The dark, oh the dark! It’s not really so stark, the dark. Just a time without light, a bark without bite. A time to rest from the glare of the sun, A time to get something done, or undone. Inside your mother you could not see. The womb of the world is a black hole in space. The dark is the place of fertility. In the dark you can see your original face. Without the dark we would not know there was light. We would …
It was a significant moment in the history of the Dhamma, that winter of 1971 in Bodhgaya, when S. N. Goenka began to teach his 10 day retreats in vipassana meditation, attended primarily by young people from the West. Most of us had come to India on a pilgrimage to check out the source of this ancient wisdom tradition that we had been reading about at college in paperback books; the writings of hip scholars like Alan Watts and the spiritual beatnik poets. I attended …
Labor Day weekend marks the last sigh of summer — and just when you were starting to relax, here’s Labor Day to signal the start of the busy season. It’s time to get hyperactive again! The speed-up has a lot to do with the autumn chill that causes our metabolism to kick into a higher gear, and then we begin acting out the legacy of our Paleolithic ancestors who had to do major hunting and gathering in order to survive the winter. You can find …
Lately I find myself engaging with friends in an ancient and revered form of discourse whose origins lie in the dim past of humanity. To take part in this talking ritual requires only that you have reached a certain age and are willing to expose your innermost self. I am referring to the art and practice of “geezing.” Often it starts with an innocent greeting such as, “How are you?” When we were younger the answer was usually, “Fine, how are you?” Lately however, with …
“Our task in the coming era is to relocate ourselves in the cosmos and to renew our kinship with all of earth life. It is time to join again in the dance-drama of biological and cosmic evolution.” -D. H. Lawrence Reflecting on the scientific story of evolution we find a lineage of bodhisattvas, saints of compassion stretching back millions of years through epochs of geological time. We owe our existence to the struggles and sacrifices of uncountable numbers of beings; creatures who had to shape-shift …
Strange as it may seem, I like to think of myself as a fool. Once I embrace my essential foolish nature I no longer have to pretend to be wise or hip or awesome. Instead I can just be me, someone a little weak of will, usually caught up in some mundane drama, and completely clueless as to the meaning of life or what I am doing here. Knowing that I’m a fool, I take great comfort in the observation of the Taoist rascal Chuang …
Hello friends, this is Scoopji here, letting you know that I have had a spiritual breakthrough. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I have been consuming massive amounts of a new herbal formula, “Chakra Decongestant.” Or maybe it is because the battery on my meditation timer died and the bell didn’t go off, causing me to enter into a blissful absorption for several days until my lotus finally went limp. But when I emerged from my altered state I found that my mystical …
One of my daily spiritual practices is to check on the condition of the universe. After all, that’s where I live. At least for now. I get an update on the universe every time I turn on my inter-net search engine, set to open on “the Astronomy Picture of the Day.” Recently I saw a picture of a red dwarf star dying, consuming itself in a fireball similar to the one in which our own sun will eventually die. Another day I saw a simulated …
“All great truths begin as blasphemies.” – George Bernard Shaw Humanity is now suffering through a deep spiritual crisis accompanied by the usual “holy” wars, and we can assume that a major part of the problem lies with our gods and goddesses. After all, if they created everything then whatever goes wrong is their fault. I know that “god” is a delicate topic of inquiry, and some people feel very protective of their deity, so as I explore this subject I hope not to insult any …
One reason that I like Buddha’s teaching so much, is that it doesn’t require that I believe in a personified god, an omniscient, all-powerful being who created everything, and sits up there in the sky somewhere, judging how I’m doing at being a human. The Buddha tells us we can never know the first cause, and it is fruitless to try to trace our karma back to its origins. Furthermore, according to the Buddha’s teaching, our rewards and punishments come not from some deity who watches us …