A newly ordained Hindu Monk, in orange clothes, was traveling in a bus in Mumbai. He came across an old high school friend. They started chatting, the high school friend was anxious to know what the monk was doing. So he asked him “What exactly do you do?” The young monk gave him a brief […]
Buddha found that the nature or feature of existence is characterized by the following three roots: Impermanence or Ongoing Change: Nothing persists, everything is transient. Suffering or Unhappiness/dissatisfaction caused by desire, anger and illusion also called ignorance. No-self or Insubstantiality: no living being is a permanent, independent, unique and separe self entity. We are all […]
Zen is telling us “When you are living realize also that you are also dying”! The vast majority of people who listen to this statement would react almost violently: “This is terrible, too pessimistic, too morbid.” On the contrary Zen is simply teaching us to live our lives plentifully and to be aware of our […]
The student asked “Learning from water? You must be kidding! What do you mean?” To pay attention to water is a wonderful and peaceful exercise, almost a spiritual one. Being mindful to water puts everything in perspective including how lucky we are to be made of it. Water is inside us, composing 70% of our […]
This is a frequent question and the answer is simple: Zen practice is not a warm, cozy and fuzzy practice generating a “feeling good” state. The practice requires rigorous commitment, patience and discipline. It is designed, first, to help practitioners realize their genuine Self or True Self different from our social mind- controlled self. This […]
Student: “ Zen is teaching us to quiet the mind but I can’t. I am always thinking about this and that, about the past, the future, my current issues, my work. It is non stop, even if I have being meditating for months!” Our mind and its hardware component, the brain, are working 24/7 like […]
Contrary to our Western medicine, the Oriental one and Zen Buddhism consider Mind and Body as an unbreakable single unit in which each part affects the other one continuously and at different degrees. Body functions, thoughts and emotions are the jobs of our subconscious and conscious mind. If thinking does not affect our body, our […]
The word meditation comes from the Latin meditare, which is the passive form of the verb. It means "being moved to the centre" Please note: it is not the active form that means "moving to the centre" So, who / what is moving us? Meditation does. When we meditate we are being moved to the centre of self […]
French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes wrote his famous “I think therefore I am” in 1637. Is equating our identity with thinking and equating thinking with Being (I am) a delusion? Is Being more than thinking? Can we be more than our mind and our thoughts? Of course, to function as a human being would […]
I have been requested to talk about what is real and what is not. After some hesitations here are few thoughts. When asked to define reality and non-reality the Buddha replied in many ways often contradicting himself. Maybe his contradictions had a purpose since he did not like metaphysical or philosophical stuff, preferring being down to […]
