There’s this thing called the serenity prayer, which you may already be familiar with. It was penned, originally, by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Eckhart & The Dalai Lama, too There’s something about this that I’ve always liked. …
Buddhism
Scripture, Sutra, Ontological Heft
The Tao That Can Be Told In the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Taoist sage Lao Tzu famously proposes that: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. (translated by Stephen Mitchell) And I resonate with this, completely. There is this eternal …
Fundamentalism: Religious & Scientific
In this brief talk, Alan Wallace covers lots of interesting ground, e.g. the relationship between religious and scientific fundamentalism; and the difference between "course mind" (aka conceptual mind) and the nature of mind (aka pure awareness). He ends by offering clear step-by-step guidance in accessing rigpa (awareness of being aware). Minding Mind Please note that the language Mr. Wallace …
Sanity In A Choke-Hold?
World Wrestling Entertainment & The White House Of all the bizarre things our current POTUS is wont to do, one that has stood out to me as especially weird is the habit of assigning demeaning nicknames to his perceived adversaries. What's this really about?—I've often wondered. Some kind of infantile schoolyard bullying technique? A sign of pathological insecurity? Or the POTUS just trying …
Not Identical, Not Separate
In the following passage—from Buddhahood Without Meditation (p. 111)—Dudjom Lingpa describes how sensory appearances are neither identical to nor completely separate from the ground of being (aka the nature of mind, aka Buddha-Nature, aka Pure Awareness), by using the metaphor of planets and stars reflected in a lake: Because all phenomena of samsara and nirvana arise distinctly and individually …
Snowflake
Imagine a single snowflake, with its delicate crystalline structure—utterly unique from any other snowflake. As it drifts through the air, this single snowflake displays its uniqueness—drifting this way and that: serenely, beautifully, playfully. Now imagine this snowflake landing on the surface of a river, lake or ocean. The moment it touches the water, it melts. Its crystalline structure …