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 […]
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Feeding the Worry Gene
Have you noticed how there is something always ‘wrong’. No matter how good things are, something will soon go awry. All this is obvious, I suppose. That is what makes the News, news. What is less obvious is how the perception and experience of good fortune and misfortune are complimentary, as chapter 58 puts it, […]
Continue reading…Breathe Into It
Words are the smoke; emotion is the fire. You can understand a volcano with words metaphorically, symbolically, abstractly, but you cannot know it through words. You can only know it emotionally, by essentially becoming it—a living breathing volcano. Is that actually possible? Rationally, of course not; experientially, I feel it is. This is where profound […]
Continue reading…Upping the Anti
Have you noticed the ever-present urge to continue ‘upping the anti’? Not only that, but isn’t the sky often the limit? We can’t help but aim for the next step up, and when we reach it, that level becomes our new bottom line. Most of us are content for a little while, but then we […]
Continue reading…Necessity, the Mother
I’ve thought that necessity was the mother of invention ever since I can remember. I’d add to that, necessity is the mother of all action. Paradoxically, I also believed throughout most of my life in free will: the power to freely act to change the course of events. Why did it take so long to […]
Continue reading…Jack of All Trades, Master of None?
Is there any real difference between a generalist ‘jack of all trades’ and a master? After all, isn’t a ‘jack of all trades’ simply a master generalist? I’ve been doing several activities for many years now: yoga (50 years), tai chi (40 years), shakuhachi sui Zen (35 years), gardening (30 years) — plus, I have […]
Continue reading…Sobering up!
Up until my early forties, I was drunk on thought fortified with the certainty of belief. Fortunately for me, I found a way to help detoxify myself, but it is still a moment-by-moment affair. Recovering alcoholics continue to say, “I’m an alcoholic”, even as they stay on the straight and narrow moment-to-moment, day to day, […]
Continue reading…He Who Conquers Self
The details of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths vary somewhat depending on the source. I recently dug up the source for the version that I long ago found to be most useful. Why useful? Because it was the most succinct I’d seen. Nevertheless, I had a minor problem with how the Third Noble Truth was stated, […]
Continue reading…The Nutty Things We Do
While pulling myself into an odd yoga shape this morning, I thought, this is nuts! No normal animal on the planet would do this. In fact, no other animal does most of the things our species does. Working, resting, and engaging in the basic biological functions is all that we have in common with other […]
Continue reading…The Spirit of Yoga
2019 Postscript: This is a copy of the 2010 PRINCIPLES update for the yoga book I wrote in 1979. At that time, I was focused on the problems that arise out of a belief in free will. In 2017, I finally realized the natural roots of this belief and most everything else that haunted me […]
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