DIALOGUE with STUDENTS: What if……? Setting: Sheridan College campus 2013. Dialogue between students and an invited Zen teacher. Student: You wrote somewhere that when someone is talking to you, in person or on the telephone, always remind yourself this: “ This person …..or myself could die anytime” Don’t you think that your thought is depressive, […]
How to assess our Mind/Body Energy Level: the palm test. The following is an interesting little exercise that I learned from a Tibetan monk living in Dharamshala with the Dalai Lama who was with us for 2 years at our temple in Toronto learning English. His name was Lin Chung. It is called the “palm […]
Letting go The monkey coconut trap is well known. The principle is simple. Put a banana in an empty coconut shell with a small hole. The monkey grabs the banana to eat it later, but cannot get his hand out because he wants to hold the banana at all costs. He is trapped. Humans are […]
The simple power of presence by Mark We talk often, when discussing the benefits of a meditation practice, about the positive effects it has personally. It is a little paradoxical because one of the core teachings of Buddhism is that there is no separate self and yet we keep trying to improve it by […]
Learning to experience consciousness At first, this sentence does not make sense for 2 reasons: 1 Over the last 6,000 years or so, the word consciousness, and what it is exactly has never been explained precisely by anyone from neuroscientists to philosophers, and theologians. We don’t know what it is….yet. 2 How can I experience […]
Do beliefs create their own realities & Truth? Whether we like it or not, beliefs are shaping our behavior, and conducting our lives. They control our thinking, mindset, assumptions, feelings, opinions, labels, and judgments to finalize our decisions either good or bad. Therefore, one should ask these 2 fundamental questions: “Is my belief in A […]
Setting up your GPS in life Here is a metaphor: Live your life like a wise captain who is steering the boat, and setting the course when necessary, but also letting the wind, waves, and currents do most of the work. If you stand at the helm, and try to force the rudder against […]
OUR MAIN AFFLICTION The following is an adaptation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Dharma teaching. Our main afflictions in this modern world are not suffering per se, or any kind of negative feelings. Our main affliction is that we don’t know how to handle suffering, its causes, and consequences constructively to achieve equanimity. So, what do […]
Awakening: what is it? & how to experience it? What is it? Being Awakened or Enlightened means to free ourselves from our permanent daydreaming state that is, not being a prisoner of our wandering mind-made fictional world main source of “suffering”. How? 1)Directly in a mindful way, by observing, then by letting them go, our […]
The Second Noble Truth (Part 2) Last time we were talking about the second noble truth, we started to examine the cause of Dukkha. The Buddha mentioned greed, aversion, and delusion as the three poisons, which bring problems for us and in the world. Today we will look at delusion or ignorance as one of […]
