03/04/2024

TRAPPED
Greetings to the dark unknown
as I lie here cold and alone
weighted by life’s enormous stone
of the guilt and shame I have known.

Visions of all I have done
in swiftly flowing streams they run.
O’er timeless dreams left undone,
battles fought but never won.

The “Kyrie” chanting in my mind,
countless myths I have left behind.
Fruitless days that have been unkind,
seeds planted long before one’s time.

Awaiting whatever this darkness brings,
my heart in silent verses sings.
Time and space and the mighty slings
that dash the sould with bitter pings.

“Gloria in excelsis Deo”
while earthly peace confounds the ego.
Neon temptations that won’t let go
have come to be all we know.

The dark unknown its ushers keep
the soul mired in misery deep.
What rewards shall we reap
other than such endless sleep.

TODAY’S VIDEO
https://youtu.be/6-kYat3HKzA

 

03/01/2024

WINTER’S NIGHT

Leaf-strewn rivers in the fading sun
through mountainous forests slowly run.
Frosty winds whistling one-by-one,
announcing winter’s eve has begun.

Echoing in the encroaching cold
the sun relinquishes its feeble hold.
The night in cresting waves enfolds
with chilling darkness heavy and bold.

TODAY’S VIDEO:
https://youtu.be/sGkh1W5cbH4

 

02/28/2024

Happy Leap Year Day!

Let the body be a body.
Let the soul be a soul
Let the two come together
Making one aware and whole

Today’s Video:
https://youtu.be/JnHhjCB18sw

 

1/26/2024

There has never lived an honest soul who could tolerate the thought that everything ends with death, and whose noble sentiment did not rise to a hope for the future.
– Immanuel Kant

10/24/2023

“People who know how to keep their mouths shut are rare.”
― Dudjom Rinpoche, Counsels from My Heart

“Working with the Outer Enemy” (Part 2) by ROBERT THURMAN

When you have thoroughly immersed yourself in the negative feelings you have for your enemy and your enemy has for you, realize that you don’t have to harbor those feelings. You can see your enemy in a different way. Try to imagine how their loved ones see them, how their child sees them, or their pet dog. If your enemy seems particularly bad, imagine how their partner in crime sees them — as an ally, a co-conspirator, a friend. And then note how stressed your enemy feels on seeing or thinking of you. It is the same stress that you feel when you see or think of your enemy.

As you look at yourself through this other person’s eyes, note the tone of voice you are using in your mind. Be aware of how your condescension, competitiveness, contempt, or jealousy is conveyed in the little things you do and say. Your emotions emerge in your voice and speech and gestures and body language, just as your enemy’s emotions are written all over their face and behavior.

Now try to see something beautiful in your enemy. Imagine that person being really happy at having fallen in love or won an election or won the lottery. (If you’re really daring, imagine your enemy winning the battle with you. That should make your enemy feel good!) Imagine your enemy being happy to see you, or if you can’t quite summon up that vision, imagine them at least as not being angry with you. Imagine your enemy being happy enough with their own life to have neither the time nor the inclination to bother you. Think of what would make your enemy truly satisfied, truly pleased. It may not be what you assume your enemy wants — that is, domination over you. When you are no longer bothering your enemy, no longer standing in the way of what that person wants, then your enemy will no longer be interested in bothering you.

In visualizing yourself from the enemy’s perspective, you start to see that what makes you vulnerable to your enemies is your sense of being fundamentally different from them. But when you realize that in very basic ways you are the same — at a minimum, you share a desire to be happy and not to be in pain — then you don’t want to spoil the happiness of your enemies any more than you want them to spoil yours.

When you truly grasp that it is the projection of your own hurt and anger and fear that turns someone into your enemy, and you are able to recognize your kinship as fellow human beings, it releases the energy you previously invested in defending yourself and your ego. Now you can use this precious energy to work on rooting out the inner enemies, such as anger, fear, and jealousy. In this way, the enemy you so disliked becomes your ally: your teacher, your helper, even — dare I say it — your friend.

Eventually you will even be able to see the beauty in your enemy, and you will feel free of inner anxiety about them. Then, whenever you happen to meet that person, you will notice that they seem less troublesome to you. And your new attitude toward your former enemy will affect them, too, and they will be less antagonistic toward you, though they may not consciously know why. Now you can meditate on seeing your life as one of being among friends. – “Working with the Outer Enemy” by ROBERT THURMAN

Robert Thurman: Universe, Zeroverse, Buddhaverse
https://youtu.be/SUXnycMe8oU?si=lKFz1RsAQnqpVJrj

 

10/23/2023

“Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

“Working with the Outer Enemy” by ROBERT THURMAN

Once we divide the world into us and them, self and other, “other” is filled with potential enemies. Even others we love right now may turn into enemies later on. All they have to do is harm or displease us in some way, and immediately we will fear and dislike them.

How we deal with our enemies, then, is to see them as human beings and to see ourselves from their perspective, being conscious of our own prejudices and preoccupations and realizing that our enemies are operating out of their own prejudices and preoccupations. “Working with the Outer Enemy,” the exercise that follows, will show you how you create outer enemies and how to reverse that process.

When it comes down to it, the outer enemy is a distraction. Focusing on someone who seems to have it in for us allows us to ignore the real enemy, the enemy within. But when we can see the enemy’s hatred as a challenge, it becomes a spur to our own growth, a gift to wake us from our complacency.

Think of someone you don’t like, someone you feel real antipathy toward. It may be someone you find frightening, someone you find challenging, someone you see as a rival, someone who has harmed you in some way. Bring the person clearly to mind and visualize them sitting before you. Really get in touch with your feelings toward that person. Feel the anger or fear or distaste as it arises in you.

You can see your enemy in a different way. Try to imagine how their loved ones see them, how their child sees them, or their pet dog. – Robert Thurman

Now put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Imagine being that person, sitting there looking at you. See yourself from your enemy’s perspective. Realize that your enemy is mirroring your feelings toward them. Just as you see your enemy, your enemy sees you the same way. Perhaps you are jealous of them, if they seem to be one-up and looking down at you. Or you may feel superior and therefore have a condescending attitude toward the enemy. Look at yourself through eyes of jealousy, envy, competitiveness, and condescension…(to be continued tomorrow) – Working With the Outer Enemy, Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman on Buddhism for Non-Buddhists
https://youtu.be/PZVYiL6LDjM?si=CLopit2Ji0p0XBhH

 

10/21/2023

Entranced by ignorance from beginningless time until now,
You have had more than enough time to sleep.
So do not slumber any longer, but strive after virtue with body, speech and mind!
– Bardo Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead

CO-CREATING THE ENEMY by ROBERT THURMAN, reprinted rom LION’S ROAR

Our perception of others as enemies is influenced by how we have interacted with them in the past and how they have interacted with us. Our view of them is seldom an objective reflection of their qualities but tends to be a projection of our own aversion. Maybe someone harmed us in the past, so now we are afraid of them. Maybe we did something a person didn’t like, so now they are angry with us. We have a mental template of what we consider harmful, injurious, and frightening, and, with or without provocation, we project that onto people, turning them into enemies.

When someone looks unpleasant or threatening — when they fit our mental image of a frightening person — then we assume they intend to harm us, and we can’t wait to get rid of them. And if we can’t get rid of them, we feel frustrated and angry, which reinforces our view of them as an enemy.

“Enemy,” then, is not a fixed definition, a label permanently affixed to anyone we believe has harmed us. It’s a temporary identity we assign people when they don’t do what we want or they do something we don’t want.’. – Robert Thurman

The last thing most of us want to hear is that we might have any responsibility for creating our own enemies. After all, it wasn’t our car that drove over our newly sodded lawn. And we’re not the ones who spread that malicious gossip about a loved one, nor are we the one who seemed to take great pleasure in stealing a colleague’s clients. But if we are ever to get rid of our enemies, or at least render them powerless over us, we will have to own up to our part in creating the enmity.

Every person has the potential to be unpleasant and harmful, just as every person has the potential to be pleasant and helpful. Think of someone you love dearly; if you look back, you can probably find a time when they did something that harmed you, even unwittingly, or a time when you were angry with them or they were angry with you.

“Enemy,” then, is not a fixed definition, a label permanently affixed to anyone we believe has harmed us. It’s a temporary identity we assign people when they don’t do what we want or they do something we don’t want. But whatever others have or have not done, enemy-making always comes back to us.- ROBERT THURMAN, reprinted from LION’S ROAR

Bob Thurman: We can be Buddhas
https://youtu.be/h5cZITQDTrE?si=p4gxzZoEJHQYw3vC

 

10/20/2023

“…in the practice of compassion and charity a disciple should be detached. That is to say, he should practice compassion and charity without regard to appearances, without regard to form, without regard to sound, smell, taste, touch, or any quality of any kind.” Diamond Sutra, Chap. 4

WHO IS REALLY HERE? (Part 2) by Zen Priest, Roshi Joan Halifax

Not too long after that, 1987, I sat under a big oak tree in Ojai, California, when Thich Nhat Hanh picked up a piece of paper. He asked: “What is this?” Some poor soul in the gathering said: “A piece of paper!” Thay sweetly looked at the young man and said: “When I see this paper, I see a tree, and the man who brought down the tree. I see the truck bringing it to the saw mill….” And so forth.

My mind turned to Bessie Jones, and I knew Thay was right; in the end, we are empty of a separate self-identity.

Years later, my good friend Kaz Tanahashi asked to meet with me. He had sat a Zen sesshin and had a breakthrough: instead of the word emptiness, in the “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” trope that we hear chanted so often, he realized that emptiness really means boundlessness, for in fact we are made up of boundless interconnected components, and as well, space or openness is without boundary. Kaz would also suggest that these interconnected valences pointed to a state of mind.

I have chanted the Heart Sutra at the bedside of many dying people. Every time I came to the word emptiness, I tightened up a little. So, I adopted Kaz’s approach. Thus, I urge you to consider what I have shared in these stories. There are many ways to interpret so-called emptiness, and in the end, it is up to you to actually and directly experience boundlessness or so-called emptiness. It is not a big deal. You can do this. Simply relax and recall who you really are. – by Zen Priest, Roshi Joan Halifax

Finding the right path | Roshi Joan Halifax
https://youtu.be/pbsXx6p0p4c?si=aFZKsKQ4vnEAdk9W

 

10/19/2023

form is emptiness, emptiness is form
emptiness is not separate from form
form is not separate from emptiness,
whatever is form is emptiness
– Heart Sutra

WHO IS REALLY HERE? by Zen Priest, Roshi Joan Halifax

I traveled to St. Simons Island, off the coast of Georgia, to sit on a hard, bare bench in a small white clapboard church that was a place of gathering for prayer and song for generations of the Black people on that island.

Bessie Jones, a great singer of old songs from her culture, was someone whom I loved and respected. She was part of the group called the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Alan Lomax had introduced us and we immediately bonded. That day in ’84, I was there for her funeral. There she was, laid out in her coffin, her face serene, her hands folded at her waist, her people gathered about her coffin looking so very awake and also in grief.

Simply relax and recall who you really are.

I found myself thunderstruck by the words of the preacher, who said, “What you loved is not what is lying there in that coffin!” I have sat with those words for forty years. Maybe he meant something different than I was to come to understand. Sure, we all loved her soul, but I also got something else; Bessie was made of non-Bessie elements. Bessie Jones was not her body, not her songs, not her race, not her history. Sure, she was all that and there were non-Bessie elements…(to be continued tomorrow) – by Roshi Joan Halifax

Cultivating presence in our encounter with suffering by Roshi Joan Halifax
https://youtu.be/tl3bTHxqW0o?si=uvBgApwu3uKgGx4H

 

10/18/2023

Tao gives birth to One,
One gives birth to Two,
The Two gives birth to Three,
The Three gives birth to all universal things.
All universal things shoulder the Yin and embrace the Yang.
The Yin and Yang mingle and mix with each other to beget the harmony.
– Lao Tzu

LOVE IS YOUR ORIGIN

Love is the nature of the universe. It is a never ending, all-surrounding, all consuming power that is stronger than anything else in existence.
Because it is the core of true existence. It is from this that happiness emanates. Life flourishes expands, gives. It blossoms. Emanates fragrance that brings joy to the soul. It is the process of a flower. Gentle. Beautiful. Exquisite.

This is the journey of your return to the conscious awareness of your true nature.

Anything other than this is not of Truth. Therefore, the process is twofold. You wish to return to thr ever- present Substratum of your existence. The true, unchanging foundation of your being. To experience this Reality.
On a conscious level.

There is no way around this. There is no substitute. There is no awakening without it. No one has ever become illumined to their true Self without love. No matter who you are. No matter what you are doing.

The love that causes the earth to remain intact in spite of mans vile inhumanity to man. In spite of all the wars and abuses that have taken place on it. The love that causes the sun to rise fresh every single day. That gives a new morning to all, regardless of their past. The love that causes one to give for another’s happiness. Beyond explanation. The love that is beyond this world.

This is the love of the moment. The moment is now. – Robert Adams Happiness This Moment

“Robert Adams. There will always be man’s inhumanity to man. Non-duality. Satsang in English.”
https://youtu.be/jYhwE36pAz4?si=DbubMd7Z2UrklUB0

10/17/2023

“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is”
― Bhagavad Gita

“Enlightened enquiry alone leads to liberation. Supernatural powers are all illusory appearances created by the power of maya (mayashakti). Self-realization which is permanent is the only true accomplishment (siddhi). Accomplishments which appear and disappear, being the effect of maya, cannot be real. They are accomplished with the object of enjoying fame, pleasures, etc. They come unsought to some persons through their karma. Know that union with Brahman is the real aim of all accomplishments. This is also the state of liberation (aikya mukti) known as union (sayujya).”
― Ramana Maharshi, Collected works of Ramana Maharshi

Silence Is the Best Speech | Eckhart Tolle on Ramana Maharshi’s Present Gaze
https://youtu.be/16Vqv1BtoFk?si=fSo8lNLa80znSQec

10/16/2023

“Whose fault is it if the traveller instead of putting his luggage in the cart which bears the load any way, carries it on his head, to his own inconvenience?”
― Arthur Osborne, The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi

“The Heart is used in the Vedas and the scriptures to denote the place whence the notion ‘I’ springs. Does it spring only from the fleshy ball? It springs within us somewhere right in the middle of our being. The ‘I’ has no location. Everything is the Self. There is nothing but that. So the Heart must be said to be the entire body of ourselves and of the entire universe, conceived as ‘I’. But to help the practiser we have to indicate a definite part of the Universe, or of the Body. So this Heart is pointed out as the seat of the Self. But in truth we are everywhere, we are all that is, and there is nothing else.”
― Ramana Maharshi, Talks With Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness

Ramana Maharshi’s Final Teaching | Can You Handle the Truth?
https://youtu.be/hddHUVsVO-w?si=0kUVkYOT66qDID2c

 

10/13/2023

“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”
― Ramana Maharshi

“First of all, is there such a thing as inward security in relationship, in our affections, in the ways of our thinking? Is there the ultimate reality which every man wants, hopes, pins his faith to? Because the moment you want security, you will invent a god, an idea, an ideal, which will give you the feeling of security; but it may not be real at all—it may be merely an idea, a reaction, a resistance to the obvious fact of uncertainty. So one has to inquire into this question of whether there is security at all at any level of our lives. First, inwardly, because if there is no security outwardly, then our relationship with the world will be entirely different; then we shall not identify ourselves with any group, with any nation, or even with any family.

It is the desire to be secure, when there is probably no security at all, that breeds conflict. If psychologically you see the truth that there is no security of any kind, of any type, at any level, there is no conflict. Then, you are creative, volcanic in your action, explosive in your ideas; you are not tethered to anything. Then you are living.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Relationships to Oneself, to Others, to the World

Your consciousness is not yours | J. Krishnamurti
https://youtu.be/JWY2RbeFr4I?si=IRJsXCApoXWXk8bG

 

10/12/2023

Your body, senses and mind come and go
but you are this timeless presence
– Jean Klein, “The Ease of Being”

“In order to transform the world about us, with its misery, wars, unemployment, starvation, class divisions and utter confusion, there must be a transformation in ourselves. The revolution must begin within oneself – but not according to any belief or ideology, because revolution based on an idea, or in conformity to a particular pattern, is obviously no revolution at all. To bring about a fundamental revolution in oneself, one must understand the whole process of one’s thought and feeling in relationship. That is the only solution to all our problems – not to have more disciplines, more beliefs, more ideologies and more teachers. If we can understand ourselves as we are from moment to moment without the process of accumulation, then we shall see how there comes a tranquillity that is not a product of the mind, a tranquillity that is neither imagined nor cultivated; and only in that state of tranquillity can there be creativeness.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom

A mind that is free | J. Krishnamurti
https://youtu.be/EJm-N4B_odA?si=HdKZ0ea2BBpos5DO

 

10/11/2023

Seeing demands letting go
of all you think you know,
of all conditioning, of all habits,
of all that is not you.

“We see throughout the world extremes of poverty and riches, abundance and at the same time starvation; we have class distinction and racial hatred, the stupidity of nationalism and the appalling cruelty of war. There is exploitation of man by man; religions with their vested interests have become the means of exploitation, also dividing man from man. There is anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, frustration. We see all this. It is part of our daily life. Caught up in the wheel of suffering, if you are at all thoughtful you must have asked yourself how these human problems can be solved. Either you are conscious of the chaotic state of the world, or you are completely asleep, living in a fantastic world, in an illusion. If you are aware, you must be grappling with these problems. In trying to solve them, some turn to experts for their solution, and follow their ideas and theories. Gradually they form themselves into an exclusive body, and thus they come into conflict with other experts and their parties; and the individual merely becomes a tool in the hands of the group or of the expert. Or you try to solve these problems by following a particular system, which, if you carefully examine it, becomes merely another means of exploiting the individual. Or you think that to change all this cruelty and horror there must be a mass movement, a collective action. Now the idea of a mass movement becomes merely a catchword if you, the individual, who are part of the mass, do not understand your true function. True collective action can take place only when you, the individual, who are also the mass, are awake and take the full responsibility for your action without compulsion. Please bear in mind that I am not giving you a system of philosophy which you can follow blindly, but I am trying to awaken the desire for true and intelligent fulfillment, which alone can bring about happy order and peace in the world. There can be fundamental and lasting change in the world, there can be love and intelligent fulfillment, only when you wake up and begin to free yourself from the net of illusions, the many illusions which you have created about yourself through fear.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

Seeing without ideas | J. Krishnamurti
https://youtu.be/zxAWNTRtyWA?si=M3eSckrYJyAuo2SS

 

10/10/2023

When the ego is no longer paid attention to,
it dies. – Jean Klein

Jiddu Krishnamurti, “Relationships to Oneself, to Others, to the World” (continued)

So, should you not when you are young, know this quality of real affection? It cannot be brought into being; you have to have it, and those who are in charge of you, like your guardian, your parents, your teachers, must also have it. Most people have not got it. They are concerned with their achievements, with their longings, with their success, with their knowledge, and with what they have done. They have built up their past into such colossal importance that it ultimately destroys them.

So, should you not, while you are young, know what it is to take care of the rooms, to care for a number of trees that you yourself dig and plant so that there is a feeling, a subtle feeling of sympathy, of care, of generosity, the actual generosity—not the generosity of the mere mind—that means you give to somebody the little that you may have? If that is not so, if you do not feel that while you are young, it will be very difficult to feel that when you are old. So, if you have that feeling of love, of generosity, of kindness, of gentleness, then perhaps you can awaken that in others.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Relationships to Oneself, to Others, to the World

Seeing, sensation, desire | J. Krishnamurti
https://youtu.be/I6nkE2OpRTY?si=Qthwad6VZdhQRWU-

 

10/09/2023

“With most of us, the difficulty is that we are unaware of our escapes. We are so conditioned, so accustomed to our escapes, that we take them as realities.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

“Is it not very important, while we are young, to be loved and to love? It seems to me that most of us neither love nor are loved. And I think it is essential, while we are young, to understand this problem very seriously because it may be that while we are young, we can be sensitive enough to feel it, to know its quality, to know its perfume and perhaps, when we grow older, it will not be entirely destroyed. So, let us consider the question—that is, not that you should not be loved, but that you should love. What does it mean? Is it an ideal? Is it something far away, unattainable? Or is it something that can be felt by each one at odd moments of the day?

To feel it, to be aware, to know the quality of sympathy, the quality of understanding, to help naturally, to aid another without any motive, to be kind, to be generous, to have sympathy, to care for something, to care for a dog, to be sympathetic to the villager, to be generous to your friend, to be forgiving, is that what we mean by love? Or is love something in which there is no sense of resentment, something which is everlasting forgiveness?

And is it not possible while we are young, to feel it? Most of us, while we are young, do feel it—a sense of outward agony, sympathy to the villager, to the dog, to those who are little. And should it not be constantly tended? Should you not always have some part of the day when you are helping another or tending a tree or garden or helping in the house or in the hostel so that as you grow into maturity, you will know what it is to be considerate naturally—not with an enforced considerateness that is merely a negative word for one’s own happiness, but with that considerateness that is without motive…” (to be continued tomorrow) ― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Relationships to Oneself, to Others, to the World

 

10/07/2023

“You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

““Question: You seem to advise me to be self-centered to the point of
egoism. Must I not yield even to my interest in other people?

Maharaj: Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-
oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only
as far as they enrich, or enoble your own image of yourself.
And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection,
preservation and multiplication of one’s own body. By body I
mean all that is related to your name and shape— your family,
tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one’s name and
shape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither body
nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for.
Or, you may say, he is equally ‘selfish’ on behalf of everybody
he meets; everybody’s welfare is his own. The feeling ‘I am the
world, the world is myself’ becomes quite natural; once it is es-
tablished, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfish
means to covet, to acquire, accumulate on behalf of the part
against the whole.”
– “I Am That, Nisargadatta Maharaj”
― -Nisargadatta Maharaj

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, enjoy the video…

 

10/06/2023

“The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.”
― Jaggi Vasudev (Sadhguru)

“I do not believe a human being can be creative. If we perceive creation around us with a certain profoundness, we can imitate in many different ways, in permutations and combinations, and seem creative in society, but actually, we are not really creative. Everything that can be created has already been done in creation. We are clever craftsmen at the most. If you define the word “creativity” as really creating something – whether you make a movie, paint something, build a building, speak, or whatever else – this is not really creative – it is clever imitation. Because we have paid attention to different aspects of life, we are able to imitate in ways that others have not thought possible. Or if you do not like the word “imitate,” you could say “replicate.

“If you look at human beings – no one has horns, an extra arm, or three eyes – everything is the same, but everything is different. This is creativity. If you want to describe the characteristics of human beings in simple terms – everyone has two legs, two hands, one nose, two eyes, and so on. But just see what a unique happening each one of them is in every way. This is the nature of creation.” – Sadhguru

 

10/05/2023

When the mind fasts, reality appears;
when the mind feasts, reality disappears.
– Nisargadatta Maharaj

“The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. Incidentally practice of meditation affects deeply our character.

We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and its workings, we over-come it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

10/04/2023

Consciousness going out toward objects is mind,
That which turns inward toward the Self is Atma.
– Atmananda Krishn Menon, “Atma Darshan”

American mythologist Joseph Campbell sought out Menon during one of his trips to India in the 1950s. Campbell later recounted, “I wanted to meet a real, first-class master, and I didn’t want to hear any more slop about māyā and how you’ve got to give up the world and all that kind of thing. I’d had enough of that for about fifteen or twenty years.” When Campbell eventually found Menon, he engaged him in a discussion about brahman. “Then [Menon] gave me a little meditation: ‘Where are you between two thoughts?’ That is to say, you are thinking all the time, and you have an image of your-self. Well, where are you between two thoughts? Do you ever have a glimpse beyond your thinking of that which transcends anything you can think about your-self? That’s the source field out of which all of your energies are coming.”

10/03/2023

I came across this passage from Jean Klein’s book “I AM” and felt it would be pertinent for all seekers and practitioners regardless of the path one is on.

“Who is the knower of my true nature?
Your real nature is knowing. It cannot be known. All that the
mind can know is not you. Your “I” becomes a living reality
once the idea that society has given you of being a separate
entity has entirely left you—together with its desires, fears
and imagination, its belief that it is this or that. One reminder,
one foretaste of your unrestricted being will immediately
make it clear that these are not reality but its expressions. You
will be instantaneously convinced of what you are. The truth
of the nature of existence will be spontaneously revealed to
you: that you give birth to all that exists. Without awareness
nothing would be. What is experienced on a phenomenal
plane is not you but an extension of you. Experience is in you
but you are not experience.

“In living freedom you are free from choice, free from
striving, free from the need to define or qualify yourself in
any way. Everything that exists appears in consciousness, but
consciousness is not lost in existence. I cannot prove this to
you in words nor can any second-hand information convince
you. Make this a living proof and you will find your still
home-ground. Then there is only thankfulness where no one
thanks.

“You are neither this nor that. You are the knower of all,
primal perception, original limitless being.” – Jean Klein, “I AM”

10/02/2023

“God is – when you are not.”
– Meister Eckhart

I’m finally back. My wife contracted the COVID virus in early September, so I had to pull double duty for a couple of weeks and decided to take the rest of the month off to work on my internal arts practice. 

The denser, more complex areas of the ego take longer to integrate. Do so without a doer, but with the deeper intelligence of open awareness which produces glimpses (moments of deep understanding) that increase in frequency and duration until the ultimate, the global awareness is established.
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See you tomorrow.

 

09/06/2023

When free from doing and not doing,
the “I AM” shines in its glory!

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

We are devoting the month of September to J. Krishnamurti. In today’s quote and video, Krishnamurti presents the fact that “We are the world.”

“We are the world. The world is you and me, the world is not separate from you and me. We have created this world – the world of violence, the world of wars, the world of religious divisions, sex, anxieties, the utter lack of communication with each other, with no sense of compassion, consideration for another. Wherever one goes in any country throughout the world, human beings, that is, you and another, suffer; we are anxious, we are uncertain, we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything has become uncertain. Right through the world as human beings we are in sorrow, fear, anxiety, violence, uncertain of everything, insecure. There is a common relationship between us all. We are the world essentially, basically, fundamentally. The world is you, and you are the world. Realizing that fundamentally, deeply, not romantically, not intellectually but actually, then we see that our problem is a global problem. It is not my problem or your particular problem, it is a human problem.”
― J. Krishnamurti

Today’s Video: “How can the idea that ‘you are the world’ be justified? | J. Krishnamurti”
https://youtu.be/SIMeM3DFHmI?si=vIN1_GRYTX8OcpVG

 

09/01/2023

The body-mind,
a narrow window
limiting our perceptions.
But consciousness isn’t narrow.
It is total, everywhere,
even behind the body-mind window.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

It’s a new month, and we are devoting the month of September to J. Krishnamurti. We start off with a Krishnamurti quote and video lecture on “Questioning.”

“You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don’t know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn’t find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn’t answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.”
― J. Krishnamurti

Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend, everyone. And keep practicing. See you next week.

Today’s Video: “What is the role of questions in life? | J. Krishnamurti”
https://youtu.be/_iuN2loTtB0?si=JlbRedRZLnBe1Uy1

 

08/31/2023

Remind ourselves
of Truth, Love, Beauty
of our best
in a way that is Truthful

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August, we have two quotes from “Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown” and a video on “Wu-Wei.”

“They found security in letting go rather than in holding on and, in so doing, developed an attitude toward life that might be called psychophysical judo. Nearly twenty-five centuries ago, the Chinese sages Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu had called it wu-wei, which is perhaps best translated as “action without forcing.” It is sailing in the stream of the Tao, or course of nature, and navigating the currents of li (organic pattern)—a word that originally signified the natural markings in jade or the grain in wood. As this attitude spread and prevailed in the wake of Vibration Training, people became more and more indulgent about eccentricity in life-style, tolerant of racial and religious differences, and adventurous in exploring unusual ways of loving.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

“The way of Wisdom lies, therefore, in recognizing things which happen to you as your own karma—not as punishments for misdeeds or rewards for virtue (for there really is no “bad” or “good” karma), but as your own doing. For in this way you come to see that the real “you” includes both the controlled and the uncontrolled aspects of your experience.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts – Wu Wei (Do Nothing) | Powerful lecture”
https://youtu.be/605s2QuYGX0?si=yqHkNyeddu2X-BgI

 

08/30/2023

Choicelessly aware of life
within us and without,
no fixed mental patterns,
not influenced by
or implicated by
our mental conditioning,
— The meditative state.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August, we have two quotes and a short video from “The Watercourse Way.”

“Chao-Chou asked, “What is the Tao?” The master [Nan-ch’üan] replied, “Your ordinary consciousness is the Tao.” “How can one return into accord with it?” “By intending to accord you immediately deviate.” “But without intention, how can one know the Tao?” “The Tao,” said the master, “belongs neither to knowing nor to not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it’s like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?”
― Alan W. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

“As Chuang-tzu says, “It may be attained but not seen,” or, in other words, felt but not conceived, intuited but not categorized, divined but not explained. In a similar way, air and water cannot be cut or clutched, and their flow ceases when they are enclosed. There is no way of putting a stream in a bucket or the wind in a bag.” ― Alan W. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

Today’s Video: “The Watercourse Way (Alan Watts)”
https://youtu.be/YNBB6uYsDY8?si=zEHjTqyX3D2Ckltr

 

08/29/2023

When you park you car,
it does not follow you.
Why not so with emotional burdens?
Why carry them 24/7?
Park them
and go about life.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August, in today’s quote and the accompanying video, Watts urges us to Become What We Are…

“ALMOST EVERY FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF LIFE can be expressed in two opposite ways. There are those who say that to attain the highest wisdom we must be still and calm, immovable in the midst of turmoil. And there are those who say that we must move on as life moves, never stopping for a moment either in fear of what is to come or to turn a regretful glance at what has gone. The former are as those who listen to music, letting the flow of notes pass through their minds without trying either to arrest them or to speed them on. Like Chuang-tzu’s perfect man, they employ their minds as a mirror: it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep. The latter are as those who dance to music, keeping pace with its movement and letting their limbs flow with it as unceasingly and as unhesitatingly as clouds respond to the breath of wind. The one seems to reflect events as they pass, and the other to move forward with them. Both points of view, however, are true, for to attain that highest wisdom we must at once walk on and remain still. Consider life as a revolving wheel set upright with man walking on its tire. As he walks, the wheel is revolving toward him beneath his feet, and if he is not to be carried backward by it and flung to the ground he must walk at the same speed as the wheel turns. If he exceeds that speed, he will topple forward and slip off the wheel onto his face. For at every moment we stand, as it were, on the top of a wheel; immediately we try to cling to that moment, to that particular point of the wheel, it is no longer at the top and we are off our balance. Thus by not trying to seize the moment, we keep it, for the second we fail to walk on we cease to remain still. Yet within this there is a still deeper truth. From the standpoint of eternity we never can and never do leave the top of the wheel, for if a circle is set in infinite space it has neither top nor bottom. Wherever you stand is the top, and it revolves only because you are pushing it round with your own feet.”
― Alan W. Watts, Become What You Are

Today’s Video: Alan Watts- Become What You Are, Be More Creative
https://youtu.be/NF9-Z8k84dQ?si=adaDterVRYAvTZqv

 

08/28/2023

Life is a book,
one can read it,
or skim through it.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August, in today’s quote and the accompanying video, Watts discusses decision and how we make them.

“We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision, and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if decision itself were voluntary, every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide–an infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide. We are free to decide because decision “happens.” We just decide without having the faintest understanding of how we do it. In fact, it is neither voluntary nor involuntary. To “get the feel” of this relativity is to find another extraordinary transformation of our experience as a whole, which may be described in either of two ways. I feel that I am deciding everything that happens, or, I feel that everything, including my decisions, is just happening spontaneously. For a decision–the freest of my actions-just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me. Such a way of seeing things is vividly described by a modern Zen master, the late Sokei-an Sasaki: One day I wiped out all the notions from my mind. I gave up all desire. I discarded all the words with which I thought and stayed in quietude. I felt a little queer–as if I were being carried into something, or as if I were touching some power unknown to me … and Ztt! I entered. I lost the boundary of my physical body. I had my skin, of course, but I felt I was standing in the center of the cosmos. I spoke, but my words had lost their meaning. I saw people coming towards me, but all were the same man. All were myself! I had never known this world. I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion: I was never created; I was the cosmos; no individual Mr. Sasaki existed.7 It would seem, then, that to get rid of the subjective distinction between “me” and “my experience”–through seeing that my idea of myself is not myself–is to discover the actual relationship between myself and the “outside” world. The individual, on the one hand, and the world, on the other, are simply the abstract limits or terms of a concrete reality which is “between” them, as the concrete coin is “between” the abstract, Euclidean surfaces of its two sides. Similarly, the reality of all “inseparable opposites”–life and death, good and evil, pleasure and pain, gain and loss–is that “between” for which we have no words.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Way of Zen

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts Making Decisions”
https://youtu.be/Idccm2zmbVc?si=F4HxNw9HrTiQSXZJ

 

08/26/2023

Consciousness
is the hearth
from which sparks fly
and then die out.
Duality identifies with the sparks
and not with the hearth.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August, in today’s quote and video, Watts critiques the Future and those who live in it.

“The decay of belief has come about through the honest doubt, the careful and fearless thinking of highly intelligent men of science and philosophy. Moved by a zeal and reverence for facts, they have tried to see, understand, and face life as it is without wishful thinking. Yet for all that they have done to improve the conditions of life, their picture of the universe seems to leave the individual without ultimate hope. The price of their miracles in this world has been the disappearance of the world-to-come, and one is inclined to ask the old question, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” Logic, intelligence, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hungry. For the heart has learned to feel that we live for the future. Science may, slowly and uncertainly, give us a better future—for a few years. And then, for each of us, it will end. It will all end. However long postponed, everything composed must decompose.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Enjoy your weekend, everyone. And here is more on the Future from Alan Watts…

Today’s Video: “Putting Hope In The Future Is A Good Way To Suffer | Alan Watts”
https://youtu.be/zq7b9GwH65U?si=MFPMy_PyIvaIcDdG

 

08/25/2023

Through global vision,
all intentions subside,
leaving only silent awareness,
total presence,
freeing one
from the kaleidoscope of the ego

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August, here Watts compares the world outside and inside your skin…

“The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably, and at first you feel a little out of control because the world outside is so much vaster than the world inside. Yet you soon discover that you are able to go ahead with ordinary activities—to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead, of looking and listening, light and sound come to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. All space becomes your mind. Time carries you along like a river, but never flows out of the present: the more it goes, the more it stays, and you no longer have to fight or kill it.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

In the accompanying short video, Watts discusses life free of a skin-encapsulated ego.

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts ~ The Skin Encapsulated Ego”
https://youtu.be/vked7sJrRN0?si=LjJw7zLT6NpiSMEn

 

08/24/2023

Most action are reactions
from fear, anxiety, desire,
a kaleidoscope
rearranged and sustained
by one’s ego and memory.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Rather than posting an Alan Watts quote, today we will present an excerpt from Watts’ classic seminar on Myth and Religion. This is part one of that lecture series, entitled f”Not What Should Be, But What Is.”

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts Podcast – (Tao of Philosophy) – Not What Should Be, But What Is”
https://youtu.be/VDAjeQwDdAw?si=a4tMdJ2PSNJomSlg

 

08/23/2023

Fear and anxiety
pawns of memory and the known.
Emotional involvement blinds,
a reaction of a psyche
separated from its Source.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Watts focuses on the vicious circle of trying to produce “happiness.”

“Thus the “brainy” economy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse—providing a constant titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions. The perfect “subject” for the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the radio, preferably using the portable kind which can go with him at all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from television screen, to newspaper, to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-with-out-release through a series of teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous surfaces, interspersed with such restorers of sensitivity—shock treatments—as “human interest” shots of criminals, mangled bodies, wrecked airplanes, prize fights, and burning buildings. The literature or discourse that goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to replace every partial gratification with a new desire. For this stream of stimulants is designed to produce cravings for more and more of the same, though louder and faster, and these cravings drive us to do work which is of no interest save for the money it pays—to buy more lavish radios, sleeker automobiles, glossier magazines, and better television sets, all of which will somehow conspire to persuade us that happiness lies just around the corner if we will buy one more.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

In today’s accompanying video, Watts discusses confusing money with happiness.

Today’s Video: “How To Waste Your Life & Never Be Happy – Alan Watts’ Antidote to Guilt”
https://youtu.be/O-chgIYYTtQ

 

08/22/2023

In the realm of the known
all is qualified, classified,
filed away in memory.
Beyond the known,
lies never-ending discovery.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Watts focuses on scriptures and religion…

“Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, open-ness—an act of trust in the unknown. An ardent Jehovah’s Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

In today’s accompanying video, Watts continues his talk on scriptures and religion.

Today’s Video: Alan Watts Opens Up About Religion (thought provoking video)
https://youtu.be/0wi7Wtocj9M

08/21/2023

When desire arises
before fixation on an object
become conscious of it.
Without the ‘I’ being involved
the power of the desire
dies away into
the all-containing I-Observer

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Watts focuses on detachment in his quote and how to break free of emotional attachment in the video.

“To be detached from the world, (in the sense that Buddhist and Taoists and Hindus often talk about detachment), does not mean to be non-participative. By that I don’t mean that you just go through doing everything mechanically and have your thoughts elsewhere. I mean a complete participation, but still detached.

And the difference between the two attitudes is this..

On the one hand, there is a way of being so anxious about physical pleasure, so afraid that you won’t make it, that you grab it too hard..that you just have to have that thing, and if you do that, you destroy it completely.. and therefore after every attempt to get it, you feel disappointed, you feel empty, you feel something was lost..and so you want it again, you have to keep repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating..because you never really got that. And it is this that’s the hang up, this is what is meant by attachment to this world…

But on the other hand, pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced, when one is grasping it..

I knew a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. She was so delighted with the bunny rabbit and so afraid of losing it, that taking it home in the car, she squeezed it to death with love. And lots of parents do that to their children. And lots of spouses do it to each other. They hold on too hard, and so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is.

To have it, to have life, and to have its pleasure, you must at the same time let go of it.”
― Alan Watts

Today’s Video: Alan Watts – How To Break Free From Emotional Attachment
https://youtu.be/Sv43jZqLXeM

 

08/19/2023

in truly creative moments
no ‘I’ interference.
thing occur of and by themselves.
such action is total action.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote is an excerpt from Watts’ book, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” The accompanying video Watts sumarises the entire book.

“To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet. We look for this security by fortifying and enclosing ourselves in innumerable ways. We want the protection of being “exclusive” and “special,” seeking to belong to the safest church, the best nation, the highest class, the right set, and the “nice” people. These defenses lead to divisions between us, and so to more insecurity demanding more defenses. Of course it is all done in the sincere belief that we are trying to do the right things and live in the best way; but this, too, is a contradiction.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Today’s Video: “The Illusion of Psychological Security – Alan Watts 📖 The Wisdom of Insecurity Summary”
https://youtu.be/X7vn1OtxwDU

 

08/18/2023

Live Simply,
or not at all.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote and accompanying video Watts discusses the mask of love and in his video he humorously depicts falling in love.

“Behind the mask of love I find my innate selfishness. What a predicament I am in if someone asks, “Do you really love me?” I can’t say yes without saying no, for the only answer that will really satisfy is, “Yes, I love you so much I could eat you! My love for you is identical with my love for myself. I love you with the purest selfishness.” No one wants to be loved out of a sense of duty. So I will be very frank. “Yes, I am pure, selfish desire and I love because you make me feel wonderful—at any rate for the time being.” But then I begin to wonder whether there isn’t something a bit cunning in this frankness. It is big of me to be so sincere, to make a play for her by not pretending to be more than I am—unlike the other guys who say they love her for herself. I see that there is always something insincere about trying to be sincere, as if I were to say openly, “The statement that I am now making is a lie.” There seems to be something phony about every attempt to define myself, to be totally honest. The trouble is that I can’t see the back, much less the inside, of my head. I can’t be honest because I don’t fully know what I am. Consciousness peers out from a center which it cannot see—and that is the root of the matter.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness

In his video, Watts takes a humorous if not profound look at falling in love.

Today’s Video: “The Mystery of Falling in Love – Alan Watts”
https://youtu.be/DIChudNdFQ8

 

08/17/2023

All actions of the “me”
intentional and implicated,
trapping one in a vicious circle,
chained in a psychological relationship
to the action or thought.

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote and accompanying video Watts discusses our faulty feedback system and in the video how to apply Zen in life.

“The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a margin of “lag” or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate–that is, if we bring the upper and lower limits of temperature very close together in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70 degrees–the whole system will break down. For to the extent that the upper and lower limits coincide, the signals for switching off and switching on will coincide! If 70 degrees is both the lower and upper limit the “go” sign will also be the “stop” sign; “yes” will imply “no” and “no” will imply “yes.” Whereupon the mechanism will start “trembling,” going on and off, on and off, until it shakes itself to pieces.

The system is too sensitive and shows symptoms which are startlingly like human anxiety. For when a human being is so self-conscious, so self-controlled that he cannot let go of himself, he dithers or wobbles between opposites. This is precisely what is meant in Zen by going round and round on “the wheel of birth-and-death,” for the Buddhist samsara is the prototype of all vicious circles. We saw that when the furnace responds too closely to the thermostat, it cannot go ahead without also trying to stop, or stop without also trying to go ahead. This is just what happens to the human being, to the mind, when the desire for certainty and security prompts identification between the mind and its own image of itself. It cannot let go of itself. It feels that it should not do what it is doing, and that it should do what it is not doing. It feels that it should not be what it is, and be what it isn’t. Furthermore, the effort to remain always “good” or “happy” is like trying to hold the thermostat to a constant 70 degrees by making the lower limit the same as the upper.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Way of Zen

Alan Watts ~ How To Apply Zen In Life
https://youtu.be/e04tK9g1H34

 

08/16/2023

The person, an autonomous entity,
a fictional viewpoint
without substance or independence
like characters in a dream.

Dear Friends and Practitioners

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote and accompanying video Watts why God plays hide-and-seek.

“God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays “hide” and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself! But that’s the whole fun of it-just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But- when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will WAKE UP, stop pretending, and REMEMBER that we are all one single Self- the God who is all that there is and who lives forever and ever.

You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn’t really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It’s the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards and play again, and so it goes with the world.”
― Alan Watts, A. Book

And here is the accompanying video…

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts – Life is a Game of Hide & Seek (And Why YOU Are God?)”
https://youtu.be/ipGEg4rT4zk

 

08/15/2023

The Self, the Continuum, Life,
not found in experiences
or in mental exercises.
Clarity which knows limitation
free the way
to what lies beyond.

Dear Friends and Practitioners

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote and accompanying video Watts discusses finding out that you are all of yourself…and the universe as well.

““So you see, if you become aware of the fact that you are all of your own body, and that the
beating of your heart is not just something that happens to you, but something you’re doing,
then you become aware also in the same moment and at the same time that you’re not only
beating your heart, but that you are shining the sun. Why? Because the process of your
bodily existence and its rhythms is a process, an energy system which is continuous with the
shining of the sun, just like the East River, here, is a continuous energy system, and all the
waves in it are activities of the whole East River, and that’s continuous with the Atlantic
Ocean, and that’s all one energy system and finally the Atlantic ocean gets around to being
the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, etc., and so all the waters of the Earth are a
continuous energy system. It isn’t just that the East River is part of it. You can’t draw any
line and say ‘Look, this is where the East River ends and the rest of it begins,’ as if you can
in the parts of an automobile, where you can say ‘This is definitely part of the generator,here,
and over here is a spark plug.’ There’s not that kind of isolation between the elements
of nature.”
― Alan Wilson, Watts

In today’s video, Watts suugests we are all of ourselves…and more.

Today’s Video: Alan Watts “You Are The Universe”
https://youtu.be/fjpcMoaNtBM

08/14/2023

True aim of existence
to be without conditioning,
a life promising
joy, freedom and peace.

Dear Friends and Practitioners

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote and accompanying video Watts discusses what is science.

“The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. However much it may confuse facts with conventions, and reality with arbitrary divisions, in this openness and sincerity of mind it bears some resemblance to religion, understood in its other and deeper sense. The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than to understand and explain it. The more he analyzes the universe into infinitesimals, the more things he finds to classify, and the more he perceives the relativity of all classification. What he does not know seems to increase in geometric progression to what he knows. Steadily he approaches the point where what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind, a window whose name is not ignorance but wonder.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

In the accompanying video, Watts continues his discussion of science and the art of definition.

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts ~ What Is Science?”
https://youtu.be/yqf4an9ra4s

 

08/12/2023

non-directed listening,
an openness, a living meditation.
everything heard points directly
towards ultimate reality,
not conceived
of words or thoughts

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. In today’s quote and accompanying video Watts discusses the great hallucination.

“We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that “I myself” is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body—a center which “confronts” an “external” world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. “I came into this world.” “You must face reality.” “The conquest of nature.” This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.”
― Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Learn more about the Truth behind this Hallucination in today’s video lecture…Have an enjoyable weekend, everyone, and keep practicing.

Today’s Video: “You are a Hallucination – Alan Watts – Find the Truth”
https://youtu.be/2JZdTW_6wXM

 

08/11/2023

Spontaneous clarity
dissolves all patterns, habits
that produce states,
a condition called – enlightenment

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Alan asks us how we feel about vanishing forever.

“So if you really go the whole way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing forever. Have all your efforts, and all your achievements, and all your attainments turning into dust and nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you? That’s what it’s all going to come to. And for some reason or other, we are supposed to find this depressing. Do you see in a way, how that is saying: the most real state is the state of nothing? But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness. Where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how it looks behind your eyes. You see?

So in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality. Then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of you being scared, and put out and worried, and so on, this is nothing, it’s a dream. Because you’re really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. So cheer up! You see?
The essence of your mind is intrinsically pure. Pure means clear, void.
See? If you think of this idea of nothingness as mere blankness, and you hold onto this idea of blankness then kind of grizzly about it, you haven’t understood it. Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and the mountains, and rivers, and the good men and bad men, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and You Are IT. What else could You BE?”
― Alan Watts, The Essence of Alan Watts

In the video today, Watts discusses Nothingness and our place in it.

Today’s Video:”The Truth about Nothingness ~ Alan Watts”
https://youtu.be/ghQl77-tiXM

 

08/10/2023

The ultimate non-state
without cause
existing in itself,
by itself.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Alan discusses the rat race – thinking you’re going to get somewhere.

“For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an
abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.”
― Alan Watts

And here’s a video containing excerpts from several of Watts’ talks pertaining to the rat-race.

Today’s Video: “It’s Already Happening But People Don’t See It – Alan Watts on Rat Race”
https://youtu.be/iYaPFZW7Q30

 

08/09/2023

Hear the sound around you.
Hear its music.
Hear the sound within you.
Hear the body’s music.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Alan discusses the superficiality of how we view our existence.

“As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable? But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.” How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

In his video discourse, Watts discusses why life seems so meaningless to many.

Today’s Video: “ALAN WATTS MEANINGLESS LIFE”
https://youtu.be/m72iWC-0UpU

 

08/08/2023

Seeing facts as they are
is discernment,
but the discerner must be absent.
Discernment only happens
when there is no controller.
Then clarity is present.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Alan discusses the Fear of Death.

“Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that “I” and all other “things” now present will vanish, until this knowledge compels you to release them – to know it now as surely as if you had just fallen off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Indeed you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it’s no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over – fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don’t die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Below is Alan Watts’ complimentary video on the Fear of Death

Today’s Video: “How to Conquer One’s Fear of Death – Alan Watts”
https://youtu.be/fIWfcThb5_0

 

08/07/2023

Your natural state
needs no learning.
Be free
from learning and unlearning.
No volition is necessary
to see you are conditioned.
In seeing what is false
all that remains is unconditioned,
the inconceivable non-state..

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Today we have more from Alan Watts as Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Alan discusses Space.

“Most of us assume as a matter of common sense that space is nothing, that it’s not important and has no energy. But as a matter of fact, space is the basis of existence. How could you have stars without space? Stars shine out of space and something comes out of nothing just in the same way as when you listen, in an unprejudiced way, you hear all sounds coming out of silence. It is amazing. Silence is the origin of sound just as space is the origin of stars, and woman is the origin of man. If you listen and pay close attention to what is, you will discover that there is no past, no future, and no one listening. You cannot hear yourself listening. You live in the eternal now and you are that. It is rally extremely simple, and that is the way it is.”
― Alan Watts

More about Space with Alan Watts in today’s video…

Today’s Video: “Space Is Not Nothing, It’s Everything – Alan Watts On What Lies Beyond”
https://youtu.be/nlUNHMsp8Xs

 

08/05/2023

The Presence and Words
of a real Teacher
come directly from the Freedom
the disciple longs for.
They do not free the disciple
but bring the disciple
to that threshold
where Freedom abides.
It’s his/her own autonomy
that takes the disciple across.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today Alan is fascinated by the “rhythm of the waves.”

“Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves.”
― Alan Watts

Here it is below in a video format. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and keep practicing. If you are near a beach, take some time just to listen to the rhythm of the waves.

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts on Waves”
https://youtu.be/ogG11nMdKXI

 

08/04/2023

Meditation is not a state
but the background and substance
of all states.
No anticipation, no projection,
no striving toward a goal,
neither an inside,
nor an outside,
beyond time and space.

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today his quote and video focuses on the ‘Wisdom of Insecurity.”

“For man seems to be unable to live without myth, without the belief that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future. At once new myths come into being – political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them – for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.”
― Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

Today’s Video: “Alan Watts On The Wisdom of Insecurity”
https://youtu.be/XU-aB5ylcjo

 

08/03/2023

True Meditation,
the absence of a meditator
and anything meditated on,
the absence of subject-object relationship,
a timeless awareness,
freeing one from automatic reactions
of thought and memory,
freeing the energies
engaged in these reactions

Dear Friends and Practitioners,

Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today we read and view Watts’ thoughts on the “Double-Bind.”

“This state of affairs is known technically as the “double-bind.” A
person is put in a double-bind by a command or request which contains
a concealed contradiction…

“This is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t
situation which arises constantly in human (and especially family)
relations…

“The social doublebind game can be phrased in several ways:The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.
Everyone must play.
You must love us.
You must go on living.
Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.
Control yourself and be natural.
Try to be sincere.
Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain
kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere—all these are
spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen “of themselves” like
digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire
that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone
deplores—weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like
forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate
them. Faith—in life, in other people, and in oneself—is the attitude of
allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its
own time.”― Alan Watts, “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”

In his video lecture, Watts delves deeper into the “Double-Bind.”

Today’s Video: “The Double Bind – Alan Watts”
https://youtu.be/PYvQlVQJSds

 

08/02/2023

separated from perception,
separated from the body,
from its organic memory,
paralyzed by an overactive mind,
driven by desire and intentional thinking
separated from total understanding.

Alan Watts Month continues throughout August. Today we read and view what happens if we can dream any dream we wanted…

“Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say “Well, that was pretty great.” But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say “Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?” And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream … where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today…”
― Alan Watts

Now here is the full lecture in a video…

Today’s Video: “If You Could Dream Any Dream You Wanted by Alan Watts”
https://youtu.be/abWBb1SxkXc

08/01/2023

conceptual memory,
localized in the brain,
concretized perception,
recognition of name and form,
living in concept and recognition
is living in abstraction.

Dear Friends and Practitioners.

August is Alan Watts Month. That’s right an entire month of Alan Watts quotes, lecture and videos. We start off with Alan reminding us that we are still part of the Big Bang and its primordial energy.

““It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually–if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning– you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang. You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as–Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so–I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I’m that, too. But we’ve learned to define ourselves as separate from it. ” ― Alan Watts

Now here’s how the above quote would look and sound like in video…

Today’s Video: “You Are the Big Bang”
https://youtu.be/JEunth9YCgo

 

 

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