Who's in control?

Ms. Rosenberg is walking down the street with her two grandchildren all dressed up for the morning Sabbath service.

Ms. Freedman is coming the other way and sees them.

- Oh, my goodness! Are those your grandchildren? I can’t believe how tall they have grown. How old are they now?

Very proud of her grandchildren Ms. Rosenberg replies:

- The doctor is 7 and the lawyer is 9!

Funny or not, 6 out of 10 Americans are unhappy with their career choice.

Yet every morning they wake up and they go to their dreaded jobs week after week, year after year.

We started our lives playing in the sand pan with a shiny red tin truck, dreaming that one day we will drive the real thing, carrying iceberg lettuce from California over the Rocky Mountains, sun gleaming in our eyes, wind blowing in our hair.

And somehow, we wake up one day practicing corporate law, locked up in a stuffy office with a mountain high pile of paper in front of us.

(Or something similarly disappointing)

Somewhere along the way, our shiny red truck of happiness got high jacked by the people wishing our best interests and now some other poor schmuck is driving it over the Rocky Mountains while dreaming of a cushy office job in a law firm in the big city.

(Such is the irony of life.)

So, what the hell just happened to our childhood dreams?

As the immortal John Lennon said:

"Life is what's happening to us while we're busy making other plans."

So stop and ask yourself: Who is in charge of my life?

Am I in charge or there is somebody or something else driving my life and if the latest is the case ask yourself: Am I happy the way he/she/it is running my life?

If not; why don’t you get read of he/she/it and put somebody else in charge?

After all, in charge or not you are still the one responsible for the happiness – or the unhappiness - in your life.

Almost everybody is unhappy with heir life or at least with some aspects of their life but almost nobody is unhappy with the decisions and the actions they make or not.

It is funny how almost everybody wants a better life but almost nobody wants or works to become a better person.

It is funny because even if we want to change our life nobody wants to take charge and responsibility for that change.

The truth is that if you are not in charge of your life somebody or something else is and they are using that power in their own interests, not yours, no matter what they believe or say to you.

SATORI

Q: What has four legs and one arm?

A; A happy pitbull.

It’s a joke.

Do you get it?

If you get it you’ll laugh, if you don’t you will be offended. 

If you are not even offended you’ll just stare confused and ask for an explanation.

I had a friend like that, he always asked me to translate my jokes for him. (You know the type )

So I would go: - Pitbulls are very aggressive dogs. They will rip your arm off..

But of course, when you explain a joke like that, the joke is not funny any longer.

So he would go: - Aaaha! Like he understood it. But he missed the whole point entirely.

I was telling him the joke because I wanted to make him laugh not to makehim understand.

When two hands clap there is a sound.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

It’s a koan.

Do you get it?

If you get it, you got satori.

If you don’t you’ll think it is a stupid or absurd question.

If you don’t even think that it is stupid or absurd, you’ll just stare confused and ask for an explanation.

So I’ll give you the answer: The sound of Silence

You need two hands to clap.

You need silence to have sound, and sound to have silence.

One cannot exist without the other, like the two sides of a coin or two ends of a rope.

Technically speaking a constant pressure on your year drums is silence not sound.

You need  a wave, a continuous switching between pressure and no pressure to make a sound.

Two hands pressed together make no sound either.

You have to clap to make the wave oscillation.

It's a yin, yang thingy!

But of course when a koan is explained like that you miss the whole point entirely.

The master has nothing to teach his students that they already don’t know. (Well at least the real ones)

A master does not give his student a koan so the students have something to study, understand and learn, because there is nothing to study, understand or learn.

A master gives his students a koan in the hope that the student will have Satori.

That sudden realization, that sudden awakening that AHA! I got it moment.

I know you purists out there will go:

-        So how come you are doing this?
How come you are teaching this if teaching is not possible?

I am doing it because I am a bad teacher. 

Actually I’m not even a teacher, I’m just a pissed off individual.

And I know what you are thinking:

-        So if you call yourself a buddha how come you are pissed off?
Aren’t enlightened people suppose to be serene, on a plane above mundane?

Oh well... of course, if they choose so.

Four Bodhisattva Vows

In Mahayana Buddhism, bodhisattva is the Sanskrit term for anyone who, motivated by great compassion, has generated bodhicitta, which is a spontaneous wish and a compassionate mind to attain buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings

At the beginning of their journey to enlightenment, anybody wishing to follow the Buddhist path takes these “Four Bodhisattva Vows”

“There are innumerable sentient beings in the universe. I vow to help them all to awaken

 My imperfections are inexhaustible. I vow to overcome them all.

The Dharma is unknowable. I vow to know it.

The way of the Awakening is unattainable. I vow to attain it.”

For the non-initiated, the vows seem paradoxical and unattainable.

The vows are a challenge to accomplish things that no human can accomplish.

The misunderstanding arises both from the limitations of language translation and the Eastern –  Western philosophical differences.

In the Western philosophy, the human is born in a state of imperfection that cannot be overcome.  Only by divine intervention can we be absolved of our sins.

In the Eastern philosophy, the human imperfection is relegated to the Ego and it can be overcome by attaining enlightenment, or the state of No-Ego.

A regular person, the “Ego” cannot and will not accomplish any of the vows.

Only by becoming a buddha can a bodhisattva overcome the paradoxical impossibilities of the vows tasks.

Attaining enlightenment is like falling in love. It cannot be done purposely but millions of people fall in love each year.

You have to look at the world and fall in love with it.

The path to impossible starts in infinite compassion.

Where The Truth Lies

A long time ago I had a very nasty car accident.  

I was stopped, waiting to make a left turn at the intersection when out of the blue a car smashed into my back.

There were several motorists that witnessed the accident and stopped to help. When the police arrived and started taking testimonies from them to my surprise their stories were all different and not as I recalled the accident happening.

Furthermore, one of the witnesses even went to say that the accident was my fault. I couldn’t believe it! Why a complete stranger with no vested interest in the case would lie like that? Or maybe he wasn’t lying, he was honest but wrong.

Was he then telling the truth? Then… what is truth?

There is no universal accepted definition of truth and the subject is still out for debate. The classical definition of truth deals with how well a statement represents the actual facts or things it describes.

So a painting, let’s say, it is true to the degree it reflects the reality, hence a photography will be better but still limited to a two-dimensional representation, while a hologram will be even closer to reality, but in an absolute sense still not real. Reality is the only absolute truth.

For more than 2000 years we have been trying to bring our language closer and closer to that reality with direct, explicit, clear words. At the same time, our vocabulary has developed to reflect the social, political and economic trends, specifically the male dominance in the society.

The rise of women rights movement in the US brought those discrepancies in the limelight. The argument was that the male culture and language promotes sexism and discrimination against women and had to be changed to reflect the equality of sexes.

So mankind became humankind, stewardess became flight attendant; policeman became the officer, chairman chairperson, manmade synthetic, fireman firefighter and so on.

The changing of the wrongdoings of the past was done not as a favor to women but as justice. The new words were not a departure from the truth but rather a better reflection of the man, woman equality. And this is the most important most misunderstood and abused thing about the truth.

This misunderstanding has started a new trend in the American language to change the vocabulary not to serve the truth but to accommodate certain human sensibilities thus in the 80’s the “politically correctness” movement was born.

The crippled has become handicapped, the retarded are now mentally challenged, fat people are overweight, midgets are little people, old people are senior citizens and dead people are expired.

Why? Are those words a better reflection of reality? Do they hold a higher truth? No. Fat people are still fat, old people are not getting any younger and stupid people are not getting any smarter.

So are we really doing them a favor by pretending that we don’t see their condition? Do really deaf people say “I don’t like the sound of that word, I prefer to be called hearing impaired.”? Isn’t African American as racist word as black, since it makes the same artificial discrimination?

There is only one race, the human race; shouldn’t we all be called just human beings?

We are witnessing an ever increasing abuse of the truth, in our everyday life.

The media, the pundits, the experts, they all are stretching and abusing the limits of language in order to persuade and control public opinion.

The obvious reality is no longer the truth. Facts are no longer facts. All that it matters is the spin, the interpretation, the opinion, the words.

 And of course, everybody is too busy to use their own brain.

After all, why do we have computers for?

IT THE TRUTH

What is IT?

What is the absolute, the indefinable IT that defines all things?

The IT that cannot be named but gives names to all?

IT, is like a black hole that collapses all in its gravity; inaccessible, unobservable and untouchable.

Like a black hole we only know of its existence by its effects.

We know IT by its many names; The Matrix, Intelligence, Consciousness, Love, Energy Flow, The Truth.

IT, is the truth, the whole truth and nothing by the truth.

Nothing exists outside the Truth. All that exists is the truth.

Reality is the ultimate Truth against all that exists is measured.

Lies do not exist. And even so it feels like the world is overcome by lies, that is just an illusion.

It is the illusion of the darkness taking over the earth. But darkness does not exist.

Darkness is just the absence of the light. Lies are overcoming us because the truth was silenced.

Darkness fills in every time we turn off the light. Darkness cannot be turned on or off.

Darkness doesn’t exist. Darkness exists only in our perception.

Lies exist only in our perception. Lies do not exist outside of our Ego illusion of the reality.

Stop lurking in the darkness. Turn on the light.

Seek the truth and the illusion of lies will dissipate like the morning mist under the sun’s glory.

Seek the truth and you shall be set free.