritable cathedral. So... sanctified. And the holy water, wow, that was really mystical, much thicker and substantial than regular water. It must have been packed with "holies" or something.


  • Where a Simple Thing Such as Breath Meditation Can Lead!
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] After you learn to let these things go, they will cease on their own, replaced by a particular sign that indicates you are on the threshold of Samadhi, or deep concentration. The sign is many times a bright light, very bright, and cannot be mistaken. It can be as bright as sun, but even so, it only lighting the passageway that you must eventually make your way through.


  • What Happens When We Die?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] What is death? For a Buddhist, it is more of a continuation than an ending. But what is it that continues - this is the tricky part.


  • The Bird on the Pole
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] And I wondered about life, as I watched my bird, and wondered if she worried about death. Every morning she acted as if this was the first morning of her life, so bright and full of hope, interested in everything that passed below no matter how many times she had seen it before.


  • How to Approach a Thoughtless Person
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] But this is not the thoughtless people that I am writing about. I am writing about truly thoughtless people - people who can see so clearly that they act without the burden of thought interfering with their actions. You know who they are; the soldier who falls on a grenade to save his buddies, the mother who gives her life for her child, our champions in the movies that so endear us with their selfless actions, the football heroes that sacrifice all personal safety to help their team win.


  • Does Life Let Us Down
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Let's say that we have a goal to retire at 50, and we have to hustle to make this happen. It can be fun, making all the right moves and still taking plenty of personal time for vacations and doing enjoyable things. However, we miss one important point, and that is the point that we are truly missing out on life.


  • Paradise Lost - When Insights Slip Away
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] We are meditating, or perhaps just walking on the beach, and WHAM! the insight strikes. Wow! But then what happens? In a millisecond, the interfering mind elbows right in, "WHAT WAS THAT? WHAT WAS THAT?" and our insight evaporates like ephemeral foam on a wave.


  • Teaching Our Kids - The New Education
    [Reference-and-Education:Future-Concepts] The dress codes of our kids, the old, ragged, baggy clothes, are a dead give away of their feelings. They are mocking our values.


  • Does God Cause Disasters?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Have you ever experienced a disaster, a real one, where many people are killed or injured? I mean actually experience it, not read about it, or watch it on television. The aftermath of such an experience up close and personal can be gut-wrenching, and questions that arise from it can threaten the very foundations of one’s beliefs.


  • Why Do I Write?
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] I don't know, but I do know that many times I must stop writing because I can't see the keyboard or the screen through the tears. What I write is heartfelt, and comes from places unknown to me, those deep. passionate wells that writers know, into which we plunge and then burst to the surface gasping for air as we scribble down what we discovered before it disappears like the ephemeral morning mist.


  • Giving up Dependency
    [Self-Improvement:Addictions] Look at the absurdity of all of this. You are a human being, free to exist and investigate life from fresh perspectives every day, yet your dependency, whatever it is, holds you back from this. No longer is there creativity, there are only dead thoughts and conclusions that keep your mind stuck in a groove,


  • My First Meditation Experience
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] That evening, I arrived at the crowded zendo and was shown where to sit, which was directly in front of a Roshi (a very accomplished teacher). He sat two feet behind me staring at my head. No problem, I had stared into the eyes of men almost twice my size while playing football, and cut them down. This was going to be easy.


  • Advice for Missionaries
    [News-and-Society:Religion] I had recently ordained as Theravada Buddhist monk at Wat Pah Nanachat, a monastery in Northeast Thailand. One afternoon, as I was half asleep and resting in the shade underneath my hut after meditating all night, I thought I heard someone approaching through the jungle.


  • Remembering Dad
    [Relationships] He spread the crumpled money on the funeral director's desk. "Is this enough?" he asked. The director counted out the three thousand dollars and nodded, assuring my father that everything would be taken care of. Mom and Dad would be buried together in a small cemetery in the foothills. I had a little money that would have helped, but this act of finality was important to him, something he had to do himself, and perhaps in his own mind it was a closure that made amends for his past.


  • The Vow
    [Relationships] This happened thirty years ago, when I was thirty-five and had just left my wife and children. The excerpt is from my memoir, "The Vow," and illustrates that no matter where we are coming from, or what we may have done, it's never too late to turn around.


  • It All Comes Down to Love
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] All of this translates into the fact that if we want to discover for ourselves what is real love, we must re-investigate love from an entirely new perspective.


  • Cracking the Code of Religion
    [News-and-Society:Religion] "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought (Matsuo Basho)


  • Politics and Religion
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Please give me your comments. Is it too late?


  • Is Fame Worth it?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] Yet we look at an entertainer's life and say, "Yes, that's what I want to be;" I want to be rescued from this hum-drum existence that I'm trapped in. But what happens when we become a hit, and that hum-drum existence hasn't gone away


  • When All Hope is Gone
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] There are no endings, only openings, and openings can be light years from what was before.


  • A Meditator's Dilemma
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] So here we are, nowhere, and feeling as if we are actually going backward, that there is no hope and no solution to our constant dissatisfaction.


  • What Do You Want From a Relationship, (and How Will it Make a Difference?)
    [Relationships] Therefore, it is important to ask this fundamental question when we achieve our goal . . .


  • Carbon Footprints - An Interesting Point of View
    [News-and-Society:Environmental] We leave two kinds of footprints behind, a carbon one upon the earth, and a psychic one upon our existence to come- the two are intertwined.


  • Einstein's Religion
    [News-and-Society:Religion] A hint of the cutting edge of humanity's new consciousness.


  • The Buddha's 5 Steps to Enlightenment
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] The instructions appear to be very simple and straightforward, however, they are quite complex.


  • An Unending Summer Romance
    [Relationships] Perhaps we will be successful and buy that big house with a big mortgage and imprison ourselves in some cul-de-sac, but the wise ones will always go with their hearts and their hearts don't always provide financial security, only the security of a summer romance, the romance that you will never forget because it was the only real thing that you have ever felt, and may never feel again.


  • The Monkey Study
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Simultaneous shifts in consciousness


  • Meditation - Beyond Belief
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] There is great emptiness when we know that we just can't fake it any longer. It's as if we awaken from a pleasant dream and want to go back to sleep, but can't - the sun is up, and something quite sobering has entered our hearts.


  • The Zen Master and the Ducks
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] A few words from the Zen master introduce his student to the world of eternity, but can the student hear?


  • Relationships - Knowing if it's Real
    [Relationships] How do we know if what we feel for another is true love?


  • What Happens When We Don't Meditate?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] You will want to meditate for sure after reading this!


  • The Purpose of Life
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] This is a good question, a "catch 22," and the answer may be a clue as to the real purpose of life.


  • Beyond Meditation
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The key to transitioning from level 1 to level 2 is a matter of spiritual experience and maturity, and the timing must be exactly right.


  • The Preacher's Mission
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Guidelines for preachers.


  • Buddhism and Christianity - Do They Differ?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] As with all great traditions, there are no differences at deep levels, however, at a belief level, some differences exist, such as beliefs about heaven and God.


  • A Soldier's Question
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] "I am a soldier, O Blessed One, and am appointed by the king to enforce his laws and to wage his wars. Does the (Buddha) who teaches kindness without end and compassion with all sufferers permit the punishment of the criminal? And further, does the (Buddha) declare that it is wrong to go to war for the protection of our homes, our wives, our children, and our property? Does the (Buddha) teach the doctrine of a complete self-surrender?"


  • Meditation - Benchmarks of Progress
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] These will determine your destiny in the next world.


  • A Monk's Secret to Sleeping Better
    [Womens-Interests] As with all advice, always check with your health care practitioner before embarking on any regimen, especially one that you haven't tried before. Everybody's body is different. Having said that, I would like to introduce you to the secrets I discovered about sleep while living as Buddhist monk in the backwater jungles of Thailand.


  • Three Ingredients of a Failed Relationship
    [Relationships] Learn how to recognize and diffuse these three perils.


  • A Conversation With Dad
    [Relationships] "Sure, I won't have much, but I’'l feel good about myself. You know why? Because I'll have the guts to go another way, and I'll find someone who wants to go with me...I'm going back to the house, I'll see you later."


  • No on the Job Training in Heaven!
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] She didn't acquire these angel skills in heaven, however, she acquired them while still living on earth and doing things that most of her friends thought were stupid.


  • The Missing Element
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] If you ever become serious about real happiness, weary of temporary happiness slipping through your fingers time and again, then go after the missing element.


  • Karma (Part 3)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] We are reborn to the same habits but not the same body or identity. Karma can be imagined as a psychic record of all our desires that impels us toward the activities and actions that we are inclined to perform. Karma colors each consciousness that is created moment-by-moment by mind, and we act accordingly. We establish habit patterns of greed or giving, hatred or compassion, ignorance or wisdom based on these activities. These habit patterns are...


  • Karma (Part 2)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] At the moment of actual death when no resuscitation is possible, several different consciousnesses arise, each fractions of a second in duration.


  • Karma (Part 1)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] When old karma hits, good or bad, and perhaps from other lifetimes, it can do so powerfully and in unusual ways.


  • The Good Life?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] This means, of course, that all of our good deeds, our outstanding lives, our generosity mean very little when it comes to our actual salvation, our life eternal.


  • Generosity Might Not Be What You Think it is
    [News-and-Society:Religion] But is this the generosity that Christ and the Buddha hinted at when they both suggested that their disciples give up everything, including family, friends, and possessions, and follow them? This would leave the disciple with nothing but faith to go on.


  • Karma and Quantum Mechanics (Part 2)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] So, what determines, out of the field of billions of possibilities in our brain, what becomes our experiences - and who is it that actually experiences this?


  • One Day to Live
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] Then you might eat some ice cream, or smoke a few cigarettes, maybe watch a sunset for the last time noticing how exquisitely beautiful it is, and maybe pet your dog. And that night, you would hold the one you love, very tight, and notice how beautiful she is, and always has been.


  • Karma and Quantum Mechanics (Part 1)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Science searches for truth; spirituality should do no less, and when both science and spirituality agree on something, this is worth noting, and meditation and science seem to merge when it comes to our thoughts and sub-atomic particles.


  • Face-to-Face With the Zen Master
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] He pointed to the door and I knew that my interview was over, an interview that was only a few minutes long but taught me more about my practice than anything else to that point; or maybe I was working up to it, at any rate, it was the best two days I had ever spent, and when I left the hall that afternoon and stepped outside, the trees and flowers surrounding the property were different — they were dazzling — and they have dazzled ever since.


  • Why Our Kids Drop Out
    [Home-and-Family:Parenting] I was talking with a teacher, down here in Florida today. She was lamenting about kids having little interest in school, and that half her kids were dropping out. We talked about solutions, but curiously, the more we got into it, the more we could see that there are no solutions within the context of normal parameters.


  • Meditation in a Nutshell
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] A simplified explanation of meditations deeper aspects


  • How Do You See God?
    [News-and-Society:Religion] How we envision God determines the depth of our Spiritual understanding.


  • 3 Skills that Can Save a Teen's Life
    [Home-and-Family:Parenting] So we have a problem: The peers are teenagers themselves and as mixed up as our kids – how can they not be? The problems they are facing take a lifetime of experience to understand, and our teenagers are barely babies when thrown out into the world, expected to fend for themselves, while parents work 60 hour weeks to support them. Even if parents were familiar with the skills that would help their kids survive this most crucial period of their lives, what parent has time to teach them? Suicide, sex, and drugs are dangers for teens. Homemade abortions, risky behavior, unrealistic expectations of life, and many other perilous things can make a teen’s life not only stressful and unmanageable, but short as well. Teens simply don’t have the necessary skills to face these serious difficulties, or the inclination to take advice from parents. They rely almost exclusively on peers.


  • The Monk Diet
    [Health-and-Fitness:Weight-Loss] This one is unique! And one of the few free ones that really works, and might even change your entire life!


  • Meditation -- Mental Practice
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] A simple, straightforward practice that can take you to Samadhi.


  • How Not to Meditate
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Simple instructions.


  • Why It's Best to Live Alone
    [Relationships] When it's important to be by ourselves.


  • Meditation Posture
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] A detailed description of the meditation posture.


  • The Classic Question - Why All This? Why Not Nothing?
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] An interesting perspective. The classic question, and one that should be answered directly. Here is the answer:


  • The Hidden Power Of Compromise
    [Relationships] Desire is good; yes? If greed is good, according to Wall Street and Michael Douglas, then desire must be good as well. Desire, greed avarice, hatred – maybe they are all good in this era of the ends justifying the means regardless of what those means are. What harm can come from sticking to our guns and digging in our heels and never compromising? Never say that you are sorry, right? Or say that you are wrong. It shows weakness.


  • You Can't Truly Love Another Until You Truly Love Yourself (What Does That Mean?)
    [Relationships:Love] When we look inside ourselves, we see a mess. If we don't see a mess, then we are more than likely crazy! There are those who think they are perfect (look out for them!), but usually we will admit that we are a jumble of competing desires.


  • The Most Important Thing to Look for in a Relationship
    [Relationships] Good looking, intelligent, personable, self-assured, these are important, but if the most important thing is missing, the relationship could be doomed. Approximately 50% of marriages fail, and the number of failed relationships, although unknown, eclipses that figure for sure.


  • The Answer to Global Warming
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Big changes are coming, and they could begin now, with each of us. The individual creates society, and the society we have created is driven by greed and the bottom line. Oil is the most dangerous, and the only way to combat these dangers is to turn our backs on them. Here is how to do that without sacrificing anything.


  • The Zen Master and the Cat
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] He took some ashes from an incense burner next to his seat and put them in the palm of his hand. Then, with eyes twinkling, blew them away, holding up an empty palm. He again looked into each student's eyes and smiled broadly, and when his eyes reached mine, I was surprised to find tears welling up for no particular reason.


  • The End of the World
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The end of the world is coming. Scientists say that the sun will flare out in the future and envelope our entire solar system and all of its planets, burning them to a crisp! This sort of thing is happening now in other parts of our universe, so it’s not unusual, and the earth is not unique.


  • Love Your Neighbor - Can We?
    [Relationships:Love] But where are the instructions on how to do this daunting task; love our neighbors? The commandment doesn't help, it's like saying to a child, "Be good!"


  • The Role of a Meditator in the World
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] A meditator, a true meditator, has no role to play regarding the world. None whatsoever. What a meditator must do is discover the truth about herself, himself, and that is the extent of it. This is a very self-enclosed, seemingly selfish endeavor.


  • Life's Struggles
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."


  • Addicted Kids
    [Self-Improvement:Addictions] CNN reports that twenty-five percent of college kids are addicted to either alcohol or drugs. What are we doing to our kids? And it's not "them" - the drug dealers or seedy, single-parent friends - that are the cause. Just look in the mirror...


  • The Zen Master And A Troubled Man
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] I made my way back toward the monastery and noticed a middle-aged man waiting near the entrance; he had his hands clasped, indicating that he would like to speak with me. When I walked over to where he was waiting, he said, "Thank you for a moment of your time. I must make a difficult decision and was hoping you could help."


  • A Magic Bullet For Stress
    [Self-Improvement:Stress-Management] The destructive things we do, we seem to do all the time, repeatedly and unconsciously. Tension and stress build when we are impatient, such as waiting for a red light, waiting in line, waiting for our computer to load! Our breathing becomes shallow, our shoulders tense, our eyes tight, and our minds become frustrated and angry – the perfect time to begin using your Magic Bullet! In no time, you will be using it all day long, and not only will your stress be reduced, but your entire life and how you experience it will change.


  • Meditation and Living in the World
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] How far can I get in my meditation practice while continuing to live in a busy world? This is a question often asked, and the answer is . . . it depends.


  • Keeping It Together
    [Relationships] Relationships are complex things. Each person is a complex individual, and a mixture of the two can at times become incendiary. There is a solution, however, to insuring that a relationship will last, and that solution is so simple that I wonder why it isn’t mentioned more often.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 8)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Sometimes I dream of a secret key that opens a treasure chest of light, a magical light that frees me from not only my Wanting Bugs, but from all the things that I want to hide from.


  • Warrior (Part 3)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Spiritual warriors are the future, and the future will be light years from what we consider religion to be today


  • Positive Thinking? No Such Thing
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] May I take you one step above all of this? Any thinking that works toward a goal, any goal, is never positive thinking.


  • The Heart of the Problem - Part 2
    [Self-Improvement:Anger-Management] There is only one thing that can help us in this area of serious inquiry, an inquiry that could turn our lives around 180 degrees, and that one thing is deep reflection in the absence of thought, in the absence of our self or "I" thought, and where the beauty of the world and the beauty of life reveals itself. Where conflict is ended and fear dissolved.


  • Stirring Up Mud - Part 2
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Our body is reminiscent of a comfortable house built near a raging river where we must live, knowing well enough that a flood could wash it away at any moment. It would be foolish not to consider escape routes when living in a house threatened with disaster, because when the time comes to leave, how would we be ready to get out in time? Therefore, since we can't rely on our impermanent body, shouldn't we invest in something we can trust, something that will be there for us when our body fails, which is not long from now, as it's beginning to rain and the water is rising.


  • Endings?
    [Home-and-Family:Retirement] This is the ultimate adventure. We can now embark on the real meaning of life; to touch that ecstasy beyond this mundane and predictable existence we have so ignorantly bought into. We can actually become free from our circumstances.


  • A Different Slant On Raising Kids
    [Home-and-Family:Parenting] We must be as kind to ourselves as we are to our children. We always treat others as we treat ourselves, so our relationships with our children indicate how we relate to ourselves.


  • The Real Secret
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] We just don't yet understand the secret, because the secret is only available to those that stop running from it-


  • Warrior (Part 2)
    [Self-Improvement] What is love? Is love what we feel when we are attracted to someone or something? New studies have shown that the part of the human brain that becomes stimulated when someone is in love is not the emotional centers at all, but the primal centers that control physical desires. Is love nothing more than animal lust, which turns into possessiveness, control - a business relationship involving anger, suspicion, guilt, and apprehension?


  • Time
    [Self-Improvement:Time-Management] Managing our time in everyday life is not rocket science; it's a matter of priorities. We can read endless books about it. But here we are invited to consider time itself, and the manager of time, so that we have a slant on life that few have, and perhaps we will take a step or two toward freedom from time.


  • Attraction - Be Careful!
    [Relationships] Research has revealed that the part of our brain that is stimulated when we are in love is not the emotional centers as once thought, but the part of the brain that controls physical lust. In other words, being in love has everything to do with sex and little to do with love.


  • Real Motivation
    [Self-Improvement:Motivation] Real motivation is special kind of passion, so strong that we will literally give up everything.


  • Getting Real
    [News-and-Society:Religion] It is possible that this fundamental misunderstanding could be the basis of much of our anger and resentment as we strive for the impossible.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 7)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Boy are we ever stuck now! We have to get everything we want all the time! And, oh no - we are ambitious, driven, jealous, competitive, and we surely don't like anyone who has more than we do!. It can be such a confusing situation. Our poor little minds can't keep up with the hordes of Wanting Bugs that bother us all the time!


  • Our Real Addiction
    [Self-Improvement:Addictions] Our real addiction forms the foundation of all others. If we can solve this fundamental one, the others dissolve along with it.


  • Understanding Success
    [Self-Improvement:Success] Too often, however, our successes run through our fingers like water, regardless of how tight we cling to them, and soon we find ourselves unsuccessful once more.


  • Warrior (Part 1)
    [Self-Improvement] An evolution is stirring. People are beginning to break free. To understand this evolution, we must look at what we were before the evolution began, before we made a radical decision to think for ourselves. Thinking for ourselves requires us to become warriors . . . To become aware of where we were before we began this evolution, we must look closely at our comfort zones; God, country and family, those cherished values so key to our security.


  • A Problem With Goals
    [Self-Improvement:Goal-Setting] We may spend one percent of our time in creating a goal and ninety-nine percent of our time trying to achieve that goal, which is ninety-nine percent of uncreative activity.


  • Positive Attitude
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] A positive attitude is a complex mental state displaying certainty. The question is; can we develop certainty if our beliefs, feelings, and values are based on a world that's changing constantly, a world that is not fundamentally under our control? That's where we find ourselves – in existence – where everything changes.


  • The Delusion of Self Esteem
    [Self-Improvement] The difference between self-esteem and self-knowledge is that self-esteem creates a puffed up illusion, where self-knowledge tears down the illusions. When the illusions are torn down, only then is the possibility of something beyond the physical, which is so subject to dissolution. Only then is there the possibility of eternity. Only then is there the possibility of freedom without limit


  • Understanding Grief
    [Self-Improvement:Grief-Loss] These times of grief are when profound questions should come up in our hearts, questions that we shouldn't run out and get answered by this person or that book too quickly. These are questions that we should gulp down deep inside and allow to simmer for awhile so that we can really feel the suffering that all humanity goes through.


  • Stirring up Mud (Part 1)
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Something needs to stir up the calm mind that we have developed, similar to stirring up mud on the bottom of a pond so that we don't become confused and believe that the mud is no longer there.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 6)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Sometimes we have Devious Wanting Bugs. These are the worst kind, because they know that everything changes. Knowing this, they keep their slaves on their toes by constantly changing their circumstances. Like a large boat that creates a great wake in its path. These unfortunate slaves who are cursed with these kinds of devious Bugs must never stop moving, for if they do, the wake of the big waves they are making will drown them.


  • Happiness, the Carrot
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] Happiness is the carrot that hangs just in front of our noses, but whenever we take a step toward it, the carrot moves as well . . .


  • Why Do We Want to Be Creative?
    [Self-Improvement:Creativity] The first and most important question to ask ourselves is why we want to be creative. If our answer is not profound, then our chances of becoming truly creative are slim.


  • Seeds of Stress
    [Self-Improvement:Stress-Management] If we are to relieve our stress once and for all, we must know for sure. And the only way to know for sure is to plainly see the false. Within the false images of life we create is the seeds of stress, and only when we can see clearly is the stress ended.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 5)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If enough people and their greedy Bugs get together to gain as much power and wealth as they can regardless of the consequences to the rest of us and to the earth, and regardless of what others think about them, then the world will be just an awful place to live! And might even burn up!


  • The Heart of the Problem (Part 1)
    [Self-Improvement:Anger-Management] Life can be a beautiful thing, but if we don't understand life, we might end up fighting it. More often than not, it's you and I against the world.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 4)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] If we get rid of some of our cute Wanting Bugs, (actually, if you look closely at them, they are not so cute, and have very sharp little teeth), then, we actually turn into good people — humble, honest and truthful in every way — then our Wanting Bugs are not happy campers! If we don’t "want" things, how will our Wanting Bugs ever piggyback their way into heaven with us, so that they can drag us back down to earth, or other unmentionable places?


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 3)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Wanting Bugs have many legs, some have a many as a hundred! They love to feel stuff, and they have many eyes as well, all looking for something to do. They love smelling roasting peanuts, and eating donuts while listening to cool music - and listening to compliments! And they're forever thinking and dreaming about stuff. Where would we be without our Wanting Bugs, even though they never give us any peace?


  • Ego Unveiled
    [Reference-and-Education:Psychology] It's quite an illusion, a very clever deception, the fundamental trick of my mind that builds a self or an "I" thought.


  • Three Stages
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Awareness is always there. It is eternal. It never began and will never cease; it is the basis of all existence and never dies. Unlike consciousness, which requires change in order to manifest, awareness requires no change. Awareness is unchanging. Awareness is what we thirst for; that undying, unborn, unformed, eternal realty that we inherently are.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 2)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] When we satisfy our Wanting Bugs, They makes babies. But it feels good when we satisfy our wanting bugs, so good, in fact, that baby Wanting Bugs don’t seem to be any problem at all . . . at least not right away.


  • Wanting Bugs (Part 1)
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Fear not; The Wanting Bug Articles are a welcome departure from this penchant for seriousness, yet without compromising the great teachings regarding desire. The articles are complete, accommodating, and even better; they change lives. Actually, they go further than changing lives, they changes destinies!


  • Letter to God
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Rock: Is there any possibility of humanity going beyond its opinions and beliefs, or are we destined to fight with each other endlessly? If God commanded you to come up with something that would satisfy all beliefs, yet enlighten all minds, what would you suggest?


  • Finding Your Teacher
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Our experience of life is more precious than anything, and the thought of suspending that experience is unthinkable. But pure awareness is void of thought, void of consciousness, void of experience . . . and void of an experiencer. Nothing can be said about pure awareness; nothing in the world could come close to its ecstasy, or bring about the changes that occur in people who cross its threshold. We have finally arrived at that place we had never left, and only dreamed that we had.


  • Manage It? Why Not End It?
    [Self-Improvement:Anger-Management] When we deny anger, we aren’t being true to ourselves. We are still animals, in many ways (look at the sex act!), and one them is our fight or flight reaction.


  • Meditation's Ground Zero – Lak Tam
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Lak Tam; a mysterious term used by the most advanced meditation teachers deep in the forests of Thailand.


  • No Soul?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] After the shock that we don't exist eternally in the form of a wispy soul wears off, we come down to earth, where we belong. We become responsible and sensitive to what we do and how it affects others. We-actually become happy! We become happy in helping others and not worrying about ourselves. Happy. A strange word, yes? But it's true. Strange but true.


  • The Story of a Tree
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] Life's passages are beautifully reflected in this innocent, poignant story of a little tree.


  • Live for Today
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] "If we can just suffer through all the inequities of this life on earth, we will be rewarded in heaven, but only if we are good and don't cause problems here." (Hmm, sounds like something right out of a predatory employer's handbook!)


  • Waking Up
    [News-and-Society:Religion] So, should we wait for a bus to hit us before we improve our lives, or should we become proactive and embark upon a pursuit of the deepest of human experiences, that mysterious state of mind coveted by prophets and seers throughout the ages? But how do we do it?


  • True Meditation
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Dwelling in the Ultimate or simply "being" defines meditation in its purest form, an integral part of spirituality. This true meditation, in turn, leads to a radical personal transformation called enlightenment. Until our spiritual institutions embrace this aspiration of fundamentally changing ourselves, things are not likely to change in a self-centered world, a world that remains violent even after thousands of years of culture.


  • Why Should I Change?
    [Self-Improvement] Conflict results when we consider our particular conventional realities to be undeniable truths, then, the obvious consequence of this conflict is disdain toward those who believe in conventions other than ours. This is an illusion, because no conventional reality is truth; no conventional reality is perfect for all people at all times – all things are in flux.


  • Anger Mismanagement
    [Self-Improvement:Anger-Management] Anger is the crux of it, and by an objective observation of the raw fear that precedes anger, you leave yourself no choice but to surrender to what you are about to become. No excuses. An angry person is a very fearful person, and that’s okay. We are all fearful at times; we just react differently.


  • Three Reasons We are Unhappy
    [Self-Improvement:Happiness] We put on a good face and insist we are happy, but in those private moments, when we are honest with ourselves, we aren't happy. We can't even sleep! Nights are not easy for us, because then we are alone with our "me's".


  • Be True to Yourself
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Being true to yourself involves tremendous courage. If you lack that courage, you fake it. You fake it when you fool yourself into believing in something simply because it makes you feel good, or makes you feel secure, or real, and this is part of the ignorant bliss you surround yourself with when you are not true to yourself.


  • Why Meditate?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] Everything caught within existence changes constantly. Otherwise, it could not be experienced in time. Time is the record of change.


  • Simply Meditation
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] It is important that our practice can be done comfortably all day in a busy world, not only when we are sitting formally in meditation.


  • Three Reasons We Search
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] You know, in many ways we are all the same, making our way through life, trying to be happy. Happiness is a natural inclination


  • Tolerance is Intellegence
    [News-and-Society:Religion] And what we are seeing in the world regarding sectarian, fundamentalist aggressiveness is troubling. And we are seeing it more and more.


  • A Morning Walk Along the Slough
    [Self-Improvement:Inspirational] I find myself again floating on that resplendent carpet of ferns, myriad hopeful faces turned toward the light. Do they know who they are, what the next moment will bring?


  • Seeds of Change
    [News-and-Society:Religion] Over 4,000 different belief systems exist in the world. New level of consciousness. Isn't it ironic that this ineffable Truth has always been right here, within us.


  • Going Deeper
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Philosophy] Where do we find our security? What is it that we couldn't do without? So, if not spiritual beliefs, what can we hold on to? Actually . . . nothing.


  • God is Love
    [News-and-Society:Religion] The original tenets of religion, that God, or the Ultimate, is ineffable. This new consciousness is not a choice for people, or something to be stamped out; it is inevitable. This shift in consciousness is happening now.


  • Resolving Conflict
    [Self-Improvement:Anger-Management] What we extend outward toward others, we internalize. We are always the recipients of our actions, no one else. You can feel the physical difference between, on one hand, hating someone, and on the other, forgiving someone. Positive emotions create spaciousness, they create acceptance, and love accompanied by a feeling of completion.


  • Personal Transformations
    [Health-and-Fitness:Meditation] The last time I looked, personal transformation was not on America's top ten list of achievements. Success, family, happiness, friends, wealth, respect, health, religious beliefs or spirituality, satisfying work - these took priority.

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