Category Archives: 06/25/2020

The following is also to be found as #157 of “Zen Thoughts” on my WordPress blog, “Jim Dollar’s Published Works:” All living things–all sentient beings–recognize, know, respond to being received and treated lovingly. But, don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. We make too much over love. Forget love. Forget “I love you.”Continue reading “December 06 – B, 2025”

No one can tell us where the stillness speaks to the silence, or how to find that place and what we can expect to hear there. That is why there is theology and doctrines and dogma and dharma and sutras and all those preachers and teachers who make things worse by talking us to deathContinue reading “December 06, 2025”

Anything we say about something says more about ourselves than what we are talking about. How we see the thing, anything, reveals who we are. The Buddhists who say “No Duality!” also talk about taking refuge from suffering. There is refuge and there is suffering. And, they talk about enlightenment and awakening, and they talkContinue reading “December 05, 2025”

This is an excerpt from Zen Thoughts, #154, on my Published Works Blog: If prayer worked, there would be no cemeteries, hospitals, medical schools, nursing homes, funeral homes, war or standing armies. Where does that leave us? With seeing what’s what, letting be what is and doing what needs to be done about it where,Continue reading “December 04, 2025”

Trump wants to be great, but he is only pitiful. The Beatles somehow channeled him with their song, “Nowhere Man”: “He’s a real nowhere man, living in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” He is great only in his imagination. Living in their fantasy world is what schizophrenics do best. WhereContinue reading “December 03, 2025”

Chief Seattle and Black Elk were two Native American spiritual leaders on par with Jesus and the Buddha according to my take on things. They had dreams and visions as accurate and valid as anyone’s ever. And they took the loss of their land and their people in as mature a way as anyone everContinue reading “December 02, 2025”

There is the experience of our experience and there is the observation of our experience. Observing our experience removes us from our experience and provides us with the experience of experiencing our experience–and that puts us in the position of impacting our experience by being removed from it to the extent of altering its impactContinue reading “December 01, 2025”

Laying our desires, ambition, wants, will, idea of how things ought to be aside and living in the service of what is called for in each situation as it arises by doing what needs to be done here, now in order for that to happen, and doing it in the right way, in the rightContinue reading “Winter Months 2025 – 2026”

We live in trying times. The way things are supposed to be is nothing like they are. The Constitution, Democracy, the Rule of Law, Truth, Justice, Equality, Freedom… Have all been replaced with Authoritarianism, Mobster Rule, Obscenity, Atrocity, Brutality, Cruelty, Inhumanity, Ruthlessness, Iniquity, Abomination, etc. without end. No one in position to enforce goodness isContinue reading “November 30, 2025”

We bring justice, compassion, grace, mercy, peace, and all the soft values to life in the Cosmos–in as much as we allow ourselves to be alive to one another and all living things. It is the gift of life to care about the living. And it is my bet that Neanderthal had an over-abundance ofContinue reading “November 29, 2025”

How many worlds are there in this world? How many worlds do all living things live in over the span of their lifetimes? It is no wonder that we have such a difficult time sharing space in this world that unites us all without actually uniting us at all. No? Making, in my mind, itContinue reading “November 28, 2025”

What do you know that no one told you, and you do not know how you know? How much do you know that no one told you and you don’t know how you know? Sit with that secret knowledge. Take it into the emptiness, stillness, silence with you, and wait there “for the mud toContinue reading “November 27, 2025”