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...

Buddhist thought in South China was distinctly philosophical in character in Zhiyi’s time. (See more about  Zhiyi ) Northern Chinese Buddhists were developing a religion of faith and discipline called Zhingtu (sometimes called Ch’ing-tu or Pure Land). Zhiyi was a product of the southern Chinese educated upper class. His teacher, Huisi (514-577), was a Northerner of the lower classes. Because of this, Zhiyi came to the judgment that the contemplative and philosophical approaches to religion were like the two wings of a bird. As a result the Chinese T’ien T’ai School, and its descendent, the Japanese Tendai School, is characterized by a strong philosophical content and emphasizes meditative practice at the same time. The most distinguishing trait of the T’ien T’ai worldview is that there is only “one” reality consisting of both the phenomenal world of samsāra, and ultimate reality of nirvana. Zhiyi undertook to explain the evident incongruity between this view and the “two-wor...

I n the past I was able to teach the Buddha’s Dharma throughout the day without ever mentioning him or using a Pali or Sanskrit word. I’ve given up on that. Once the Buddha is taken out of the equation people are free to twist the teachings anyway they want to because the teaching has no context. I’ve seen psychoanalysts of all stripes damage a patient’s life by using Dharma teachings secularly avoiding what might be perceived as a religious connotation.   Whether or not “Buddhism” is a religion or not is a matter of interpretation. As a practitioner of the Dharma I find the Buddha is immensely important to me. It is after called Buddhadharma. If we can all agree that these teachings originated with the Siddhartha Gautama then the importance of the Buddha cannot be over estimated.   It is true that Dharma, as taught, is to be used in secular settings but I am just a tad skeptical of a secularized Dharma having great long lasting value. If one cannot ha...

     "Monks, I will teach you the All. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."      "As you say, lord," the monks responded.        The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All.   Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range." Sabba Sutta: The All SN 35.23   Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu There is this age-old question, “Who am I”. Philosophers, theologians and mystics have been trying to understand a rational answer tot his question since human beings first walked the earth. The Buddha answered this qu...