Had a rather bizarre dream-experience early this morning, as I was drifting in that space midway between the dream and waking states ...

First I was in a dream in which I (as a dream-character) was playing basketball, and somehow cut my leg seriously enough to require medical intervention. Then that dream-world dissolved ...

... and sometime later a different dream-world emerged, within which I (as another dream-character) was doing some yoga asanas, that were somehow part of a wedding ceremony; and then standing in line to congratulate my friend who was the bride. As I stood in this line, I ran into an old friend (a character corresponding to someone who is also a waking-world friend), who had a young son with whom I struck up a conversation. At one point during this conversation -- and this is the strange part -- I told the young boy about "my" recent basketball injury (the cut to my leg), even though this event had happened within a completely different dream, to a character who was not necessarily the identically-same character as the one I was in the current dream.

Read More...

"The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman."

~ Jonathan Swift

We'd be hard-pressed to make a case for Jonathan Swift being a Taoist (except, perhaps, for his awesome sense of humor) -- but nevertheless in this statement he expresses a view in clear alignment with Taoist sensibilities: in valuing the power of silence; embracing a generally uplifted attitude; and being wise about what we consume, and in this way taking good care -- being an intelligent steward -- of our precious human bodymind.

It's in this spirit that I'll offer an enthusiastic recommendation for the liver and colon cleansing Colonix Program created by Dr. Natura, with just one caveat: While Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman can (with great mutual benefit) be bona fide residents of your household, Doctor Natura is best kept as an honored guest -- invited just once every three or four years, for an extended visit of a month or two, and then sent on his way, leaving you greatly enhanced (and in relevant ways reduced) by his visit.

Why is doing a colon cleanse, every now and again, a really good idea? Read More...

So .... when does the condensation of the formless Divine (Shiva, Tao, Dharmakaya) into the field of space/time (i.e. of defined dimensionality) -- as reflections, emanations, or embodiments (the ten-thousand-things!) of its Enlightened power -- become a problem? What is it that turns the playground of the manifest world into an (imaginary) prison within which an (imaginary) egoic "me" suffers horrendously (or even in just small but persistently annoying ways)?

In the following passage -- and the remainder of his excellent book, The Paradox of Becoming -- Thanissaro Bhikkhu offers a clue ...

"We live in the same world, but in different worlds. The differences come partly from our living in different places. If you live to the east of a mountain and I to the west, my world will have a mountain blocking its sunrises, and yours its sunsets. But -- depending on what we want out of the world -- our worlds can also differ even when we stand in the same place. A painter, a skier, and a miner looking at a mountain from the same side will see different mountains.

Our worlds are also different in the sense that each person can move from one world to another -- sometimes very quickly -- over time. If you're a painter, a skier and a miner, you will see the same mountain in different ways depending on what you want from it at any given moment -- beauty, adventure, or wealth. Even if you stay focused on nothing but the desire to paint, the beauty you want from the mountain will change with time -- sometimes over years, sometimes from one moment to the next. Your identity as a painter will continue to evolve. Each and every desire, in fact, has its own separate world; and within those worlds, we take on different identities.

The Buddha had a word for this experience of an identity inhabiting a world defined around a specific desire. He called it bhava, which is related to the verb bhavati, to "be," or to "become." He was especially interested in bhava as process -- how it comes about, and how it can be ended. So "becoming" is probably a better English rendering for the term than "being" or "existence," especially as it follows on doing, rather than existing as a prior metaphysical absolute or ground. In other words, it's not the source from which we come; it's something produced by the activity of our minds."

*

Measurement

Measurement is the word we use to indicate the practice of articulating, in as precise a way as possible, the ordering of objects in space and/or time, i.e. defining their relative size and position. Such a procedure can be very useful in relative contexts. It's interesting, however, to notice the assumptions that are typically embedded in such a process -- its "hidden" components, if you will.

One typical assumption, for instance -- and the bedrock of the scientific method -- is that of the so-called "neutral observer" -- i.e. the capacity of the scientist to assume a stance of utter objectivity, a "place" from which they are able to measure the object under investigation without in any way altering it in the process.

But quantum mechanics challenges -- in a convincing way -- this assumption of the scientist as a neutral observer. Read More...