I can't get no satisfaction!

“Be content with what you have, rejoice the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
Lao Tzu

Even a child or a mentally retarded person can laugh and be happy.
But do you know how hard it is to be unhappy?
Do you know how hard it is to be miserable and hate your life?

It takes a lot of energy!
It takes a lot of thinking and reasoning.
It takes long sleepless nights of self torture.
And exhausting searches for that perfect excuse for failure.



Any body can be happy!
You don’t need to be rich to be happy.
You don’t need to have things to be happy.
You don’t need to worry about the world economy going south, about the inflation going up and the dollar going down.

Anybody can be happy!
You don’t need to get involved in politics, to debate religious or philosophical ideas.
You don’t need to have enemies and you don’t need to hate anybody.
You don’t need to live your life in a continuous battle.

You don’t need to do anything to be happy.
But to be unhappy; that is a hard thing to accomplish!

It takes a special person to be miserable.
It takes will power and cunning.
It takes maturity and stamina.
It takes discipline and a lot of perseverance.
Being unhappy is a very difficult and complex task!

So I’m just sitting here smiling like a retard.
…I can’t think of any excuse for being unhappy!
Besides I am not the young energetic block I used to be.
Even if I cold make up some clever excuse for self flagellation, I don’t think I’d have enough energy to do it.

Bummer!
Happiness is easy and it’s free but misery is a very expensive luxury and I am too poor to afford it!
So I’ll have to settle for less :)
I guess I’ll just have to live the rest of my life in this unbearable happiness…

…Oh well, not everybody can be successful in this life.

Back to Zen

A great Zen master once said:
Zen is to eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty and sleep when you are sleepy…
Or something like that :)
So one might say “Hey, I can do that! Enlightenment after all is not that hard.”
But few realize that “simple” is the hardest thing to do.

Caught in the illusion of life few people realize the tangled web we have spawned.
Few realize that we have enslaved ourselves to the clock and the dollar.
Time and money determine when, what and how we eat, drink and sleep…
The truth is that we don’t run our lives; our lives run us!

I see a lot of “Buddhist” out on the net preaching the virtues of enlightenment.
I have never found one yet to practice what they preach.
Studying the wisdom of the scriptures is like studying the art of bicycling.
It means nothing until you get on the bicycle :)

Zen is the art of being free.
Free from the illusions of life.
Free from the desires of the material world.
Free from the tyranny of time and money.

It sounds so simple and so beautiful, doesn’t it?
You can almost feel the power, the freedom, and the infinite opportunities opening up.
To become the center of your lfe, the master of your destiny.
To be the source of your happiness and love.

…I have mastered the art of self centering.
I can reach inward for the energy, the love and the wisdom I need.
But some how I get scared and I ran back to the self pity and comfort of my own excuses.
...I thought it was my lack of faith in God that stops me from wining my freedom.
But lately I’ve been thinking that is the lack of faith in me that is the problem.

Some how I fear that there is not enough love, power and love in me.
I fear that I will “run out” of it, and find myself empty like some of the people I see around me;
– living like zombies on their medicated lives.
You know the fear I’m talking about?
Well, maybe you don’t.

But is it having that courage to be what you want to be.
To reach for your dreams with the conviction of your impending success.
To eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty and sleep when you are sleepy…
It is that simple.
…I just have to stop complicating my life.
He, he, he…
Namaste!

I got the blogger’s blues!

Negativity has a nasty habit of looking for me.
No matter how hard I try to hide it will find its way to me.
I got the blogger’s blues!

Last September I cut off my TV watching habit.
I think that some where in the depths of my being there is a little drama queen loving all that turmoil, but when the “drama” started affecting the people that I love, the self indulgence had to stop!
So I turned off the TV, and let me tell you, it was one of the best things I ever done in my life!

Suddenly I found myself with more time and more energy at my disposal, and since I don’t like to be idle for too long I had to pick up another bad habit – It is called internet socializing :)

Now, unlike the TV where a couple of talking heads are brain washing you into a submissive citizen and consumer, the internet still has that Wild West freedom feeling and appeal.
You can still meet people that are not interested into selling you shit, you can still meet free thinkers that are not goose stepping in popular or official dogma, and you can still reach over the boundaries of class, age, sexual orientation, religion etc and have honest friends and a honest exchanges of ideas.

(Or maybe I am just a very fortunate person in finding you guys!)

But things are changing fast on the internet and the Wild West culture is starting to be over run by the same evil doers that are running the TV and media outlets.

Blogs were supposed to be a private, personal form of expression, right?
But now everybody that is somebody has a blog!
From Oprah to Phil, from Drudge to Huffington and Obama the so called “blogs” are turning the internet in another TV station.

I wouldn’t mind if Oprah would spend 10 hours a day writing post and answering to comments but she doesn’t.
Behind the so called “blogs” there is an army of paid professionals that are running the show.
(How can I or any other blogger compete with that?)

Same thing is happening to My Space, Face Book, Twitter etc.
The simple folk and his little form of expression are run out the town by the big money ant their big guns.

But the real sad and disturbing trend is that a lot of the “little” guys that IMO should protect this free spirit and fight against big brother and big money, are joining the evil doer’s side.

More and more I am bombarded by “sellers” and “pushers” that under the disguise of gentile bloggers are selling and pushing shit to me.
And I am not talking about people promoting their blog and their creativity; I am talking about people that are pushing their internet stores or political party agendas.

So the question I have is how do you fence yourself from evil doers but keep reaching out for the like minded folk?
How do you make your little voice heard in this more and more media dominated environment?
Is blogging still a relevant form of expression or has it become obsolete?

What is your personal experience and POV?

Staying in trouble II

Troubles are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can gorge them, banish them, abolish them.
- Mark Twain

I did not know that Mark Twain was a Buddhist :)

I remember when I started my meditation practice.
I would do this meditation where I close my eyes and imagine a great source of energy, love, health, truth and harmony like a big ball of light and I would breathe in this energy,
guide it into my body, into my blood stream and from there into every cell of my body.

I would imagine this energy washing away all my stress, fears and troubles and then I would exhale all that negativity out of my body.
And I would repeat it until I would attain complete body rest and mind stillness.
And at that point all my troubles would be out of my mind and I would be just as pure and perfect as the day I was born.

A very powerful meditation, that I still do from time to time to recharge my batteries but then I get back to my illusory “real” life to play the hide and seek game of the ego.

I would always know that this “reality” is just a temporary illusion and our troubles are only a figment of our imagination but that illusion can be so powerful, so overwhelming that many of us can’t see through it.

I remember a conversation with my friend J ( a very stubborn atheist )
He said to me:
- That is just religious mumble jumble. How can you deny the obvious, the concrete, factual reality?
Here, I have a problem with my car – can you say that is just an illusion, that it is not real and it is just a creation of my imagination?

- Yes – I reply – We have created the illusion that we need a car, by creating the illusion that we need a freeway, by creating the illusion that we need an urban sprawl, by creating the illusion of progress.
You can renounce that illusion.
Move to an Amish community and suddenly you will not need a car, car registration, car insurance, gas, car maintenance or repairs – all your car troubles will vanish like magic :)

- That is just more religious BS – he replied –
You have a car, you have the same car problems and you know it as well as I do, you just don’t want to admit it.

- My friend, I have the problems that I have, the same way you have the problems that you have. I am not denying that.
The difference between you an I is that you believe your problems are real and I believe that my problems are my own choosing.
And that is the difference between fighting your life or playing your life.

Staying in trouble

You might ask why I am so obsessed with micro managing my life.
Why an enlightened Buddhist worries about life’s little problems?
Why Buddha of Hollywood doesn’t have faith?
But the truth is that I am not worried or concerned about my life.

I don’t want to sound like a televangelist that has a direct telephone line with God but it seems to me that every time I had a major event in my life God has intervened with his divine powers in my favor. (Or maybe was just an angel or something :)
I mean really, really bad situations when I had no power at all and all hope was gone, when I was thinking “this is it – this time I’m not gonna make it” a saving hand protected me and some how everything ended OK after all.

Now, that makes me feel special, makes me feel loved, and makes me feel like in God’s eyes I’m not an insignificant son.
It makes me feel that he cares about me, and I know in the depth of my being, that God will always be with me.

At the same time, I find my daily life bogged in little problems, irritating inconveniences, little and annoying people, and insignificant petty quarrels.
(But God doesn’t help me with those at all, even when I am asking for help.)

So I figured out that God must be busy saving some other unfortunate being from a catastrophic predicament and probably doesn’t have time to deal with my trivial problems.
(The truth is that I shouldn’t ask for help at all. After all I have a pretty good life and complaining about my life would be the most ungrateful thing I could do.)

So here I am, like a little kitten fighting with a ball of yarn, fighting life’s little miseries.
It is some sort of challenge, some sort of an addictive game for me.
It is a compulsion – like buying too many books when I know I don’t have time to read them all.

So I know that I don’t have any problems, that I am getting my self into trouble just to have something to do, but I figured that as long I have fun doing it, it shouldn’t be that much of a sin :)