Taking our sadness for a ride Sadness is a frequent emotion to endure. When severe and persistent it may become depression. Sometimes there is a good reason for being sad but, most often there is no reason at all. We can wake up sad or happy w/o any obvious reason. If somebody near […]
I DON’T KNOW BUT I THINK THAT.... This is a follow up on a recent Dharma Talk by Arnaud on building confidence during insecurity and incertitude. Zen perspective is based upon trying to understand the mechanics of how the mind operates so that we end up controlling the mind, rather than the mind controlling […]
Is suffering really necessary? During his 50 years of verbal teaching, the main message of the Buddha was that life is suffering. Suffering been understood in its generic meaning that is negativity. Was the Buddha a masochistic man? Not at all. In fact he was enjoying good times like anyone else. Suffering comes from […]
Ego on love, love on ego The #1 goal of Zen Buddhism is to minimize suffering. This is why Zen loves to talk about the ego because it is our main source of suffering........even and despite when love between 2 persons is involved. Without our ego, love between 2 people, will be in theory, […]
Looking deeply into food During lunch break, we are eating almost like a robot, even still in front of the screen. Our body is eating whereas our mind is, as always, busy in different space-times doing something else. The body has a lunch break but your mind is running around. This is, as Zen […]
Unfolding the wings of acceptance We often talk about mindfulness and leave out compassion. In today’s talk I will talk about acceptance and how mindfulness and compassion work together. We create suffering when we are caught in the trance of life. We often don’t clearly recognize or feel, what is happening inside of us. Our […]
Quantum physic and Zen philosophy. Physics is the study of nature, matter and the properties of energy. Over the centuries our understanding of physics has become more and more refined. It started out as simply logical deductive reasoning from Aristotle. Amazingly, little more progress was made over the next 2,000 years until Isaac Newton made […]
Mindfulness practice Drill #1 “ Awareness of spaces” Zen calls our brain-mind a monkey mind because, like a monkey, our mind jumps from one branch to another one non-stop 24/7. Branches, of course, mean thoughts and feelings. In fact, it is estimated than this crazy monkey is running thru around 110,000 branches per day. […]
Building confidence during insecurity and incertitude Psychology says that we can learn self-confidence through positive thinking. Creating good thoughts to counteract bad ones can only make our mind busier and....worried. Like putting a Band-Aid on a wooden leg. Zen practice builds confidence in a total different way by: - Minimizing detrimental overthinking, - Noticing the […]
A step toward Awakening “ What are you” or “Who are you” is a classic Koan that every Zen student has to answer properly. If the answer is related to the “I, me, myself & mine” the student fails and must work on the Koan again and again. So....How to define yourself w/o talking […]
