Articles
Browse every published article connected to E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
Articles
Browse every published article connected to E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock, or search within this exact expert archive.
One good way to find God is to lose yourself! Which is easier said than done, because in order to lose yourself, you must first discover what your "self" is! Once that discovery is made, then you can decide which is more important; yourself... or God? Assuming that you decide God is far more ...
It is important that we remain true to our own ambitions, whatever they happen to be. If they are harmful or helpful to others, or ourselves, we will find out soon enough through the reflection of our associations. Learning to play our instrument flawlessly is very important. We should be aware ...
Something quite dramatic is happening in the political arena - a new vision nothing like the old politics of greed, hatred, and spin. Accustomed as we are to division, bickering, and animosity, this will take some getting used to - and may not happen in this cycle – but it is coming. Voicing ...
Just then a villager walked out from behind a tree with the long, heavy blade of a razor sharp coconut cutter loosely hanging in his hand. One of the soldiers laughed and drew his sword. Behind him, two other villagers, a boy and a woman, emerged with their blades, and the other warrior drew ...
· Reducing stressnn· Feeling better mentally and physicallynn· Eliminating fear and uncertainty from our livesnn· Changing aspects of our lives we do not likenn· Deepening and improving our relationships with othersnn· Becoming more ...
"Becoming" is a word used to describe, among other things, striving to attain states of transcendence in meditation practice. We intellectually figure out a goal, and then imagine that we have somehow attained that goal. This is the trick of a clever ego; a chameleon in the ways in which it can ...
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 ...
My breathing became labored, and as the poison worked its way into my heart, I wished that I had begun my quest when I was much younger, before the wars. I also wished I had paid more attention to the robed man who warned me to sweep the path! When key seekers speak, it is never for ...
An old man with shaking hands counts out some crumpled bills to a receptionist in a doctor's office. The sign above the cashier's window says: "If you are a Medicare customer you will be required to pay your $135 deductable before service is rendered." But the old man only comes up with ...
If you are a normal person, you will serve your family and your country by trying to do what's right. This necessarily involves ambition and goals while you try to solve your problems in life. As you settle into your career, whatever it turns out to be, your government in turn tries to equalize ...
Conqueror, my mystical horse, was not getting any younger. He had lived well beyond a normal lifespan and I wondered how many trips he could still make. Was that old, robed man, who brought an enchanted colt to the Kingdom of Ayatana those many years ago, the sorcerer? Of course, he was, and he ...
There’s an old saying how a young man has no past so he drives fast cars to catch his future - and an old man has no future so he sits in his rocking chair trying to hold onto his past. This has some truth to it. There comes a time when we get beyond the stage of reliving our past in actuality, and only relive it in memoirs. We either lack the energy, the money, or the interest to actually do it all over again, so we sit back and remember the good times. It’s amazing how the mind erases the bad ones.
It's two-thirty a.m. I light a small candle, hang up my mosquito net, and put on my robes. The forest is quiet now in this backwater rural area of northeast Thailand. I have been meditating since 10:00 p.m. in my tiny hut. The narrow, half-mile trail through the forest is about 930 steps, ...
Scientists say that everything began in the emptiness of space when a pea-sized piece of intensely dense matter and energy exploded into what has become our universe. In the Zen Buddhist religion, it is said, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is no other than form, form is no ...
Dear God, Can you hear me? If you’re busy, I understand, But I just have a little time now. So I was hopin’ you could maybe hear me today. Just a couple loose ends to tidy up, If you can help. I done a few bad things, Won’t have time to make them right now, So I thought maybe you could ...
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 ...
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.”
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 ...
We are coming to the end of an era. Beginning 35,000 years ago when we were savages, we have evolved because of numerous shifts in consciousness to where we are now. This present level of consciousness is characterized by a disregard of our planet, a disdain of other's problems, an unhealthy ...
Do you love and hate? If you do, then you are very normal. If you just hated, or only loved, there would be consistency, but when you do both, the mind finds itself in conflict all the time, and this produces stress. So if you want to find the underlying cause of your stress, look no further ...
How can anyone guarantee happiness? Well, they can't. But we can. We can guarantee our own happiness. In order to do that, however, we must first eliminate those things that make us unhappy. So let's get started. First, think about what makes you unhappy. Take a few moments to think about that. ...
"I am the greatest!" If we repeat this affirmation to ourselves enough times, we will begin to believe it. Then we will begin to act out "Being the greatest," and soon, in our mind, we will be. It doesn't matter what we repeat, it's the repeating that counts, sort of an internal brainwashing. ...
As long as there is hope, there will be despair. As long as there is experience, there will be death. Yet fervently we seek both. nnn Human beings are strange creatures. What creatures of earth aren't? For one thing, we eat each other. The child Buddha saw this one day at a ploughing festival in ...
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 ...
Although the usual suspects of stress may be our jobs, financial difficulties, illness, political and religious arguments, family, personal problems, etc., if you look into each one of these in depth, you will find within them all a common thread. If only we could identify that common thread, then stress relief would be immensely simplified. So let's take a look at the mechanism of our stress in general. Let's say, for example, we are arguing with someone about politics which has gone past the point of civil discussion and now has reached levels of personal attacks.
Spirituality is an innate quality we all have in various degrees. For that spiritual quality to move from an innate to an active mode, however, depends upon three things. If any of the three are missing, spiritual tendencies could be smothered by our instinctive reactions of greed, hatred, and ...
. . . And so began a ten-year friendship with this little man and his constant grin, as we wandered the forest together in search of the elusive key. "I know where to find plants and insects to eat," I said, trying to be helpful. A John shook his head in disagreement, "Those who are ...
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 ...
We walked across great plains and countless farm fields framed against pristine days of clear morning skies, yellow-white days and nights filled with endless stars. Eventually the plains gave way to forests, and as we continued our trek, we soon could see the tangled jungle ahead. Before long, ...
My campaign rained death and destruction upon the realm for fourteen long years. I was a young man when I first led my troops into battle, but now I was a seasoned warrior, feared throughout the land, and although the war had cost me an eye, and countless friends including my general, victory ...
Have you ever thought about ete ity? That‘s longer than a month, a lot longer. If an angel flew up to the top of a solid granite mountain once every hundred years and softly brushed a silk veil across it’s top, the number of years required to wear that mountain down to the ground would be a drop in the bucket compared to ete ity.
When we cannot just "be," then we have to be "something," and when we have to be something, we have to set goals. When we set goals, however, we are never satisfied until the goal is reached, and therefore, it is only when there are no goals that we can just "be." Just being has its ...
When we hit middle age or thereabouts, it's not unusual to begin asking questions such as, "Is this it?" Before that, we are busy with kids, careers, and all the things that, as we become older, begin slipping through our fingers like water - without our even realizing it at times. Whatever we ...
To make sure that your future beyond this world is going to be the best it can be, make each day a little more meaningful than the last. That's it! Make each day just a little better, just an infinitesimal amount better than the last. "Better" doesn't mean what you do, but what you notice. ...
We made our way through a peaceful countryside where we were always given the utmost courtesy and respect from the villagers. There were many days; however, when we didn't run across any villages and were forced to fast (a John was very strict about not picking and eating fruits and coconuts, or ...
"Everybody knows that you are here," he said, putting up a good front. "Killing me will do you no good." Expressing no emotion, I calmly asked, "Why would I want to kill you?" "You know why. You are a threat to the king and I know that you are here," he haughtily replied. "But I am the ...
1. Relying on your feelings rather than your intuition. Feelings regarding a new relationship will almost always involve powerful lust. This is natural. When an interest grows sexually, it grows as quickly and as surely as a child. Each interaction doubles the desire until the need to be ...
Access Samadhi is a stage of meditation where interesting things can happen. It is the active gateway to fixed Samadhi. The danger with access Samadhi is that a meditator can become so engrossed with the unusual aspects of access Samadhi that they lose interest in going further. The ...
The subjects of this article are cherished goals. What could be more rewarding than a life fulfilled, or expressing ones deepest felt emotions and thoughts? The problem is; one person's fulfillment might be another's tragedy. Take for example the dream of home ownership. A young woman, ...
When I was living as a Buddhist monk in the backwater jungles of Thailand, I learned many important lessons that have made my life much easier. One of them was how to handle food. The rules of a Theravada monk include eating only once a day, and that is in the morning. Typically, we would walk ...
This world is an amazing place. Never-ending things to experience. Long ago this was not the case . Other than a change of seasons, nothing much happened. But today with the internet, we can be worldwide travelers while sitting in our media rooms. We can be authors and write articles, or political pundits and create blogs. We can even shop the world for everything from a nice camera to a good-looking wife. Who would want or could imagine any more than this?
Eons ago when we lived in caves, we would get hungry, and when we got hungry, we would become very unhappy and mad as hell, and we would go out and kill something to eat! Today, if we become unhappy with our situation, whatever it may be, we get mad as hell and change it! So unhappiness has its ...
When we say that we are a Christian, or Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, or Hindu, what does that mean? When I was a faith-based Christian, it meant that I believed. I believed in God, Jesus, the Church, and I believed in Catholicism. I was proud of being a Catholic. It didn't matter whether my beliefs ...
"What is troubling my great king now," Weepasa inquired with a disinterested look on his face, as he carefully peeled a mango. "There are many things I have learned throughout my travels, but some of my questions have never been answered," I complained, "and they are now a constant burden." ...
Research has revealed that the part of our brain that is stimulated when we are in love is not the emotional centers as once thought, but the part of the brain that controls physical lust. In other words, being in love has everything to do with sex and little to do with love. Emotionally, after ...
I couldn't make out what it was at first, but then to my horror I discovered what was now curled in my robes; a large cobra! This was no imaginary ghost; this was real. I could hardly breathe. I immediately launched into the inner work to keep my body still, but it was impossible to concentrate ...
Sahmad began the secret instructions, "Close your eye and pay close attention so that you can precisely remember these directions. They are complicated but essential, and any deviation could prove disastrous. And remeber; opening the centers should be done every time you begin your inner work. ...
I turned around and walked slowly to the stables. Conqueror knew that it was time to once again leave. We just began walking down the mountain when a soldier appeared without warning and raised his crossbow. The great horse saw him before I did and began running as I swung on to Conqueror's ...
Sahmad dispatched one of his attendants to summon a physician, while another stayed behind as an interpreter. Sahmad then instructed me to lie down, and he lit two large cones of incense, carefully placing them on my bare chest. He told me to concentrate on the pain that would soon come, as the ...
IMPORTANT: Always check with your medical and mental health care professional before beginning any new regimen. 1. EXERCISE: Brisk walking: Three to five miles a day. Neck roll: Twice a day. (Do this exercise slowly and carefully until your neck and spine become loosened up). Touch your left ...