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Who ARE we?!
Have you ever wondered this …?! Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) It is a good thing to figure out as our sense of self...
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Karma and us
Some of you may remember the inappropriate attention I paid to the supposed theft of two bikes two summers ago… bikes that turned out not to be stolen at all. Well, some months ago, the big blue bike...
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Delusions be gone!
I had one more article on delusions up my sleeve, quickly finishing off the six causes of delusion as these are so practical. They show how delusions arise in dependence upon other factors and so, if...
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How are you feeling? Musings on karma continued…
(You may want to read this article first to get up to scratch. I’ve divided the article up into two parts to make it easier to read in a coffee break.) Feelings Going back to the discussion in the last...
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Learning to meditate in 2015
Deciding to learn meditation is a really great new year’s resolution. Anyone can learn, if they want to. Meditation means becoming familiar with positivity and wisdom, both on the meditation seat and...
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What am I so attached to?
Fire of wisdom?! Back in this article I was surmising that the reason we don’t go for a realization of emptiness more passionately seems to be because we are so attached to inherently existent things,...
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Buddhism and the pursuit of happiness
The last article, based on the Spring Festival introduction, looked at how deceptive samsara’s enjoyments are. Of course its sufferings are no fun either. Now I have boarded my second plane, from San...
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Stop grasping
To me the spiritual path seems largely a process of letting go – first of the expectations that this life is the be all and end all of existence, then of the expectations of samsara working out, then...
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How do I get rid of problems? Buddha’s advice
A million-dollar question. If we could answer this, we could get finally be free of the wretched things. In fact, this would be priceless information. Buddha did answer this. The whole of Buddhism, or...
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How to catch a problem before it catches you
This carries on directly from this last article. My lovely dad turned 80 on October 2nd, and we were discussing the meaning of (the rest of his) life. He told me he’d been perusing the obituaries to...
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Feel free to change your mind
With attachment born of ignorance we are always splitting ourselves off from our actual happiness, the happiness of our own peaceful mind. Holding onto an isolated real “self”, distanced from “other”,...
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The Biggest Problem Ever
Did you have a problem today? Did it seem to fill your mind, even if, stepping back from it, you could see that it was not a huge big deal? If the answer is yes, it would not be surprising. This is...
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Exploring our potential for peace and omniscience
We all need to be able to let go of our unhappiness. This, to put it mildly, is a Very Useful Skill – unless of course we don’t mind hanging onto misery for a few more years, a few more decades, a few...
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Getting perspective on hurt feelings
I’m sinking in the quicksand of my thought And I ain’t got the power anymore. ~ Quicksand As mentioned in the previous article, step one in transforming our mind — gaining power over our lives and...
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Accepting unhappiness without panicking
Another instinctive reaction to hurt feelings (accentuated these days by 24/7 availability) is to try and distract ourselves from them, hoping that by sweeping them under the carpet they’ll go away....
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A perfectly ordinary theft
I seem to be here again at the Denver DMV. I thought I’d left this grimy place forever, but here I am back all over again. “Weren’t you here just the other day”? asked the man who failed me in my first...
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Dealing with our demons
Of the three steps to overcoming our delusions taught in the mind-training teachings of Buddhism, the first is recognizing or identifying them. And that means not just intellectually but in our own...
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I choose everything
I’m on a roll with this monsters in the basement theme, so bear with me for one more article. Our delusions project problems “out there”, in all the directions they face. Work problems, relationship...
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Ever had self-loathing?
Delusions are inner diseases. When our mind is uncomfortable or ill at ease, we can accept that we are experiencing mental dis-ease, some level of uneasiness, without thinking, “I am a disease.” (By...
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Tired, yet, of living a cliché?
On the last day of the recent Kadampa Summer Festival, the life story of Buddha Shakyamuni was shown, as it always is, and well received. Buddha’s story is a great story, and ours can be a great story...
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