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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 desire 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 1960’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 principles 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, p.139 and One who speaks does not know? p.602. Well, third time’s a charm, […]

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, passion stems from the mother of need — fear. The visceral fear arising from feeling little control over life drives a need to do something… such as cultivate character. Chapter 54 has the […]

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 they don’t believe in the supernatural. Fair enough, so let me rephrase this… Supernatural essentially amounts to our mind’s […]

Loss Aversion Management

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

Flow Triggers

The Flow Genome Project researches Flow, which Steven Kotler describes as when performance sharply increases. Google [How to open up the next level of human performance], [How To Get Into The Flow State], and [The Science of Maximizing Human Potential]. Anyone comfortable with the Zen(1) point of view will recognize Flow right off. Steven rephrases […]

BRAIN

President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) seeks to decipher how the brain’s circuitry produces thought and behavior. Recent Science News’ reports looked into this initiative. This excerpt is from Brain Shot. Ambitious goals: While the BRAIN Initiative’s objectives are hard to express in concrete terms, the project is full of visionary […]

Instinctive Free Will

We easily 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 miraculously acquire the power to choose right from […]

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