A Fistful of Sand

Going To All the Wrong Places I am not complaining, I merely state an observation: most people are knowledgeably ignorant. The pseudo-spiritual say that in order to understand reality “you have to go inside” but they never tell you inside of what. I’m already inside my office so where else is there to go? Well, maybe to the bathroom after I finish this cup of coffee.   Shades of the pop culture "New Age Gurus”, who teach people to keep telling us to go inside ourselves. Students and well meaning “spiritual people [whatever the hell that means], shout “Go inside yourself and you will find all your answers”. You can hear them militantly shouting from the highest rooftops [in Chicago that would be Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower].   If you don’t understand what is inside and what is outside then you go to all the wrong places.   What or where is “inside” exactly? Is it your body? Your body accumulated over years of time. What is accumulated can b...

Asevana ca balanam panditanañca sevana,  "Don't associate with fools. Associate only with wise people." "Fools" are people whose minds and actions are unskillful and "evil". They are unskillful in their actions - killing, stealing, having careless sex - and unskillful in their words: telling lies, creating disharmony, deceiving other people, engage in gossip. They are unskillful in their thoughts - judging others, conceptualizing, lost in drunken fantasy. Fools are the enemy of society because unskillful behavior makes us the enemy of society. Gossiping, for example, makes us the enemy of those we tell tales about, enemies of the persons we share our filth with, enemies of ourselves as we spew our half truths and lies. That's one example of a fool. Serving one's self over serving others is yet another. Being willing to harm others is one of the prevalent   examples of foolishness in the world today. The foolishness of feeling mo...

Contemporary Pure Land Buddhism has come under much scholarly critique over the past two to three decades. This is especially true of the Japanese Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū presentations. In fact, the entirety of the model of populist Buddhism in its many guises has come under question as to whether they can be accurately called “Buddhisms” at all.   While few take such criticisms of Zen to heart there is open criticism of all of the major sects in the Buddhist world.  Western forms of Buddhism have come under especially intense scrutiny even if they are direct transplants from Asia. It is even the case that some sects do not recognize the validity of those ordained in other sects.  Prior to my ordination  in Sōto Zen my Zen teacher, for example, told me the story that that beginning in 2000 the Sōto Zen headquarters in Kyōto Japan formally complaint to the American Sōto Zen lineage of the San Francisco Zen Center and others that they was not actually...

"As I explore the wilderness of my own body, I see I Am made of blood and bones, sunlight and water, pesticide and redwood humus, the fear and dreams of generations of ancestors, particles of exploded stars” I don’t now who actually said this but the quote is found on Pinterest in a dozen or so places. It is a wonderful “mantra” to use when reminding ourselves that our body is not who we are. Not are we our mind.   According to the Buddha, self is not truth. He declared," Where self is, truth is not. Where truth is, self is not. Self is the fleeting error of samsara; it is individual separateness and that egotism which begets envy and hatred." He defined self as "that yearning which seeks pleasure and lusts after vanity where as Truth is the correct comprehension of things, which is the permanent and everlasting, the real in all existence and the bliss of righteousness." The very existence of self is an illusion,. It is the Self, which through...