fear

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 […]

Who are you? (Part IV)

The social qualities integral to our ancestral hunter-gatherer old way (1) just happen to mirror the core “spiritual” qualities that the world’s religions promote. That’s no coincidence. Indeed, those innate qualities of harmony we now seek are the very ones we lost when we left the old way for the alluring material benefits and security […]

“Right state of peaceful mind”

While living in Thailand in the early 60’s, I bought a book on Buddha put out by the Buddhist Society of Ceylon, as I recall. Recently I wanted to find a copy. I finally found a translation by Paul Carus, The Gospel of Buddha Paperback, that matched my version of Buddha’s four noble truths word-for-word […]

Fear & Need Born in Nothing

Fear and need are the underlying principle for most of my observations. I know this rationale often raises more questions than it answers, so more clarification is in order. Not that I haven’t tried before… see Fear is the Bottom Line and One who speaks does not know? Well, third time’s the charm, right? On […]

Cultivating Character

I’ve found that some people in Taoist circles have passionate ideals about cultivating one’s character. Seen from a symptoms point of view, I see passion overall as arising from the mother of need — fear. In this case, they fear lack of control over life, which drives their desire to control life… to cultivate character. […]

Of Mountains, Molehills and the Supernatural

I’ve noticed how our species appears to have a universal sense of the supernatural. Now, I know science types and atheists will probably dispute that, at least as far as ‘universal’ applies to them. They’ll claim that they don’t believe in the supernatural. Fair enough, so let me rephrase this…

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 […]

Flow Triggers

The Rise of Superman: 17 Flow Triggers is an interesting review of essential ‘flow triggers’ as the author Steven Kotler calls them in his book The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. Anyone comfortable with the Zen(1) point of view will recognize them right off. Steven rephrases them in a religiously […]

BRAIN

President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) seeks to decipher how the brain’s circuitry produces thought and behavior. This is interesting on several levels. Certainly, ongoing scientific corroboration of what we have long suspected at an intuitive level is very useful. (thank you little mouse… sorry!) Two recent Science News’ articles looked […]

Instinctive Free Will

We easily seem to accept the idea that animals and young children don’t choose their nature; they are born with it. Consequently, society doesn’t usually hold them responsible. With the onset of adulthood, that suddenly changes, and society then deems us responsible for our actions. As adults, we somehow magically acquire the power to choose […]

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