‘Awakening to your own original face – “enlightenment’” – does not mean being able to explain yourself or the source of yourself. Enlightenment is liberation from the dross of learning and experience that, without one’s being aware of it, has accumulated and settled like so much sediment – or like cholesterol into one’s arteries! It […]
Much as I love reading the New Yorker for learning about new things, intellectual stimulation, and keeping up-to-date with aspects of the news, I was not expecting an article on natural wine to be prompting a blog post. In it were references to a Gurdjieff community in California (which prompted me to send it on […]
‘The “joy” in joyful effort is crucial. It implies… a rising mind, a happy and easeful mind, a sense of humor, even when things aren’t going well. The word effort sounds like a task, a chore. But joyful effort is almost no effort at all. It’s effortless effort – effort without strain or pressuer, just doing […]
‘Seeing all things wisely, as “empty” of their “own-being,” the bodhisattva begins to live differently in the world. Based on the vision that this perspective enables, this new way of living absorbs energy from the surrounding world and transmits quantities of energy that can be absorbed by others. Wisdom empowers that ability, in part by […]
‘The power of trust is to be fooled by the self and have nowhere to escape. It is to be called by someone else and turn your head around. It is to be just here from birth to old age… The power of effort is to speak of what action cannot express, to act what […]
‘There are many forms of practice that may look like Zen practice, but the practice of the Way of Buddha is nothing other than knowing that, essentially, we are not deluded. If you want to get rid of delusion, or think that your present condition is not so good, and therefore want to transform yourself […]
‘Common sense tells us that water is in a river, ocean, lake, or bowl, and that it comes out when we tip the bowl. Dogen says that wherever water goes, that place becomes a river; where water stays becomes a lake; where water becomes large and rests becomes an ocean. There is no ocean, river […]
