Author Archives: jimwdollar

02 One of my favorite questions is “What would you go to hell for?” Totally serious. It may be the most important question. There are sacred covenants that require our filial loyalty, our liege devotion. What are yours? I hope you have a long list! I will put it another way: What commitments do youContinue reading “July 01, 2020”

02 History is always coming around. The times are always changing. Coming and going. For better or for worse. For better and for worse. Better for whom? Worse for whom? Only time will tell. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Time tells that much all the time. “The poor will beContinue reading “July 02, 2020”

We thread the needle between Scylla and Charybdis, moment-by-moment through each situation as it arises all our life long. We walk along the straight and narrow, with all its twists and turns, on the slippery slope, the dangerous path, like a razor’s edge every step of the Way– circumambulating the center, the core, the SourceContinue reading “July 03, 2020”

You do you! The way only you can do you! In ways appropriate to the occasion. In every situation as it arises. All your life long. How long has it been? Do you even remember? Do you even remember how to do you? What happened to you? Were you shamed out of doing you? WasContinue reading “July 04, 2020”

01 Robert Ruark, writing in The Old Man and The Boy had the Old Man say, about fishing, “A fish is only a fish. If you make too much of it, you lose the whole point of it.” Robert Ruark missed the essence of his grandfather’s sutra, and failed, throughout his life, to apply theContinue reading “July 05, 2020”

01 What needs to happen in any situation conflicts with– and stands in contradiction of– what we want to happen there. This is the story of the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane. It is the story of the Buddha under the Bo Tree and of Jesus in the wilderness. It is theContinue reading “July 06, 2020”

02 Sincerity and awareness are prime tools in the work of bringing ourselves forth within the time and place, context, conditions and circumstances of our life. We cannot fake either. And we don’t have to feel like doing either. We don’t have to be in the mood. Sincerity requires us to be the mood weContinue reading “July 07, 2020”

02  Too many of us think we have to have a plan, a map, a strategy, a course of action, a destination in mind, to know where we are headed in order to get where we are going. If we don’t know where we are going, we could wind up anywhere! Time for a showContinue reading “July 08, 2020”

02 Trust where you are to be exactly where you need to be. Trust the path you are on to take you to exactly where you need to be. Trust seeing what you look at, and hearing what you listen to– asking the questions that beg to be asked, and saying the things that cryContinue reading “July 09, 2020”

02 The extremes exist in denial of each other, of contradiction, of conflict, of opposites, of duality… The Middle Way is “Thou Art That” in a way that excludes identity, equivalence, interchangeability, and demands mutual recognition of the “I” in the “Other,” because the Two are One “but not the same One.” And the DanceContinue reading “July 10, 2020”