Buddhism, you see, is free.
Like a bodybuilder who does sets of reps with barbells, we’re going to be pumping mental iron by alternating periods of intense visualization and empty-mindedness.
Unnatural, or unnecessary suffering, is the pain we experience when we don’t handle our natural suffering in a healthy, mature way.
If you had asked me 15 years ago what my faith was, I would have given a simple answer. I was Christian that thoroughly loved the Catholic tradition. Most if not all of my faith, and subsequently moral compass, was 100% based on what my parents taught me was the "correct" way to live. We... Continue Reading →
Compassion is the soft breeze that is felt on a hot summer day, delivering you from one more unbearable windless moment. It comes to you when you get out of the way of trying to escape suffering and accept it as a part of life.
How should I feel about the fact that I was targeted? The thieves, in a menacing tone, had asked me if I was lost. Perhaps I didn’t belong in Colombia. Maybe this was all a big mistake. Should I be angry at the thieves, declaring Colombians to be terrible people?
There is an ever-present monster beneath the world of who we are, a behemoth always at the ready, a Leviathan always lingering. It can never be completely defeated. It can never be banished once and for all, but we can defy it. And, in our constant and continuous acts of defiance we find parts of ourselves, maybe even the best parts.
I found out what made this Buddha so unusual. It was the normalcy. He was a real guy, like me, with a similar background and similarly flawed. I found that he wasn't
But I’ve also been thinking about meditation. Specifically, I’ve been pondering the fact that we serious meditators share a secret. It’s one that we may be loath to let the world in on. That secret is the pleasure—yes, I mean the bona fide, juicy, luxurious, full-out decadence—of withdrawing from the world, albeit for relatively brief periods at a time.
"The creation pour[s] out of you like you channeled an elder god...Sometimes you are the conduit through which it comes and other times you drag it the fuck out of yourself."
