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Browse published articles attributed to E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock, with full-archive search.
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.”
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 ...
You know the routine; picking out that special card with just the right verses, and then that special gift - an upscale box of candy, some flowers, maybe a nice ring, a new car, or some tickets for a cruise. According to Wikipedia, The historical background of Valentine's day seems to go back ...
Approximately 100 million people die every year.That's a lot of people. Death is a common occurrence, but we hide from death's reality in many ways. In third world countries, there is no funeral director that takes care of everything and neatly makes up the body as if it is asleep. In third ...
Everything built up will fall, and all that falls will rise again - this could be called the cycle of existence. When things are about to fall in this cycle, there are premonitions that wash through our hearts, and the premonitions have definite signs: We lose our Generosity: We become ...
This is a very important question; what interests you most, because your answer to this question determines your destiny. So before you answer, look carefully at all the options and decide which is truly the one thing that interests you more than any other. n The obvious ones - relationship, ...
No friendly moon was there to light this unfamiliar path; only a pitch-black night, so dark and foreboding that I could not see my hand in front of my face. Even Conqueror's sharp eyes soon lost the trail, forcing me to dismount and wrestle through heavy, wet vines, and walk on tangled roots and ...
Are liberals and conservatives opposite? If you are a conservative, does that mean that liberal ideas are opposite of yours? And if you are liberal, are conservative ideas opposite of your way of thinking? The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism - but tyranny (a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator - not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.).
This old Zen saying describes the way in which a trainee practices Zen; no striving, no ambition (to become enlightened), no goals . . . only sitting quietly. As a matter of fact, Zen considers goal making a disease of the mind! Quite a contrast from modern life where without goals we would be ...
Good friends of mine, Catholic friends, recently confessed to me. They said that although they occasionally attend their Catholic church, they have found a community church that makes them feel better. They find themselves happy when they leave, unlike their Catholic experience where they feel ...
Sometimes we can catch a fleeting glimpse of ete ity in a wood, where the pungent odor of wet pine and a timeless stillness calms our troubled minds, for just a while. Or in a wondrous sunset, where we lose the burden of ourselves, for a precious moment. Or when something happens so suddenly ...
An onion is peculiar in that it has many layers. It also causes you to cry when you peel off the layers. So we could say that the state of the onion is complex, as well as tearful! Our country is kind of like an onion. Fifty states all wrapped around a flag that gets more tattered every day. There are those that say we should live by state's rights and forget about the federal government. That sounds okay, but then all the liberals would move away from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and into Massachusetts, Oregon, and Vermont!
"So, you are ready to renounce everything," a John said. Then he smiled and added, "Words are spoken with ease, my good friend, compared to the actual experience of this discipline, although there are some key seekers who live in the forest quite comfortably. Some live without irritation; not ...
Hold her tight, tonight. Let her dream of what her life will be, her fairytales of love and happiness. Hold her tight, tonight. Hold her tight tonight, so that monster truth can’t steal her dreams, not this night. This night, let truth not meet time, not yet . . . please not yet. Hold her ...
Self: Your consciousness of your own identity. Esteem: The condition of being honored. Self-esteem: Honoring oneself. As we can see, self-esteem is a rather “self” ish condition that we necessarily feel obligated to create artificially when we are insecure. The fact that we must go out of our ...
Here is a recipe for disaster: China and other Asian countries, being pressured at home by rising inflation, is forced to raise prices on all those goodies we buy at Wal-Mart, but not high enough to encourage us to compete again. This would be a formula for runaway inflation along with job ...
Suddenly, I found myself in a mist, and through the mist I dimly made out what appeared to be a cave. As I moved closer, my perfected insight revealed exactly what it was – the den of the Great Dragon of Self. Three of the dragon’s guards lie dead and decomposing at the entrance, obviously ...
Growing up in the Catholic tradition, I believe that I can understand some of the feelings that Christians, Muslims, and Jews might have about people who don't believe in a creator God! And Buddhists are guilty! I wouldn't be surprised if they think that Buddhists have a one-way ticket to hell ...
A Thai farmer is in a ditch planting rice in the searing, Southeast Asian heat. He is old, uneducated, ill, toothless, and his body is small and frail, weathered from years of hard labor. Is this old, useless farmer less than you? You, who are educated, beautiful, healthy, relatively young, ...
Performing any deed, good or bad, has repercussions. A bad deed obviously sets us up for a load of bad karma and bad luck. But how could a good deed, that sets us up for good karma, punish us? The punishment comes from the illusion that someone performed the deed. When we perform a deed from a ...
We will never succeed at changing ourselves by trying to change ourselves directly. We must do it indirectly. By indirectly means merely watching our anger instead of trying to rid ourselves of it, because attempts to aggressively change ourselves into something we wish ourselves to be results ...
My admiration for Ariya was growing; this diminutive being that took me under her wing. And as I listened to her strange voice that appeared in my mind, her words became even stranger. She said that some believe that when life ends, there is nothing, just an unconscious, ete al sleep. Others ...
Values could be defined as beliefs in which we have an emotional investment. If we study the values of rural areas throughout the world, we see that a pastoral, agricultural life naturally propagates ethics and ideals that create harmony between people, such as thrift, honesty, quietness, ...
Some say that moms are the most important people in the world, after all; where would we be without moms? And dads too. We wouldn’t be at all!! Sisters and brothers can be very important in our lives, and in many ways create the foundations of what we are by testing us throughout our life’s ...
War is the opposite of peace. When we say that we wage war in order to secure the peace, this is delusion, this is being ignorant of the truth of the moment, which is war, and replacing it with an ideal for the future, which is peace. It is a shell game. If we believe and confuse ourselves with ...
A tremendous exhilaration began rising inside of me, as I watched Ariya disappear into the treetops. All of my unanswered questions now faded into the background. The appearance of this mystical being, whatever she was, liberated me to the point that I was ready to forge ahead with reckless ...
The last time I looked, personal transformation was not on America’s top ten list of achievements. Success, family, happiness, friends, wealth, respect, health, religious beliefs or spirituality, satisfying work — these took priority. Our spiritual institutions follow suit with the most ...
There are good people everywhere, but how do we define good? Pope Sixtus IV loved Tomas de Torquemada (arguably the most evil man that has ever lived)! Good and evil seem entwined with society’s expectations. Behavior can be considered good by some, bad by others, and volumes are written on this ...
When we talk, or when we write articles, the number of times that we use the word "I" can indicate the level of confusion we might have in our minds about ourselves. This wouldn't ordinarily be a problem if we are not attached to ourselves emotionally, and only use the term conventionally; ...
Christ and the Buddha were wise men; they never talked about politics. They didn't talk about politics because political opinions and campaigns are but afterthoughts in humankind's evolutionary process. Politics, war, power, and ambition have never moved humankind to a fundamentally better ...
Everyone wants happiness. Happiness is the driving force behind almost all of our actions, and even when we are unhappy, we are involved with somehow changing that unhappiness into happiness for ourselves. When we are confronted with someone or something, we either have a compulsion to pull ...
Ask anyone about the soul and more often than not, you will get a blank stare, or the soul might be explained as a spirit, a part of God, our basic being, or our true essence. But there has never been a good, logical explanation. So here goes! Although according to Buddhism the soul does not ...
Being judgmental is being angry. Fear, the basis of anger, is always connected with the past or future. If you can look deeply within and find what it is that you fear, whether it is God, living up to some kind of ideal, fearing ideas different from yours, or people that are different from you, ...
Walk into any busy Zen center and you will more than likely find Christians practicing meditation. Many famous Christians, including Thomas Merton; Trappist monk, poet, writer and social activist, recommended meditation as a means of directly communicating with God. Whatever we can do to calm ...
A political evolution is stirring. People are beginning to break free. But in order to understand this progression, we must look at what we were just yesterday, before we decided to think for ourselves. We must look at it because no matter what we do or what we think, the evolution is taking ...
Counting as fast as you can, at ten counts per second, for twenty-four hours a day and for twelve months, would only get you to less than one third of a billion. A billion is a big number. The universe is estimated to be about 16 billion years old. Carbon dating pegs the earth at about 4.5 ...
3. Dying peacefully nn(From a talk by Ajahn Jagaro, the abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat when Janet and I trained in Thailand as a Buddhist monk and nun in 1981) "Having considered all of this, if dying becomes no longer a contemplation but an actual experience, we can face it without fear. Not only ...
What we extend outward toward others, we internalize. Whether the emotions we extend are negative, such as hatred, animosity, and anger; or positive, such as love, forgiveness, and peace, these feelings seep inside of us and affect us deeply. You can feel the physical difference between, on one ...