My attempts at nutrition therapy, massage therapy and personal development writing all fizzled because I lacked motivation. The same now with art, and I’m wondering why. I felt I couldn’t write about such subjects; I merely echoed what others had written. I was becoming a curator, not a creator, repeating well talked about ideas. Why […]
Buddhism and the quest for meaning and purpose
In my experience and understanding, such questions as ‘Why are we here?’ ‘What my ultimate purpose in life?” can’t be answered definitively. I don’t need the consoling beliefs offered up by other religions like theism. Such views are always metaphysical (Place your faith in God). I looked into metaphysics and concluded it’s a waste of […]
10 Moments of Awakening you need in your life
‘One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late’ Agatha Christie In life, certain moments stick out, moments out of the ordinary, Their import more evident as our lives progress., and we look back to notice how much things have changed. Pivotal moments are those special moments where your life […]
Buddhism: Jiriki-Tariki – Do you find enlightenment or does it find you?
Big questions occupy our religious musings: ‘what extent does hard work help us find salvation or enlightenment? Is that impossible, out of our hands, or do our efforts make a difference?’ In Japanese Zen, this debate is between Jiriki and Tariki, or Self-power and Other-power. Jiriki Vs Tariki Jiriki (自力, one’s own strength) is the […]
Zen Buddhism, going meta and postmodernism
What’s the connection between the Buddha and Deadpool? It might seem an unlikely comparison, a wisecracking anti-hero and a spiritual icon. The answer is linked to the most amusing thing I learned from my battle with anxiety and what I learned from Zen: its responses are seemingly counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. You can’t understand Buddhism by grasping for […]
Buddhist Causality: Interdependent Co-arising
One of the most challenging ideas of Buddhism is their understanding of causality. It’s not based upon the western idea of because it doesn’t trace its history back to ancient Greece and the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. The Pratityasamutpada of Buddhist teachings asserts neither direct Newtonian-like causality nor a single causality. But a multiplicity […]