Unfolding the wings of acceptance We often talk about mindfulness and leave out compassion. In today’s talk I will talk about acceptance and how mindfulness and compassion work together. We create suffering when we are caught in the trance of life. We often don’t clearly recognize or feel, what is happening inside of us. Our […]
Quantum physic and Zen philosophy. Physics is the study of nature, matter and the properties of energy. Over the centuries our understanding of physics has become more and more refined. It started out as simply logical deductive reasoning from Aristotle. Amazingly, little more progress was made over the next 2,000 years until Isaac Newton made […]
Mindfulness practice Drill #1 “ Awareness of spaces” Zen calls our brain-mind a monkey mind because, like a monkey, our mind jumps from one branch to another one non-stop 24/7. Branches, of course, mean thoughts and feelings. In fact, it is estimated than this crazy monkey is running thru around 110,000 branches per day. […]
Building confidence during insecurity and incertitude Psychology says that we can learn self-confidence through positive thinking. Creating good thoughts to counteract bad ones can only make our mind busier and....worried. Like putting a Band-Aid on a wooden leg. Zen practice builds confidence in a total different way by: - Minimizing detrimental overthinking, - Noticing the […]
A step toward Awakening “ What are you” or “Who are you” is a classic Koan that every Zen student has to answer properly. If the answer is related to the “I, me, myself & mine” the student fails and must work on the Koan again and again. So....How to define yourself w/o talking […]
About complaining Complaining is one of our ego’s favorite strategies for feeding itself in order to get stronger and more powerful. Ego loves complaining even if, most of the time, complaining will not change anything excepting producing negative energy, which will neutralize our positive one. I will talk about these later on. Every complain is […]
Dharma talk # 346 Is suffering necessary? Of course not or ..maybe! However physical and emotional pains are unavoidable. Events in Life are what they are and not what we want nor what we don’t want to be. “When we do not get what we want or when we get what we do not want,” […]
Humility: one of our hidden force towards equanimity The following talk sounds distant from Zen philosophy, but stay tuned to the end. Suppose you are at a job interview with the HR recruiter, and she/he is asking the following: “ What is one of your best qualities?”... and, after a short pause, you answered: “ Humility.” At this point, […]
Start with the end in mind... So what happens in the end? We become dirt. We may be buried, cremated, or as in the case of Zoroastrianism left to be fed to birds of prey and then become bird poop. Either way, the end is dirt. So why are we, the walking pile of ‘eventual’ […]
Wanting to be happier Wanting to be happier is a universal daily expectation. The scientific study of happiness called positive psychology has mushroomed over the last two decades. Major research institutions have taken on provoking search into the joy of joy, with surprising results. Here are few: Researchers from UK used MRI, heart-rate monitors and […]
