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Buddha’s Truths Pertain To All Life

Buddha’s Truths apply to all Earth’s creatures, although only humans need to have truth stipulated. For me, this suggests that our need for “Truth” is a symptom of something we feel missing. For that reason, considering the widest possible scope of these truths gives helpful context for their application – ‘profound sameness’, as chapter 56 […]

We All Know We Don’t Know

I enjoy doing yoga on the beach because I can easily pause to look seaward and skyward to soak in eternity, or glance closer in to bond with my friends, the sand flies and the seagulls around me. Today I got to thinking how small and insignificant we — they and me — are. Then […]

Stressors of Comfort and Security

This Science News article, The mess that is stress, ties right into my last post, “Right state of peaceful mind”. Notice how the lightening bolt in the graphic (left) points to the brain, and from there down through the rest of the body. The article puts it this way: “The effect of stress starts in […]

Science Proves Buddha Right!

Another nail has been driven into the coffin of faith-based thinking. Watch this short video, Low Expectations = Happiness, that outlines how we shoot ourselves in the foot through expectations born of wishful thinking. This is not to say expectations aren’t useful or natural. Indeed, considered from a symptoms point of view, I realize they […]

Alleviating the Hoarding Disorder

The video for this was great, but I waited too long so the video link is gone. 🙁 However, the transcript is still available. Search: Seeking Help For Hoarding. Here is a brief excerpt: At some point I got a lot of stuff,” said Joanne Garland. “I kept too much paper. I kept too many books. […]

Civilized Insanity

Cults like ISIS and Nazis define true human insanity for me. However, the tribal instinct driving this is universal. It pops up in all of us to various degrees. What drives the fanatic ISIS or Nazi to go over the edge? And what is the best way to deal with this? What determines the degree?

Laws as Symptoms, not Solutions

This short NPR/TED talk, Is The Law Making Us Less Free, is a sobering account of yet another way we shoot ourselves in the foot. As the speaker, Philip Howard, says, “More laws now mean more chaos. What we have is a combination of anarchy and public paralysis. There’s this fetish with rules that has […]

Loss Aversion Management

This short NPR audio interview, We Care More About Losses Than Gains, shows how we can’t help but shoot ourselves in the foot. When I look around, I see “loss aversion” influencing just about everything we do, albeit often in very subtle ways. The innate emotional aversion to loss, when reinforced by reason (thought) traps […]

Free Willers Anonymous

Members of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar addiction programs begin their process of recovery by first admitting their addiction and powerlessness over it. That starts clearing away the blind spot that up until then made their life very problematic. This first step parallels Buddha’s first step of his Eight-Fold Path—Right Comprehension.

The Proof is in the Pudding

Your personal experience will be the pudding in this post, as you test out the research reported in this Science News article, The bright side of sadness. Buddha thought we needed only to rely on our personal experience to know the truth of life, including his Noble Truths. No ‘take my word for it’ hoodwinking […]

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