What the Buddha Taught
Buddhist teacher and Zen priest Joan Halifax in The Lucky Dark: The Buddha taught that we should practice helping others while cultivating deep concentration, compassion, and wisdom. He further taught that enlightenment is not a mystical, transcendent experience but an ongoing process, calling for intimacy and transparency; and that suffering diminishes when confusion and fear […]
The Myth of Enlightenment
Charlotte Joko Beck writes in Life’s Not A Problem, One idea that really hampers us is to believe that people get ‘enlightened,’ and then they’re that was forever and ever. We my have our moments, and if we get sick and have lots of things happening, we may fall back. But a person who practices […]
The Wafer-thin Line Between Success and Failure
In The 75 Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made, Stuart Crainer writes, Managers are not perfect, but who ever said that management was about perfection? Management is about a combination of following inexplicable hunches, getting lucky, working hard, and taking risks. Often managers fall on their faces. That’s part of the job. Managers may run all […]
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
Venture capitalist, and essayist Paul Graham’s 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups: Single Founder Bad Location Marginal Niche Derivative Idea Obstinacy Hiring Bad Programmers Choosing the Wrong Platform Slowness in Launching Launching Too Early Having No Specific User in Mind Raising Too Little Money Spending Too Much Raising Too Much Money Poor Investor Management Sacrificing Users […]
A Sign of Someone Knowing God
Daniel Ladinsky, the renowned American poet and interpreter of mystical poetry, asserts that the 14th-Century Persian poet Hafiz’s work is not just very beautiful—it is useful too. It can teach us how to get the most out of our lives: Two stories of Hafiz come to mind that my own teacher told me, and here […]
Religion is About Unprovable Postulations
Religion is about postulations that no human being could possibly be assured about declares Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation, While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the […]
The Nature of Enlightenment
American spiritual teacher Adyashanti writes in his article “Bliss in a By-Product” in the Summer 2009 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review: We must give up the pursuit of positive emotional states through spiritual practice. The path of awakening in not about positive emotions. On the contrary, enlightenment may not be easy or positive at […]
Philosophy Begins in Disappointment
From Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance by the English philosopher Simon Critchley: Philosophy does not begin in an experience of wonder, as ancient tradition contends, but rather, I think, with the indeterminate but palpable sense that something desired has not been fulfilled, that a fantastic effort has failed. Philosophy begins in disappointment. […]
Time Createth All Things
Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa writes in The Mahabharata (translation by Kisari Mohan Ganguli): Existence and non-existence, pleasure and pain all have Time for their root. Time createth all things and Time destroyeth all creatures. It is Time that burneth creatures and it is Time that extinguisheth the fire. All states, the good and the evil, in the […]
Personalized Extra Effort
Robert Cialdini writes in Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, An ounce of personalized extra effort is worth a pound of persuasion. the more personalized you make a request, the more likely you’ll be to get someone to agree that request. More specifically, this research shows that in the office or in the […]