In nature, there are the eaters and there are the eaten.

The doe does not offer their fawn to the coyotes. The coyotes take the fawn by force. The tree does not offer their leaves to the deer. Deer eat leaves without permission.

In American capitalism, we seem to be part of an economic food chain. On the bottom, people have little influence over their circumstances and live in poverty. Like plants, they have little by way of defense. At the top, apex businesspeople seem able to do anything they please and possess everything they want.

In nature, apex predators have a ‘killer instinct.’ In capitalism, apex businesspeople have a natural talent when it comes to accumulating wealth. One could argue that both animals and capitalists are hardwired to do what they do, however, there is an important difference. Lions, tigers and bears have no choice but to be what they are. People can change. People can choose to have compassion or uncaring.

Nature’s Balance; American Capitalism’s Imbalance

In the natural world, the population of apex predators is controlled by disease and food supply. In American capitalism, those at the top of the food chain depend upon their ability to achieve and maintain wealth. The wealthier you are, the safer you are from the capitalist exploitation that the rest of humanity suffers.

According to the Economic Policy Institute :

CEO-to-worker pay has skyrocketed over the last six decades. In 2024, CEOs were paid 281 times as much as a typical worker—in contrast to 1965, when they were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker.

According to Fortune, as of August, 2026:

… some CEOs leading the world’s biggest companies are making money so fast that they can earn their workers’ annual pay in a matter of seconds. Elon Musk earned the typical Tesla worker’s annual pay every 4.23 seconds.

…While Americans are monitoring their grocery budgets and delaying major life purchases, their employers are being awarded record-breaking salaries. It’s fueling a growing wealth divide that is not lost on workers living paycheck-to-paycheck.

The Inequality

Living paycheck-to-paycheck can be fraught with uncertainty. Limited funds mean limited choices. Feelings of uncertainty and limited options are suffering. The inability to afford basic family needs like housing, food, transportation, education, and medical, and elder and child care is suffering.

Living at the top of the capitalist food chain as an apex businessperson means that you are largely spared the lack of choices, uncertainty and challenges that the rest of the world must face.

Pros and Cons of Capitalism

According to Economics Help, I paraphrase:

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by:

• Lack of government intervention

• Means of production owned by private firms

• Goods and services distributed according to price mechanism (as opposed to government price controls)

Pros:

• encourages innovation

• encourages efficiency

• provides more consumer choices through competition

• helps limit government interference

Cons:

• consumer exploitation through monopolization

• low wages due to monopsony

• damage to the environment

• inequality - large pay gap between workers and management

• instability - affected by ‘boom and bust’ cycles

These characteristics of capitalism affect people’s lives. People benefit from new technologies that make their lives easier, but they suffer from the exploitation, environmental damage, instability and increasing inequality of American capitalism.

The Supremacy of Profit

Whereas American capitalism is based on qualified non-interference by the government, some intervention is needed to prevent wholesale greed from taking over the entire system. Safeguards against price fixing, monopoly, monopsony, environmental damage, and unstable markets are sparingly applied and tend to change from administration to administration.

According to Finance & Development:

The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit.

Profit can be a contentious force, often pitting apex businesspeople against workers and consumers. Because products are produced mostly for profit instead of for the good of humanity, prices are set more with profit than affordability. Goods are priced by “what the market will bear,” rather than by measure of the ‘good’ of the goods.

Wages, salaries and benefits are calculated taking into account expected employee work output valued in dollars and factoring in what the competition might be paying their workers. Employee turnover can be expensive if training is required for the position. But the most important factor is how wages, salaries and benefits affect the bottom line.

Executive decisions about pay often tend to ignore the needs of the workers, focusing instead solely on maximizing profit for the ultimate gain of the apex businessperson at the top of the pyramid.

Fixing Capitalism

There are ideas out there about making things better. Writing for the The Guardian, Steven Pearlstein and Heidi Shierholz write about making American capitalism more equitable. Shierholz cites resolving inequalities and worker empowerment as a way to improve things. Pearlstein focuses more on changing the unjust valuation and exploitation of workers compared to top executives, closing with a reference to compassion.

I paraphrase below:

Heidi Shierholz

… Only rejection of the notion that rising inequality is natural and inescapable can [address] the forces that have been suppressing wages for most workers and thus boosting inequality – namely the deliberate policy choices (either by omission or commission) that have shifted power from workers to their employers.

These include policymakers opting not to increase the minimum wage, allowing its purchasing power to decline over time; … trade agreements that have consistently placed corporate profits over workers’ rights; [and] failure to protect the fundamental right of workers to associate and bargain collectively... And the list goes on.

… in recent decades we have chosen policies that hamstring the bargaining power of working people, channeling economic growth away from workers and toward the wealthy. Rejecting the myth that rising inequality is a foregone conclusion in a modern economy is the first step towards getting to the real work of addressing the policy-driven power imbalances that have resulted in an economy that works for the few and leaves the rest behind.

Steven Pearlstein

… the extravagant compensation for corporate executives boils down to two points:

• it’s fair because it’s tied directly to increased profits

• it provides necessary incentive for these highly talented people to share their excellence and make the decisions necessary to keep their companies competitive

… however, this logic is rarely used when talking about the pay of frontline employees who produce the goods and services.

… the corporate view … is that a paycheck at prevailing market wages is all the incentive workers need and all the compensation they deserve. … Decades of soaring profits and stagnant wages have resulted in declining employee engagement, loyalty and productivity as well as declining workforce participation.

What’s needed is a new business norm that says all workers should share in the success of their companies, with government playing a supporting role.

… Giving workers a return on their investment of hard work, talent and loyalty, along with their willingness to risk their economic security on an enterprise, sounds to me like the very essence of capitalism.

Philosopher Adam Smith, understood that our own wealth and happiness depends on the wealth and happiness of others.

Taxing the Rich

According to Pew Research, around sixty percent of Americans say tax rates on large businesses and corporations should be raised and tax rates on household income over $400,000 should be raised.

Although taxing the very wealthy may seem just, it has seemed to produce mixed results in other countries. According to Tax Foundation Europe:

• Many developed countries have repealed their net wealth taxes in recent years. Among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, only four currently impose one: Colombia, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland.

• Countries have repealed their wealth taxes for a variety of reasons. They raise little revenue, create high administrative costs, and induce an outflow of wealthy individuals and their money. Many policymakers have also recognized that high taxes on capital and wealth damage economic growth.

According to the American Enterprise Institute:

“Citizens with lower or moderate incomes speak with a whisper that is lost on the ears of inattentive government officials, while the advantaged roar with a clarity and consistency that policy-makers readily hear and routinely follow.” The wealthier vote more frequently, and they dominate the ranks of political givers and political volunteers.

The response of the people to the invasion of Minneapolis and other recent demonstrations show that non-rich people can also ‘roar’ when they act together. Upcoming elections will tell if the roar of the average American will be powerful enough to initiate changes to make American capitalism to make it a more equitable system, and also determine whether American legislators can avoid the influence of big money.

The Ford Example

Henry Ford was a trailblazer for a new kind of capitalism. According to Google AI:

In January, 1914, Henry Ford dramatically raised his workers’ pay to $5 a day and cut the workday from nine hours to eight. This move doubled typical factory pay, stopped high worker turnover on assembly lines, and helped create the modern consumer economy.

Paraphrasing the 2014 article from NPR:

Henry Ford didn’t introduce the $5 workday in 1914 because he was a nice guy, but to stabilize the workforce.

A few months earlier, in 1913, Ford Model T production totaled 200,000 — a feat made possible by the creation of the first moving assembly line. But while Ford had standardized production, he hadn’t standardized his workforce. Suddenly, he didn’t need particularly skilled workers; he just needed ones who would do the same repetitive, specialized tasks hour after hour, day after day. At first these working conditions resulted in chronic absenteeism and worker turnover, so Ford doubled daily wages to attract better, more reliable workers.

The benefits were almost immediate. Productivity surged, and the Ford Motor Co. doubled its profits in less than two years.

It’s widely believed that Ford also upped wages to expand his market — paying employees enough to buy the cars they made. While that wasn’t Ford’s main motivation, it was a welcome byproduct. And it the process, the industrial middle class was created.

Higher wages have helped create legacy wealth for workers by making it possible for them to own the cars they built, and later to own their own homes. However, the lower bar for worker skills made individual workers more expendable. As cost of living expenses grew for production line workers, they needed higher pay to support themselves.

As mass production became widespread, workers formed unions to collectively demand better working conditions, better pay, and benefits.

According to Amnesty International:

Trade unions are critical to protecting and promoting human rights including economic, social, and cultural rights and the right to be free from discrimination.

… they play a key role through negotiations with employers and collective action in supporting workers’ rights. In so doing, unions balance the scales of power, ensuring that workers are in a position to advocate for their rights, and holding those who run wealthy and powerful companies to account.

… the benefits of trade unions go far beyond the workplace. Unions are the fuel that keeps the fires of social justice and people power burning so that workers’ rights are respected and protected by law. Throughout history, unions have been the driving force behind calls on governments and employers to acknowledge and prevent human rights abuses that are connected to their business operations. They also ensure laws are adopted and reformed to better respect and protect the rights of workers.

Collective bargaining helps create a balance of power between the workers and the apex businesspeople.

Consumer Power

The wealth of the very rich is fed in large part by consumers. According to Fortune, upwards of twenty-five percent of Elon Musk’s wealth is fueled directly by consumers who by Tesla automobiles. If enough people choose to by other brands of electric vehicles, Elon will feel it. If the majority of Amazon consumers switched to buying elsewhere, Amazon stocks value - where Jeff Bezos makes most of his income - would plummet.

Consumers can help change the distribution of wealth by choosing not to fund the fortunes of the very rich by buying elsewhere.

Conclusion

As in nature, there is both darkness and light in the American capitalistic system. In order to address American capitalism’s inequalities, apex businesspeople must be made to embrace empathy, by the force of legislation or consumer boycott if necessary. Workers and consumers must make themselves heard with their voices and with their money. There must be good faith, compassion and solidarity.

Apex businesspeople bring many benefits and they deserve reward. But these rewards cannot come at the expense of democracy and the needs of the many.

End note: I did not address AI and employment. But I found this article from Stamford University:

What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

This might be a topic for future Substack.

Leaves 

some of us start as blossoms 
others as buds in spring 
but all bursting forth 
unfurling 
intimately attached to the mother tree 
one feeding the other 
in the warm sun and sweet rain 
until the autumn turning 
when our colors change 
and in due course 
our true lives begin 
leaving our mothers 
to float like confetti 
for a moment 
our airborne dance 
telling our brief story 

Life is a chess timer.

Your turn.

We run in circles to the beat of a circadian rhythm. Wake, sleep, and in between we perform a daily routine that may include eating, cooking, cleaning, working, reading, watching TV, etc. The days pass and we watch our bodies age, and one day find that we can no longer do what we were able to do before.

The wheel of our circular days starts at birth and rolls us through all of our selves until the end.

Wheels of Life

Casual internet research reveals two ‘Wheels of Life.” One seems to be a perhaps salable product as a self-help or coach-led guide to finding balance in life by examining these areas:

• Money & Finances

• Career & Work

• Health & Fitness

• Fun & Recreation

• Environment (home/work)

• Community

• Family & Friends

• Partner & Love

• Personal Growth & Learning

• Spirituality

The above categorial wheel is used as a guide to help us choose our priorities. They are all (arguably) important, but because we have only so much time in a day, we have to choose.

The other wheel is the Buddhist Wheel of Life, a symbolic teaching diagram illustrating the endless cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth driven by karma and human emotions. Monasteries display it to help people understand reality and escape suffering.

(Notable monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches that there is no permanent soul, and replaces the concept of rebirth with the word, ‘continuation.’ Simplistically put, some of our essence continues after our death, such as our remembered interactions with others, our genes and our deeds.)

Like many Buddhist concepts, the idea of escaping suffering is elusive because of the Five Remembrances, which are all about unavoidable suffering:

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.

3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Reading the Five Remembrances for the first time, I initially felt resistance to number five, but later I was able to accept it as well. And the net feeling I gained from memorizing the Five Remembrances was relief, because if I will grow old and there is no choice, I must accept growing old; if I must become sick and cannot avoid it, I must accept that at some point I will be sick; if I will die, and everyone dies, what is the use in trying to escape from it? And if I cannot escape the consequences of my actions, I must accept and own them.

I think both of these wheels belong on a single cart. Self-examination can result in a more peaceful existence for oneself and those with whom we interact. Acceptance of the inevitable consequences of life can remove some of the fear attached to these sufferings.

It’s About Time

Time seems to be elastic, stretching out when we are engaged in tedious or unpleasant activities and contracting when we are engaged in fun or otherwise interesting activities. Both the unpleasant stretching-out of tedious times and the contraction of fun times can be transformed by mindfulness.

Paying attention with patience, acceptance and openness makes unpleasant times more interesting and makes fun times even more fun, and also promotes learning about ourselves and our activities.

It’s important, to the best of our abilities, to enjoy our experiences because we will only have a finite number of them.

May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.  
I care about your suffering.  

what are you reaching for 
with your mind 
when there are no answers 
when essentials are broken 
and the unspeakable is spoken 

when you stretch yourself outward 
into the abyss where everything resides 
what then 
do you hope to find 

when they need you 
and you cannot come 
what do you send in your place 

when your heart is a cold stone 
suffering alone 
and they're not answering the phone 
and you cannot abide your own face 

what
if anything 
is there

words that arise in the mind 
words not of your design 
or a warmth you can't define 
or your own heartbeat 

maybe God
or something 

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"If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you."

Humans have seen Earth from orbit, yet some of us still cling to the belief that the Earth is flat. Some of us believe that vaccines are evil because one crazy old man with a famous name says so, and some believe germs can’t make you sick. Back in 2020, when Covid-19 was filling our hospital beds and hallways, according to U.S. News a handful of misguided folks actually gargled bleach because of some idiot’s offhand remark. Warning: gargling bleach causes immediate, severe chemical burns to the mouth, throat, and esophagus.

Just goes to show, you can’t always believe what you hear, or read.

I would venture to say that most (if not all) of us have been taken in by a scam or otherwise believed in some lie. Except me, of course.

I’m just messin’ with ya.

Why are we Gullible?

Bobby Hoffman, Ph.D., writes about gullibility for Psychology Today. I paraphrase below:

Some root causes of gullibility:

• Unconditional respect for authority and tendency to conform

• Overconfidence in our own knowledge

• Failure to use analytical thinking

• Traditional and cultural consistency

• Lack of self-control and tendency toward impulsivity

• Tendency to agree with others

• Personal bias

There is some overlap in the above. One can have many or all of these characteristics. Hoffman continues with his gullibility piece, saying that there are different sides to gullibility:

… individuals who fall for dubious claims provide concrete examples to inform the rest of society. … evidence can be presented, and gullible theories debunked by the analysis of the evidence [rather than] opinion.

If you learn that your neighbor ruined their body by gargling bleach, you probably will not try it yourself.

… The gullible provide exceptional examples as to why emotionally based decisions are often the ones most regretted.

[On the other hand,] being overly skeptical … means you may be overly critical. Instead of going along with convention and popular opinions you automatically resist. … there is a long history of resistance to once unconventional ideas including things like the round earth, gravity, and the existence of evolution.

How do we distinguish True from False?

These days of memes, outright lies and AI-doctored video make it difficult to distinguish between true and false.

According to Theravada Buddhist Council of Malaysia, Buddhism, as in many things, suggests a middle way between gullibility and skepticism. Below is a simplified (westernized) translation from Google Gemini:

This teaching (from the famous Kalama Sutta) is the Buddha’s guide to healthy skepticism and personal verification. In short, it means: Don’t just take someone else’s word for it—test ideas in your own life to see if they actually work.

• What to ignore as ultimate proof:

  • Tradition & Dogma: Rumors, ancient customs, cultural habits, or holy books.

  • Pure Logic & Guesswork: Clever arguments, theoretical probability, or assumptions that sound good on paper.

  • Authority Figures: Blindly following a famous teacher, expert, or leader just because of their title or reputation.

• What to rely on instead:

  • Direct Experience: Put teachings and behaviors into practice and observe the real-world results.

  • Practical Outcomes: Ask yourself, “Does this quality (like kindness, greed, anger, or generosity) bring peace and happiness, or does it cause harm and regret?”

  • Wisdom in Action: When you see for yourself that a mindset is wholesome, harmless, and praised by wise people because it genuinely improves lives, that is when you should embrace it.

Truth and Circumstance

Truth can change with circumstances. What is true in one situation may be false in another. For example, it was popular in the 1980’s and 90’s to believe that red wine is good for you because the French had lower instances of heart disease, but later studies concluded that the French heart-health statistics were due to other healthy habits - not just red wine. Most health experts today say that alcohol is just plain not good for you.

Finding what is True

Part of our problem with truth and falsehood is natural laziness: believing what we want to believe rather than doing the work of making sure that we identify truth through direct experience. It’s best to keep an inquiring mind, withholding judgement about what is offered as truth until we have a chance to test it out.

Facts are easy to verify, but the nature of facts may be less so. The story of ‘good luck, bad luck’ illustrates this.

A farmer’s horse ran away. His neighbors said, “What bad luck!”

The farmer replied: “Good luck, bad luck: who knows?”

A few days later, the farmer’s horse returned, and with her were three wild horses. His neighbors said, “What good luck!”

The farmer replied: “Good luck, bad luck: who knows?”

On the next day, the farmer’s son attempted to ride one of the wild horses. The son fell off and broke his leg. The farmer’s neighbors said, “What bad luck!”

The farmer replied: “Good luck, bad luck: who knows?”

Later, the army came to the farm to recruit men for their war, but because of his broken leg, the farmer’s son was spared.

So the story ends on a positive note. Whenever I use or hear this story, at its conclusion I always think that it could have been otherwise. But the point is to withhold judgement until the whole story has unfolded, rather than grasping at what we wish to unfold.

Proceeding with action based on false pretenses can often be harmful to ourselves and others. Best to ‘look before you leap’ instead of glomming on to a purported truth.

May all our actions be based upon truth, and may we avoid succumbing to popular lies.

It’s easy to fall into the view that humans are special and apart from the other manifestations of the universe. After all, as far as we know, we are the only entities who can talk about ourselves as having special privileges and rights. Some see healthcare as a human right while others see it as a human privilege for those who can afford it. Which of these views is more compassionate?

From the viewpoint of the World Health Organization:

• Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

• The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

• The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent on the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.

These lofty goals are all focused on humans, but what about the atmosphere, the oceans and all the non-human, living entities on our planet?

Humans and Other Animals

Humans exist because everything else exists, and human health depends on the health of other animals and of the environment. For millennia, humans have been fiddling with the environment to make ourselves more comfortable, often at the expense of said environment. There are consequences.

Lyme disease and Covid-19 are examples of how our relationship to our environment and animals can impact human health.

Paraphrasing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC):

• Human populations are expanding into new areas, often bringing themselves in closer contact with wild and domestic animals. Close contact with animals and their environments provides more opportunities for diseases to pass between animals and people.

• Changes due to deforestation and intensive farming practices can disrupt environmental conditions and habitats, creating new opportunities for diseases to pass between humans and animals.

• The movement of people, animals, and animal products has increased from international travel and trade. As a result, diseases can spread quickly across borders and around the globe.

Lyme Disease

Katharine Walter researched Lyme disease while a doctoral student at Yale School of Public Health:

“The Lyme disease bacterium has long been endemic,” she said. “But the deforestation and subsequent suburbanization of much of New England and the Midwest created conditions for deer ticks—and the Lyme disease bacterium—to thrive.”

… Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in North America. Since it was first described in the 1970s, the disease has rapidly spread across New England and the Midwest. Reported cases of Lyme disease have more than tripled since 1995 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that more than 300,000 Americans fall ill each year.

According more recent data from the CDC, as many as 476,000 people may have been infected in 2025.

I could say, simplistically, that humans deforested the habitat and exterminated the predators enabling a population explosion of deer. With the burgeoning numbers of deer came a population explosion of deer ticks, resulting in the current and growing incidence of Lyme disease. Simple, right? But no.

Paraphrasing an article from Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies:

… a study at the University of California-Santa Cruz … found increases in Lyme disease in the Northeast and Midwest the past three decades seldom correlated with deer abundance.

Instead, [it] found [that] the disease consistently correlated to range-wide declines in red fox. In turn, low red-fox numbers correlated with increases in coyotes where fox once lived.

… deer ticks most often spread Lyme disease to humans as nymphs, their second life-stage, … commonly carried on small rodents.

Lyme disease cases have increased about 300 percent in Wisconsin since 2000. During this time, landowner wildlife surveys by the Department of Natural Resources show red-fox declines and coyote increases statewide [due to hunting of the red fox.]

[The theory is, when humans] killed and displaced red fox, which prey heavily on small rodents, [the population of small rodents significantly increased. Many ticks spend their nymph stage in said rodents. Adult deer ticks most often spread Lyme disease to humans as nymphs…

Our meddling with our environment creates complex and layered consequences.

Covid

Controversy has obscured the origin of Covid-19. One theory is that Covid-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Another theory places the origin in an illegal wild animal market in China. A third posits that bats carried the pathogen from other wild animals.

Each theory points (in its way) to the proximity of wild animals to humans as the root cause of the Covid pandemic. Viruses and diseases are part of the environment. Animals - particularly wild animals - bring disease when humans physically interact with them or when the diminishing of habitat brings wild animals into proximity to humans.

Healthy Environment

Climate change has made our environment so much more favorable for deer ticks, according to Boston University, that they have spread from the forest into urban parks like Boston Common. Climate change is partially due to the greenhouse gasses created by human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming food animals, according to the British Geological Society.

Climate change is a threat to human health, according to the World Health Organization,

• Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes and they are increasing in scale, frequency and intensity.

• Research shows that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.

We are not apart from nature, we are a part of nature.

We are not separate from our environment. We cannot escape our interconnection with literally everything. What is bad for the animal is also bad for the human. What’s bad for the environment is bad for everybody. Climate change is not wholly the creation of humans, but we can reduce our complicity in the production of greenhouse gasses and other waste so as to lessen our negative impact upon our environment.

The United Nations provides a list of ways for us to help slow climate change. I paraphrase below:

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May all creatures be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

My kids gifted us tickets to the gifted artist, Trombone Shorty at Tanglewood this summer. Man, this guy has it all: joyous energy, charisma, superhuman chops that never give out, huge tonal range, versatility across musical genres, circular breathing, virtuosity on multiple instruments - wow, it really kind of makes me wish I was him.

I don’t recall ever attending a concert that was more fun, and I have not picked up my own trombone since. Oh, there are some family reasons, all good, mind you, but the main reason is that I cannot hold a candle to the blazing furnace of talent that is Trombone Shorty. When I think about picking it up, there is a small voice that says, “What for?”

Well, I thought - after playing the trombone for about sixty years - I was past comparing myself to other musicians … but apparently not. Time to revisit why it is that comparing ourselves to others causes suffering.

Comparing Mind

According to Buddhism, there are three main complexes that arise from comparing ourselves with others:

• inferiority

• superiority

• equality

I could think that, as a trombone player, I am inferior to Trombone Shorty; my trombone playing is superior to Trombone Shorty’s; or that my trombone skill is equal to that of Trombone Shorty. As it happens, I feel my trombone playing falls far, far short of Trombone Shorty quality.

Does feeling inferior to Trombone Player serve me in any way?

According to James Baraz of Spirit Rock Meditation Center:

The tendency to compare ourselves to others or against some idealized standards is the cause of much suffering. This self-judgement is based on what the Buddha called "the conceit of I am".

Notable Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh taught:

According to the teaching of the Buddha, there’s no self. So you cannot compare; there’s nothing to compare with. There’s no self to compare with. The right hand and the left hand have no separate self. That is why you cannot compare. And you should not compare. That is why you don’t suffer.

In Buddhism, all complexes are born from the notion of self.

What is this ‘no self’ business? Everything in my world seems to indicate that I am indeed a ‘self,’ separate and unique.

Losing the Self

According to Lion’s Roar:

We assume there is a permanent essence of “me” that inhabits our bodies throughout our lives. And we may believe that at death this essence continues to exist in some form, either in an afterlife or by transmigrating to a new body to live another life. But the Buddha taught that there is no such permanent essence.

Further, the belief in a permanent essence of self or soul is the primordial ignorance that leads to suffering. We spend life in pursuit of what will please this self, protect it, or even glorify it somehow. Maybe sometimes we get what we pursue, but it never lasts, and we are dissatisfied again. We lie, cheat, scam, assault, and do various other damaging things to other people ultimately because we are trying to protect or gratify the self.

Permanent is the key word here. The Buddha denied a permanent essence of self, but he also denied non-existence. So what are you? Realizing the true nature of the self is what’s called enlightenment, which is not something that can be conveyed in words.

So Buddhism is really saying that there is no permanent self. I get it. The illusion of a permanent and separate self is supported by the continuities of our sleep cycles, our waking rituals, our routines and our interactions with other beings and things. Of course there is a me! But we can observe daily differences in ourselves which, we might say, prove that we are not the ‘me’ we were yesterday.

Clinging to the illusory ‘me’ is what causes the suffering. Giving up the ‘me’ part, there is no comparing. Playing the trombone, especially with other musicians, I can let go of comparing myself to the superhuman Trombone Shorty, I can enjoy feeling my instrument in my hands, feeling my breath as I play, and play the music I like. In that moment there is no ‘better’ or ‘worse,’ there is only playing.

By the way, right after I wrote this article I picked up my trombone and played. It felt good.

May we be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

the voice says 
remember

i say yes
yes that was me 
suffering  

former selves 
tell my story
in which 
i can feel a hand 
herding ineffably

from there to here  
to joy from fear   

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My wife and I were driving home when we negotiated a sharp uphill turn. In the midst of our turning this corner, a deer leapt out of the brush from our right, passing inches from the front of our car. If I had been driving any faster, or if the deer had leapt a microsecond later, she would have been on the hood of our car or perhaps in the car with us. I had zero time to react. As it was, the deer landed on the other side of the road unharmed, and we continued driving with no scathe worse than elevated heart reate.

Everything that happens is a consequence of some other thing that happens. There is no one to blame for it. It’s just the way the universe works. It unfolds. Sometimes we can understand it and sometimes we cannot.

This is life: the unexpected.

Q:  Why did the deer jump over the road?  
A:  To get to the other side.  

Hypothesis One:

Let’s look at circumstances and try to apply logic, because applying logic to animal behavior is so fun.

Downhill, behind the point of our almost-collision, a brook crosses under the road from north to south and flows down to a larger river below. On the north side of the road, the brook flows through many acres of woodland before it crosses the road. On the south side, the river meanders at a distance, more or less parallel to the road within another wide strip of mostly uninhabited land.

Perhaps the deer had wandered down the brook from the north and, coming to the road, was unable or unwilling to cross under the bridge that the brook flows southward beneath. So instead she climbed up the hill, seeking an easier place to cross. Near the top of the hill, encountering the house that is there, she might be reluctant to approach it, causing her to move toward the road.

On the south side of the road is another house, behind which, further down the hill, is the river. Hearing our car coming up the hill, she did what deer are really good at, that is, go airborne.

Hypothesis Two:

My sensory experience was of a deer materializing out of thin air. Maybe it was created on the spot to be a message to us from ‘beyond.’ Though perhaps less likely, this hypothesis has the advantage of the fact of my complete ignorance of the steps that led to a deer flying across the path of our car like a warning shot across the bow of a ship.

AI Reasoning

… because machines are super-reliable storytellers, (wink).

Deer jump in front of cars because their natural survival instincts—which evolved long before automobiles—cause them to panic and bolt when startled. Because cars move too fast for deer to process, the animal's "fight-or-flight" reflex kicks in, often causing them to blindly run straight across a road to escape a perceived threat.

Many living things have that fight-or-flight feature fully integrated into their brains, humans included. For us, it’s centered in the rear of the brain and is called the amygdala. The amygdala can sometimes be very useful when one faces a threat, but sometimes not. According to Cleveland Clinic:

One particularly valuable ability your amygdala has is to skip processing steps related to your senses. For example, if you hear a familiar, dangerous sound, your amygdala immediately sends emergency signals to make you react before other areas of the brain process what the sound was. That’s why sudden loud sounds can cause the acoustic startle reflex, which makes you jump or flinch.

That effect can also take a more extreme form: The “amygdala hijack” or “emotional hijack.” … An amygdala hijack is when your amygdala takes control of your body to protect you from danger.

This effect is helpful in dangerous situations, activating your fight-or-flight response so you can protect yourself. But it can also contribute to mental health conditions like PTSD, especially when it mistakenly interprets things happening around you as signs of danger.

Martial arts are built around training the body to react in a certain way in certain situations so that one can defend themselves without too much thinking. Similarly, meditation trains the mind to be present instead of drowning in its own recycled fears.

Things Happen

What brought this particular deer to leap in front of our particular car at this particular time? File this under ‘we’ll never really know.’ And that’s okay.

It can unsettling when the unexpected happens, and we wonder about what might have been. Our encounter with the deer could have been the end of one or both of us; but since no harm occurred, we can let the memory go without dwelling too deeply on the ‘what if.’ If there had been harm, perhaps we would have found ourselves in the ‘Why me?’ zone, perhaps pressing a deity for answers, ‘How could you let this happen?’

People say there is a reason for everything, but I say only that everything has a cause, and sometimes we know the cause, and sometimes not. In the end, it comes to accepting what is, because to deny reality is delusion, and delusion only brings suffering.

The universe unfolds, and as it does, new realities are created moment by moment. When our most frightening nightmares materialize into our reality, we can choose to blame, hypothesize, deny, or simply accept. When our most delicious dreams come true beyond any expectation, we can pat ourselves on the back, think ourselves special and entitled, or accept our good fortune with grace.

We can choose.

Share

the sunbeam arrives late upon the floor 
as Earth nods toward fall 
the longest day behind us 
like all the other days before 

the streams of spring are dry 
until the rain
brings them back for a day 
as torrent or trickle 

it seems random 
at the same time clockwork 
like fruit that falls 
while from a distance winter calls 

the sunbeam is long delayed 
the sleepy Earth slow to turn  
for we who watch the parade of days 
and the lessons we might have learned 

Share

Living in the Present Moment is good for you.

According to Mayo Clinic, living mindfully provides proven physical health benefits:

Research shows that practicing mindfulness can help with a variety of mental and physical health conditions, such as:

• Stress. Mindfulness calms the nervous system. This reduces the body’s stress hormone, cortisol.

• Anxiety. Mindfulness can ease anxiety by helping you stay focused in the present instead of getting caught in worry loops, where you keep thinking about the same thing over and over.

• Pain. Mindfulness can help with long-lasting pain by changing how the brain processes pain signals.

• Depression. Mindfulness can help manage depression by raising awareness of negative thought patterns and reducing emotional reactions.

• Sleep quality and insomnia. Regular mindfulness practice can improve sleep by helping the mind and body relax at bedtime. Mindfulness can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep.

• High blood pressure, also called hypertension. Mindfulness may help lower blood pressure by easing stress. This helps the nervous system stay balanced.

• Diabetes management. Mindfulness helps lower cortisol, a hormone that raises blood sugar levels.

• Asthma. Mindfulness can help manage asthma by lessening stress-related flare-ups. It also can help with symptom awareness.

More than a remedy for what ails us, living mindfully is a way to improve our overall quality of life, and also a way to deepen our participation in our lives.

Practicing to be Mindful

You can train yourself to be mindful through meditation practice.

To begin your daily meditation practice, it is helpful to choose a place and time where you can sit comfortably every day without too many distractions. Starting by returning to your meditation place at the same time each day helps to establish the habit.

According to the ‘Toolset” on the Zen Habits website:

Meditation is where mindful living starts. … it’s not complicated: you can sit still for even just 1 minute a day to start with (work up to 3-5 minutes after a week), and turn your attention to your body and then your breath. Notice when your thoughts wander from your breath, and gently return to the breath.

Checking in with bodily sensations is a good way to get into the groove of awareness. They are handy, always there when you need a focus for your meditation. Focusing on our breath is very effective and widely recommended, but one can use a word or object as well.

Duration of Meditation

To maximize the beneficial results of meditation, you can gradually increase the duration.

Herbert Benson, M.D., a pioneer researcher of the benefits of meditation practice, prescribes the instructions below for beginning meditators to elicit what he calls the ‘Relaxation Response.’ I paraphrase…

1. Sit quietly in a comfortable position.

2. Close your eyes.

3. Deeply relax all your muscles

4. Become aware of your breathing.

5. Continue the awareness of your breathing for 10 to 20 minutes. You may open your eyes to check the time, but do not use an alarm. When you finish, sit quietly for several minutes, at first with your eyes closed and later with your eyes opened. Do not stand up for a few minutes.

6. Do not worry about whether you are successful in achieving a deep level of relaxation. Maintain a passive attitude and permit relaxation to occur at its own pace.

Benson’s research revealed that daily meditation creates new neural pathways in the brain that alter its habitual patterns away from thoughts of fear, anger and sadness and toward calmness and peace; away from gut reactions and toward thoughtful consideration.

This shift in consciousness happens through being aware of our thoughts arising during meditation. For example, while we trying to concentrate on our breath we suddenly realize that we are no longer doing so, but instead are thinking of a bill we need to pay. Beginning meditators will often blame themselves for drifting away from their focus, but the arising of extraneous thought is perfectly natural. Moreover, the fact that they caught themselves drifting presents the very opportunity of growth. Benson’s research shows that when we gently dismiss the thought and return to our focus, that is exactly what causes the beneficial change in our neural pathways.

The greater the time spent in meditation, the deeper the experience will be.

According to Cynthia Perkins, M.Ed., writing for Medium:

While I was taking [a] class we were required to meditate for a full 30 minutes on a daily basis. I was shocked to discover how much difference this made in the benefits I experienced. My level of relaxation and stress relief were significantly higher and they stayed with me longer throughout the day and spilled over into all areas of my life. It took more to ruffle my feathers and I had a higher threshold for frustration.

I now had greater levels of calmness, contentment with life and myself, inner peace, well-being, and compassion for myself and others. I felt more grounded, happier, and deeper life satisfaction.

This is where the practice of meditation pays off in our daily lives. Because we have trained our brain not to jump to anger or fear, we can react with thoughtfulness instead. Because of our practice, we may become kinder, more thoughtful and less self-centered versions of ourselves.

Living Mindfulness

Because we have learned patience and calm through our meditation practice, interruptions do not trouble us. Instead, our enhanced ability to focus makes us better, more compassionate, helpful listeners.

Because we have learned to focus on one thing at a time, we no longer feel scattered, no longer feel pulled in many directions at once. We can lovingly perform our tasks while other tasks patiently wait their turn.

Living mindfully, we pay attention to what we are thinking, what we are saying, and what we are doing. It comes naturally because we practice.

Share

power is not mysterious 
but exists in thoughts 
actions 
voices 

the tree of our consequences 
creates our universe 

in our hands power 
to comfort or strike 
build or demolish 
harm or heal 

in our minds power 
to love or fear 
hate or accept 
imagine or understand  

in our voice power 
to influence or repel 
agree or rebel 
and perhaps both/and  

the faintest thought 
the quietest word 
the slightest movement 
changes the universe 

tiny as we are 
our unseen power
runs like a stream 
radiates like the sun 
falls like the rain 
grows like a tree 
is our legacy 

Share

I apologize in advance to anyone who receives this twice, but if you do, it’s because you are both a donor and a subscriber to my Substack.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to our fundraising efforts this year. We are very grateful for your support. With your generosity we raised over two thousand dollars for the Massachusetts Multiple Sclerosis Society. This money will be used to fund research toward a cure for MS and also fund direct help for people living with MS.

About the Event

The Massachusetts Multiple Sclerosis Society’s yearly Cape Cod Getaway annual cycling event falls on the last weekend in June to raise money to fund research in pursuit of a cure for MS, and also to provide direct help for people living with Multiple Sclerosis. It is a two-day event for most riders, and a one-day event for some. Riders can choose rides as short as 40 miles in a single day, or as long as 175 miles over two days. This year I rode 150 miles over the two days with my daughter, about 75 miles each day.

At the Start

Saturday, July 27, 2026

This year there were about 775 riders assembled in the parking lot at 1776 Heritage Drive in Quincy, Massachusetts, where we left our cars for the duration of the ride.

Cyclists were released in waves starting at 7:30 A.M. The major teams were out first, ranked by how much money they had raised for the MS Society. Amounts of money each team raised were broadcast over the sound system as the teams crossed the starting line in there colorful kits. The largest team, “Liam’s Lucky Charms” were first out, having raised over $200,000. Next was Chiseling Lou’s, with over $100,000, and so on.

Some of the smaller teams had creative names like “Positive Spin,” “SupercalifragilisticMultipleSclerosis,” and “Team BikeASaurAss.”

Individuals and small teams were released in the last wave en masse at close quarters, so everyone needed to be careful. We all crossed the starting line without incident, spilling out onto the streets of Quincy like a river. As riders found their paces over the first several miles we became more and more spread out, riding mostly two by two or in single file.

Road Conditions and Elevation

All of the roads of the ride are paved, but conditions vary: shoulder or no shoulder, newly paved or in need of some pothole remediation: all fully rideable, but a mixed bag. For the first several miles, police wave the riders through every important intersection. This convenience fades to a ‘here and there’ presence later on, and varies by township.

The ride starts at about 40 feet above sea level. Through the first day on the 75-mile route, riders climb 3,289 feet and descend 3,289 feet. On the second day, on the 75-mile route, riders climb 2,682 feet and descend 2,632 feet.

The Ride

If you have a desire to tour Cape Cod by bike, this ride is a way to do it with a robust safety net. Rest stops manned by friendly volunteers are placed at intervals of between 8 and 14 miles along each route. At these stops riders find snacks, water and electrolytes, and first aid and bike mechanic stations. On the road, volunteers in cars, motorcycles and pickup trucks cruise up and down the line on the lookout for riders in need. The volunteers who man the SAG wagons, support vehicles and rest stops are super nice and helpful.

On Saturday, the first day, for a short time the roads are flat and run along the shore of Quincy Bay. After that the course turns slightly inland and gets hillier as you go, but the ups and downs are broken up with stretches of flat terrain as well. This first leg of the two-day event ends at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where many riders stay overnight in the dorms. Several riders bring tents and sleep outdoors. Others stay at nearby motels and B & B’s. Riders who ride only on the first day are bussed back to Quincy in school busses.

At the Academy, riders park their bikes in an athletic field for the night, then go to their overnight housing for a shower and change of clothes. If riders have arranged off-campus overnight housing, shuttle busses are provided to and from the Academy. Food is served in the dining hall. Team tents are set up in an athletic field across from the dining hall for outdoor dining.

There is also a large tent where you can get beer. This year beer was provided by Jack’s Abbey. Riders are allotted one free beer (if of age), or up to three free beers for top fundraisers. The beer tent shelters both team riders and unaffiliated riders.

Leg two of the ride begins at 5 A.M., starting with a short ride to the Bourne Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal. It’s a notable climb first thing in the morning, but after that comes a long, flat ride along the Canal. The second leg has more rolling hills and less of the hills-on-top-of hills than the day before, but does have one rather long hill up in the sand dunes. There is also a considerable flat stretch on the Cape Cod Bike Trail.

The ride ends with a final climb on a major highway through the dunes that lead up to Provincetown, and on up to the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown. There, shower trucks are provided for the riders’ convenience and comfort. After a shower and a change of clothes, riders can take an air conditioned bus or a ferry boat back to Quincy.

That last stretch can be challenging, as it is mostly uphill, usually hot weather, and there is usually a bit of a headwind. And, of course, one’s body has about 70 miles on it at that point.

Mindful Cycling

Riding a bicycle can (and probably should) be a mindfulness exercise, because one’s safety depends on paying constant attention. Out on the road, at the mercy of the weather, the cars, your body, your bike and the road, there is little room for daydreaming or extraneous thought. The act of riding the bike engages the entire body.

While riding, our senses are constantly feeding our mind with information. Our eyes are on the road surface, watching for hazards like potholes, gravel, glass, cars or other riders; our ears are on the lookout for cars approaching from the rear; and our minds are further occupied by a flood of physical sensations, leaving little room for random thoughts. Under such conditions, one cannot help but settle into a state of mindfulness.

The Paceline/Sangha Effect

When I used to draft in a paceline I have found myself almost wholly concentrated on the back tire of the rider in front of me. For safety, one must be ready at all times for any sudden change of conditions while scant inches from the rider ahead. This state of readiness crowds out extraneous thought and emotion, leaving the mind of the rider fully present.

The draft effect of a paceline decreases air resistance for all the cyclists within it, allowing the cyclists to sustain energy, strength and concentration. Similarly, it is often easier to enter a mindful state when meditating with others.

Whenever any group of people concentrates on the same single point of focus, their electromagnetic fields become harmonized with each other.

I am grateful to have had the experience of riding on the Cape Cod Getaway event with my daughter. I am grateful for having the continuing experience of meditating with my sangha.

I no longer draft other cyclists. My sense of balance is not conducive. I am also grateful for this, because it informs me of my state of being. I will love being until I cease to be.

The Feeling of Belonging

Belonging fulfills the basic human need for acceptance and inclusion.

Cornell University describes the sense of belonging:

Belonging is the feeling of security and support when there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity for a member of a certain group.

According to the Verywellmind website:

In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the sense of belonging is one of the key needs motivating human behavior. This hierarchy is often depicted as a pyramid, with basic needs like food and safety at the base and more complex needs near the top. The need for love and belonging sits in the middle as a social need.

… and …

A 2020 study of college students found that a strong sense of belonging was linked to increased happiness and overall well-being. It also showed reductions in mental health issues, such as:

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Hopelessness

• Loneliness

• Social anxiety

• Suicidal thoughts

When We Don’t Belong, We Suffer

When we don’t belong, we end up with the negative influences of the list above. Inclusion is a vital need. When deprived of the feeling of belonging, we suffer.

According to an article entitled, ‘The Pain of Not Belonging’ on the Psychology Today website:

Belonging shapes mental health, resilience, and motivation. Research consistently finds that people with stronger social ties live longer, healthier lives. … When belonging is present, it buoys us so seamlessly that we barely notice. When it is absent, its absence can dominate our lives.

Social Exclusion

On my own journey I learned, when I met other boys my age for the first time at the celebration of my fifth or sixth birthday, that I was different than them. They all knew each other, but I knew none of them. In their early years they had played games together while I was entertaining myself mostly alone. We really did not have a common language that would allow me to participate, so while they played, I sat and watched.

When I started school, because I lacked social skills I quickly became a bully magnet. At first, I blamed myself, and as happens to many young people, my self-blame brought me more suffering, leading eventually to self-destructive behaviors such as violence, self medication and perseverating on plans of self-harm .

The pain of social exclusion is not only psychological, it is also physical. Paraphrasing an excerpt from the book, ‘Multidisciplinary Handbook of Social Exclusion Research’, edited by D. Abrams,

[Research] found that when people were asked to recall physically or socially painful events, [remembered] pain was greater for recalled social pain experiences, especially those that involved rejection or ostracism.

[Other research] used functional magnetic resonance imaging… to examine the neural correlates of social exclusion and found that the same region of the brain that is activated during the experience of physical pain is also activated during social exclusion.

I struggled with low self esteem, anger, hatred, self-hatred and self-pity for a long time, but eventually recognized that these feelings did not serve me, and were keeping me isolated. To quiet my negative thought loops, I used the technique of expressing love for myself to myself in the mirror, daily. Over time these daily affirmations helped me to turn the volume down on the negative narratives, enabling me to establish relationships with others.

Meditation

I had the good fortune to discover meditation as a way to become aware of the lingering negative narratives that sometimes still replay themselves in my mind. Awareness of these narratives removed their power, allowing me to let go of hurts from the past so as to live in the present.

According to Revealing Vajra:

By practicing mindfulness and meditation, you can create space between yourself and the constant stream of thoughts, which allows you to break free from negative patterns.

Overthinking often arises when we get stuck in a cycle of worrying about the future or replaying past events in our minds.

But when you meditate, you create a moment of stillness where you can simply be—without judgment or analysis. You begin to realize that thoughts are fleeting and don’t need to have control over you.

In the stillness created by the space you create through meditation practice you can realize that the negative narratives in your mind are not you. You can control them. In meditative awareness you can choose whether thoughts are wholesome, unwholesome or neutral. Practicing this over time, we learn to be in charge and to live in the present. When old hurts surface, they are just things that happened. They had their influence in their time, but now they are just memories.

If you would like more information about using meditation to ease suffering, the Mindful website offers instructions on how to meditate for beginners. Many places of worship house group meditation. AlsoDaily meditation practice improves physical and mental health.

Joining a meditation group helps to keep individual our practice going - and, as a side benefit, it can be a place to belong. In person is better, but you can also join meditation groups online. One such is Sangha Live.

May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.  
May you always feel that you belong..  

I am writing this on the eve of my 70th birthday. I see what is going on with me and my body. I have trained hard for a month or so to prepare to ride my bicycle 75 miles a day for two days on Cape Cod to raise funds and awareness for the Massachusetts Multiple Sclerosis Society. I believe this will be my ninth time participating in this ride. Perhaps it will be my last. Perhaps I will not finish. Time will tell. I’ll let you know how I do.

The human body is indeed a marvel. Tubes, tendons, bones, cartilage, liquids, solids, electricity, heat - it’s very complicated. And it is precisely where we live while we are alive.

From inside our body, our brain processes input from our senses. Our body houses our senses. Our senses provide information to help us navigate life.

Traditionally, humans were said to have five senses:

• Sight

• Sound

• Taste

• Smell

• Touch

However, researchers say they have found many more. According to EBSCO:

[Most neuroscientists] … believe the human body actually has as many as thirty-three different senses. Examples of lesser-known senses include equilibrioception, which is the sense of balance, and nociception, which is the ability to feel pain. Proprioception gives an understanding of which parts of the body are where without looking; for example, this sense allows people to type on a keyboard while looking somewhere else. Other research studies senses such as kinaesthesia, the sense of movement, and chronoception, the sense of the passing of time.

Sensory information is constantly flying around in and on our bodies. Most of it is processed without our knowledge by the brain. It’s a wonder we can tell what is going on inside us at all.

Buddhists number the senses as six:

• Eye (Sight/Forms)

• Ear (Sound/Noises)

• Nose (Smell/Odors)

• Tongue (Taste/Flavors)

• Body (Touch/Physical sensations)

• Mind (Thoughts, emotions, and mental concepts)

Andrew Olendzki at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies differentiates the mind from the brain:

By mind we mean … the full range of lived experience, both conscious and unconscious, including such things as thought, cognition, memory, desire, emotional states, and even perhaps the sense of transcendence. By brain we refer to … the physical stuff between our ears, with its complex architecture of inter-related neurons and the electro-chemical processes activating and connecting them.

I have written before about ‘store consciousness’ and ‘mind consciousness.’ Mind consciousness is more expansive and thoughtful; store consciousness is more automatic. Ideas in our store consciousness may have come from others - parents, friends, Fox News, etc. When we ponder and reason with openness, we are using mind consciousness. We need both to navigate life.

Buddhists advocate living mindfully, that is, paying loving attention to what is happening around us. By practicing mindfulness, we are training ourselves to pay attention to the unfolding of our lives as it happens..

In a teaching, Chanmyay Sayadaw at buddhanet quotes the Buddha on mindful use of our senses:

“Whatever you see you must be mindful of as it really is. Whatever you hear you must be aware of as it occurs. Whatever you smell you must be aware of as it really occurs. Whatever you taste you must be aware of as it really occurs. Whatever you touch you must be aware of as it really occurs. Whatever you think or think about you must be aware of as it really occurs.”

The purpose of this practice is to become more awake to life as it happens around us. When we are focused on the present moment, life is more real and more meaningful. While we are awake to life, both the pleasant and unpleasant, our life is richer and we suffer less.

The What’s Your Grief website talks about how mindfulness can help us keep an even keel when life gets scary.

Mindfulness is a way of life in which we become aware of the present – our thoughts and feelings, our physical experience, and the world around us. Though people often associate mindfulness with meditation, meditation is just a way to learn and practice mindfulness. Mindfulness stretches into every part of life, giving us a tool to live in each moment, knowing it is fleeting (i.e., impermanent).

Everything is impermanent, which means our lives inside our human bodies are also impermanent. Knowing this, we should not be surprised when our turn comes to encountering the impermanence of our body; but in practice we often are.

Paraphrasing an example later in Sayadaw’s teaching:

When you see… a very beautiful rose you realise the rose is very beautiful. Its scent is sweet. There arises a pleasant feeling about the rose. When you feel a pleasant feeling you will feel attachment to the rose. The attachment arises dependent on that feeling. Then if the flower is no longer beautiful, but is ugly and produces a bad smell, how do you feel, pleasant or unpleasant? You may feel unpleasant. You may judge the flower to be very ugly. Then what mental state rises? Aversion. Anger.

The passage above is a story about clinging. We cling to our health and the freedoms that the body offers, but these are impermanent. Being separated from our health and the freedoms that health enables is painful, but inevitable. When we experience the reductions of freedom that come with compromised health and strength, we often mourn the loss. We experience grief, and perhaps the stages of grief:

1. Shock: We suddenly realize that we can’t do what we could do yesterday.

2. Denial: We decide not to believe it.

3. Anger: We cannot dismiss it, so we experience aversion at the truth.

4. Bargaining: We appeal to a deity to restore our ability, or try to make the body re-acquire it.

5. Depression: Emotionally cornered, we become sad.

6. Testing: We experiment with ways to compensate for our lost ability.

7. Acceptance: At last we accept that we can no longer do what we could before.

These stages are fluid and may or may not occur in individual experience, or may appear in any order. We may experience some of them in some order or other.

Mindfulness steps in to make the loss of abilities less painful. First, living mindfully with our bodies, we do not ignore the gradual degradation that is bound to occur. Second, we accept what we know is happening. Third, we rationally explore how to act, given what is.

May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

History is the story of where we have been. To truly know where we are, we must know where we have been.

A Very Brief History of Language

Because words spoken in the past do not leave a physical trace, when, exactly, humans began to communicate by spoken word is a bit of a mystery.

Of course, being human, we have many theories.

Paraphrasing a 2016 article on The World website:

Scientists say they have traced the world’s 6,000 modern languages — from English to Mandarin — back to a single “mother tongue,” an ancestral language spoken in Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.

According to MIT News,

… evidence suggests humans’ unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.

The human brain may have acquired the hardware needed to communicate through spoken language thousands of years before people started using the ability. The ‘mother tongue’ theory seems to suggest that, for a single individual or group of individuals in Africa, the ability to speak in words awoke, and as these first verbal humans spread across the world they brought this ability with them. Subsequently, as groups were separated by space and time, separate dialects emerged to become separate languages.

The Tower of Babel

The picture at the beginning of this article depicts the Tower of Babel. According to National Geographic the tower may have been constructed between 1500 and 1000 B.C. by the Babylonians.

The story of the Tower of Babel appears in the Torah and the Bible. From the book of Genesis, chapter eleven, in the New International version of the Bible:

“Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.

This plural version of the Divine seems to have been a little fearful of humans and our use of technology and cooperation. Apparently the intervention did not work well, as group after group of humans throughout history have claimed names for themselves, names like “English” or “Mandarin,” and have gone on to invent and to cooperate to accomplish great things.

Facets of Verbal Communication

In life, we constantly experience failures of communication. Why? Because we use words. Words are supposed to convey our thoughts and concepts, but they often fall short in their translation.

The Language Barrier

Travel often includes failures of understanding, not only because of the different languages, but because of concepts that are not articulated as clearly in our own language. Following is a short list from Google of concepts that are not articulated by single English words:

• Saudade (Portuguese): A deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent, often carrying the bittersweet knowledge that the object of longing might never return.

• Wabi-Sabi (Japanese): A world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection, often finding beauty in what is rustic, incomplete, or weathered.

• Gezellig (Dutch): Translates loosely to “cozy,” but encompasses a broader feeling of warmth, intimacy, and a pleasant, convivial atmosphere shared with friends or family.

• Forelsket (Norwegian/Danish): The intense, euphoric feeling of falling in love.

• Schadenfreude (German): The feeling of joy or pleasure that comes from witnessing someone else’s misfortune.

Subtle differences in the fabrics of cultural development result in differences of meaning and point of view. No single word in English carries the full meaning of any of the above concepts, yet the feelings they convey are common. As English speakers, we can say “I miss you so deeply, I feel that my heart is breaking” instead of ‘saudade’ in Portuguese. We are all familiar in this world of impermanence with the departure of things to which we are attached in our lives. We tend to cling to the way things were to the point of rejecting what is.

Sometimes very similar languages use different words to represent the same item. For example, one definition of the word, “hood,” in American English means the hatchway to the engine compartment of a car, whereas in Great Britain that same item is called a “bonnet.”

Limits of Understanding

One barrier to communication is our own ability to process what is said to us, even if the speaker is speaking our language.

According to Psychology Today,

… studies show that people typically retain and process only about 50% of what is said to them immediately after hearing it.

And although we often ‘come to an understanding’ about what others say, this so-called understanding is always colored by our own worldview. Our worldviews are often barriers to communication and understanding.

Worldview

According to EBSCO:

… worldview is shaped by people's home environment, experiences, education, and the culture of their hometown and country. A worldview includes values and morals, and what one believes is favorable or unfavorable. A worldview encompasses perceptions about what is real and what is fictitious. It also defines one's logic and reasoning, such as what the result of an action might be. Of course, worldview cannot be separated from religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and political ideology. A worldview is one's perspective of one's place in the world in relation to others. It can be summed up as one's perception of reality.

We begin building our worldview at first through sensory input as infants. As we get used to our digestive system, our senses transmit pains of hunger or gas, introducing us to ‘unpleasant.’ Similarly we come to know ‘pleasant’ by being fed or being held in a comfortable position. Throughout our lives we continue to judge sensory and other experiences as unpleasant, pleasant or neutral.

Inherent Morality

Yale Professor Paul Bloom studies babies and toddlers and how their social and moral capacities develop. According to the Jacobs Foundation:

Even before we reach our first birthday, we have rich moral capacities. Babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; and act to soothe others in distress; There is even some evidence that we are born with a rudimentary sense of justice and fairness.

As babies, we express our joys and discomforts with sounds. In our first year of life, we start to learn from our parents and others how to communicate, and, in the process, begin to assimilate their worldview.

As we go through life our worldview may change due to our exposure to information and/or others who believe differently than we do. As we meet with beliefs different from our own, we make choices about what we believe; what to accept and what to reject.

Seeking Justice in Our Language

Personal Responsibility

Each one of us helps build our collective Tower of Babel with the bricks of our absolutes, resulting in failure to communicate. Worldviews may be obstacles to communication. It is often difficult or even impossible to see past our programming, or conversely, to draw out someone else from their own shield of understanding.

It would seem that we are doomed to misunderstand and mistrust each other unless we can learn to effectively communicate.

Professor Franke Wilmer, PhD., writes about conflict transformation involving societies:

When there is no effort to effectively transform the root grievances into dialogue and constructive engagement with an aim to at least talking about issues of justice (and injustice), parties to conflict continue to harbor grievances that either render the conflict intractable or, ultimately, erupt into future cycles of violence.

… Conflict transformation is about transforming the way that societies deal with moving them from violent to nonviolent means. Its goal is to build just, sustainable societies that resolve differences…

Thinking about successful societal conflict resolution as a map to learning to communicate with each other constructively in an environment dominated by strong differences of opinion, the words, “effort to effectively transform root grievances into dialogue and constructive engagement with an aim to talk about issues of justice …” seem to resonate.

As we speak with each other as individuals, what is unjust? Name-calling and group labelling are unjust; persisting in the perpetuation of lies is unjust; refusing the right of others to speak is unjust.

Removing Barriers

It takes courage to take down the barriers that we think are protecting us, but it is necessary if we want to live in peace with each other. Sometimes this means being open to the possibility that certain beliefs we have lived with all of our lives may have to be put aside. Sometimes it means tolerating views with which we disagree as long as they present no barrier to peace.

We naturally gravitate to people who share worldviews similar to our own; however, within anyone’s worldview may lie illogical or otherwise false beliefs. Through honest self-examination we can identify these habitual views as barriers to peace. If peace is what we want, these barriers must be removed.

Because words are attempts to express thoughts, right speech is a result of right thought. Looking inward honestly, we can examine our thoughts to see if they promote peace or love, and thereby learn to choose our words carefully.

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Humans have been creating art for a long time. According to the BBC, a cave painting in Indonesia has been carbon-dated to be at least fifty-one-thousand years old. Experts say that the cave painting depicts three humans and a large pig.

The largest human figure has both arms extended and appears to be holding a rod. The second is immediately in front of the pig with its head next to its snout. It also seems to be holding a stick, one end of which may be in contact with the pig’s throat. The last human-like figure seems to be upside-down with its legs facing up and splayed outwards. It has one hand reaching towards and seemingly touching the pig’s head.

The image seems to be ‘action packed.’

… [Scientists say that the painting is] representational art – an abstract representation of the world around the person or people that painted it … [and] therefore represents an evolution in the thought processes in our species that gave rise to art and science.

This evolutionary event indicates a change from unconsciousness to consciousness.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “the convincing representation of animal movement” in ancient cave art demonstrates that “archaic primary consciousness” gave ancient humans “a savant-like perception with a superior richness of details compared to modern man.”

The argument seems to say that artists today must be trained for years to transcend ‘top-down thinking’ before they attain (or exceed) the skill of their prehistoric forbears when it comes to creating images of animals in motion.

What is ‘top-down thinking?’ According to Verywell Mind,

Top-down processing involves perceiving things based on your prior experiences and knowledge. In other words, you use what you already know to make sense of the new information you encounter. It refers to how our brain utilizes existing knowledge and expectations to interpret new sensory information.

Instead of interpreting the world based solely on the information we gather from our senses, the brain uses pre-existing concepts, ideas, and knowledge to comprehend sensory input.

I think that ‘pre-existing concepts, ideas, and knowledge’ would be what notable Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, would call ‘store consciousness,’ the kind of consciousness that we draw upon for rote tasks, such as driving a car. While driving, our mind is making decisions about where and how to go, but the motions of steering, braking, etc., are largely done without our thinking about them.

Comparing the creation of art to the car-driving example, a modern artist may create an image of a moving animal from their stored conception of both the animal and how to represent it using familiar mediums; but the cave artist, having intimately experienced the moving animal, must have had the desire to visually communicate the event and invented mediums and tools to do so: art from the ground up, as it were.

I know that when I begin to create a song, a piece of music, a poem (or Substack article), or when I improvise music, I enter a different state of consciousness. I would call it, ‘in the zone.’

Others refer to ‘flow.’ According to an article on the Pinot’s Palette website:

Participating in art promotes deep focus, leading to a state known as "flow" within the scientific community. This state involves complete immersion, causing a loss of awareness of time and space. During a flow state, various brain networks are activated, including a "Relaxed Reflective State" characterized by focused attention on the task and a sense of pleasure. This state is characterized by increased theta wave activity in frontal brain regions and moderate alpha wave activity in frontal and central areas.

Yes. Creating art feels good.

According to The Pointless Artist,

… the creative process isn‘t just the flow we experience in our moments of silent grace, but it’s also everything that precedes and follows it. In other words, a creative journey in art is everything that ultimately leads to the final artworks: impulses, one’s intuition and ideas, the field and studio research we usually conduct, the inspiration we gather along the way, the joys and challenges we encounter with the techniques and mediums we choose, and so much more ...

Negotiating the balance between idea and no idea, knowing and not knowing requires a blend of courage, self-confidence, inner motivation and passion in addition to determination and commitment to doing the work despite all the failures and frustrations that may occur along our creative journey full of uncertainty and wonder.

“Uncertainty and wonder.” Uncertainty is something we encounter constantly. The only thing that is constant in life is change. We often miss wonder because of our unconsciousness as we go through the motions instead of paying attention.

Paying loving attention to what we do enhances the lives of everyone.

Several sources cite the health benefits of art creation. According to Google, engaging in creative activities lowers stress hormones like cortisol, eases symptoms of anxiety and depression, and stimulates the brain to build new cognitive connections. Coincidentally (or not), these are some of the same benefits of a meditation practice. Both artistic creation and meditation are not only good for your brain; they also help humanity evolve.

Another activity that puts me ‘in the zone’ is bicycling. I will ride in the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s fundraising bike ride at the end of June: one hundred fifty miles over two days, during which I will be in the zone most of the time.

May we all always live ‘in the zone.’

It’s good for us.

Reaching for Gods

Before one reaches out to a god, they first must know that they desire or need. Early humans knew they wanted plenty to eat, and that they did not want to be preyed upon by predators, but they sensed that they had little control over many things. I imagine it was a time of trial and error wherein they tried this and that, and found that their ideas worked sometimes and not others.

At some point, someone probably got it into their head that there are unseen forces that govern the plentitude or scarcity of food or water, the weather, fertility and other mysterious phenomena. Then they thought, maybe there’s a way to communicate or make deals with these unseen forces.

The First Idol?

According to a 2017 article from The British Museum, the oldest known representation of a deity is said to be The Lion Man, a statue carved in ivory from a mammoth’s tusk about forty thousand years ago in Germany during the Ice Age. The statue was found in Stadel cave in 1939. Jill Cook writes for the museum:

… characteristics suggest that Stadel Cave was only used occasionally as a place where people would come together around a fire to share a particular understanding of the world articulated through beliefs, symbolised in sculpture and acted out in rituals.

Sources speculate that the Lion Man was a depiction of a shaman in the act of shapeshifting, that is, merging with an apex predator to enter the spirit world on behalf of the people. The artifact is said to appear to have been rubbed by many hands, perhaps as part of a ritual or rituals.

The shapeshifting shaman is a feature of some religions to this day, endeavoring to petition the spirit world for help from beyond. ‘Beyond’ is where the higher powers always seem to be.

The Proliferation of Gods

The human search for divine assistance has manifested into many forms.

Gary Wenk Ph.D., writes for Psychology Today:

Anthropologists estimate that at least 12,000 different gods, goddesses, and various animals or objects have been worshiped by humans since our species began producing durable artifacts. Spirituality must offer something tangible that enhances procreation and survival. Otherwise, evolution should have selected against such costly beliefs and behaviors, such as making gigantic pyramids to house the dead, blowing oneself up for the pleasures of paradise, or sacrificing one's children as a measure of devotion to one’s deity.

Here I believe that Wenk first refers to the Egyptian pyramids, then the suicide bombers purported to be followers of Islam who expected an afterlife that includes a harem, and maybe the Judaic story of the sacrifice of Isaac, though many religions have featured child sacrifice.

Sacrifice

There are different forms of sacrifice associated with deities. Above are examples of some of the extreme actions that are meant to reach out to deities for various outcomes through human and animal sacrifice. In the Bible, the aroma of animal flesh being burned on an altar is said to be ‘pleasing to the Lord:’ really kind of a bribe. Humans often bargain with deities by offering something. Often this takes the form of offering to change one’s behavior. For example, Christians might promise to attend Sunday services.

Many ancient religions have included ritual animal and/or human sacrifice. According to The Big Think:

The history of human sacrifice is closely connected to the history of religion and superstition. “Prehistoric religion,” writes John Skinner, “originated as a magical sacrament intended to deny the reality of death.” In his text, Ritual Matricide: A Study of the Origins of Sacrifice, Skinner discusses how our fear and curiosity about death manifested itself in ancient rituals like the consumption of human brains and human sacrifice in general…

… important individuals were sometimes buried alongside their servants and/or concubines. Given that the bodies of these retainers rarely show signs of trauma or disease, archeologists speculate that they were interred alongside their masters in a practice that is now referred to as the “retainer sacrifice.” Such rituals ensured that people would remain cared for in the afterlife.

Human fear of death is natural. The human brain allows us to imagine what death may be like, and convince ourselves that our imagined scenario is the truth. But that is a subject for another day. The Big Think continues…

… Ultimately, human sacrifice was about protecting the majority at the expense of a minority.

Corroboration from Scientific American:

… human sacrifice seems to bolster stratification: it helped to stabilize hierarchy, and conceivably, therefore, had a common role in the development of highly stratified societies that generally persist even today.

Desire and Human Sacrifice

Religious scholar René Girard’s core thesis is that human desire is not original but imitated. “We desire things because we see others desiring them, which breeds inevitable rivalry and escalating conflict. For most of human history this conflict has often been dealt with by means of sacrifice.”

… the immolation of a sacrificial victim that is both guilty of disorder and able to restore order, is constantly re-enacted … Since the dawn of humanity, millions of innocent victims have been killed in this way in order to enable their fellow humans to live together, or at least not to destroy one another. This is the implacable logic of the sacred, [the myths of which] dissimulate less and less as humans become increasingly self-aware. The decisive point in this evolution is Christian revelation, a kind of divine expiration in which God through his Son could be seen as asking for forgiveness from humans for having revealed the mechanisms of their violence so late. Rituals had slowly educated them; from then on, humans had to do without.

Gemini artificial intelligence helps me simplify Girard’s assertion, writing: “Ancient rituals, like sacrifice, used to guide human behavior, but after Christ exposed how they worked, humans had to learn to live without these ancient rituals.”

In Judaism, animals, by law, could only be sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. After the destruction by the Romans of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism was more or less forced to abandon animal sacrifice and, over time, transform itself into a religion of prayer and study. (According to EBSCO, some Samaritan Jews continue to sacrifice animals as do some Hindus and some followers of Islam.)

Sacrificial immolation was the fate of tens of thousands of witches in Europe as, by Christian church decree, they were burned at the stake beginning in the fifteenth century. This original ‘witch hunt’ was like ethnic cleansing, in which a majority slaughters a minority out of fear, hatred, or in pursuit of power.

Self Sacrifice

According to Wisdom Library:

Self-sacrifice is a concept that spans various philosophical and religious traditions, emphasizing the act of giving oneself for the benefit of others or a higher cause… [For example,] prioritizing others’ needs … enduring hardships for family …

To sacrifice on behalf of others is a highly regarded ethic. Charitable giving is a kind of self-sacrifice, and so is helping others without thought of reward. Often, a deity can be a motivator for charitable acts that require some sort of sacrifice.

God and the Human Brain

Wenk cites studies that map regions of the brain specific to religious experiences in individuals. One such is paraphrased below:

[One] study discovered self-reported spirituality or religiosity mapped to a brain circuit that was centered on a brain region called the periaqueductal gray … an ancient structure believed to play a role in our response to fear, pain, and altruistic behavior. This brain circuit, and the apparent importance of the periaqueductal gray, may have evolved to encourage altruistic behaviors that benefit others in an extended family as well as to reduce the fear of living in the dangerous and unpredictable world…

It would seem that we may have been hardwired to spiritual experience by evolution. Ah, but whom or what hardwired us? There’s a question.

According to an article from the BBC, “religious belief may well be founded on our human culture and thought patterns:”

Many psychologists now think that the belief in gods is an extension of our recognition, as social animals, of the existence of others, and of our tendency to see the world in human terms.

Many versions of deity are anthropomorphic: bearded, angry thunderer in the sky, for example. This anthropomorphism may indicate a desire to make God in our own image.

God (or Something)

As science and modernization have chipped away at human ignorance, organized religion has been sometimes displaced by less institutionalized belief systems, as people sample different systems and beliefs to suit their individual intuition.

David Ludden, Ph.D., writes for Psychology Today:

Religious belief of some sort is a nearly universal feature of humanity... At the same time, not all people are religious, and… the forms of belief among the religious range widely...

Although many people in industrialized societies have abandoned traditional organized religion, many of them still confess to some sort of spiritual belief, such as a life force or divine spirit that pervades nature and humanity.

Instead of an all-knowing, all-powerful God who resides apart from us, some people envision a God that permeates everyone and everything. Others seek the Divine within themselves.

According to The Worldview Bulletin:

… progressive Christians hold to a worldview in which God is not a personal, transcendent Creator but is rather the spiritual or sacred presence or power in all things…

According to URI, Modern Hinduism is built around inner divinity - finding God in oneself.

Aspects of the Divine

Kabbalists

Jewish Kabbalists define God by the “ten fundamental attributes, emanations, or channels through which the Divine reveals itself, creates the universe, and sustains reality.” These attributes are called sefirot.

According to the Library of Israel:

Kabbalists found the word sefirot in an ancient esoteric book known as the Sefer Yetzirah.

Taking the unique word sefirah (plural: sefirot) from that mysterious work, the Kabbalists changed its meaning. For them, God had two distinct aspects: one is the Ein Sof – The Infinite – about whom nothing can be known, this is the hidden God; the other is the Divine Presence in the world, which emanates … divine categories that represent the powers, qualities, attributes… of the revealed God.

There are different versions, but here is a list:

The Intellect (The Mind)

• Keter (Crown): The supreme, transcendent will and divine spark. It bridges the infinite unknown with conscious reality.

• Chochmah (Wisdom): The initial flash of intuitive, boundless insight. It is the spark of “something from nothing”.

• Binah (Understanding): The analytical reasoning process. It takes the flash of Chochmah and molds it into a structured, conceptual form.

The Emotions (The Heart)

• Chesed (Kindness): Boundless grace, love, and the desire to give unconditionally.

• Gevurah (Strength): Judgment, boundaries, discipline, and the containment of energy. It balances Chesed to allow for productive action.

• Tiferet (Beauty): Harmony, truth, and compassion. It represents the synthesis and balance between the opposing forces of Chesed and Gevurah.

The Action (The Manifestation)

• Netzach (Victory): Perseverance, endurance, and the active drive to overcome obstacles.

• Hod (Splendor): Humility, gratitude, and the yielding surrender to a higher purpose. Paired with Netzach, it translates ideas into deeds.

• Yesod (Foundation): The unifying channel that gathers and binds all preceding energies together, directing them into manifestation.

• Malchut (Kingship): The physical, material world and the vessel that receives all the higher energies. It represents our tangible reality and the realization of divine potential.

Tolle and Dyer

Following are attributes of God cited by two popular spiritual teachers.

Eckhart Tolle’s core aspects of God appear below:

• The Unmanifested Source: Tolle often refers to God as “the Unmanifested”—the silent, empty, and formless space out of which all physical manifestation flows. It is the invisible background of life that exists beyond space, time, and physical forms.

• The One Life (Being): God is not a being, but rather ultimate “Being”—the eternal, underlying One Life that animates all things. Tolle describes Being as the supreme intelligence whose visible manifestation is the physical universe.

• Consciousness and Awareness: God-essence manifests in the physical realm as consciousness. Consciousness is the “light of the world”, the pure, alert awareness you feel when your mind is perfectly still and you are completely present in the Now.

• Infinity and Eternity: Instead of viewing these as faraway concepts, Tolle describes them as essential attributes of God that are, in fact, perceivable right now. You connect with God’s eternity when you step out of the illusion of past and future and anchor yourself entirely in the present moment.

Wayne Dyer has a list that is similar:

• The Source of Creation: God is the field of intention that holds the universe together in perfect harmony. It is an infinite intelligence that responds to faith, trust, and alignment rather than fear or desperation.

• God as Energy and Vibration: He frequently referenced God as a specific frequency or vibration. When you raise your consciousness, you tap directly into this higher energy field to attract peace and abundance.

• The “I AM” Presence: Dyer often cited ancient texts and mystics to point out that the true name of God is simply “I AM.” Your imagination and your inherent awareness are direct expressions of this “I AM” presence.

• God Speaks Through Intuition: The intuitive, quiet inner knowing that guides you through life is God communicating directly with you. Your gut feelings and sudden nudges are divine interventions keeping you on your path.

• God in All Things: Because God is omnipresent, there are no ordinary moments. Every person, challenge, and experience is a facet of the divine, intended to help your soul grow and remember its true nature

Non-Duality

We are the Divine

One Kabbalistic saying is, “Everything is God, and nothing but God.”

Belief in non-duality is the belief that everything is part of the whole of the universe, and therefore everything is dependent on everything else for its very existence.

David Loy, a professor, writer, and Zen teacher, in an interview for the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, attempts to demystify non-duality.

To make it less theoretical, [consider a couple of examples of bipolar concepts] such as rich/poor, or good/evil. Rich and poor seem to be two different concepts, but if you think about it, they are really not separate — you can’t have one without the other. If you don’t understand what poor means, you don’t know what rich means, and vice versa. This may sound like an abstract logical point, but in fact it is psychologically important as well, because if the most important thing in your life is to become rich, it also means that you are preoccupied with poverty — afraid of being poor.

Another useful example is pure versus impure. Suppose the most important thing for you is to live a pure life, whatever purity means for you. That implies you are going to live your life preoccupied with impurity, because you’ll need to be constantly looking out for impure thoughts and acts. Since the meaning of each of these concepts is the negation of the other, to live purely is to avoid impure things. They only have meaning in relation to each other.

Purity/impurity is a good example of how seeing the world in terms of such bipolarities creates problems for us. It’s one of the ways we “bind ourselves without a rope,” to use the Zen expression. One of the great Chan masters, Hui Hai, said that “true purity is to live beyond the duality of purity and impurity.”

The Higher Power

People may turn to a deity for help when they are powerless, for example, when they are addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, what have you. They need a ‘higher power,’ but ‘higher power’ could be anyone or God or anything that can help them resist their addiction.

Andy F., writing for AA Agnostica, relays this story credited to Dr. Bohdan Woronowicz about the need for a higher power:

A [woman] walks into her kitchen one morning, shocked to find the entire kitchen floor flooded with water. The water is rising fast. It’s only a matter of time before it spills out into the rest of the house. It is sure to ruin the carpets and all the furniture. Understandably, she goes into total panic and despair. She acknowledges her powerlessness over the situation. Realizing that her home life will become unmanageable, she reaches for the phone and calls a plumber.

The plumber arrives quickly, finds the leak, and stops the water flow. He has saved a potentially disastrous situation.

[Woronowicz then says], “Is not the plumber, in her desperation, a power greater than the [woman]”? His experience, knowledge, and skill were able to avert the crisis she found herself in. Authentically and practically, the plumber was, for the housewife, a power greater than herself.

People seek divine intervention out of despair or simple desire. The rituals around worship of deities are many and varied. Belief seeks to define the undefinable, driven by the feeling that there is someone or something out there that can help us with both the mortal and the immortal.

May we be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

Light and darkness have profound effects on us. Like every thing, we are made as a result of light. The light warms us, permeates us, and affects us in many ways. Darkness is more than just the absence of light.

In the Beginning

During the first 380,000 years (or so) of the existence of the universe, scientists say that photons - the particles that make up light - were all trapped, entangled by other particles. So you and I might say that this was a very dark time.

Then, according to NASA:

… after the universe had cooled enough that atomic nuclei could capture electrons, [there began] a period astronomers call the epoch of recombination. This had two major effects on the cosmos … The universe became transparent, and for the first time, light could freely travel over great distances.

An artificial intelligence composed this summary of an article on the Brookhaven National Laboratory website:

Light's relationship to matter is the fundamental interaction between energy and mass. Matter determines how light travels, absorbs, and reflects, while light probes matter's structure or transforms directly into it. This dynamic interplay defines the visual and physical universe.

Light is crucial to the existence of everything.

The Cycle of Light and Darkness

Our concept of time is rooted in a daily cycle of light and darkness that affects us in many ways.

According to Science Direct:

… light has strong direct effects on mood, cognition, alertness, performance, and sleep, light can be considered a “drug” to treat many clinical conditions. Light therapy is already well established for winter and other depressions and circadian sleep disorders.

This daily cycle, day and night, is the creator of the ‘biological clock’ embedded in the hypothalamus region of the human brain, where it controls the release of melatonin and other hormones. Another name for our biological clock is ‘circadian rhythm.’

According to the National Institutes of Health, natural circadian rhythms of light and darkness greatly affect our sleep cycles.

In humans, nearly every tissue and organ has its own circadian rhythm, and collectively they are tuned to the daily cycle of day and night.

As humans, we may sometimes think we have total control over our tissues and organs, but when things go wrong, we may realize that much may go on inside us without our knowledge. It’s good to check in with your body by sitting still, breathing and using your mind to scan each part of your body in turn.

Aspects of Darkness

The color of sunlight is comprised of all the colors of the spectrum, from the invisible shades of ultraviolet to the invisible shades of infrared. To our eyes, some colors are darker and others lighter; for example, we perceive that purple is darker than yellow.

Black is the darkest of all colors and white the brightest. Using the artists palette, we use white to lighten colors and black to darken them. Interestingly, it is said that black is the absence of all color while white is the presence of all color, yet the combination of all colors may result in either black or white depending on method or color model.

Our relationship with darkness is interesting. Most of us sleep in the darkness (or at least relative darkness) of night, and many of us cannot get to sleep when there is too much light in our sleeping space. Perhaps we may feel comfort from the darkened room, as we use the lack of light to inform our body that it is time to sleep.

Yet, perhaps due to vestigial fear of night predators, darkness tends to be where we imagine our enemies lurking. Fear seems to wait in dark alleys and doorways, though (usually, wink,) no threat of harm is present. Skunks prefer nighttime - a hazard worth respecting.

Light casts shadows. Brighter light casts darker shadows. Sometimes we sit in the shade to avoid too much exposure to the sun’s heat and ultraviolet radiation. In this instance we are using a bit of semi-darkness as protection.

According to LibreTexts Humanities:

Shadows are divided into two types:

Core shadows appear on the object, indicating where the form turns away from the light source. They give objects a sense of three-dimensionality and weight…

Cast shadows, on the other hand, are cast by the object onto another surface or the object itself, like the shadow of a tree on the ground or a figure’s shadow on a wall. These shadows help anchor objects in space…

The shadowing effect of light allows our sense of sight to discern distance, depth and texture.

Light and Dark Metaphors

We use light (or the absence of it) to name states of being. We say that the process of learning is ‘illuminating.’ We may call thoughts of violence ‘dark,’ and the state of being sad or angry as ‘in a dark mood.’ When we see a happy, kind human, we may say ‘they are filled with light,’ or, ‘they light up the room.’ When we are disabused of a misconception, we may say that we ‘saw the light.’ Ignorance is characterized as a kind of darkness.

Formfluent, an Australian purveyor of crystal and porcelain items, provides light metaphors one finds in different religions. I paraphrase below:

Light and the act of lighting lamps or candles are meaningful to followers of many religions across the world and have been used for many centuries by world religions to symbolise a belief or remind followers of their history.

In Christianity, light is symbolic of Jesus Christ as ‘the light of the world’, as well as the metaphorical light of God’s love…

Light is also symbolic of God’s guidance in Islam. In fact, the Quaran is often referred to as ‘the light of God’ or ‘the Candle of God’.

In Judaism, light is the overarching metaphor for the Jewish understanding of reality. In the Tanakh or Jewish bible, metaphorical light is created by God before physical light, giving the concept great spiritual significance.

Buddhists do not view light as symbolic of any deity. Instead, they see light and candles as signs of respect and deference. The impermanent state of candlelight is called upon in Buddhist ceremonies to manifest change…

In Hindu practice, light is seen as symbolic of the gods and goddesses, but also of the higher self, as well as qualities such as happiness, wisdom, and prosperity.

Lights are often used by Pagans to pay tribute or make offerings to various deities, or to symbolise the natural elements …

Moonlight

Traveling back to 1967, drummer Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues has given us this poem:

Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day's useless energy spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one;
Lonely man cries for love and has none;
New mother picks up and suckles her son;
Senior citizens wish they were young

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey is yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion

May we be filled with the light and darkness of existence.  
May we be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.      

What is it like to be?

What is ‘being?’

We exist, but what does that actually mean?

Mind and Body

Our sole means of interacting with our world is through our body. We say that we are alive as proven by the facts of our breath and heartbeat, and our senses of smell, sight, taste, touch, hearing and mind.

In every moment, our mind reminds us of our aliveness. Our mind is not the same as our brain. Our mind thinks it controls our body, and in many ways it does, controlling what we say and do. Our brain controls autonomic functions like breathing, heartbeat, digestion, and many others that our mind is mostly unaware of, usually until something goes wrong. When that happens, the mind may create stories about what is happening in the body, such as thinking that our heartburn is a heart attack; or the reverse, (mistaking our heart attack for mere heartburn, etcetera).

For most of us, being involves an endless stream of thoughts originated in our mind. Often these thoughts come in reaction to input from the other five senses, and perhaps even more often the mind just makes them up.

We may say that our awareness of our sensory experiences and thoughts is our consciousness. Feeling and thinking prove to us that we exist.

Consciousness

The word, ‘consciousness,’ has many meanings that we might divide into categories. Gregg Henriques, Ph.D, writing for Psychology Today, identifies three categories of consciousness. First, there is subjective consciousness, that is, “the subjective inner experience of being in the world—what it feels like to be you.” Next, there is creature consciousness, meaning “the capacity for functional awareness and responsivity to the environment,” a meaning that “extends well beyond humans and animals. Trees, fungi, and even bacteria demonstrate creature consciousness in their ability to sense and respond to external conditions.” Third comes self-consciousness, “which refers to recursive self-awareness.” I believe that recursive, in this usage, describes the human ability to inwardly reflect on our inner selves.

I come away from this set of definitions feeling that there is not much difference between subjective consciousness and self consciousness. I feel that these consciousnesses are interconnected.

Notable Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh gives us examples of two distinct kinds of consciousness: store consciousness and mind consciousness. I find these distinctions informative.

… When you drive a car, it is store consciousness that is driving, not your mind consciousness. In the beginning, when you learn driving, you have to use your mind consciousness. You have to focus your attention. It is difficult. But in the process of doing so, store consciousness learns. And eventually, you don’t have to think about it, and can drive while your mind is thinking about other things. So, it is the store consciousness that is doing most practical things, including driving.

We learn, and use the storehouse of what we have learned to navigate daily life. Using our brains, that is, ‘mind consciousness,’ to learn new things requires time and effort whereas using information that we have already learned happens quickly, almost effortlessly.

… While you are driving, if you encounter something and very quickly avoid an accident, that is store consciousness. It has learned and reacted very quickly. If you had to wait for your mind to make a decision, it might be too late.

That is why we can conclude that the mind is slower, and more expensive also. Because our brain spends a lot of energy, while our store spends much less.

… If you think that the body can be without the mind, that is wrong. That is not a living body, that is a dead body. That is why the mind must lean on the body to be a mind, and the body has to lean on the mind in order to be a body…

To be in the physical existence we use the combined interdependent power of both mind and body.

Existing Mindfully

We are born with a blank slate and hit the ground learning. We start with no control over our body and, if all goes well, gradually learn to use our limbs and to communicate in the months and years after our birth. What we learn goes into store consciousness.

However, sometimes what we learn is unwholesome. As we grow, we encounter many influences, such as our parents, siblings, peers, teachers and others. Although we may not be aware of it, each of these influences plant their seeds in us. These could be seeds of peace or anger, grasping or graciousness, calmness or reactivity.

The seeds planted within us insert thoughts into our store consciousness that may manifest as wholesome or unwholesome behaviors. Since our actions define us, these influences can be powerful. An easy example of a negative learned behavior is prejudice against others based on skin color. Many people bear the burden of this prejudice. Prejudice closes our minds, and so we suffer.

Becoming aware of the state of individual seeds within our store consciousness, we can choose between wholesome and unwholesome.

Self

According to Lion’s Roar, in Buddhism, consciousness is one of the Five Aggregates (or Skandhas) that go into the process of fabricating our separate self. The others are Form, Feeling, Perception, and Mental Formations. All reinforce the idea that we are separate and alone. This is a fiction.

Our sense of having our own separate self is a story told us by our mind about how we fit in the world. As the world changes constantly, our self also changes. We shed our selves as a snake sheds its skin, leaving in our wake the selves of baby, toddler, child, teenager, young adult, middle aged, and, finally, elder. We take on and leave behind job titles and other roles. On any given day, we experience emotions of joy and aversion that shape our notion of ‘who we are.’

When we are comfortable in our idea of our separate self and our ever-changing world forces us to change, we may experience sadness - a sense of loss. We may suffer. Knowing in advance that the only constant in our lives is change, we may lessen the suffering that clinging to our sense of self has brought us. Being aware of changes as they emerge can make adapting to these changes less painful.

According to Professor Jay Garfield, writing for Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, says, “… one of the most important insights to develop is that into selflessness. To understand who you are is to understand that you have no self.”

Recognizing that our self is not static, but is ever-changing, is powerful knowledge. Knowing that things will always change can help us learn not to fear change, but to embrace it instead.

To be is to change.

May we be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.