I am small and the world is great and beyond my comprehension right now. This at least I can say without doubt. But here is a dream. Once there was a fish in a fishbowl. There were pebbles on the ground, water all around, a toy castle, and a filtration system of some sort. Every so while food would fall from above the water, from where there was no water, a place of nothingness except pain of...
I’ve only been studying R for a few weeks. It’s my second programming language, and I’m only a beginner at my first – python. R is strangely strange. It looks a bit like java with all its brackets, but then goes and uses “<-” for designating variables, as if the universal “=” wasn’t good enough. In my accumulation of anecdotal evidence, I...
The Buddha called sickness, ageing and death, the divine messengers. The Buddha called death the supreme teacher, containing all teachers just the elephant’s footprint can contain all others. I know that I will become sick, that I will age, and that I will die. I know these things but rarely am I aware of them. I begin with an intention to be aware of that death. I spark my mind with...
The Buddhists teach that fear is like a slave at a festival who cannot enjoy the celebrations because of immanent obligations, while doubt is like one lost in the desert, wavering back and forth, going nowhere. Change can be frightening for many reasons. Change implies new challenges and facing new unknowns. Change can mean abandoning old challenges and old senses of self. Sometimes the need for...
He had been walking since before he could remember, and before that he had escaped. There had been dunes of fine white dust and shattered stones lining dessicated river beds. He had passed passages decorated by impossible fossils, decaying wooden signs and roughly hewn markers proving undeniable theses and directions, and a skeleton proving that he was not the first to go this way. He had known...
I have spent a few months engaging myself in a regular study and consideration of Buddhism. My schedule now calls for me to move onto other studies, which makes this a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned, how I’ve learned it, the methods I used, and the advice I would give myself or another interested in a similar venture. My introduction to Buddhism began with an interest in...
The Pali cannon (MN 36) tells the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Before his liberation, the to-be Buddha tortured himself by emaciating himself and restricting his breathing, in his search for ultimate liberation. Past masters had failed him in his ultimate quest, and so he strived to find his own way. But when these efforts bore him to fruits, he considered that not all that is...
Emotions are a central concept in Western psychology and its language for introspection. The definition of “emotion” is nebulous, incorporating and alluding to a range of phenomenon, and yet it is an extremely powerful category for defining and referring to the human experience. Buddhism has a deeply and long developed model for describing, identifying, and deconstructing mental...
Setting: Aristotle (the philosopher) and Alexander (the young, one day to be the great) are walking home from a speech by Protagoras the sophist. Alexander: Are the words of Protagoras true; that the ways of men are whimsical and at the mercy of the winds? Or perhaps it is true that man is the puppet of his soul? Aristotle: What a fine question young Alexander. The oracle of Apollo must surely...
Samma samadhi is the last of the listed eightfold path. It is the nurturing of a mental state already present in every state of consciousness. It aims at the development of citt’ekagatta one pointedness of mind, when the mind centres its acts of consciousness around an object. Samadhi can be recognized by two salient features: Unbroken attentiveness to an object A consequent tranquillity...