March 29, 2025
The Buddha said, “Growing up is the solution to all of our problems today–or any day.” And, if he didn’t say it, he would have said it if it had occurred to him, because all of his sayings that he did say can be reduced to growing up. Enlightenment, for instance, is nothing more than growing up. We cannot see things as they are without growing up. Etc. Our practice is growing up more each day, and doing things as they need to be done, when, where and how they need to be done. “Peaceful abiding, here, now,” is growing up. Nothing changes until we grow up, see what’s what, know what is called for, and do it when, where, and how it needs to be done. That’s all there is to it.
April 1, 2025
There is no duality but. There are fools and there are not-fools. There are ways to be and there are ways to be-not. Be wise. Do not be foolish. Etc. But there is no duality. All is One. But. Do not be like those who think as though all is not-one. It’s tricky, being Buddhist. Denying denial. Being one but not one. Being like this but not like that. There are teachers by the dozens to teach us how to be and how to be-not. But. There is no duality. It’s a word game. Buddhism. The teachers teach us how to play the game. Why not extend the game to get rid of suffering the way we get rid of duality? No suffering, like there is no duality? Poof! Gone! Just like that! No?
April 2, 2025
Words aren’t what we take them to be. Mutual arising and independent arising seem to be conveying some type of reality but where does the line lie between real and unreal? And, how can there be a line at all when All Is One and there is no duality anywhere at all ever? But, without distinctions/dualities there is nothing to say, nothing to talk about. Nothing is nothing. And words get in the way. Conceal much more than they reveal. Cover more than they disclose. Dropping into emptiness, stillness, silence leads to clarity, enlightenment, realization, understanding, knowing, though nothing is said. And the work to say something only leads to confusion and the need to say more to clear up the confusion which only stirs up more not-knowing. Dropping into silence is the only solution. “No Talky Bout!” is the last word, and we are all on our own, which is the only place to be.
April 2, 2025
David, your article is beautifully done, and I look forward to reading John Tarrant’s book, “The Story of the Buddha.” Thank you for inspiring that! And I will close by saying that everything we hear, read, see are projections of our, or someone’s idea, of what we hear, read, see–that reality itself and all reports of reality by others are projections of someone’s idea of reality, and cannot be taken for reality itself. The world consists of projections and opinions, and I don’t know where projection goes over into opinion, or vice versa. And I don’t know how anyone would know. It’s like where does the line lie between Zen and Buddhism? What is Zen about Buddhism? I can’t find it.
April 14, 2025
This is beautifully, wonderfully done! And exposes Buddhism as the fraud it has been over time, from the Buddha forward. “The end of suffering” is ridiculous. Suffering is but a judgement call, a way of assessing “reality,” (And “reality” must always be considered with quotation marks around it because nothing can be seen, known, “as it is,” but only as it appears to be to whomever is looking at it because we can only see from our own vantage point and no one can be a completely disinterested observer but we all are predisposed to see what we think we see. The most blessed state of being–and as close to happiness as we can get–is doing what is called for, when, where and how it is called for in each situation as it arises. Which is the old Taoist realization of the Tao being the flow of life and being wherein we do the right thing at the right time in the right place in the right way time after time. Amen! No? Can I get an Amen! here?
April 16, 2025
To end suffering all we have to do is change our perspective. Which means we have to grow up. Growing up is the solution to all of our problems today, Changing the way we look at things changes what we see by changing how we see it. Duh. Adjustment and accommodation, Kid. Adjustment and accommodation .
April 20, 2025
Carl Jung was a proponent of the idea that normal, apparent “reality” consists of more than what can be weighed, measured, counted, x-rayed, and put in the attic. His cohort, Aniela Jaffé, in her book, “The Myth of Meaning,” explores the possibility of worlds beyond the capabilities of our physical senses, and suggests that psychic reality is an essential addition to our collection of “how things are.” The Buddhist practice of meditation producing trance states invites and enables experiences transcending those of “normal, apparent reality” and opens us to states beyond which “normal people” are prepared to go, and/or are capable of going. I find this to be one of Buddhism’s greatest strengths and most important offerings to the world “as it is,” and one that we would be right to deepen and explore as a way of serving the oath to end suffering by expanding our understanding of truth and what the full understanding of truth has to offer those who are blessed by it on all levels, in all ways.
April 27, 2025
“Really?” applies to every religious doctrine, proclamation, declaration across the board, around the world, throughout the cosmos. Religion by its very nature (“Take this on faith!”) has nothing to do with the real world. Even science has nothing to do with the real world. It is all grounded upon projections, inferences, assumptions, and associations. And faith is nothing more than an opinion that takes itself seriously. Real doesn’t belong in the same sphere as religion except in saying that if something religious claims to be real it isn’t.
April 29, 2025
Council is not to be confused with being told what to do. We do not need teachers. We need sounding boards. We need people who are able to listen us into hearing what we have to say. All we need is the right perspective, and we correct our perspective by becoming aware of it, of seeing it clearly, perhaps for the first time. A Community of Innocence (Innocent in the sense of having nothing at stake in the conversation–not trying to convert us, straighten us out, change us, etc.) is all we need. 3 to 10 people who can LISTEN with understanding to what is being said. Anybody ought to be able to do that, no? It’s shocking, I tell you, how few people can. No?
May 03, 2025
I drop into the silence and stay until the silence is done with me. And drop back into the silence when the silence beckons me. I call it dancing with sitting. In that the Buddha, when he declared, “Do not listen to ME! Listen to YOU!” announced that we are our own authority in all things great and small, dancing with sitting is a perfect (for me) response to the matter of how to sit properly. And I have evolved similar ways to do all things Buddhist. I am in charge of my own practice, and my own life. And I trust everyone to know where they stop and I start. And if they act like they don’t know, I ask them in a curious kind of way. I’m always curious how people know where they stop and others start.
May 05, 2025
Awareness assumes subject/object. Awareness of emptiness/nothing is difficult to distinguish from unawareness. Being aware of nothing is like being unaware of anything. And is the equivalent of being unconscious. Which is to say that words forming Buddhism are words about words saying nothing about anything. As are words about anything. Leading easily to the realization that all of our talking is projection, words about words. And to the additional realization that the only thing that is not a projection is kindness. Making kindness the ultimate reality. The unspoken, unspeakable truth. The essential experience. Giving rise to awe and wonder. The experience of life itself.
May 06, 2025, Lion’s Roar:
Pema Chödrön’s question, “What’s the most important thing?” inspires consideration. I lean toward “Truth.” What could mean more than truth? Particularly as it relates to seeing, hearing, knowing, doing, being? Knowing what’s what and what is called for in each situation as it arises–and doing it. That’s all there is to it, no?
May 06, 2025, Lion’s Roar:
Tonglen is a Buddhist practice of breathing in, breathing out. What we breathe in is transformed into what we breathe out. We breathe in tightness or fear, or tightness and fear, and we breathe out relaxation, and letting things be as they are, no matter what they are. We want things to be the way we want things to be no matter what that means for ourselves and/or others. So, we breathe that in, and breathe out realizing what the are doing and making a slight shift to breathing out what things need to be in any/every situation as it arises no matter what that means for ourselves or others. Sacrificing ourselves for what needs to be done no matter what is the way of the Buddha, the Christ, and all those who have seen and known what’s what and what matters most and what is called for and what needs to be done about it, here, now, and doing it throughout the ages. That is all that is ever asked of any of us at any time. No?
May 06, 2025, Lion’s Roar:
Tonglen is a Buddhist practice consisting simply of consciously breathing in a perceived need and breathing out an appropriate blessing in response to the need.
We can do this instantaneously/spontaneously throughout the day, and we can do it at a specific time/place that we set aside within each day to address current needs with a blessing suitable to the occasion.
This practice allows the day to connect us with the practice and carries forward Jesus’ idea of “Pray always” by understanding prayer as a meditative way of being in relationship with all that is happening around us, with the need of the world in all times and places, offering a blessing of peace and good will, breathing in and breathing out, anywhere, any time, everywhere, all the time.
May 06, 2025, Loose Change 01
There are no words. There is only primal emptiness, stillness, silence. Meditative quiet in which we empty ourselves of all thoughts and emotions, memories, guilt, shame, etc. and wait for realization, clarity, understanding, seeing, knowing… to arise in the silence as a call to action, a blessing for direction and reassurance, a reminder of who we are and what we are about, reaffirmation and orientation…
We can drop into the silence, etc. at any time/place to ground ourselves in seeking to know what’s what and what is called for in each situation as it arises in order to do what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done in each situation as it arises, all our life long. What could be more necessary, essential, important that that?
May 06, 2025,
I will sit the way I sit, and you may sit the way you sit. And maybe the way you sit has immense advantages over the way I sit. I’m fine with that. I’m fine with the way I sit. I’m fine if I never achieve an enlightened state of being. I am fine with my state of being. I am fine with being me the way I am being me. Maybe there will never be immense advantages for me to be different from the way I am being. I am fine with that. I will do me my way, and I will be fine if you do being you your way.
May 10, 2025
In response to an article by Kritee Kanko, “Animistic and Shamanic Elements of Asian Buddhism
This is very well-written/presented article and I find it to be helpful on several levels. initially it shouts STOP! SIT DOWN! SHUT UP! STAY QUIET! AND LISTEN!!! to the world we live in, to the people we live with or near. To the trees and animals we are continuing to displace/destroy with progress that goes nowhere but destroys everywhere!
I realize that Projection is a psychological mechanism that disrupts perception and understanding, and I don’t know how to avoid it. I can only be aware of it. Every time I am tempted to talk about a perception, I remember that I am only talking about a projection. Having said that, this: A Native American recommendation is that we approach a tree in a wooded area like a city park, stand before the tree with what we take to be a proper degree of reverence, and ask the tree’s permission to touch it with our bare hands. And to wait silently for its reply. With what I just said about projection leading the way here, I cannot do this anywhere, since being asked to do this, without a deep, dreadful sense of rejection to the point of damnation coming to me from the trees I have stood before, with flashes of awareness of trees being bulldozed and dynamited for building projects or highways, etc. in the local area, to the point of being staggered and aghast with comprehension of what this particular tree and all the others nearby feel/experience/know what we are doing to their fellow trees. They know who we are and what we have done and are doing, and they don’t want me touching them or anywhere near them. I have left them grief-stricken. And am ashamed of our nonchalance and disrespect of fellow lifeforms throughout the world. Who do we think we are to kill with such aplomb? Everywhere? My heart is heavy with shame and grief. Which are but projections of my sense of what the tree before me would be feeling/thinking/being–and I have no idea of what that might be if anything. So everything is a mirror reflecting me to me, seeing me seeing me and what it all means depends entirely on my interpretation of what’s what, here, now, without telling me anything about what’s actually what here, now. You see the quandary and the absurdity of thinking ourselves into circles going nowhere, telling us nothing, no?
May 10, 2025
We have opinions spontaneously. We think all the time, without stopping to think. When we consciously, intentionally invoke emptiness, we may become aware of a knowing, realizing, realization, recognition, beneath opinion, reaction, reactivity. I like to be there, I would like to live there. Be there. All of the time.
May 10, 2025
We cannot worry about what our chances are, or think about what the odds are, or wonder why try? We cannot fall into the “Who cares? So What? What difference does it make? What good will it do? What is the point? Mantras that go round and round creating a negative trance state of gloom and doom. This is not why we are here. It is not called for. It is not what we are asked to do.
Our place is to drop into the emptiness, stillness, silence (One thing! Not Three!). And sit there, “Waiting for the mud to settle and the water to clear.” Looking, listening for something to stir to life, arise, emerge, appear out of nowhere to beckon to us with an urgency about it that discloses some aspect of what’ s what and what’s happening and what’s called for, that we are particularly equipped to deal with in serving and sharing our original nature, innate virtues (The things we do best and enjoy doing most), our inherent imagination, and our intrinsic intuition, and our Psyche’s eternal, everlasting force and powers, in doing what needs to be done, where, when and how it needs to be done–and when we have done our work, the work that is ours to do, then we step back as Lao Tzu advises, and let nature take its course, with no opinion, no expectations, no disappointment, no whining, no complaining, just dropping back into the emptiness.. stillness, silence to wait some more for the next arising, emergence to call our name and send us into action. See? This is the process. This is who we are. This is what we do.
May 13, 2025
Duality/No Duality. Which way is it? Both ways at the same time. In a “now you see it, now you don’t” kind of way.
Reality is an optical illusion. On the one hand, The Buddha and the Buddhists and the Hindus before them, and Einstein after them are all quite correct in saying that the ground of reality is, call it what you will, Brahman, Non-duality, Energy, or my personal fave, Psyche. That everything is “That Thing,” and we cannot talk about it because we are it, and a mirror cannot see itself, even if someone holds up a mirror before a mirror, the mirrors thus mirrored are seeing their own reflection and knowing no more than they knew before someone held up one before the other.
And on another hand, we are Psyche/Brahman/Non-duality/Energy trying to make sense of ourselves. And we need to pretend that we are all of the separate objects/divisions in the cosmos of objects/divisions in order to distinguish aspects of oneness from other aspects of oneness so that we might begin to make sense of things as they are and also are. Without distinctions we can’t see anything, or know anything, so we have to play a game with ourselves, or our self. We KNOW all is one, and we pretend all is many because it is convenient that way enabling us to eat a hamburger and not eat gravel or concrete. So, that’s that. What’s next?
May 16, 2025
To live without a self is to let someone else do our thinking for us. No? Which brings up this question: Who was the Buddha’s teacher? Why are there so many Buddhist teachers when the Buddha himself had no teacher? If the Buddha can attain “Peaceful abiding, here, now,” by simply peacefully abiding, here, now, why can’t everyone? What is so difficult about seeing, hearing, knowing, doing, being? If anybody can do it, why can’t everybody do it? Is it easy being Buddhist? Is it difficult being Buddhist? With so many teachers, books, instructional videos, YouTube presentations, etc. why isn’t everyone a Buddha? Wait! Everyone IS a Buddha, right?! What a mess, no?
May 23, 2025
There should be a ton of comments here! This is a critical point of view, well done, beautifully stated. A masterpiece of brilliant reflections on who we are and what we are about. What do we hope for? What are we doing in service to our hope? How is our hope motivating, directing, producing our action in the service of hope? I look out the window a lot, and call that hope in action. I take refuge in my chair and the window. My hope spurs me on every day. My idols are the old Taoists who didn’t allow anything to get them down. Whose motto was/is doing the right thing at the right time in the right place in the right way. That is hope in full bloom and full service to what is called for in each situation as it arises! Refuge in Right Action is the only kind of refuge worth the trouble.
May 25, 2025
Everything that moves us—Art, Nature, Music, Babies, Children, etc.—is a direct experience with Zen. Experience your life and there is Zen. But, to say it is not doing it and there we come upon the realization: “That is water! Drink it, swim in it, bathe in it, or drown! But do not talk about water! To talk about water is to not know water!” And saying that we cannot say it is saying it.
To end suffering we only have to change our mind about suffering. Think of it as an inconvenience, or as a doorway to enlightenment, which it was for the Buddha. Or as a bridge to maturity and grace. Or as the path to wisdom and patience. Or as a test of our capacity to produce emptiness, stillness and silence anywhere, any time…
Here (we are), Now (what?) is an expansion of here, now, and quite often appropriate, particularly in the presence of pain, disruption, chaos, etc. that is not going away, but only getting worse–but here we are even so, and we aren’t going away either. Thus the stand off, the stare down. There is pain and there is dealing with pain. Pain is not going away and neither are we. We are here for the duration! So, show us what ‘cha got–we don’t care! And we aren’t going anywhere! “Say yes I’ll be right here when the morning comes! I’ll be right and I ain’t gonna run!”
I’ll still be here when you are just a bad memory!
May 26, 2025
No self, no Buddha, no Dharma, no Buddhism, no delusion, no illusion, only realization: no anything, no everything. We are all enlightened. Nothing to it. Any of it. Never was. Never will be. What’s the fuss all about? Not seeing and seeing nothing is the same thing. If we see that much, we see all there is to see. No? No! YES!
New translations are new ways of seeing that deepen, broaden, expand understanding, realization, knowing, doing, being. And steer us a way from thinking in duality, right seeing and wrong seeing, right understanding and delusion. Etc. Truth is truthful, not factual. Is the Lotus opening as we watch, read, hear, carrying us away into new possibilities and boundless wonder. May it be ever so!
May 29, 2025
I do not know were Zen starts and Buddhism stops. Or why it is called “Zen Buddhism” when we do not know what is Zen and what is Buddhism. And I do not find any help in knowing what is called for in each situation as it arises. I do find emptiness/stillness/silence to be priceless in terms of waiting for clarity and moving spontaneously to say/do what is appropriate for the situation at hand, but not as something to take credit for knowing how to do, any more than one would take credit for scratching for where it itches. “Scratch where it itches” is my understanding of Zen, but not Buddhism. Buddhism has to be sure to do it right. I know that much about Buddhism. Zen, not so much. Buddhism is not much fun to be around. Zen, plenty of fun to be around. Go where you are called to go and do what you enjoy doing. That’s all the Zen I know, or feel the need to know.
June 06, 2025
Awareness without/devoid of Doing/Being what is called for in each situation as it arises, and ignores the Tao’s need of doing the right thing in the right way and in the right place, at the right time, and also ignores the truth that there is no duality/plurality, because all is one and Awareness is doing, being.
June 09, 2025
Who was it who said, “It is the wave’s place to realize it is the ocean”? This realization makes meditation simply a matter of relaxing into “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” It can’t be about achieving anything, accomplishing anything, doing anything. The wave doesn’t achieve, accomplish, do anything to be the ocean. Meditation doesn’t achieve, accomplish, do anything to be the Buddha. What’s with striving? We already ARE! What more is there to BE? We are the wave striving to be the sea. What sense does that make? How hard could that be?
June 10, 2025
Not only is God not “Wholly Other”–God is also not “Out There,” “Up There,” “Over There,” “Across the Sea,” “Beyond the Mountains,” “Etc.” God is ME and YOU and ALL OF US who are now and ever have been. The old Hindus (Hindee?) are right about Brahman being the ultimate/absolute reality. And, if you change the spelling of the ultimate/absolute reality to E-N-E-R-G-Y, you have Einstein’s realization that “Energy (Brahman) cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed or converted.” And thinking doesn’t change anything but the way we see/think-about things. And what do we have when we see things “as they really are” (as the old Buddhists like to say)? How much better off are we then? In what ways?
June 10, 2025
Who is “in,” who is “out”? How do we know? Mercy and grace welcomes the stranger, the strange. We are one extension of tender mercy, of resplendent grace away from everyone being in and no one being out. Why is that hard? Why are there rules to keep people out? To shut people in? Why is mercy and grace easy to talk about and hard to do? Is it not so that we are only mercy and grace away from the other shore, or wherever it is that we think we need to be?
Is sitting Zazen going to make us merciful and gracious? Is meditation? Maybe if we practiced being merciful and gracious? Maybe if we do mercy and love kindness? How about we do that and see what happens?
June 15, 2025
Forgiveness is over-rated. Holding things against people is ridiculous. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. We do stupid, we do brilliant. Why does what happens impact us? Why do we forever resent anything? Donald Trump is cruel and malicious, and guilty of atrocity, etc. The sky is blue some days and cloudy some days. Why keep score? Why grade everything? Anything? “Peaceful abiding here, now.” All the time. No matter what. No opinions. No judgment. No condemnation. No sending anybody to hell. Just like the Prodigal Son’s father.
June 17, 2025
What should be done? What should we do about what should be done? How do we know? Who is to say? How would we know they know what they are talking about? How would we know what we are talking about? Where does opinion end and knowing begin? How did we get here? Then old Taoists liked to say that we got here, now, by way of “circumstances begetting circumstances,” and that is how we are going to get to where we are going. Careening, Skidding. Slip-sliding all the way. No?
June 19, 2025
We cannot see anything without interpreting what we are looking at. Seeing/Interpreting is one thing. And we interpret what we see out of our past experiences, which we filter through our tendencies, propensities, proclivities, idiosyncrasies, which are created through our interactions with our environment over time. We are the reason, the cause, of seeing things as we do. Which leads to our responding to things as we do. Which is to say that nothing changes until we do. “Getting to the thorn” is seeing ourselves seeing and asking all of the questions that beg to be asked about everything we think is so, and not so. We are the subject of our own meditative practice.
June 19, 2025
We are “the secret cause” of our own suffering (After James Joyce and Joseph Campbell). How we see things is how we interpret things, and how we interpret things hinges on our propensities and idiosyncrasies. No one can tell us how to see what we look at–they can only suggest alternative viewpoints. They cannot impose their views onto us. So the Buddha and Jesus could only say what/how they saw. They could not MAKE disciples. Our propensities and idiosyncrasies shape/form us and make us who we are. Our work/practice is to see our seeing by asking all of the questions that beg to be asked and saying all of the things that cry out to be said, and reflecting on all of it in light of all of it to create/produce/realize the reality of how things are beyond how we tend to think how things are. This is the work of enlightenment, awareness, realization. Finding our way back to seeing/being “as one thus come.”
June 19, 2025
I am interested in how our body “talks” to us, or, is it us imagining that our body is talking to us? And when we say what our body is saying to us is it only us talking to us about our body because we cannot talk directly say what we can say if it is our body talking? So, I take up the practice of asking (By writing down) all the questions that beg to be asked, and saying all of the things that cry out to be said. Sometimes I do this several times a day, or wake up at night writing what begs to be asked and cry out to be said. And as I do that I am aware of listening to my body-self as an audience of one. If there is anything here that you can use, fine–and if not, fine. We all have to find our own way to what needs to be asked and what needs to be said, and done. No?
June 25, 2025
A lot of people take refuge in numbness and denial. Both appear to be a natural defense against more than we can bear. Alcohol takes many of us away. My escape–and what is taking refuge if not making our escape?–is refusing to take what is happening now with more seriousness than it deserves. I return the nihilist barrage, “So what? Who cares? Why try? What’s the use? What difference will it make? by flipping it, saying, “So what if it makes no difference? Who cares if no one cares? Why not try? What’s the use of doing nothing?” And focusing on what is called for here, now. Finding and doing what is called for trumps anything we might want or wish would happen. Seeking and serving what needs to be done rescues the moment and gives us purpose–which is one of the best things to have when the world is going to hell. Purpose heals hell. Or, it’s a start anyway.
June 26, 2025
If we drop Greed, Fear, Hatred, Desire for Power and Control, we will spontaneously experience “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” No striving. No forcing. No compelling. No demanding. No insisting. No pushing. Only dropping into Emptiness, Stillness, Silence, and waiting there for what is called for to lead us into right seeing, right knowing, right doing, right being, here, now. This is well within our reach, yet it exceeds our grasp, as those who know have always known without letting it prevent them from sitting quietly and dropping into Emptiness, Stillness, Silence and waiting there…
June 26, 2025
Buddhism is mostly thinking about thinking and words about words, or talking about talking. Lost in the noise and complexity is the concept and experience of “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” Yet everything that matters flows from that and leads to that, making it the core, the foundation, the adamantine rock upon which we sit and from which “we live, and move, and have our being.” We do not know anything worth knowing by being told anything. We know what we know that forms and shapes our life from what we learn from our experience. Experience cannot be taught! So what are all these teachers of Buddhism doing pretending they can tell us something enlightening? They don’t know what they know from being told something. Their knowledge comes out of their experience, and that includes knowing that experience cannot be taught or told. So now what?
June 27, 2025
Self-induced trance-states (chanting, breath counting, drumming, etc.) are ways of zoning out or tuning in. Trance states are overlooked as a meditative tool for bridging the worlds of the here, now, and that of eternal presence looking for places offering transparency to transcendence. And there (here) we are, offering an opening to what is hoping for that very thing. Readiness meets the search for readiness and, wonder of wonders, magic happens again!
July 01, 2025
We think we can arrange a future to our liking if we are careful to do Now like it ought to be done. We aim to profit from our actions and arrange a life worth living. The Buddha, it is said, died from eating bad pork. So much, I say, for Karma. If the Buddha can’t count on good Karma, what chance do I have? Oh, wait! I AM the Buddha! I keep forgetting. I’m glad no one is keeping score!
July 16, 2025
Buddhists like to propose Non-duality as the foundation to life, conveniently ignoring that there are at least two sides to everything. So, I recommend that Buddhists modify their presentation by saying,
“Non-duality is the foundation of life if you ignore that there are two sides to everything.” That should do nicely, no? Even Einstein would have to agree that in order to be useful energy has to become something with two sides, so non-duality gives way to two sides, just like that (Snaps fingers). The only way to be a Buddhist with insight into the two sides to everything, is to become a Non-Buddhist. Or, to wink and nod a lot.
August 27, 2025
Life is suffering. How we look at life is suffering. Where does experience of life end and interpretation of experience of life begin? Suffering is projection as much as it is suffering. What we say about suffering has its origin where? Why that and not something else instead. Take wanting/desiring out of the picture and what happens to suffering? Can we suffer if we don’t care if we are suffering or not? If we don’t expect to not suffer? If we don’t want/desire to not suffer? If we are quite content with what other people call suffering? We can disappear suffering like that (snaps fingers) just by changing our mind about what we are experiencing.
August 31, 2025
Knowing is the foundation of doing the right thing at the right time in the right way in the right place in each situation as it arises. But. It is an intuitive knowing, not an intellectual knowing. It is a knowing born of the here, now, not of the should, ought, must because someone says so variety.
Our Psyche is the source of the right kind of knowing, not our brain. We cannot think our way to doing what is called for here, now. We cannot be taught to know how to know what to do when, where, how. Instruction is in the way of the way, which waits for those who “just know.”
Zen is knowing that doesn’t know how it knows what it knows. Taoism is knowing the same thing. And there are Zen/Taoist “Masters” who market themselves as knowing how to teach us what we know. There are Buddhist teachers by the thousands who tell is how to know what the Buddha knew sitting under the Bodhi Tree, when the Buddha himself didn’t know what he was doing beyond sitting, waiting, with “Peaceful abiding, here, now.”
If we can live peacefully abiding here, now, that’s it forever.
October 10, 2025
Sense your Way into the rhythm and flow of your life and trust yourself to it completely apart from plans, schemes and dreams. You aren’t trying to make anything happen, you are trying to remain aligned with, in accord with the rhythm and flow.
October 24, 2025
Thank you (to Viet Thanh Nguyen) for inviting me to hold otherness in relation to oneness as a reminder that oneness is not sameness, and that we see the salt shaker is different from the pepper shaker because of their differentness though they both are one in that that they are spices. We are all one but. not the same one, and our otherness is a blessing and a grace upon all of us and upon each of us because our individuality is essential to community–and together we save the world as individuals doing our thing just as an orchestra is a collection of individuals doing their thing for the good of the whole, and oneness is a koan of high class because it is and it isn’t at the same time for the true blessings of life upon all who are alive to their living as irreplaceable individuals communing with one another for the true good of all.
October 26, 2025
Suffering is over-rated. The external source of suffering has to be interpreted internally as such, received as such and responded to as such. Suffering is as much projection as it is actual/real, and it requires us to cooperate with it in carrying it, moaning, groaning, whining, crying, “Oh, woe, how awful! How unfair! How unbearable this is!” Wait. Hold it. Stop. Our response to suffering is just as responsible for our agony as the actual source of our agony. Suffering would be nothing if we refused to take it seriously and were not bothered by it. Changing our mind about suffering relieves us of our burden. There is suffering and there is the experience of suffering. We can reduce, or even disappear, our suffering just by taking our mind off of it, shifting our attention, perhaps by being interested in the physical and/or emotional impact of physical/mental/emotional suffering. Becoming curious about our pain reduces our pain. Concentrating on the intensity of our pain reduces our pain. Watching as our physical pain ebbs and returns, ebbs and returns, interrupts the coming and going of intensity and, doing so itself provides us with relief for the intensity of our pain. We distance ourselves from our pain by experiencing our experience of our pain. Shifting the focus of our attention shifts the experience we are experiencing. Perspective and attitude changes things, brings relief and we take refuge in opening ourselves fully to our experience and carrying it in our awareness and watching as it intensifies and diminishes, ebbs and flows, comes and goes over time.
October 27, 2025
Buddhism is big into No Dualism! All is ONE! But oneness is not sameness! Suffering and The End of Suffering are not one. There is suffering and there is refuge from suffering, and there is End of Suffering. These are not the same experience. These are two quite different experiences. Two Not One is Dualism. This shore and The Other Shore. Dualism. Awakening and Delusion is Dualism. Buddhism is kidding itself about non-dualism. And double-talks its way out of all its contradictions. Demand that your teacher come clean regarding these contradictions to your complete satisfaction!
Jim Dollar's Published Works 