No Meditation

He talked today about how we go from life to meditation as if meditation is just another thing we frantically try to solve our problems. He suggested that it nor we will not solve our problems. Sickness, old age, and death aren’t solvable. With every breath, we bathe our bodies with oxygen and then exhale crud, over and over again. Going from life through the temple door with the wish to fix something is just another expression of our suffering. So now we mess up meditation just like we messed up lovemaking when we read the book on being a great lover, or we messed up art by going to art school and learning to “do it.” In the end, he suggested to hell with meditation, why don’t we just sit on the cushion in an upright and noble manner and see what happens? (My apologies for taking many liberties with his teaching.)

Relative and Absolute

I’ve been sitting for a week, which isn’t quite true as I did a lot of work cooking and thinking. I fell asleep next to a swimming pool, and when I awoke, I looked up and realized that all these branches that appear to intersect are not actually touching. In Buddhism, we talk about the relative and the absolute. The relative is what we see from our unique perspective and conditioning, i.e. intersecting branches. The absolute is the world stripped from these delusions, i.e. non-intersecting branches. Actually “what is” is a blending of these two worlds.

Suffering

Careful/Caring

Problem With Buddhism

Who Am I?

Careful