Buddha
… the flat tire represents mental structures that arise according to conditions from past karma, which influence how we perceive. Imagine your car has a flat tire and the ride is very bumpy. Rather than stop and fix the flat, you keep driving. What could be a smooth ride with functional tires becomes very uncomfortable, [...]
My last post on Late-Capitalist Youth looked at Nietzsche’s call to control our passions, in order to gain a sense of freedom and new direction for our lives—but the Buddha looked at self-overcoming as well. To move towards a new patterning for our desires, we need to have some space for the conditioned systems of [...]
Last Friday was a full moon, and a lunar observance day in all Buddhist traditions. Thanks to last week’s Monastic Immersion Program at DRBU, I was lucky enough to spend some time at Abhayagiri Monastery, a Thai Forest monastery just a short distance north of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (CTTB). The monastery is [...]
We tend to think of good things as being positive, of positive things being good. When things are perfect, for example, that’s something positive, right? Everything is just how you want it; everything is just so. [...]
In a lecture on the Sixth Patriarch Sutra awhile back, there was a line that described perfection as limitless. Marty told a story about his days cultivating at Gold Mountain Monastery, and how this line about limitless perfection reminded him of a 9-year-old monk who asked Master Hua, “What if you’re already enlightened?” Master Hua [...]
So what did Buddha have to say about our modern experience? Our fundamental problem is our crowning achievement. We have the potential for a radical, exciting freedom; yet, at the same time, we fear the responsibility. We vacillate from ecstasy and fear, openness and disappointment, feeling full of possibilities, and at the same time, recognize [...]