As of late, I’ve been contemplating the relationship between, on the one hand, intention/aspiration; and, on the other hand, accomplishment. What determines the extent to which an intention or aspiration translates into an actual accomplishment of the thing (or no-thing) that was intended or aspired to? As a starting-point, I’ve divided the inquiry into two cases: 1. When the accomplishment …
Nonduality
Practice Notes: The Serenity Prayer
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. …
Closer Than Close
He laughs when you laugh, sneezes in your sleep, yawns for you, coughs for you. He bathes every day in the river of your thoughts. He's naked, all year round, and walks where you walk. Just go up and introduce yourself. ~ Lalla (from I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded) This poem by Lalla—the 14th century yogini and mystic-poet steeped in the wisdom of Kashmir Shaivism—was translated into …
Inner Peace, Contentment, Satisfaction
An excerpt from my new book ... Everyone has had some experience, however fleeting, of deep inner peace, contentment, and satisfaction—a moment of feeling utterly complete. Perhaps such moments have come while listening to beautiful music, or being embraced by your beloved, or feeling awestruck by a million stars in the night sky, or even in the context of an emergency when some kind of quiet …
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 …
Practice Notes: Never Again …
Never again—will I say never again! When I uttered this phrase (quietly to myself) several days ago, it immediately brought to mind the liar’s paradox, in its various iterations: I am lying or Nothing I say is true or This sentence is a lie. The liar’s paradox is a paradox because if the statement is true, then it is false; and if the statement is false, then it is true. Paradox v. …