Buddha’s Truths apply to all Earth’s creatures, although only humans need to have truth verbalized. Our need to have truth put into words is symptomatic of something we feel missing. Considering which of these deep truths pertain to all life forms helps them feel more real and inclusive. The First Noble Truth is the existence […]
Continue reading…pleasure v pain
Emotion Speaks… Literally
I learned to speak a number of languages during my traveling years. Learning a language in country is an easy, quick and enjoyable way to learn. During those years, my interest was to communicate—not eloquently mind you, but just enough to get by. Several hundred words and some fearless pantomime (especially at first) worked wonderfully. […]
Continue reading…Earn It to Learn It
Knowing, in the Taoist sense of the word, is not knowledge, per se. As chapter 15 puts it, Of old, the adept student was minutely subtle, open and deep beyond knowledge. As chapter 56 notes, Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know. Times are different now. Our modern electrified pace of life is continuously updating every […]
Continue reading…Discomfort and Pain
The Science News’ article Hurt Blocker got me thinking about pain and the ways we deal with it. While this research is really about physical pain, the principle applies to all pain. How we deal with discomfort and pain results in many unintended consequences. We could avoid these consequences if we knew at what point […]
Continue reading…Opiate of the Masses
Karl Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses. Nonsense I say. The true opiate of the masses is prosperity, not religion. The United States has experienced decades of unprecedented prosperity. Indeed, most people have lived their whole lives accustomed to what is actually a historically rare era of unusual affluence. Now, the 2008 […]
Continue reading…The Wealthy Poor
Why do many wealthy people often keep upping the ante, buying increasingly more expensive things? This may follow a progression I first noticed when I experienced my own slight wealth upgrade in Japan (see Peaches and Pleasure, p.32). We innately appear to convert any upgrade in our standard-of-living into a new bottom line in our […]
Continue reading…Naturally Unnatural, Naturally!
Occasionally I hear people opine on what is or isn’t natural human behavior. Doesn’t this depend on what part of the elephant (See Biology’s Blinders, p.2) one currently perceives? Elephant parables aside, I see this issue as emerging layers of reality’s onion. (See Tao as Emergent Property, p.121.) Let me sort this out… Like all […]
Continue reading…Fear Is The Bottom Line
There is much more to fear than meets the eye. We often associate the symptoms of fear (i.e., the outer reactions fear instigates) as the fear itself. These reactions span a range from ‘flight’ to ‘fight’, although screaming and fleeing are the images that usually come to mind. Actually, pure fear is profoundly more subtle […]
Continue reading…Exquisite Balance
I never ever use the word exquisite, but this morning while standing on my head I thought, “How exquisite this moment of perfect balance feels”. I went on to consider other facets of life such as working, eating, speaking, and shopping. In all cases, balance is possible, but is often only partial and so seldom […]
Continue reading…Chairs: One of Our Big Mistakes
The use of chairs in the West is ubiquitous. One of the most important life style changes I ever made was giving up my use of the chair fifty years ago. Chairs and sit down toilets are good examples of my motto, short-term pleasure invites long-term pain; short-term pain invites long-term pleasure. The physical ease […]
Continue reading…Peeking in on Nature’s Hoodwink
We are born with a bio-illusion — a bio-hoodwink(1) — that goes like this: Through hunting, “I” gathers fillers to satiate (fill) the hole. Primal emotions of need (e.g., desire, wish) and fear (e.g., insecurity, anxiety) drive this illusion forward. This illusion originates in the survival instinct to find food to fill the empty belly. […]
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