correlations

Who are you?

Civilization ‘helps’ answer the question, “Who am I”? The cultural story we hear from infancy drums into us who we are and who we should be. Essentially, this is a form of ‘natural’ brainwashing — ‘natural’ in that the brainwashers are themselves brainwashed. Because the story is essentially arbitrary, we spend our lives striving to […]

The Word Trap

We are innately attracted to promises of solutions to problems, not to examining the underlying problems. In the wild, that is the healthiest approach because problems there share wilderness simplicity, and the solutions are straightforward. It was natural for us to evolve the inclination to opt for the simplest view of most any problem, and […]

Taoist secrets

Over the years, I’ve come across references to life secrets in general, and occasionally Taoist secrets in particular. A few decades ago a woman inquired about our Sunday Taoist meetings, held weekly back then. I told her we mainly shared our reflections on the Tao Te Ching. She said she already had the Tao Te […]

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 […]

Naturally Racist

The online matchmaking site Okcupid ran a survey of its members. When they first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, they say it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. That offers some proof to what has long been obvious to me: homo sapiens are naturally […]

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 […]

A Wealth of Happiness

They say wealth doesn’t bring happiness. However, when you think about it, it is easy to see how happiness is wealth. Correlations help sort this out. For example, consider how this corresponds to love. Love has two sides; one side is a ‘grasping, expecting, needy’ experience. The other is true love, a ‘giving, empathetic, content’ […]

I Look, But Do I See?

In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus says, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. This is profoundly true, although I expect often misinterpreted. For […]

Counterbalancing I.Q.

The onion is an excellent metaphor for life’s reality. Each of us peel away layer after layer as our daily experiences steadily turn into a lifetime. With each decade, we see a little deeper and become a little more humble in the process. I always keep one eye on the past and the other eye […]

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correlations