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Browse every published article connected to E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
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Browse every published article connected to E. (anagarika eddie) Raymond Rock, or search within this exact expert archive.
A political evolution is stirring. People are beginning to break free. But in order to understand this progression, we must look at what we were just yesterday, before we decided to think for ourselves. We must look at it because no matter what we do or what we think, the evolution is taking ...
The Catholic Church is losing folks. A recent survey reveals that 6 out of 10 Catholics feel that they are out of touch with Catholic views. Much of this might result from the pedophile cases and views on contraception and illegal immigration, but I have a hunch that this is merely the course of ...
Once there was a little tree. It had a special place all to itself in a beautiful forest, and with the warm winds and gentle rains, the seedling began to grow. Soon, a few small leaves appeared, and the little tree spent the long summer days opening itself to the sun. For some reason, however, ...
This group of men had become my family, and leaving them was difficult. I went through the motions of following the schedule for the next few days, but halfheartedly, faced with the reality of striking out on my own again with Conqueror, my solitary companion, and once more following a restless ...
These very special gateways are usually spu ed by just about everybody. When the gateways conspicuously pop up in our lives, as they regularly do, we do back-flips to avoid them. They are distasteful, in some ways frightening, and make us feel absolutely miserable. So why bother discussing them ...
"Thou shalt not bear false witness" - the Ninth Commandment that is probably more abused than any other! Lying is one of the Buddhist precepts as well, the fourth to be exact. The problem with Buddhism, however, is that lying is not simply a matter of making an untrue statement, lying goes much ...
I found the dog lying almost dead near the path. A crossbow arrow, a type not used by the villagers, had silenced him. Somebody was after me, and apparently wanted the bounty all for himself. My instincts told me to slowly back away and move toward the denser part of the forest, but just as I ...
You know the routine; picking out that special card with just the right verses, and then that special gift - an upscale box of candy, some flowers, maybe a nice ring, a new car, or some tickets for a cruise. According to Wikipedia, The historical background of Valentine's day seems to go back ...
We worry a lot, and the things we worry about are unlimited. For example, the current hot issues - the war, the economy, immigration, global warming, health care - and the list goes on. If these weren't enough, how about our personal problems, our jobs, our relationships, our families, our ...
Our personalities, it could be said, fall into six categories: Faithful, greedy, hateful, deluded, speculative and intelligent, and if we tend toward the speculative and intelligent, it’s a good bet that our spiritual life will progress in fits and starts because we outsmart ourselves. The ...
Maybe it has already happened to you. It doesn't happen to everyone. But those lives to which it happens are drastically changed. Changed for the better. When this happens, all the things that make life such a burden are magically lifted from one's shoulders resulting in a sudden, unexpected freedom that appears to come out of nowhere. This is not an intellectual thing, which is something to be studied and applied to one‘s life. It's not in the self-help books or uttered by life coaches. This is an experience, sometimes called a spiritual experience.
The Buddha was called the great physician. In his quintessential teaching: The Four Noble Truths, he took us under his wing, as a good doctor should, to care for his favorite patients. In his First Truth, he diagnosed us as being very ill. In his second, he explained exactly what was making ...
If our spirit has not lived before, from whence did it originate? Where did it come from? If we didn't have the momentum of either a collective or individual spiritual past life to propel us into this one, are we therefore only accidents of nature; random romantic moments between eggs and a ...
"In the moments before death," a John began, "your whole life will flash before you and you will be able to see each separate moment simultaneously, noticing where you did well and where there is room for improvement. The reason that this only takes a fraction of a moment, which is a complete ...
What are those unique qualities we call bravery; those almost subconscious qualities that we can't readily put our fingers on whenever we see a hero in action but somehow recognize every time someone does something out of the ordinary? It's almost as if what they do is superhuman, yet their ...
It was 1981 and my wife and I were living at a monastery in the remote jungles of Northeast Thailand practicing as a Buddhist monk and nun . . . and Janet was having problems stomaching the coarse food. With only one meal in the morning and no further food permitted the rest of the day, she ...
4. Thinking that life is a cake walk. This has the potential to be one of the bigger mistakes because it means that we are blind to the realities around us, and usually insensitive to others. When we have blinders on, we tend to create a personal little world that is in fact very fragile, difficult to maintain, and quite fictional. Life actually involves all kinds of uncertainties. There are personal risks, such as health, wealth and happiness, and many family and societal risks which can affect our lives as well.
We create mountains for ourselves to climb. We trust that over the next peak will be our final salvation, our complete happiness, that for which we have been searching. But as we climb our mountains of mist, we find only more mountains, more mist. Our mountains are made of mist because we ...
When I entered Weepasa's room the next morning, he asked me to sit down and immediately began talking about insight, "Insight results from a concentrated mind that is aware of everything it comes in contact with, but it clings to nothing. Insight is not a focused concentration centered the ...
Counting as fast as you can, at ten counts per second, for twenty-four hours a day and for twelve months, would only get you to less than one third of a billion. A billion is a big number. The universe is estimated to be about 16 billion years old. Carbon dating pegs the earth at about 4.5 ...
The last time I looked, personal transformation was not on America’s top ten list of achievements. Success, family, happiness, friends, wealth, respect, health, religious beliefs or spirituality, satisfying work — these took priority. Our spiritual institutions follow suit with the most ...
I resignedly went back to my training, somewhat relieved, but in my heart, I knew this whole episode with Weepasa was simply my mind trying to squirm out of the inevitable – the constant mindfulness he insisted would be required. In time, I was able to see that these questions were not ...
At that exact moment, a young couple from the village was coincidently walking down the path with some food they had prepared for me. When they saw me emerge from the cave with this creature from hell, they were understandably horrified and dove into the bushes, as they had never seen such a ...
Years ago I lived a complicated life. I had a Porsche, a beautiful wife, three kids, a Tudor home in a posh Cleveland suburb and all the bills and headaches to go with it. And even though I had it made, something always seemed to be missing no matter how good it got. Within two years after living this American dream for eighteen years, I found myself in sweltering 1981 Southeast Asia in the middle of the jungle in a 6’ by 6’ unfu ished hut (just a bare floor) surrounded by snakes, scorpions, and all kinds of mean critters that thought I was lunch.
They say the Bible has seven levels. If the level at which one understands the bible determines one's status in the next world, or heaven, one's understanding is very important. So, at what level do you understand the Bible? This understanding would manifest as the first idea that comes to mind ...
He guided me down the narrow, winding stairs into the bowels of the abysmal cave s where rats ran freely and the stone floors were awash with slime. Coughing and moaning oozed from hidden chambers as we made our way through this hell that could only be described as the most horrendous nightmare ...
Dependent Origination, the direct transcendent knowledge and understanding of which the Buddha proclaimed to be the lynchpin of enlightenment, is an area far removed from physical reality in many ways In many other ways, Dependent Origination is the best intellectual explanation of the entirety of life as we know and experience it. The cause and effect of life, the beginnings as well as the continuance of physical reality from the standpoint of bodies and minds revolving in a spiritual realm beyond the six common senses which we rely upon for all of our current knowledge.
"I need you," is not something we hear too often these days. When we do hear it, however, it touches a very deep chord in the depths of our being. To be needed, to be necessary and important means so much, because as human beings, we will always need each other. When we are not needed, when ...
My father timidly put his hand on my shoulder. "I am sorry that I have not been able to make you happy, Son. I have tried. Lord I have tried." He looked into my eyes searching for some kind of recognition, but I gave him none. "It's just that since your mother died," he continued, "I have been ...
We meet someone, we like them, want to see them again, and soon we are forming a deep relationship. This seems like a very natural, innocuous, and innocent thing to do, and we do it every day. What we seldom realize, however, is that we are also forming a psychological attachment. After we meet ...
You've been with her for many years. You have shared the ups and downs, the tragedies and the triumphs. You became used to each other and shared your dreams, the dreams you both had, with bright eyes and wondrous anticipation when you were young. . . . And then one day, she was gone. Just that ...
Ask any educator today about the purpose of teaching, and they will more than likely say that it is to bestow knowledge, not much different from programming a computer. But is that the true purpose of teaching, or is that only an obsession with past, dead information? Another educator might say ...
A True Story of Lust and Seduction - with a Twist! Twenty-six hundred years ago, Subbha the Buddhist nun was walking through a mango grove when a lustful young man blocked her path. Subbha the Nun: “What wrong have I done you that you stand in my way? It’s not proper my friend that a man should touch a woman gone forth (Buddhist nun who has dedicated her life to finding enlightenment). I respect the (Buddha’s) message, the training pointed out by the one well gone, I am pure, without blemish; why do you stand in my way?
There's gotta be a millions of articles about relationships. Books, too. If you are thinking about writing a book, put "relationship" in the title and you will have agents beating down your door!
The way that we have been living is called the way of least resistance. This way involves emotionally and logically going after what we believe will make us happy. For the vast majority of us, this usually includes a career, a partner, then a house, cars, furniture, kids, college tuition, grandkids - you get the picture. These become our goals and triumphs in life. After living for 78.6 years, we then pass away and all the kids and grandchildren remember how kind and generous we were. End of story. And most people are satisfied with this and really don't expect much more.
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of capital. Our rewards are in direct proportion to our efforts - no free lunch here. If you are energetic and intelligent, connected and educated, you should do fine. If not, you could easily end up living on the streets. This system ...
Christ and the Buddha were wise men; they never talked about politics. They didn't talk about politics because political opinions and campaigns are but afterthoughts in humankind's evolutionary process. Politics, war, power, and ambition have never moved humankind to a fundamentally better ...
Truth is not what we believe truth to be. Whatever we see, whatever we hear, whatever we think, whatever we believe is not truth. Truth manifests beyond that. We might say that our religion is truth, but our religions are no more than a set of beliefs, and beliefs can never be truth, only conventional wisdom based on something that we read or heard, or our own past experience. Belief can never be truth, just as reading about something and repeating it can never capture the experience, and even religious experiences always seems to follow our heritage and culture; our conditioning.
War is the opposite of peace. When we say that we wage war in order to secure the peace, this is delusion, this is being ignorant of the truth of the moment, which is war, and replacing it with an ideal for the future, which is peace. It is a shell game. If we believe and confuse ourselves with ...
Just as a fire is built by lighting small twigs so that they can in turn ignite the larger branches, we make the world a better place by changing ourselves first. This change, this transformation, must be mental, because all things begin with the mind, and mind is none other than our thoughts ...
CAUTION: This article and the information it contains is not for Christians who simply believe and look forward to enjoying a peaceful Easter, which is such a beautiful, spiritual holiday. If this is you, please stop reading now. If you are still here, this article is for Christians and ...
Below our conscious mind is a stream of subconscious, emotional activity. Buddhists call this stream the Life Continuum Consciousness, or the Bhavanga. Sometimes we call it just karma. It is what remains with us from lifetime to lifetime and impels us to do what we do, whether they are good ...
I thought you were going to the community," a John said, his eyebrows Raised. "Yes, yes, I am on my way," Moosawa stammered, looking surprised. "But isn't it in the other direction," a John inquired." "Of course, I should have known that," said Moosawa. A John tried to ease the key ...
It's never easy when what we have been accustomed to is pulled out from under us. We see the warning signs, perhaps for a long time, but we just don't pay attention to them. Then, one day, when everything suddenly changes, we feel blindsided. We feel abused, hurt and rejected in some way because ...
These six major steps weave in and around each other, and there are many others, all revealing a transition between materiality consciousness and heightened consciousness, or between an outward emphasis (thinking, remembering, body and mind), and an inward emphasis (the replacing of thought and memory by a spiritual fullness devoid of body and mind). Therefore, the materially minded, dependent upon thinking and memory, and believing strongly in body and mind, will not be able to relate, from an experiential standpoint, to the heightened mind.
Feel-good spiritual paths espousing light and love and the prospect of some kind of an enlightenment with little or no effort are plentiful, but have they really changed you? A trend is developing toward a serious approach to spirituality involving personal, in-depth, permanent changes in ...
Some say that moms are the most important people in the world, after all; where would we be without moms? And dads too. We wouldn’t be at all!! Sisters and brothers can be very important in our lives, and in many ways create the foundations of what we are by testing us throughout our life’s ...
Contemplative prayer, the deepest roots of the Christian faith, has remained hidden and secret in the hands of the contemplative saints these many years, and one may wonder why contemplative monks and nuns have practiced these mystical prayers in obscurity. Why do they close themselves off from ...
Are liberals and conservatives opposite? If you are a conservative, does that mean that liberal ideas are opposite of yours? And if you are liberal, are conservative ideas opposite of your way of thinking? The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism - but tyranny (a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator - not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.).
St. John of the Cross claimed that all the pleasures of the world are as crumbs from the table of God. Hmm, saints must be experiencing something pretty outstanding! Actually, meeting God, face-to-face in this very lifetime, no differently than the prophets of old did, is not only possible but ...