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Mindfulness
I’ve been engaged for the last eight minutes or so maintaining awareness of the reality before me; not focusing on anything in particular, just contemplating the here and now. Thoughts occasionally...
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Me, Myself and I
I’ve been thinking about my Self lately; mostly about how to reconcile the beauty and freedom of selflessness with the necessity of maintaining a healthy self-image to deal with the pressures of...
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Contemplation
I read the other day about a study done recently that found that a lot of people have a really hard time being alone with their thoughts. Apparently, researchers had asked volunteers to sit alone in a...
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Belief is Truth to the Believer
Boy, it’s really hard to know what to believe these days. I read in a news magazine my hero, Mr. Rogers, was a former Navy Seal with twenty five confirmed sniper kills during the war in Viet Nam; truly...
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Beyond the Grave
I see by the calendar All Soul’s Day and with it The Day of the Dead is here. Death isn’t something most of us want to think about very much but at this time of the year, with nature racing toward...
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Mandala Haiku
I was reading recently that the psychologist Karl Jung had his patients paint mandalas as a means of treating their various mental difficulties. He arrived at this notion, I guess, through his...
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Suffering and Death
I’ve been thinking lately about some of the great thinkers of the not too distant past and how they seem nearly obsessed with ideas of suffering and death. First, take Arthur Schopenhauer. He was...
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haiku mantras
So, I’ve been thinking, as I continue to pursue my meditation practices, that perhaps, in addition to mandalas as primary visual focus, haikus could be used sort of like mantras as additional mental...
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Taking Advantage
I’ve been wondering how natural it is for those who are able to take advantage of others. Beside the moral imperative to do to others what one would have done to one’s self and the often stated...
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Mindfulness Overdone
My daily meditations have me focusing, lately, on mindful attentions. Today, as I arise from my nocturnal slumbers to the feng-shui of my bedroom, I inhale deeply, exhale, and mindfully absorb the...
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Altered States
I’ve been having these flashes lately of another time and place. Small things: certain smells and sounds, plays of light, will bring to mind thoughts, sometimes remembrances of earlier experiences,...
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Where am I (now)
I learned recently that modern science views the notion of ‘now’ as nothing more than an illusion. Due to the lag time our sensory apparatus requires to acknowledge occurrences around us, along with...
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Qualia
I’ve been making paintings, lately, as foci for meditation. The images in the paintings represent places in my familiar environs that have personal significance for me. What the bases of the deep...
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Zombie Apocalypse
There sure is a lot of negativity in the news these days: gun violence, terrorist threats, economic inequality, ecological degradation; the list goes on and on. Some think the situation is so dire the...
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Winning and Losing in the Material Realm
I’ve been getting caught up in winning and losing lately. The politics, these days,is getting pretty cut-throat and the pressure to take sides, whether regarding sports activities, political...
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The Inadequacy of Language
There is a certain philosophical perspective I’ve been reading about lately that maintains language is the basis of all thought. Not only can one not think without a language structure, but, on this...
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The Absolute
I’ve been thinking lately, about the idea of the Absolute, you know, in an abstract sense: the Origin of all, the monad, the axis mundi, the metaphysical first cause; God, if you will. I have this...
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Delusions of Well-Being
According to the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran a person would be better off not to have been born. He determined suffering is the rule in life and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it....
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Mandalas to Order
An idea has come to me lately that, perhaps, the problem I have with meditative practice has to do with not having an appropriate focus to immerse myself in to. I’m pretty sure that if I’m ever to...
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The Nature of Love
I was thinking the other day how emotions sometimes creep up on a person, how they seem to come out of nowhere. Suddenly one finds herself overwhelmingly attracted to someone for no apparent good...
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