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Articles by E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock

Browse published articles attributed to E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock, with full-archive search.

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By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

What’s Your Pleasure?

Take a look at your life and see if it's not true that the pursuit of pleasure and happiness involves just about everything you do. From watching TV or playing on the internet, to working at a career in order to make money - so that you can spend it and be happy with the resulting pleasure or save it and be happy with the resulting pleasure of security. To pursuing sensual sights, wonderful smells, sensual sensations, great food, great sex, warm family interactions, self expression . . .

Primary topic: Meditation

1,800 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Satisfaction of Living Simply

Years ago I lived a complicated life. I had a Porsche, a beautiful wife, three kids, a Tudor home in a posh Cleveland suburb and all the bills and headaches to go with it. And even though I had it made, something always seemed to be missing no matter how good it got. Within two years after living this American dream for eighteen years, I found myself in sweltering 1981 Southeast Asia in the middle of the jungle in a 6’ by 6’ unfu ished hut (just a bare floor) surrounded by snakes, scorpions, and all kinds of mean critters that thought I was lunch.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,796 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

See You In Ete ity

Have you ever thought about ete ity? That‘s longer than a month, a lot longer. If an angel flew up to the top of a solid granite mountain once every hundred years and softly brushed a silk veil across it’s top, the number of years required to wear that mountain down to the ground would be a drop in the bucket compared to ete ity.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,794 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

If Easter is a Pagan Holiday, Who was Jesus?

CAUTION: This article and the information it contains is not for Christians who simply believe and look forward to enjoying a peaceful Easter, which is such a beautiful, spiritual holiday. If this is you, please stop reading now. If you are still here, this article is for Christians and ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,765 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Silent Prayer: Part 3 - How to Pray Silently

While we are praying silently, we are going to let go of all the baggage we carry on our shoulders regarding the past and future.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,763 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Dangerous Alliances

Of course, most of us have seemingly innocent alliances that are common to ordinary folks, like our friends and relatives. But is this where the really dangerous alliances lie? How can a relationship with Auntie Bess and Uncle Bill be harmful for us? They are loving, warm, giving, and have encouraged and guided us throughout our lives. But is there a sinister aspect to their association with us?. An alliance is when we get together for a common interest. But what makes alliances dangerous?

Primary topic: Meditation

1,754 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Let Them Eat Cake

It seems to me that too many people are taking a big cut out of the health care pie for themselves. Instead of a middleman, we have numerous middlemen that come between the sick person and his or her care. And it has gotten too top heavy, way out of control. The medical schools reap huge profits from their business, and it is a business. The doctors run up huge loans to go to medical school, and then self-justifiably become specialists (because that's where the money is), and charge huge amounts for their services, because their services are a business.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,748 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Locating God

Hello, God? Are you there? HellOOoo. Are you listening? I know; you have a gazillion other things to do and billions of people to keep happy just here on earth, let alone all the people on all the planets around all the billions of stars in just our small galaxy. And then how about the billions of galaxies, all with their billions of suns and billions of planets full of people? Whew. But you are a miracle worker so I guess you can handle it all. All I want is a Blackberry for Christmas. Is that okay? That's not asking for much, is it?

Primary topic: Meditation

1,743 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Constant Flow of Change

"All is impermanent." What a depressing thought, but only to an untrained, worldly mind. Impermanence is never lost, just a flow of change; a flow of change that is an ultimate truth and therefore an ultimate security. What is it that we instead depend upon for our security? When I was a young man I depended upon my strong body and mind to excel in sports, earn an athletic scholarship, attend college, and then go on to establish a career and raise a family. The family is now grown, middle aged themselves, and the body is becoming creaky. The mind is not as sharp as it once was.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,737 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Five Roadblocks to Meditation, and How They Apply to Westerners

The first hindrance to meditation is desire for sense stimulation. This can range from obsessive sexual lust, to compulsive socializing, to addictive intellectual pursuits. In the West, we tend toward the addictive intellectual pursuits because we have usually disciplined ourselves regarding ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,718 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Making Smaller Footprints

On my way up the mountain carrying some roofing materials I stopped to catch my breath, and as I unconsciously gazed at a scrub cedar tree that I had trimmed a month before to make the trail, an insight popped up. They happen at random like this, and seldom have anything to do with the thinking mind, they just come from another place. If I happened to die at the foot of this tree, the 70 % water that this body consists of and the remaining ash that's left over would quickly sink into the soil at the base of this tree and disappear.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,704 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

What Was My Life All About?

There comes a time in most people’s lives when they look back. Perhaps after the kids are gone, or when their faculties are almost gone! Or when they are more inclined to surrender rather than put up the good fight anymore. We all have to surrender, eventually. We might long for a sense of freedom from it all after we have courageously fought our battles. Battles that we cannot even remember but seemed so significant and meaningful at the time. And we fought so bravely, against tyranny, oppression, enslavement.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,686 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Mindfulness Meditation - Free Health Care

Mindfulness meditation is free. There are no health insurance premiums, drug costs, or expensive therapies. And it works! But first you have to understand the authentic instructions, and secondly you must practice diligently. If you do this, mental and physical problems will melt away. Try it! How can you lose?

Primary topic: Meditation

1,685 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Weapons of Least Distraction

One of the most powerful weapons in the world is compassion. The least powerful is control. The two are surely at odds with each other, and it certainly seems that power and control would trump wimpy compassion any old day. But in actuality, compassion, a weapon of least distraction, is not only one of the most powerful, but the weapon of lasting peace. And this is the secret of its power. When we strive to control things, we set ourselves up for some angst. Do we not?

Primary topic: Meditation

1,676 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Are You Living in the Past?

There’s an old saying how a young man has no past so he drives fast cars to catch his future - and an old man has no future so he sits in his rocking chair trying to hold onto his past. This has some truth to it. There comes a time when we get beyond the stage of reliving our past in actuality, and only relive it in memoirs. We either lack the energy, the money, or the interest to actually do it all over again, so we sit back and remember the good times. It’s amazing how the mind erases the bad ones.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,667 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Spiritual Insight - Extraordinary, Yet Very Ordinary

A direct experience of spiritual insight will change your life, a fact which is irrefutable and well documented.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,663 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Getting Over Yourself

We all seek power. We try to push ourselves up and in the process, many times attempt to push others down. It might begin with a feeling that we have been wronged, which means that our ego has been hurt, and in order to right things we might begin a verbal confrontation with the offending party. ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,657 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

What Step are You On? Evolution of Religion - Six Steps

These six major steps weave in and around each other, and there are many others, all revealing a transition between materiality consciousness and heightened consciousness, or between an outward emphasis (thinking, remembering, body and mind), and an inward emphasis (the replacing of thought and memory by a spiritual fullness devoid of body and mind). Therefore, the materially minded, dependent upon thinking and memory, and believing strongly in body and mind, will not be able to relate, from an experiential standpoint, to the heightened mind.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,657 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Is Your Religion Working for You? Really?

When you say to someone, not of your religion, that "because your good book says it is true, therefore it must be true," don't you ever notice that the person, instead of falling down in worship, rolls their eyes? Do you smugly continue to be a "work in progress," and proud of it, justifying your careless actions by pointing out that sinners have no chance to improve themselves? . . . Convenient. Are you peaceful, calm and loving, or are you ever trying to make something happen in your faith.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,646 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Internet Of Our Mind

If you had a computer, but no internet connection, you would be limited to only what is stored on your hard drive. You could access your documents and compose some stuff, but if you wanted to reach out and touch the world, that couldn’t happen. In the same way, we can describe the part of our ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,639 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Meditation - What's the Point?

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, what a waste of valuable time, right? You could be on the computer or cell phone talking with friends, or doing something really productive or fun. Why sit quietly? In life, two things separate successful people from ordinary people: creativity and energy. People with no college degrees or credentials whatsoever have made it to the highest ranks of corporate America, and if you look carefully at their attributes, you will find energy and creativity standing out head and shoulders above anything that they have learned in the past.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,630 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

E. Raymond Rock Life Situations - The Usual Mistakes (and how to avoid them) Part 4

4. Thinking that life is a cake walk. This has the potential to be one of the bigger mistakes because it means that we are blind to the realities around us, and usually insensitive to others. When we have blinders on, we tend to create a personal little world that is in fact very fragile, difficult to maintain, and quite fictional. Life actually involves all kinds of uncertainties. There are personal risks, such as health, wealth and happiness, and many family and societal risks which can affect our lives as well.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,616 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Metaphysics, Politics, and Religion

Metaphysical arguments go nowhere, no different from political or religious ones! What does make a difference, however, is how we treat each other. I may be a Buddhist and you may be a Christian, yet if we both treat each other with respect, how crazy can that be? When a monk asked the Buddha ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,616 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Essence of Buddhism

“Growing Old is Not for Sissies!” I remember this great bumper sticker making the rounds a few years ago. Unless life ends tragically, suddenly, we will all experience old age and the result of old age, which is death. If we live long enough, on the way to death via old age, we begin losing things. Perhaps our mobility, our health, our energy, our memory, our parents, our friends and spouses, our brothers and sisters, and maybe even some of our children who die before we do.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,615 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Spiraling Toward Oblivion

Have you noticed, as you get older, that the months have turned into weeks, and the years into months? Time passes relentlessly, and as we look back on all the things that we have done, where is the significance? I was watching the white tailed deer that frequent our meditation center here in Texas, the bucks, does and fawns come and eat the corn that we put out for them during the dry spells in the heat of summer when there is no grass to eat.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,614 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Do You Have A Speculative And Intelligent Personality - And What Does That Mean?

Our personalities, it could be said, fall into six categories: Faithful, greedy, hateful, deluded, speculative and intelligent, and if we tend toward the speculative and intelligent, it’s a good bet that our spiritual life will progress in fits and starts because we outsmart ourselves. The ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,610 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Why Doesn't God Come Down and Just Say Hello?

Well. Why doesn't he, or she? I guess that's the first problem, one of gender. The Bible is gender blind, I mea Adam has all of his ribs but somehow his wife was created out of one of them instead of out of the earth from which Adam was created. And another question, If Adam and Eve had three sons (no daughters), hmmm, who had sex with whom to keep things going, so to speak? But that doesn't mean that God might be female, or male, or Gay. Yikes! A gay God! That would be interesting.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,609 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Life - The Secret to Success

Can life be pigeonholed into a viable model for success? Can a methodology or system be relied upon to give us the results or achievements that we desire? Can a formula for winning ever work with such an unpredictable thing such as life? If we read all self help, psychological, philosophical and religious books on life, we’ll get dizzy. Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that, be careful with this, embrace that - it’s all ultimately a waste of time and energy because we eventually find ourselves again faced with the enclosed system called our personal life.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,606 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Big One

Maybe it has already happened to you. It doesn't happen to everyone. But those lives to which it happens are drastically changed. Changed for the better. When this happens, all the things that make life such a burden are magically lifted from one's shoulders resulting in a sudden, unexpected freedom that appears to come out of nowhere. This is not an intellectual thing, which is something to be studied and applied to one‘s life. It's not in the self-help books or uttered by life coaches. This is an experience, sometimes called a spiritual experience.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,599 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

What is the Most Important Thing in a Romantic Relationship?

There's gotta be a millions of articles about relationships. Books, too. If you are thinking about writing a book, put "relationship" in the title and you will have agents beating down your door!

Primary topic: Meditation

1,599 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Playing Racquetball, Playing Life

In order to get good "court sense," a beginning racquetball player must put up with the difficulties of learning how the ball bounces; only then will they understand the ball's nature and become relaxed and proficient. The player must face the problems through practice, however.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,581 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Stress Relief - Free!

Although the usual suspects of stress may be our jobs, financial difficulties, illness, political and religious arguments, family, personal problems, etc., if you look into each one of these in depth, you will find within them all a common thread. If only we could identify that common thread, then stress relief would be immensely simplified. So let's take a look at the mechanism of our stress in general. Let's say, for example, we are arguing with someone about politics which has gone past the point of civil discussion and now has reached levels of personal attacks.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,578 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

A Key to Enlightenment

Dependent Origination, the direct transcendent knowledge and understanding of which the Buddha proclaimed to be the lynchpin of enlightenment, is an area far removed from physical reality in many ways In many other ways, Dependent Origination is the best intellectual explanation of the entirety of life as we know and experience it. The cause and effect of life, the beginnings as well as the continuance of physical reality from the standpoint of bodies and minds revolving in a spiritual realm beyond the six common senses which we rely upon for all of our current knowledge.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,559 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Sociopathic Relationships

Although you may never know it, people you look up to, love, and respect could easily be sociopaths. They give themselves away by exhibiting strange combinations of controlling behaviors, such as being charismatic, calculating, extremely confident, while warmly embracing those who fall under ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,553 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Dateline: Los Angeles May 15, 2030 - U.S. Government Cancelled

By a narrow margin, both houses of congress agreed to cancel the Government of the United States. After years of struggle, President Polin has finally fulfilled her mother's dream; the total end of government control. On the streets of L.A. can be heard the celebratory exclamations this morning: "No more payroll taxes! Yay! No more Social Security or Medicare taxes! Yay! No more military expenses (Yay!) No more post offices or schools! Yay! No more costly VA.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,552 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Waking Up By Yourself

We know when it's not working; it's like a slap in the face. We thought that it was working but then something happens to remind us that nothing has fundamentally changed at all, and we find ourselves back at square one after all these years. We were smug for awhile, even bragging to friends about what we found and how wonderful it was, but now we see that it was only an act and we were actually better off before we became so smug and self assured.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,541 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Alte atives for Millennium Kids

A good friend of mind recently commented that his own kids and their friends are a lot less materialistic than our generations were, and that numerous surveys show that Millennials don't want their jobs to interfere with their family or social life. He went on to say that, "Some say this is laziness, I tend to believe that Millennials have their priorities a little better aligned than their parents and grandparents." These kids, I believe, are smart, and cognizant of their challenge in America.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,534 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

I’m Right - You’re Wrong

It's obvious that other people, when they disagree with us, are just plain wrong. And when we confront these kinds of people, our only alte ative is to let them know in no uncertain terms that they are not only wrong, but apparently stupid for disagreeing with us about something so obviously apparent. It's unbelievable that people can be so messed up. Of course, the other person feels the exact same way about us! It's not that they somehow realize that they are stupid and forge ahead anyway.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,516 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

A Day in the Life of a Buddhist Forest Monk (Evening)

Evenings are a blessed relief in Thailand; warm, but without the smothering heat of the day that gratefully surrenders to the night’s relative coolness. If I wasn’t in my solitary hut meditating in the evenings, I would be in the main hall at dusk chanting along with the other monks, or maybe ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,503 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Five Million Dollar Pill

Let's imagine for a moment that a cure for cancer was discovered. It wasn't just a cure for certain types of cancers but a cure for all types of cancers. And it didn't require radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery (burn, poison and cut). All you would have to do is take a pill, and immediately all tumors and symptoms would end. Just like that. The only problem is that this particular pill contains an ingredient that is very rare, so rare in fact that each pill would cost one million dollars to produce.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,502 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

What Are You?

Who has time to consider such lofty questions, even though the answer to this question is the answer to all of your stress. Yet we refuse to look at what we are. We think that continuing to do what we are doing will somehow magically relieve our stress someday. How is that working? The question is not ‘Who’ are you, but ‘What’ are you? Who you are simply reveals your habit patterns. Maybe you are friendly, Catholic, nice, compassionate, good looking, intelligent, successful. Or maybe you are the opposite of all these qualities. It doesn‘t matter; life is short.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,492 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Religious New Normal in America Will Not Be Religious!

Huge shifts are occurring all over the world. It’s as if a new awareness is in its beginning birth pangs. People who have been repressed and treated unfairly for years, generations, are suddenly and spontaneously rising up, rejecting the old, fighting for justice and truth regardless of personal safety. It’s as if a new consciousness is being born.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,485 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Seven Warning Signs – Is Your Organization Becoming A Cult?

We all remember the Jim Jones tragedy, which resulted from a deadly combination - a charismatic leader who knew how to influence and control people, and weak willed followers who couldn't discriminate between fact and fiction. In the cramped confines of a cult, rationality goes out the ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,474 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Immigration - The Cat is Out of the Bag

We in America are just beginning to understand what the phrase "Letting the cat out of the bag" is all about. This idiom means that a secret has been somehow accidentally disclosed, and in America's case, the secret has dire ramifications. The phrase has been traced back to around the middle ages where dishonest farmers would sell piglets packaged in opaque, black bags that you couldnt see through. But there were no piglets in the bags . . . there were cats! Which were much less expensive than piglets.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,457 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Cooperative Games for Children

Janet and I decided play a little tennis recently to get a cardio workout. The last time we played was almost 30 years ago when we first met, so we knew the fundamentals but were, to say the least, a bit rusty! At 56 and 66 respectively, Janet and I aren't exactly Serena Williams and Roger ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,448 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

How to Untangle the Tangles

No, this is not an article about dissolving a third marriage! This is about untying the knots that we make in our minds. Whenever we tie ourselves to someone or something, we make a knot. Over time, these knots accumulate, and our minds become nothing but large balls of tangled twine. A mind ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,447 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Christianity Declining in Texas

USA TODAY reports that "Despite population growth and immigration adding nearly 50 million more adults, almost all denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS data was released in 1990. The 2008 results, released today, April 25th, are based on 54,000 interviews with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5%." On their interactive map, data that was collected over 18 years from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) is available state by state.

Primary topic: Meditation

1,446 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Deeper Meaning of Life

Life on this planet is but a few moments long, considering the endless eons this earth has twirled around its sun. Long after life has found this planet too unfriendly, and after all of our accomplishments are burned up in that incredible supe ova that our sun will evolve into just before it ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,441 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

The Absurdly Obvious Solution to Health Care

Think about it; what did we do in the pioneer days out on the prairie when we came down with an appendicitis attack? We would go, “Ouch. ooh, ahh” for a few days and then die. Easy! No paperwork, no deductibles, no out of pocket expense, no arguing back and forth with insurance companies, doctors and hospitals - and no funeral expenses! Well, hardly any, maybe a shovel and a hand chiseled, homemade headstone, “Here Lies Clem. He Didn’t Have Health Insurance.”

Primary topic: Meditation

1,427 views

By E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond RockRecently published1 topic

Meditation: Balancing Concentration and Mindfulness

If you have ever tried to walk with only one leg, you have discovered, for yourself, the importance of two legs. Likewise, when we meditate, two aspects of meditation are necessary if our practice is to be balanced. Samadhi (concentration) and Vipassana (mindfulness) are the two aspects that ...

Primary topic: Meditation

1,393 views

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