Some people are so brilliant they can think their way through to an understanding of dharma without ever having formally studied it. David Foster Wallace was one. The man was so brilliant and compassionate he could create Buddhism out of the wanderings of his own mind and his observations of everyday life. Listen to this 22 minute talk, and be moved and amazed… And the fact that he grew up in the same small town as me is pure coincidence!
Older and Wiser? (Courtesy of my good friend Mha Atma Khalsa)
My doctor asked if anyone in my family suffered from mental illness..I said, “No, we all seem to enjoy it.”
Just once, I want a username and password prompt to say, “Close enough…”
People who wonder if the glass is half empty or half full miss the point. The glass is refillable.
I’d grow my own food if only I could find bacon seeds.
Some people are like clouds, once they disappear it’s a beautiful day.
Common sense is not a gift. It’s a punishment because you have to deal with everyone else who doesn’t have it.
In a recent episode of the ManKind Podcast, I spoke with Boysen Hodgson about how to find deeper meaning in life through self-created rituals and how we can find more fulfillment by honoring all the key passages of a normal human life span with rites.
“This is not the cruise I signed up for!”
That’s a quote from a tourist on a South American cruise that went south in more ways than the literal. At last count, Covid had struck 130 of the passengers and cities in different countries were refusing to let the ship dock.
But after I stopped chuckling at the tourist’s wildly misplaced expectations going on a cruise during a pandemic, I realized what a perfect metaphor the statement is for human life. None of us gets the tour we signed up for! We sign up, have all these expectations, and then… life happens! Disappointment after disappointment. Outrage after betrayal. “When humans make plans, God laughs.”
Chaos On A Nationwide Scale
On a nationwide scale, people suffer from things like famines and wars; and as individuals, we suffer from various types of chaos in our life. It is happening right now, all the time. Things go wrong, and a lot of chaos happens. It is one thing after another. In the beginning, you may be shocked to see such energy coming your way. But you have to be willing to learn from it. Usually we are so overwhelmed by such happenings that we deliberately put off going into the depths of the psychological aspects of the chaos. Energy might have the pretense of chaos, but you are learning not to be shocked by it.
Fear arises when this energy is not a concrete, definite thing. If we can see something, we feel ready to control it. You can stop somebody from walking in front of you, or you can stop a cat from killing a mouse – in those situations, you can do something directly. But if what is happening is subtle and deep rooted, that energy is very difficult to deal with, because it does not have particular characteristics that you can catch. It has no handles, so to speak, no tail. It is just an all-pervading force. So it is like trying to catch the wind or a rainbow. That makes us afraid and confused.
From Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi, pages 122 to 123.
Published by Shambhala Publications.
5 new films, a new book, new Warrior Films staff and Board members… I guess you could say we’ve been busy, as always Bearing Witness and Creating Change. Are you down with that? Jump in and join us… We can always use your generous, tax deductible support.
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Frederick Marx
Warrior Films