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How does the concept of "no-self" in Buddhist philosophy reconcile with the Western psychological emphasis on developing a strong sense of self?

10/7/2024

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In Western psychology we are busy building up a special person that we represent to ourselves and to the world. This person has needs, wants, and desires—especially to survive. It is restless or dissatisfied with how things are and is always looking for ways to improve, get better, do more, be more, and make a mark in history, or at least in our families or our work. This person, or sense of self, notices what’s wrong and does things to fix them. Only to find that the solution becomes a new problem.

In Buddhism, we are all individual reflections of the Self of the Universe, like many leaves on the same tree. This Self is the source energy from which all visible and invisible things emerge and then return to. It is perfect, whole, and complete and does not need to be fixed. It does not need to survive because it is all there is and all that ever will be. It does not have to prove anything to gain recognition, acknowledgment, or adulation. It is not the voice in the head that is constantly judging.

We can call the human sense of self, the “little me.” The Universal Self is the “big me.” The little me can also be called the “ego.” It needs to be special. Fear is a big motivator with the little me. It lives in an anxiety of churning thoughts and defensive behaviors. “Look at me, aren’t I fabulous because I can do all this stuff?” Or, “I’m a mess trying to hold it all together, I hope no one else notices. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have done that.” It doesn’t bring peace and it leads to suffering. So, developing a strong sense of it is not a solution to unhappiness.

Once, when the Dalai Lama was at a gathering, someone asked him what Buddhists thought of the human ego. He asked what it was because he didn’t even know what it was. And after they described something similar to what I wrote above, he said something along the lines of, “We don’t such a thing.” But at first he didn’t even know what it was.

Once he understood what ego, or the little me is, the Dalai Lama said that the ego is the enemy of compassion and that the purpose of practicing the Buddha's teachings is to eliminate ego. He has also said “The greater the ego, the more vulnerable a person is.” In other words, developing a strong sense of self opens us to more suffering.

He also said:
  • “A person grows stronger as the ego becomes more transparent".
  • "Selfishness is short-sighted and narrow-minded. The more you dedicate yourself to others, the happier you'll be."
  • "There is nothing inherently wrong with pursuing one's own interests but being excessively self-focused can make your instinct for self-interest negative."
  • "A narrow perspective (on the little me) can lead to frustration and seem unbearable".
  • “Beings who know they aren't special don't suffer. They don't suffer because there is no ego to defend.”

The Western concept of the separate little self doesn’t work and is one of the root causes of all the interpersonal strife in this world. It is a sign of weakness because it is not aligned with the Source of All that Is. In All that Is, everything is special and nothing is special, especially the little me that thinks it exists apart from the powerful forces of the Universe. It disappears anyway at the end so it looks futile to keep strengthening it.
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Therefore, the Western sense of self does not reconcile with the Buddhist understanding of the Eternal Self, or Soul, of the universe. In Buddhism, it’s wonderful to express every talent we have and keep growing in our skills. But ultimately, if it is not for the glory of the One, higher Self, it will be destructive and lead to misery. Not just for the individual, but everyone on the planet, as we can clearly see in the daily news.
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Can two people be spiritually connected before meeting in person? Are there any examples of this?

9/29/2024

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The Spirit or Soul is eternal. That is why we can be connected with someone who is important in our physical life long before we actually meet them. That connection is a Soul Mate connection and is not bound by time. We have been together in many physical lives as well as when we did not assume the shape of a body. We have been together forever and we take on a separate body temporarily to work out our own Soul’s expression.

Soul Mates are not always peace and love relationships. Sometimes they exist for reasons of our natural growth and expansion (in the expanding universe) and can actually be difficult or painful. But they are necessary for our Soul’s innate joy in learning and growing. We might have concepts in our heads about what Soul Mates are. Maybe we will resist the person who shows up again after we have already met them. When we meet them may not be what our imagination wants to envision.

I have had numerous incidents in this life of people showing up after I have dreamed about them. Other times it is the feeling of deja vu. You know you have known this person before, even though you just met. You feel familiar and they even look familiar. You even said the same things as before to each other. This is one portal into the ways of the Spirit. They are uncanny and it is best for us to not try and figure them out, for they are miraculous.

Dreams are one channel through which my Soul Mates have prefigured themselves before I met them. I had dreamed of a very important person in my life, long before I met him. I saw him in detail in many dreams. Then one day, I was in a crowded tram in Pittsburgh, I saw him walking out of Kauffman’s department store. The next day, he was sitting in my college dormitory. This was an all-girls school, so for him to be there was unusual.

A few weeks later, I randomly attended a gathering at Carnegie Mellon University, and he was there, walked up and introduced himself to me. And we completed the connection, which was life-changing for both of us.

Meeting the Soul in one body and then many years later meeting that Soul again can happen too. This occurred enough for me to take notice of the pattern, with the people even having the same names. An example: My best friends through different times of life were named Andrea.

Dear friends when I was a child showed up later as doppelgangers but with completely different backgrounds. Yet they expressed that same quality of Soul that I recognized from before. They looked like identical versions of themselves but were older.

People that fascinated me for no apparent reason, showed up later in my life to have significant impact on my growth and spiritual understanding. I never understood why, when I was 12 years old I was intrigued by a humble little man who did menial work for my father. When he’d come up the path to “borrow” money from my dad I stared and stared. Why would a child of that age be so absorbed with this insignificant-looking man that had nothing to do with her? Because later in life, Spirit arranged that we would meet again. He became on of my most cherished teachers and looked like his twin!
​

The quantity of these experiences brought further awe and wonder at the ways of the Spirit. They confirmed my understanding of unseen forces that do not conform to our ideas of how the world works. Many people would say what I have related is delusional or some kind of whacky chemical or neuronal/electrical reaction going on in my brain. But no. This happened too many times for it to be just a self-generated fluke. This is has been my recurrent experience and I am deeply grateful to be open to it.
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What is your opinion on Osho's quote, "Don't take it seriously. Life is just a game! Enjoy!"?

6/18/2024

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Osho’s statement that life is just a game makes it seem OK to do whatever we want regardless of how much suffering it causes. As long as we’re having fun, that’s the point of the game. To have fun.

But if we take out the word “just” and make it into “Life is a game!” then we can see that life has certain rules that if you don’t follow or understand, you won’t even be able to play the game and definitely not win it. The word “just” trivializes Life and gives the impression that we can do whatever we want and there are no consequences. It’s just a playful pass-time.
However, what actually happened in the case of Osho, was that the literal interpretation of this philosophy turned into orgiastic irresponsible sex, addiction (including his own addiction to nitrous oxide), murderous power struggles, and hateful and greedy behavior resulting in much harm done to innocent people.

I loved Osho for years and read his books as well as listened to his talks. Articulate and loving, wise and profound, full of light and peace I was entranced with him as I became more and more spiritually aware and awakened. But something got twisted along the way.

I arrived in India just as he was being expelled. Mostly “Westerners” followed him and loved the lack of discipline and “anything goes” behavior. But India didn’t like it. It was not in keeping with a serious approach to spirituality. It was a bunch of hippies dancing around in a frenzy and it just looked like a giant rave at a nightclub—but outdoors under the blazing sun. It looked like he was pandering to spiritual tourists who wanted to have a great time.

Then we all know what happened when the Rajneeshis arrived in the US. At that point, if life was a game, that game included poisoning the townsfolk, murderous plots towards targeted people within the ranks, and greed, as exhibited in Osho’s collection of Rolls Royces. His aim was to have 365 Rolls for every day of the year. This game was not something that looked enjoyable. It was not lighthearted and fun. It was a malignant game.

Who was going to win a game based on invading and killing? His organization wanted to take over the town governance. It became like some violent video game such as Mortal Combat or Manhunt. They were serious about grabbing power. There was no playfulness about it and I can’t imagine any enjoyment either.
​

So to say that “Life is just a game, enjoy,” sounds good. It sounds like nothing matters. It’s just a game anyway and you are just a player. In the abstract, this is actually so. But in the physical manifestation of this life, there are consequences. People can suffer because of our actions. We can suffer because of the karmic consequences that can the the result of such an attitude. This is a holy game and Osho was making up the rules as he went along and, iin his case, the game became more and more destructive
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Plato said that all souls are eternal and indestructible. Do you agree?

5/4/2023

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I agree with Plato that Soul is, by definition, eternal and indestructible. Bodies and minds come and go. Everything physical withers away and dies, from the tiniest one-celled animal to the whale. Mountains turn into grains of sand on the beach, worn away by time and weather. And deep rivers have dried up into canyons.

Only one thing is eternal—the fundamental Energy of the Universe, which never had a beginning and has no ending. It always was and always will be. It takes many, many forms, but always originates from the One Eternal Source. That is also true about the Soul because it is through our Soul that we partake of the Universe. It participates in us and we participate in it. But most of us don’t recognize the, because we are run by the mind-stream of endless thoughts, fears, and regrets.

Yet deep within each of us, we know that the Soul we were when we are eleven years old is still the Soul we are now. And when we meet someone who is on the same vibrational level as our Soul, we feel a spiritual reaction. Our Souls are tuned into each other. We inherently know that there is something within us and surrounding us that can never die or be destroyed and we feel it in this connection too. It is in a state of growth and freedom, like the expanding Universe itself.
​

Plato understood that the Great One Source Energy is the fountain of all that is. And that within each of us, regardless of our individual characteristics, is Divine Consciousness. It’s just a matter of how much are we allowing into our fields of recognition and how much of it we are uncovering. For it is all there, like a lightbulb covered over with duct tape. Take away the layers of the obscuring tape and you will find the eternal light of the Soul within.
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Why did Buddha say, "All things are impermanent" or "Everything is changing" in his first teaching?

3/10/2023

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Buddha discovered a system for alleviating human suffering. He also discovered that one of the major causes of human suffering is that things change. Because we cling to things in the desperate hope that they won’t change and try to control them so they will remain permanent, we are frustrated and frightened. We recognize that, underneath it all, clinging and control don’t work when everything is in a state of flux.

Buddha saw that we cling passionately to our loved ones. And if they die, we can be in mourning for the rest of our lives. Their physical presence is gone. It is not coming back. And we loved them so much, the world looks dimmer and more hostile because of their absence. Who will love us now? Furthermore, this is going to happen to us too. Every cell in our body has changed or been replaced over and over again as we grow, age, begin to weaken, and finally disappear.

This realization causes enormous pain and fear in people and they obsessively fight all the changes: Plastic surgery, large accumulations of wealth beyond what anyone could ever spend, fanatical dietary practices, rigorously dangerous exercise routines, and hoarding all kinds of material goods to hedge against an uncertain future.

The past is not bringing any consolation to our minds in this swirl of change, either. We remember our beloved persons or pets who are gone and the sadness begins again. The recollection of the past, with all of our family sitting together during the holidays or our pets curled up in our laps, underlines the vacuum they have left as the world continues on its inexorable path of transmutation.
​

An so Buddha told us not to be in denial about this. If we don’t face it, we will be in a constant scramble of trying to keep things the same. And we will always be uncomfortable. We will go through life kicking and screaming over things that are not in our control. We will try to cling, but it will all slip out of our hands. Therefore, we must let it go, let it be the change that is a constant, and follow the Buddha’s suggestions in his Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold path. He gave us a to get out of our misery. If we really adhere to what he presents, we will find a way out of this endless suffering due to clinging to what is constantly changing.
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Is it possible to be very intelligent but not spiritually advanced or enlightened?

3/9/2023

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Intelligence has nothing to do with spiritual enlightenment. Intelligence depends on the thinking mind, which is like a radar system that ensures our survival. As such, it can be frequently alarmed and live in agitation and fear. Spiritual enlightenment does not depend on the mind, logic, or advanced intelligence. It comes from the heart and gut center and not the head.
We have many different kinds of intelligence, which may be debatable:
  • Logical-mathematical
  • Linguistic
  • Spatial
  • Musical
  • Bodily
  • Emotional
  • Naturalistic
Our logical-mathematical and linguistic forms of intelligence allow us to communicate our path to enlightenment when we have found it. They also enable us to read books that point the way. But those books are just one way to “get there.” If you can’t read, or even have a below-average IQ, you can still feel at one with the underlying energy flow of the Universe. You may feel it in your bones or through your emotions. Or you may feel the creative forces of nature running through your body.

Sometimes intelligence stands in the way of understanding Source Energy. It wants to dissect, analyze, and prove itself right. It is looking for all the flaws so it can dominate them and protect itself. Very intelligent people can torture themselves endlessly over everything that could go wrong, from cosmic explosions to atomic meltdowns and entropy in interpersonal relationships . Intellectually understanding all the possible consequences of every action can lead to paralysis and incapacitating anxiety.
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Spiritual enlightenment is a state of inner peace. It is not the mind racing around trying to solve every problem in the world or even every personal issue. And there are many paths to this peace. The intellect is not usually one of them. Yet the Stoics and other philosophers are able to use logic to arrive at a sense of resignation to what is, combined with a zest for being alive. However, in general, it is not the head, but the heart that opens the gates to enlightenment.
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Is it necessary to get rid of desire for enlightenment?

2/28/2023

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The Buddha pinpointed that the cause of all suffering is desire. To rid ourselves of suffering we must give up desire. We need to give up this kind of desire because desire is always for something that is not here. It is in the future. And while we are striving after the future and thinking that our salvation and happiness resides in it, we cannot fully appreciate the present moment. Desire is always for something else. We can’t desire it if we already know we have it.

Yet, it is not in human nature to give up desire. Desire is the intention that has fueled great inventions and works of art. Desire has spurred all intellectual and spiritual growth. We want something better. We want to be better. We want to feel better. And we desire to feel secure in the future. Therefore we take action to accomplish our desires.

In this sense, desire is just part of the Big Picture of constant transformation, expansion, and growth. We don’t need to give it up, because it is built into the system of being human. We only need to give up our attachment to the outcome of our desires. Things may not turn out exactly the way we desired and we cannot control that. Therefore, we suffer and the present moment is something we’ve got to muddle through until our next desires impel us to act.

For example, we want to have a fun-filled family picnic. Then it rains, the flies come out and bite us, the ants consume the food, and the car gets stuck in the mud. We can either suffer through this because our desires were not fulfilled, or we can accept that life is full of surprises and have fun dancing in the rain. Our desire to control the outcome of our actions in a mysterious world is what causes so much psychological suffering.

As we begin to recognize that the results of our desires may not always produce what we were hoping for, we gain emotional maturity. We are able to cope with whatever life manifests and even welcome it. “Bring it on. I want such-and-such, but the Universe, in it’s infinite wisdom, has produced something else. Let me welcome this gift.” Desire is a great springboard into the future but contains the element of dissatisfaction that a keeps us looking for more, and more, and more.
​

And so, desires are not something to get rid of, but rather intentions that are to be put in their place. It’s great if things work out the way we wanted. Yet we are willing to accept whatever happens and not feel we can control everything through just wanting the results we crave. They dissolve all by themselves as an instrument of suffering and become simply the energy of intention.
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Can a woman attain enlightenment in Buddhism?

1/10/2023

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As a woman, whose entire life has been devoted to the Spirit and the unseen powers of the Universe, I have been dismayed by some of the antiquated views on the ability of women to be enlightened.

In some world religions, such as Svetambar Jains, women don’t have a chance of getting off the wheel of birth and death until they are reborn as a man. They were reborn as women as a result of being deceitful in a former life and have to work like crazy to prove themselves worthy of even being born a male next time around. One of the Jain sacred texts states:
“As the result of manifesting deception, a man in this world becomes a woman. As a woman, if her heart is pure, she becomes a man in this world.”

In the Aganna-Sutta from the Pali Canon, a record of the teachings of Gautama Buddha, imply that women are responsible for the downfall of the human race.

These attitudes toward women were imposed many, many centuries ago, when women were not seen as men’s equals. Historically they were seen as men’s possessions or as brood mares for ensuring the birth of a son. A girl birth was seen as a liability, especially when it came to the dowry for marriage.

In other religions such as Islam, women may not pray in public. They are also not permitted to pray during menstruation as they are not considered clean. Judaism also has constraints around women’s spiritual attainments with the concept of not being clean for the menstruating woman. If a woman is seen as not clean during the natural process that enables her to have a child, it brings a great stigma in terms of self-worth even if it not acknowledged.

Buddhism can then also be seen as a sexist religion in this way. Buddha himself was reluctant to take women as nuns. He was afraid of the various consequences that would arise if women were enrolled. The consequences he thought would have a negative impact on the society at that time, when women were held at little value. It was only upon the request of his stepbrother Ananda that Buddha agreed to take female followers into the worship practice.

And even when allowed to enter the practice, only women were required to follow the eight garudhammas. These are the “eight heavy restrictions” the male practitioners were not ordered to follow. These eight restrictions clearly kept monks at a much higher level than the nuns. One of these restrictions is:

"A nun who has been ordained even for a hundred years must greet even a newly-ordained monk by rising up from her seat and saluting with joined palms."

Therefore, women were not considered as complete entities in the old Buddhism of thousands of years ago. This attitude has still carried over to modern times in some Buddhist societies. Women's bodies are not considered fit to attain enlightenment and to become Buddha. There is a still a concept that women are not complete until they attain enlightenment when reborn as a man. The man’s form is required for completeness. The Bahudhatuka-sutta states that there could never be a female Buddha.

The psychological impact of this view is to keep women in a weaker and inferior position. Their morale is kept low because they think, “What’s the use? What if I get born as a woman again? How holy do I have to be before I get a chance at freedom from this bondage? There’s something wrong with being a woman.”

According to Ajahn Sujato, the early texts state that the first garudhamma, which states that every nun must bow to every monk, was instituted by the Buddha because of the customs of the time. But modern scholars doubt that the rule even originated with the Buddha.
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The rules were written only after the people started to become literate. And in ancient times, men were the first ones to learn to read and write. It was only much later that women got the chance to be educated because they were seen to be more at the level of the animals. These rules were written by a male-dominant society to favor that male Buddhists. It was one more power play over women.
​

But now, the world has changed. Yet fundamentalist world religions have not changed. Their opinions and beliefs are based on what seemed practical many centuries ago. These beliefs do not apply today if they ever applied at all. As a deeply spiritual person, I know that we are not just these bodies, miraculous as they are. At the Soul level, we are beyond being men and women. The body and its endocrine and hormonal systems do not apply to the world of the Spirit. Any view about men being spiritually superior to women is not relevant when we know that women are capable of every task a man can do—and also produce children!
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What is the connection between Martin Heidegger's philosophy and Buddhism (especially Zen)?

10/23/2022

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Martin Heidegger’s philosophy is deep and complex, and yet he makes statements that are simple and Zen-like. Zen is accepting things as they are and not fighting the flow. This includes the Zen approach to death, which is Life and Death are one. It is a continuum. There is no dividing line between them. As in the world of form, there is actually no dividing line between anything, there only seems to be to our perceptions. Everything interacts as part of a cosmic dance of chemicals, atoms, and non-physical elements. All is one underneath it all.

Heidegger made this statement:

"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.”

He is saying that our fear of death and our craving to “make something” out of our lives puts us on a hamster wheel of tasks and to-do lists that never end but don’t lead to peace, joy, or understanding of our true selves. Instead of being in denial about our own physical death, if we face that it is inevitable, we won’t scramble around living life on the surface. It’s like the Kamikaze fighter who crashed his plane but didn’t die. He expected to. die And when he survived he felt renewed, as if he saw life and all its glory for the first time.

Heidegger also said, “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.” He is saying that we are more than the physical bodies, which, like snowflakes are all individual but form the totality of the snowfield. Or like raindrops falling into the ocean. The individuality disappears, once we cross over into death.
​

This is Zen-like because of the emphasis, that after all, All is One. We realize that the deepest level of our life, what in Zen is called the "true self," is always here-and-now. This true self, even though here-and-now, is always changing. When we are born we enter the world of change and when we die we enter the world of change. It is always the same yet always changing. If we don’t realize this, we live deluded lives. That is why Heidegger said, “Transcendence constitutes selfhood.”

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Why did Abraham Maslow say that self actualization was the highest need in his hierarchy of needs?

9/27/2022

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Abraham Maslow said, "What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization."

But we can't get there before we meet all the other needs, including those of basic survival. Animals don’t look at their lives in terms of their potential to grow intellectually or spiritually. They are not concerned with completing their story and creating meaningful lives for themselves. Their main concern is to eat and avoid being eaten so they can procreate and replenish the stock.

Humans, however, have a need, once all their other survival and emotional needs are met, to find meaning in their lives and to demonstrate and fulfill their particular talents, gifts, and abilities. Furthermore, it is not enough just to survive if you are a fully developed human with an intellect and spiritual yearnings. We must find the meaning behind the struggles, difficulties, and sorrows that beset us all. Life is too painful to endure just for the sake of survival.

And so, we seek answers to our deepest questions that other life forms do not concern themselves about: Who are we? Why are we here? Are we just the puppets of our genes or is there spiritual significance to what we are going through? If we are starving, freezing, under threat, and just barely hanging on, we need to take care of that first. But once that has been solved, what is the point of it all?
​

Thus, Maslow observed that what uniquely defines being human is the drive to self-actualize, or as the Army slogan says, “Be all that you can be.” That means, accomplishing what you love to do, what you must do, and what defines you as the one-of-a-kind being that you are. It also means finding meaning outside of the physical aspects of life. It is about finding your inner life and Soul. Without this, life is a meaningless and fear-driven round of feeding and reproducing, interspersed with short-lived pleasures until we die. And therefore, as humans, endowed with the potential for cosmic consciousness, self-actualization is our highest need.
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    As a spiritual guide, healer, and lecturer, I have had the privilege to touch the lives of people who long to understand their higher selves. Please leave questions and comments for me. Hope to see you often here!

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