(Guest Blogging for the IDProject)
The latest copy of Buddhadharma arrived in my mailbox this week with the lead headline, “Finding Happiness in a World of Wants.” This would have been encouraging, had I read it correctly. But I thought it said, “Finding Wants in a World of Happiness,” which feels more like my general approach to things.
There are times when I have to stop and ask myself just what my f**king problem is. Honestly, I have no clue. My biggest practical concerns are roughly on par with which flavor ice cream to buy, and not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t disprove my well-traveled theory that I’m worthless.
Read full post here.
The meaning of Thanksgiving is often lost, buried beneath a pile of potatoes, drowned out by a chorus of football cheers on television, and, of course, family squabbles at the dining table. This is my favorite holiday. It is secular, involves no gift giving, and asks us only to be grateful for the bounty on our plates and in our lives. Indeed, we have much to be thankful for.
In a meditative vein, take a moment to pause on Thanksgiving and consider what you’re grateful for, and how you can be generous to others.
There are at least two versions of the story. In one, a man tosses breadcrumbs into the air every day. When asked why he does this, he says, “To keep the tigers away from the village.” When told that there are no tigers within a thousand miles of the village, he says, “See?”
The second version has a man standing on a street corner snapping his fingers continually. When asked why he does this, he replies, “To keep the elephants out of the city.” When told that there are no elephants in the city, he says, “See?” Read more…
My teacher, Jon Aaron, read this to our group the other day…
From AmericanTrails.org: “What to Do if You Meet a Bear.” Substituting the word “thought” for “bear,” we have…
There are no definite rules about what to do if you meet a thought. In almost all cases, thought attacks are rare compared to the number of close encounters. However, if you do meet a thought before it has had time to leave an area, here are some suggestions.
Remember: every situation is different with respect to the thought, the terrain, the people and their activity. Read more…
The Buddha was right. (Damn that guy…) Our suffering comes from craving, or as I recently understood it, from expectations. Shedding them is yeoman’s work, but if we have any shot at happiness, it lies therein.
I spent two days in silent meditation this weekend. The occasion was my birthday and I wanted to get away and reflect. My life has changed radically since my last birthday, and taking stock of it all felt like the right thing to do. Read more…
I’ve never liked the term “retreat” to describe the act of going away for a few days of meditation and restoration. It should more accurately be called “advance.” The notion that leaving our offices and crowded streets, our email, Facebook and Twitter lives for a few days represents going backwards is slightly offensive, but the conditioning is fierce, even amongst the enlightened who surely coined the phrase. Read more…
The title of this musing sounds like a metaphor. It probably is, though in this case it’s also somewhat literal. To that end, I worked with a mechanical ape in a short film last week and, as predicted, he was a source of endless fascination while providing an interesting challenge in not being upstaged too badly.
To the metaphoric end, “wrestling the ape” could represent any type of challenge. In my case, ape and ape coincided, and the metaphor arose in having to deliver the emotional part of my performance in the fifteenth hour of the last day while sick. I could see the challenge looming, and it weighed about 600 pounds. Read more…
The last growth spurt of my life happened when I was 26 years old. I ate and slept like a teenager, and for a few short weeks a typical evening was spent consuming a pound of pasta and a box of donuts, and then crashing for about half a day. I didn’t even gain any weight. It all got magically burned off into… growth. Maybe I got a little taller, I don’t know. One thing I did notice, however, was that my brain “fizzed,” as if somebody had poured champagne on it.
Read more…
Though there’s thankfully less holiday bunting this year than usual, it will certainly not slow down our mad belief that we are somehow to be happy because, well, it’s happy season. As a child who endured one Christmas more miserable than the next, I always felt like Exhibit A that this was, in fact, the least wonderful time of year. And what I found particularly horrifying was the idea that I had to buy gifts for people who couldn’t stand me. Read more…
When I was in high school a kid came back from winter break with a shaved head and a scar on his scalp. In one of my greatest asshole moments I looked at him, laughed, and said, “Whadya do? Have your brain replaced?” He looked back and coolly replied, “I had a brain tumor removed.”
I have felt bad about this ever since. Read more…
(Guest Blogging for the IDProject)
