Category Archives: 06/25/2020

We are not free to be anybody, to do anything. We are bound to our genetic make-up, to our nature and our traits–our virtues, our specialties, our knacks and proclivities– our particular ways of seeing/doing/being. That simplifies things for us. We can stop thinking we should be more like someone else than we are, andContinue reading “March 14-A, 2023”

Noise, complexity and drama run our life. Emptiness, stillness and silence wait their turn. We just want to be happy. That’s pretty much it. What we do with it from this point on tells the tale. Won’t somebody tell us how to be happy? All of the time? –0–

I have been perfectly suited for most of the stuff I have done in my life. I did not belong subbing for a third grade class, and knew it when I agreed to do it– at 8 AM the day of. I did not belong in a scuba diving church camp trip with Sr. Highs,Continue reading “March 04-A, 2023”

Which is the greater miracle: that all of this is the result of a meticulous Grand Plan (The Plan of Salvation), with everything worked out in the finest detail, like the number of feathers on every bird at any time– or that nothing is? That everything is the result of randomness and accident, with circumstancesContinue reading “March 02-B, 2023”

I think things do not ever settle into how they are going to be. Never settling is as settled as it gets. Something is always happening. Circumstances beget circumstances, and things go to hell again. Another war comes along. Another pandemic strikes. Floods and droughts chase each other throughout eternity. The latest incarnation of theContinue reading “March 01-B, 2023”

The point is not to have what we want and live happily ever after. What does wanting and happy know? The point is to be who we are within the terms and conditions, context and circumstances, time and place of our lives. To be true to ourselves in each here/now of our living. To workContinue reading “March, 2023”

Ourselves–the term sounds strange until we understand that “we” are composed of a multitude of layers, all with something at stake in who we are, and our conscious exterior’s rightful place is to tune into our interior’s (Which we call “The Unconscious” because we are not conscious of it) interests/leanings/drifts/directives, so that we form aContinue reading “Spring Months, 2023”

The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is “All life is suffering.” I say, “Stop right there! Suffering is a frame of mind! A way of seeing! A way of evaluating what you are looking at! An opinion! “All life is an opinion! The way to be free of suffering is to change your mind aboutContinue reading “February 18-A, 2023”

All this striving to get, to have, to do, to be! There is nothing like it anywhere in the world of nature. We want things we have no business having. That makes us like the dragons of lore, collecting and hording treasures of gold and silver, diamonds and pearls, sapphire and jade… Things they haveContinue reading “February 17-B, 2023”

Growing up is doing things we do not want to do. Things that go against the grain, that go against the flow, that disrupt the fluid ought-to-be-ness that we love about our life. Things like Gethsemane and Golgotha. And we sacrifice ourselves again, and die yet again. Again and again. Death and resurrection, Kid. DeathContinue reading “February 12-B, 2023”

Circumstances spawn/create/produce/beget/etc. circumstances. That’s all there is and ever has been. That is all there ever will be. We keep talking about “the beginning,” and “the end.” There is no beginning! There is no end! There is no outcome! One “outcome” leads to another set of circumstances with another “outcome,” ad nauseam. The “outcome” ofContinue reading “February 09-C, 2023”

Taking something on faith is having an opinion about something with no facts or substantiating evidence to support you and believing in it anyway. Faith is an opinion with no foundation or validity. And is the ground of all religion everywhere. We have sacrificed animals, children, virgins, limbs and digits based on the opinion thatContinue reading “February 04-A, 2023”