As always, the present moment exactly as it presents itself, is the greatest teacher of all… but only if we allow it to be.
Rather than succumbing to the illusion of certainty through prediction, we should embrace the future as a space of possibility and creativity.
Attempts to foretell what lies ahead often narrow our vision, tethering us to preconceptions and limiting our ability to respond adaptively to change.
Instead, by resisting the urge to predict, we can cultivate curiosity and openness, allowing us to engage with the unfolding future on its own terms.
When we resist what is, we get stuck to the very thing we want to move away from.
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
— Mark Twain
Perhaps you have noticed that the mind misinterprets everything.
Some random notes on media:
True independence of mind surely precludes subscribing to or following any publication or service that claims to be independent.
Read, watch and listen broadly and think critically.
Always be alert to confirmation bias.
What incentives are in play?
Objectivity doesn’t exist.
If you doubt too much, pause. If you agree too much, pause.
Certainty and ‘truth’ are warnings not guarantees.
‘I don’t know’ can be a valid position.
Everything is impermanent, in flux.
And the the old classic: Opinions are like arseholes, everybody’s got one.
Reading in front of this is the only place to be this afternoon.
If this moment in time should teach those of us with a spiritual bent anything, it’s the lesson of impermanence.
Counter to the prevailing trope of spiritual orthodoxy I don’t accept that our so-called true nature is loving and caring any more than it is hating and othering. Humans are complex animals with fathomless psyches. When we care and love we do so from bottomless wells of empathy and devotion. And yet we hate and other too from similar reserves of opposite emotion. When the time comes we do what we do. It is not only myopic but delusional to believe that one well of human behaviour is any more rich or better fed than another.
Nothing is everything. Or, in the mirror, everything is nothing.
What I’ve learned
One day I looked for my self and found nothing. Turning attention back on itself there was only wide open space – not a thing, but space for everything. If I am anything I am simply everything that is happening.
Life is not something to understand or figure out. It’s not an equation to solve, nor a puzzle to complete. Life is simply here, as it is.
Words can never capture what we are – language always fails beautifully in this regard – but this chap has a lovely turn of phrase and a simple brevity which always makes me smile and feel a gentle ‘yes’ every time I read him.
In this world you can
search for everything,
except love and death.
They find you when the
time comes.
Imagine waking up one morning to the realization that you have no opinions. And that, moreover, you have no likes or dislikes. What would the world look like in that event? How would you feel?
A room with no furniture
We tend to define ourselves and fashion our identities in opposition to other people instead of discovering who we really are in relationship with other people.
No matter how compelling or beautiful they may be, words appeal in the main to the linear, thinking mind that thinks in words.
— Dōgen
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within …
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best Hope for Humanity