August 22nd, 2008
In some spiritual traditions you are encouraged to look in your Heart, and yet what does that mean exactly? Often we are so used to looking and sensing through the head and the mind that when we are asked to look in the Heart, we look through the head into the Heart to see what is there. Usually we end up just thinking about the Heart. But what if you could drop into the Heart and look from there? How would your life look right now? [...]

August 21st, 2008
How do you know if you are significant? This question lures us the wrong way, it invites us to judge ourselves on some criteria of importance - do we escape the ignominy of insignificance, it seems to ask. But no-one is truly insignificant. The worst that can happen is that you are unaware how important you are to the people in your life, and this is a far greater tragedy than not achieving notoriety, especially since fame (as any celebrity will attest) is a double-edged sword. [...]

August 20th, 2008
In this new video from EnlightenNext, spiritual teacher and WIE founder Andrew Cohen explains what it means to hold a "Kosmocentric" perspective, seeing your own life as potentially the leading edge of a fourteen-billion-year-old evolutionary process... [...]

August 20th, 2008
One question that comes from this observation is, "Why do people do anything?" and "Why does anyone care about anything?" I could guess, or quote from a variety of theories that offer an answer, but that’s not the point of this post. I'm more interested in how awareness of individual insignificance can affect everyday life. How do we deal with this awareness that’s available just through a look into the night sky, or perhaps by watching an episode of NOVA? Most often, the infinite is just ignored. That's what usually I do. Another common reaction is to believe in some story that allows for individuals to feel more important than we are. [...]

August 20th, 2008
As with #1, there is an alternative philosophical discourse that (thankfully) gets us out of this stupid dualistic bind Prager sets up. Process thought shows that evolution involves notions of emergence, integration, and diversification all of which has deep purpose (allowing a moral arrow to guide our actions and a criterion by which to judge them positively or negatively) not requiring a Designer from Outside nor able to be materially reduced (a la Neo-Darwinianism). This is why Prager's Reason #9 is also wrong (without God humans and animals are equal)–see Teilhard's Law of Complexity and Consciousness as to why this is nonsense. [...]

August 20th, 2008
In China at that time a dog was considered to be lowly in a way that dogs in the west generally are not - as when Dogen declared that 'those who let their hair grow are lower than dogs!'. So the question had a subtly different meaning. Essentially he was asking whether even the lowliest beast has Buddha-nature. A dog? What about a rat? [...]

August 20th, 2008
Extreme gratitude and humbleness abide for the spiritual connection and commitment that exists. There is conscious awareness of love, trust, honesty, peace, touch, being with the other. There is amazing communication with a pledge to serve the other in all things. There is passion and joy at the others sight, sound, smell, touch—thought of the other. Love overflows everyday in thanksgiving for the divine incarnate. [...]

August 20th, 2008
This post will look at the classical Advaita Vedanta of Shankaracharya and how he dealt with some basic questions of epistemology and soteriology. The presentation will stay close to what Shankara actually said and avoid speculative interpretations of his thought, such as how Advaita Vedanta might be meaningfully adapted so as to suit the needs of modern Westerners. For the most part I will draw upon Shankara's commentaries on the Brahma Sutra and Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, perhaps his most important works, but I will also refer to his other writings. What follows will consist of translations of some of the more pertinent metatheoretical discussions in Shankara's works followed by commentary upon selected passages.[...]