The True Essence of Consciousness
Norwegian-American Buddhist teacher Gil Fronsdal offers his views on the meaning of nirvana in the article “Nirvana: Three Takes” in the Fall 2006 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review: The essence of our consciousness is already love and wisdom. Karma, concepts, and emotional patterns are only temporarily preventing our consciousness from unfolding its enlightened nature. […]
Combating Lies and Ignorance
German playwright and theoretician Bertolt Brecht writes in Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties, Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is […]
Recognizing Beauty
Andrew Olendzki writes in This Moment Is Unique, It is the radical transience of the world that makes it both tragic and beautiful, like the cherry blossom in Japanese aesthetics. The tragedy is that nothing actually exists; it is all passing away the instant it forms. The beauty is that we have the means to […]
Christian View of Guilt and Punishment
Christopher Hitchens writes in his memoir, Letters to a Young Contrarian, You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a […]
Perfect Moments
David Brazier writes in Zen Therapy, Modern life tends to destroy the sacred. Zen enhances it. Zen would have us experience the sacredness of breathing, of stepping on the earth, of standing still a moment, of sitting, of lying down. In Zen, getting up and going to bed, eating, drinking, defecating and passing water are […]
Compassion and Courage
Pema Chodron writes in The Heart of the Matter: How to Live with Compassion and Courage: Bodhi means “awake” and citta means “heart-mind.” Bodhicitta is a longing, a yearning, that comes to fortunate people to wake up, and specifically to wake up so they can be of help to other people and to the earth. […]
Seeing Clearly
Pema Chodron writes in The Wisdom of No Escape and The Path of Lovingkindness, Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives. It’s about seeing how we react to […]
Being Awakened
Stephen Batchelor writes in After Buddhism: To be awakened does not mean to understand the truth or nature of reality, which then frees you from ignorance, leaving you awakened. It may be more accurate to think of truth as truthfulness, or living a truthful life. It means to live in a certain way rather than […]
Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, the First Great Antihero in Literature
With spectacular forthrightness, French novelist Marie Henri Beyle Stendhal handled love and ambition with the same investigative skill. His revelation of conformism and delusion more than justifies the recurrent claim that he is a major precursor of psychological realism. Julien Sorel, the central character of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black is one of fiction’s […]
The Blue Sky is Always There
Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Calming the Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism: The Kingdom of Heaven is like the blue sky. Sometimes the blue sky reveals itself to us entirely. Sometimes it reveals half of itself, sometimes just a little bit of blue peeks through, and sometimes non at all. Storms, clouds and […]