Racing is what I did for a living. I raced to get to the swimming pool. I raced in the water. I raced to get my homework finished. I raced against my classmates for the best grade. When I sat down to rest, my thoughts raced. I watched fast paced movies, gorging on violence, sex, bodies crashing into each other, and the noise of gunfire. None of this was real, but it was a reflection of the reality of some parts of our world, certainly parts of my own mind, and so it felt real, and I felt connected to others through that “tele – vision.” Yet like Prince Siddhartha prior to seeing the four sights (a sick man, a senile man, a corpse and a sage), I knew there was something missing.
Category Archives: Meditation
Normality on Retreat
Guest Blog by sangha member, Keith Knapp
Logically and with all certainty the online dictionary defines normal as “…conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern: characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, and routine.”
Breaking Down the Walls of “Self Isolation”
Sangha member, Keith Knapp, has offered his musings on what it means to “self isolate”. Keith’s blog post recently appeared in Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center. Please join me in welcoming him to this blog.
Is it ever okay to hit your child?
Is it ever okay to hit your child? If so, what are the reasons that parents do this? If not, what can support a parent in choosing not to use physical punishment on their child?
Yoga of the Mind: A Key to unlocking the grip of prejudice
A prejudice mind is one that is experiencing fluctuations. It is the opposite of steady. When our mind is not steady, we know we are not seeing reality as it is. But this insight into our fluctuating mind only comes if we have a practice well established. Otherwise, we filter what we perceive through our confused senses as reality. We think what we are seeing is real, when in fact we are mistaking a distortion for reality.
Pleasure and Pain
What’s the way out of the pleasure/pain torment we find ourselves constantly navigating? Buddha suggests not just meditation.
The Courage to Change
I was struggling with the fact that altars in my mind always had crosses on them, not Buddhas. When I approached altars in church, it was a sacred event, and it was almost always to receive the Eucharist from a priest, and to say a prayer to Jesus. Would God punish me for getting this close to a Buddha statue and a Buddhist priest? When I look back on this event today, it’s a totally ridiculous question to me now, but at that moment my fears were real and stemmed from teachings about not worshiping idols.
Ahimsa
Fear for me is being asked by my wife to take care of our two-year old son, Malcolm, by myself.
Do Buddhists Believe in God?
What is the Buddhist belief in God?
Reincarnation
The Bodhisattva vow, which many have taken when they received the 16 precepts, includes the vow to return again and again to this world until all beings attain Enlightenment. The underlying assumption is that Enlightenment, Nirvana and no rebirth is an aim of Buddhism. Zen Master Dogen’s phrase, “practice and Enlightenment are one” (修証一如), is a later development in Buddhism which merges the means with the ends. So, in one sense, concerning our self with rebirth is not necessary. However, even Zen Master Dogen talks about rebirth: “In ten thousand kalpas and thousands of lives, how many times are we born and how many times do we die? This cycle of lives is samsara [suffering], caused only by blind clinging to worldly affairs.”[5]
