Today we are enmeshed with technology. In a very real sense, we have become cyborgs. Our computers, tablets, and cell phones are extensions of our minds. They store information for us, allow us to communicate instantly anywhere in the world with anyone in our lives. If we don’t know something, Google does. Never in history has […]
The violence that is common throughout our world is very evident, not just in our time, but throughout all of history. We are confronted with it constantly. Not a week goes by before there is more tragic news of a terrorist bombing or school shooting. In response, we collectively lash out in anger toward the […]
There are aspects of our thinking that can be problematic. No one causes us as much harm than we cause ourselves with our constant mental noise, derision, and judgement. In order for us to go beyond suffering, we must confront and meet these aspects, otherwise we will get stuck in an unconscious trance, a loop […]
Spiritual teachings of various traditions speak of compassion and its cultivation being a necessary component of a fulfilled and happy life. How is it that you can establish a way of living that will be conducive to being a mindful and compassionate human being in your ordinary, every day life? Firstly, you must have motivation […]
People in our society are generally more materially abundant and have more comforts than we have ever had in history. We ferociously consume with the thought that more things will bring more fulfillment. Yet so many of us find we are unfulfilled and unhappy. This is because we are tying our happiness to external conditions, […]
The mystics of every tradition say that there is an ultimate truth, not the ultimate truth, but an ultimate truth that can be felt through methods such as meditation. This ultimate truth points to your interconnected nature with everyone and everything in existence. At the absolute ground of reality, there is no separation between mind […]
We live in a world that wears “busy” as a badge of honor. Often when we ask friends how they are doing, their response is “Oh, work, work, work.” And that work is usually doing something they hate. I am not trying to say that doing things is wrong and that we should just be […]
I think that our incessant desire for distraction causes us to forget our beautiful and sublime interconnectedness, we forget ourselves, our inner essence. We lose touch with our equanimity and the world as a whole. Our realty becomes anxious and contracted. Ignorance and greed (for money, attention, power, etc.) are born from a power struggle […]
We have this very deep, salient, unexamined belief that something is wrong. And if it’s not wrong right now, it’s about to be wrong. There’s a sense that this life is a problem to be solved. Our view is that life is imperfect, a faulty piece of machinery to be glued and pieced together. Something […]
Everything is otherwise and nothing is what it seems. The world wells up from the ground of being, the limitless expanse, formless becoming form. We, which are other bits of that limitless formlessness that have temporarily become limited form, attempt to place our labels of sound and language on all that which arises and no […]