Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
Get the most recent iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list.
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In this evening’s talk, Michael discusses the importance of observing our experience instead of getting caught by it. Doing so drastically enhances our ability to respond to life from a place of deep freedom.
Over at digitalZENDO, there is an great piece on discussing the elusive experience of insight that Zennists call kensho:
Avoiding talking about Kensho, does not make use virtuous or spiritual. Maybe it’s the contrary, it perhaps avoiding a direct conversation that could be valuable.
I actually agree that at times we blow this one. A direct conversation about it is valuable. How we do it, however, really matters. For any teacher to, as an example, to offer up their experience as a model will only generate more attachment among their students. Especially if the students are far enough along the path to be desperate for enlightenment. On the other hand, totally clamming up about kensho generates attachment as well.
Jaye Seiho Morris points out that the work is important and takes guts:
It’s a unswerving and progressive effort towards “full awakening,” at the same time, learning to be helpful as possible to others, without thought to how I might personally benefit. Anything aiming for less than that target is settling.
Settling only results in a kind of purgatory where our egos know enough to be dangerous and our True Nature remains only partially realized. This partiality will always lead to suffering because there is a felt sense of being perpetually incomplete. It is best for all concerned to go all the way with the process of “uncovery” and refuse to settle for anything less that Dai Kensho, or the Great Awakening. At the same time, it is imperative that teachers remind their students that the experience of awakening is not awakening. Clinging to one’s experience of kensho, be it great or not, only lets the ego in the back door of the whole process, thus derailing it.
Over at the elephant journal, Waylon Lewis shares some smile material with this one:
This brilliant, almost-too-subtle (just a line at bottom) ad campaign was created by UNCLE Grey A/S Denmark. It vividly reminds us that in getting up off the couch, in working our butts off for the benefit of others, no matter the setbacks…it’s all worth it.
Even if we don’t amount to half or 1/100th of Mandela, Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama, at least it won’t be for a lack of trying, and a surfeit of surfing, skiing and barbecuing!
And the tragedy continues for the elephants of Thailand:
Once the revered symbol of Thai culture, the backbone of industry and the protector of the country’s sovereignty during war, elephants now wander the streets of Bangkok, reduced to providing rides for tourists and helping their owners beg for their next meal.
With their drivers — mahouts, they are called — the elephants dodge Bangkok’s chaotic traffic and the feeble attempts of the government and the police to push them out of the city.
Many elephants were put out of work when logging became illegal in the 1980s, making it difficult for their owners to feed them. Wild ones have been hunted and driven from their natural habitat. It is estimated that there are now 2,500 domesticated and 1,500 wild elephants in Thailand, down from around 50,000 in 1950.
Bows, Tricycle
I have a lot of respect for Adyashanti and his approach to teaching. He’s genuine, honest, and has the capacity to creatively turn up the heat on his students.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview that Tami Simon did:
I no longer believe the next thought that I have. I’m not capable of actually believing a thought that happens. I have no control over what thoughts appear, but I can’t believe that the thought is real or true or significant. And because no thought can be grasped as real, true, or significant, that itself has an experiential impact; it is the experience of freedom.
If somebody wanted to call that “being beyond the gravitational force of the dream state,” fine, but I am always hesitant about claiming something. I always remind everybody I talk to that all I know is right now. I don’t know about tomorrow. Tomorrow a thought could come by that could catch me, Velcro me, pull me into separation and delusion. I don’t know—maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I have no way of knowing that. All I know is right now.
Douglas Rushkoff writes a fascinating, and dare I say, important essay titled, Economics Is Not a Natural Science.
The marketplace in which most commerce takes place today is not a pre-existing condition of the universe. It’s not nature. It’s a game, with very particular rules, set in motion by real people with real purposes. That’s why it’s so amazing to me that scientists, and people calling themselves scientists, would propose to study the market as if it were some natural system — like the weather, or a coral reef.
Couple this stuff with Justin Fox’s recent, The Myth of the Rational Market, and you can join our EconoGeek Club.
But what does this have to do with spirituality, you ask? Everything. Looking at the footprints left by the Market’s random walk, and imbuing them God-like meaning can get in our way. The same thing applies when we attach to any of our traditions, making them special, or superior.
Our freedom arises out of our ability to let go of what we think we know.
Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
Get the most recent iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list.
____
In this evening’s talk, Michael discusses how the peak experiences brought on by a meditation practice can sometimes stop our spiritual growth. Issues of vulnerability and anger, along with the various forms of an appropriate response might be are also discussed.
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