Greed, hatred and delusion are referred to in the Buddhist tradition as the three poisons. Translations are never an exact science so to tone down the language a bit we may think of them as desire, aversion and ignorance. In many ways, these lie at the heart of so many of the problems we can […]
Author Archives: AJ
The only diamonds I need, Are the sparkles of sunlight on the lake. Its light through evening cloud, My only gold. Pearls and rubies from the earth, I will not take, My only truth, That which silence never told.
One of the aspects of searching for truth that contains any number of potential stumbling blocks is our expectations. Thoughts can arise such as, ‘If I see there’s no separate self, will I become like a Buddha? Will I be enlightenened? Will all suffering cease? Will I get rid of all my hang-ups? Will I […]
The realisation of no-self leads inexorably to the realisation of no selves. Empty boats, as Chuang Tzu called them. So all around we see patterns of behaviour, forms through which these arise, no selves. All is arising supported by its causes. There is no purpose in this, no higher Self directing it. To search for […]
What is a wave? We see them, so many of them, rolling across the sea, arising and falling, breaking on the shore. We give it a name, create it as a separate thing in thought, but we see a wave is not separate is it? It never leaves the sea. When the wave arose the […]
Patterns. Making links, joining up the dots, creating connections – it’s an important aspect of our intelligence isn’t it? The ability to look at a small amount of detail and infer what is not seen from what can be seen. Perhaps this evolved with us as a survival mechanism, but there’s no doubt it’s a […]
Sometimes it can seem like that; we look at our lives and we instinctively want to fix, repair or change it around to make it all better. In our society there are a number of industry sectors that profit from just this desire. They try to sell us self help solutions to change your life […]
Duality can appear in our lives in many different forms. There is of course the most basic dualism, that of feeling ourselves to be a separate self – me and everything I’m aware of. But it can take place on many levels. We perceive duality in lots of forms many of which are quite overt […]
The spiritual path, so called, can be a challenging one at times and full of many convolutions and contradictions. We can find ourselves in frustration asking, “Why can’t someone just tell me the truth? I’m smart enought to understand, so why can’t they just say it in plain (insert language of choice)?” Let’s call this, […]
The end of the path, this brief dream of humanity, is marked by a shift or transformation of consciousness. At this point and thereafter, the sense of personal self – that which is the cause of our perceived separation and the root of suffering, dissolves away. Of course in one sense it’s not the end […]
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