My spiritual blog & articles - My Spiritual Coach

What is the difference between Buddhists who believe that there is no end to enlightenment and those who say that everyone eventually becomes enlightened?

11/5/2023

The way the human mind interprets “enlightenment” is that it is an end point. Like the end of a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Once we are enlightened, then all life is solved. We won't have any problems, there will be eternal peace of mind (an oxymoron), and we will never experience suffering again.

But enlightenment is not an end point. It is a context in which we view all of life and death. It is a space from which we perceive all the manifestations of life. It is not a state of perpetual bliss and ecstasy of escape. It is ability to be in the present moment no matter what is happening or what we are doing. That is what enlightenment was to Buddha and that is what he revealed.

He also taught how to live so the present moment reveals itself to us in profound ways that enriches our inner being, our Souls. He understood that our Soul is always and eternally Here and Now. The future, or enlightenment in the future, is not going to bring us anything. It is all about the Now because the Soul is ageless and doesn’t have anything to do with time, or any of the other human ways of measuring experience.

Let’s look at the word “believe.” “Believe” means we are willing to follow because we are not sure but it makes sense to us. “I believe it to be true,” is different from “I know it to be true.” We believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy when we were kids. Then, when we grow up, we know that Santa was a wonderful invention to make kids happy at Christmas. We don’t “believe” in him anymore.

Buddhism is not about following beliefs. It is about a proven method of alleviating suffering, both mental and physical.
Believing that everyone will eventually become enlightened is just one more statement saying, “I’m not sure but this guy sounds good so I’ll go with what he says.” That time is necessary to be enlightened.

The Soul is already enlightened, for it is not time-bound. It is eternal and doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That is what defines the Soul, as opposed to all the other things that come and go, including our bodies. Finding our way back to our Soul and deep inner peace has nothing to do with hoping (believing) that someone is right because it makes us feel better about where humanity is going.

There is no end to enlightenment, as there is no end to Source Energy of the Universe. It is always Now. It’s not like we have to work our way into heaven. Our Souls are already there. So to “believe” that everyone will go to a heaven of enlightenment is a nice fairy tale to adhere to, but enlightenment has nothing to do with believing what other people say or any religious system that will supposedly get us there.

What are some reasons why the book "The Awakening of Intelligence" by J. Krishnamurti is highly regarded?

4/27/2023

I am glad to hear that J. Krishnamurti’s The Awakening of Intelligence is highly regarded. For I was under the impression that people have moved on to more spectacular gurus, that offer more entertainment.

Krishamurti was serious about understanding what is really holy about life and all its permutations. He wasn’t about ceremonies, dancing and writhing around in ecstasy, and putting on a dramatic display of how “enlightened” we are. He was more like what Jesus said when someone asked him how to pray. He wasn’t for the big public grandstanding of the ego, showing how religious one is and how one is going to “heaven.” He said,

“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
—Matthew 6:5-6

Krishnamurti is about the inward journey towards finding out what is really true for us. Not what others tell us, not what we believe because we were brought up that way, and not because it is a trendy lifestyle to be caught up in Bikram yoga and Osho’s sexual pyrotechnics because we are lost and lonely.

I am not surprised that Krishanmurti has stood the test of time. I am just surprised that in this period of mass amusement, passing as spirituality, that he would be embraced at all. He is not kidding and he is not nice. He outright tells us to look within and find the wisdom that resides in silence and stillness. It’s not effortful. It’s a quiet space that discards all the trapping of what everyone else tells us is “the Truth.”

Why did Buddha say, "All things are impermanent" or "Everything is changing" in his first teaching?

3/10/2023

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.

What is your opinion of Baghwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho)? Do you think he was a real spiritual leader or simply a psychological trickster? What is your personal experience with him/it?

3/2/2023

I was in India when Rajneesh, or Osho, was ordered to leave. The government had opened investigations into multiple allegations of criminal behavior in connection to Osho. These included charges related to Osho-sanctioned prostitution, international drug trafficking, gold smuggling, money laundering, and tax evasion. It affected me because I had loved his earlier writings and felt he was pandering to the undisciplined party atmosphere Americans and some Europeans desired.

Ordered by the government, Osho had to pay back taxes, a major blow to his reputation that greatly angered the Rajneeshees. In 1981, the year he left for Oregon from India, more criminality took place. Referred to as one of the most terrible cases of a bio-terrorism attack in America, Osho’s followers reportedly poisoned half Wasco’s county’s voters (in an attempt to take over the county) by pouring or spraying Salmonella-tainted liquid on salad bars of ten popular restaurants. A total of 751 people were affected by the poisoning and hospital beds were full of patients in critical condition.

Obviously, there is nothing spiritual about killing people, or trying to kill people for the sake of power. Also, Osho’s goal of having 365 Rolls Royces for every day of the year did not denote a life of simplicity in the guru lineage. Furthermore, Osho’s ruthless deputy Sheela attempted to have his physician, Dr. Andrews, killed, ordering an accomplice to poison him with a shot of adrenaline to the buttocks. By this time, Osho was a regular Nitrous Oxide user (administered by Dr. Andrews) and it wouldn’t have looked good if word got out about this addiction.

Finally, for spiritual enlightenment or awakening, we don’t need to go into extended periods of ecstatic dance and indiscriminate sex to get there. This appealed to Americans, who wanted to party hearty and still have the trappings of spirtuality. Osho’s theory is that we must overcome our inhibitions to get into the deeper layers of our consciousness. But sitting quietly and centering on the Higher Self through conscious breathing is a much more effective method and truer to the yogic path. All that sweaty dancing around and orgiastic behavior may be fun, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with understanding the non-dual aspects of the Universe.

Hatred, killing, poisoning, and sexual exploitation are the paths to chaos, not to any kind of spiritual realization. At one time Osho spoke beautifully of love and I admired his way of expressing eternal truths.

“Love is a spiritual experience – nothing to do with sexes and nothing to do with bodies, but something to do with the innermost being.”

“I teach you to be more conscious. And love will come as you become more conscious: it is a guest that comes, that comes inevitably to those who are ready and prepared to receive it.”

But somewhere along the line, he got twisted, as so many “gurus” have. It then became all about ego, greed, power, sexual exploitation, addiction, and destruction. Osho’s ego-mind overcame and counterbalanced all the good he brought to the spirit-based life he had passionately proposed in his early practice.

What is the connection between eating mindfully and being mindful according to Thich Nhat Hanh in "The Miracle of Mindfulness"? How is it related to Buddhism (in general)?

1/11/2023

Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment, instead of racing ahead to the next thing that needs to be done. It also means not getting lost in ruminating about the past, especially past suffering. And since Buddhism is all about healing our suffering, mindfulness of the beauty of the present moment brings us peace.

If we rush through our meals because they are an obstacle to getting things done, we turning our eating time into another arena of suffering. We gallop through the meal, barely tasting anything. Shoveling the food into our gullets so we can “get on with it.” Eckart Tolle tells about a meal he had with some accomplished professors. They stopped slamming down the food in long enough to make a verbal point, and then resumed their ravenous slurping.

Or, we can be ruminating about the past. Some past hurt that we felt and continue to feel because we bring it up again and again. We can go through a whole meal this way and not taste anything or appreciate the harvest of the earth. Not even appreciate the skill of whoever prepared it. This type of lack of mindfulness can actually bring on heartburn and other digestive issues. We are not at peace while our body is trying to digest food. We are secreting too much acid or not enough acid and we will feel it shortly thereafter.

The Miracle of Mindfulness is the abundant peace we feel instantly when we just stop with all this ruminating and anxiety about the future—or thinking that the future is better than right now. When we eat mindfully, we are not so intent on filling up the empty hole that we feel. This can help with weight management, because we are not just flinging food down our throats because we feel so empty inside. We don’t run to food for comfort because our mind is quiet enough when we are fully in the Now.

Eating mindfully means tasting each bite. Appreciating the flavors. Feeling gratitude for everyone and everything that made this food possible. It means slowing down and experiencing all the textures, flavors, aromas, and the vibrations of care and love with which they were combined and prepared. This is gratitude for what basically sustains us. It is living with appreciation and attentiveness. The future is not going to bring anything better than right now. And so we are in a state of bliss as we pay attention to the present moment.

Can a woman attain enlightenment in Buddhism?

1/10/2023

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.

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!

How can you tell if a spiritual teacher is genuine or not?

11/14/2022

The spiritual teacher is a vessel for Divine wisdom and insight into the eternal truths that are difficult to teach. They require an equal passion for discovering their spiritual natures from their students. They are not there to rescue anyone or to create a fantasy that sells dreams to frightened people who find life meaningless. Or to set themselves up as gods to be worshipped.

Many, such as Osho, or Rajinish, begin as clear vessels and then go haywire as the love of power and ego tendencies start to emerge. We can feel all kinds of inspiration and inner peace and finally belonging around such people, or just be carried along by the crowd in a blissful dance of loosened inhibition. But that has nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with needing to feel that somebody has all the answers. As in cases such as Jim Jones of Jonestown: People felt wonderful around him until 900 people died because of his commands, including 200 children, who were murdered.

Just because we can escape into something other than our difficult lives and join a group that makes us feel safe is not enough basis for really knowing if the spiritual teacher is genuine. It is more than a feeling. Feelings come and go and are mostly based on our mind’s reaction to something first. If we have a wonderful feeling of peace because we have finally found the answer out of our misery, that may not be enough of an indication as to whether the teacher is genuine or not.

So many spiritual teachers have gone the way of power and corruption, it would be easy to trash them all. But, the genuine ones stand the test of time. “Satya” Sai Baba was discovered to have serially molested boy students for years. Yoga guru Bikram also indulged in sexual misconduct. They both had excessive collections of jewelry, cars, and other items of personal wealth in their multimillion dollar estates. Osho owned 94 Rolls Royces, and was aiming at one for every day of the year.

Yet, on the other hand, we have Sai Baba of Shirdi, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lao Tau, Sri Ramana Marharshi, and so many other great spiritual teachers whose lessons have endured. These teachers were simple in their lives and acknowledged that they were only expressing the inner light and the truth of Spirit and Soul that was revealed to them through contemplation and grace.

As we can see through the years, ultimately the true teachers emerge. They do no harm to their students. They do not seek to get rich off of their students. If they charge a fee, it is because the student needs to show commitment. The student needs to work for it. But it is a nominal fee compared to the energy the teacher puts into sharing understanding and spiritual experience of lasting value. In my own experience, spiritual teachers put in three times the energy of any student. These teachers do not want to be celebrities or be worshipped. They see themselves as humble vessels who were blessed with the ability to communicate and then step out of the picture.

How does someone's personal belief system effect how they see the world around them?

11/13/2022

We are all products of our cultural conditioning. When we were children, we believed everything our parents told us. We needed to be loved and cared for. Going along with our caretakers’ beliefs and what they told us, helped us to survive. Often, if we went against these beliefs, we would be punished or ostracized. So we learned to conform. But those are not our personal belief systems. They are handed down to us, fully formed. Yet we think they are ours.

We may think we have a personal belief system, but if we scratch the surface, unless it is based on our own experience and direct apprehension, it is just one more set of ideas that someone came up with a long time ago and everyone around fell into. Then, if it is based on “belief” instead of direct knowledge, it is based on a supposition. We suppose something to be true when it is a belief. We don’t really know it. We observe, and based on our imperfect knowledge, come up with a plausible explanation.

For example, human sacrifice, was part of many of the ancient belief systems. People thought that was their personal belief. If a human was not sacrificed, the sun would not rise in the morning. It was believed to be important and necessary to kill adults, children, and babies to make sure the sun rose. Of course, now we know that the sun doesn’t “rise.” It is all a matter of the rotation of the earth and where we are on it, in relation to the sun. The sun is always there, just where it always was.

Then, as time went by, the belief about human sacrifice and the sun rising changed and was replaced by other beliefs. All beliefs are stories we have made up to make sense out of life or to get what we desire. But all beliefs are not based on any real experience—only on lack of it and lack of knowledge and actually the fear of the new and real.

As Thich Nhat Hanh says,

“Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.”

Beliefs are about, “This is right because people told me so and I haven’t figured it out for myself.” They are what have caused so much human turmoil. Animals have no such belief systems and are much more peaceful because of it. Especially when people start killing each other over their belief systems, which are based on conformity, illusions, and delusions that make them feel better for the moment. They can see all Christians as devils or all non-Christians as bound for Hell. And it is all based on unexamined ego patterns, shaped by fear and ignorance.

How does Zen help us deal with suffering and hardship?

11/13/2022

Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Zen master, says this:

“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”

He is not saying that people don’t suffer. In fact, one of the fundamental observations of Buddhism is: Desire for and craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality is the root cause of all suffering. These desires are all wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them can only bring suffering.

Suffering means that we do not like what is happening in the present moment. We are not satisfied with it. It brings us emotional pain. Suffering is emotional and is a choice. Pain is inevitable and sometimes even a blessing when it lets us know that we need to take care of the issue. But suffering is chewing over in our minds the fears and anxieties that are merely add-ons and don’t help us at all.

He’s saying suffering may be a strong pull for us. We may want to wallow in it. And bask in feeling sorry for ourselves. We can ask, “Why me?”, as if this is something personal the Universe is inflicting on us, when we feel entitled to be happy every moment of the day and night. And furthermore, we never want our bodies to die. But because we know these bodies will go, we can’t allow ourselves to be happy because we will all end in death anyway.

Hanh says, stop this miserable cycle of anxiety. Don’t put off your happiness until the day when everything is picture perfect and your body won’t die. Be happy now. Even if your toe hurts and you just bit your tongue. Experience the pain fully and when it is divorced from suffering, it is just one more strong physical sensation.

Zen’s primary focus in on mindfulness in the present moment. It is not about the wild hurricane of the whirlwind mind. It is finding peace in every minute, joy in the kernel of timelessness, and gratitude for it. Suffering gets transmuted, through this awareness, into a profound revelation of perfection right now.

How can belief in something that cannot be seen or measured provide strength and comfort?

11/5/2022

We can't see electricity, nor the interconnections of the Internet that makes our communication with each other possible. We don’t see the air, yet we rely on it for our very lives. We put our trust in so many things that we cannot see or measure.

We can measure the outcome or output of these invisible forces, such as how much light or heat electricity puts out. But the actual invisible energy is not quantifiable in that way. All we can do is rely on the thermodynamic laws and laws of electrical flow to predict their outcomes.

Belief and trust are two different things. Belief means, “I don’t know. I’d like to think it’s such and such a way. But I don’t really know.” Or, belief is based on blind trust, as a child believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

But when it comes to finding strength in unseen forces outside ourselves and our sensory apparatus, it is more a matter of deep feeling, and an inner knowing that comes from profound experience. If it is based on belief alone, we could find comfort in the Great Rabbit in the Sky, if that is what our culture teaches. Then, a new belief system comes along, such as the Great Turtle beneath the Earth, and we believe that as well. Because belief is not based on knowledge or experience.

The most important things in the world are those unseen things, such as love. We can’t see love or peace. We can only feel love, peace, and joy. Also, it doesn’t depend on sight at all. Sighted people rely so much on what they see to believe what they think is real. What about our blind brothers and sisters? They can feel the presence of the Holy Source Energy of the Universe too. Because, Spiritual forces are not dependent on our senses, which can easily be lost, destroyed, or diminished by age.

Therefore, the only things that are truly comforting, are the eternal things, which cannot be destroyed or diminished. That is what brings comfort. But don’t try to measure them with any scientific instruments. You must feel them to know them.