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Beginners motivation in Mahayana Buddhism

I’ve decided to translate what I learned over the past two weeks at an FPMT Lam Rim retreat into blog posts by simply explaining to you all my understanding of some basic concepts from those teachings. I am of course merely a beginner on this path, so please take this as no more than what [...]

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Between drowsiness and distraction: meditation and certainty

I was on an intense FPMT Lam Rim retreat for the past two weeks. One of the things they teach is meditation: meditation techniques as well as pitfalls. On all levels of meditation one of the pitfalls is not finding a middle ground between drowsiness and distraction. Both are recognizable at our level: nearly falling [...]

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The push of experience…

Yes, that title is enigmatic and for the linguists among you: a bit double as well. It has to do, I’m afraid, with the limitations of the English language – or possibly of my knowledge of it. Though I do rarely run into that problem these days. Anyhow – the question is: do you all [...]

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Change isn’t easy – Discover your dharma?

It’s not often that I write about books I don’t like. In fact I was going to ignore ‘Discover Your Dharma‘, but my mom persuaded me review it. She said, it makes a good story: a book that has won awards that you don’t like. Actually hate is a better word for my sentiments. I [...]

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Can you feel the quality of a spiritual teacher?

I got a book for review recently that I put down within a few minutes because it made me all jittery. A few days ago we had a spiritual teacher do a lecture at our local theosophical lodge, and he turned the room quiet. We didn’t even have questions to last the full time set [...]

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The freedom of the experience of our lives

The ultimate freedom philosophers talk about, especially existential philosophers, is not so much the world, but our experience of the world. In the words of psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom: Nothing in the world has significance except by virtue of one’s own creation. There are no rules, no ethical systems, no values; there is no external [...]

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Michael Mirdad interview

As promised, here’s some questions I had for Michael Mirdad, author of ‘You’re Not Going Crazy…You’re Just Waking Up! The Five Stages of Soul Transformation Process’, and his answers. 1. You say that nearly every process of learning is ultimately about understanding and experiencing greater levels of unconditional love (p. 14). What do you mean [...]

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The five stages of the soul transformation process: Michael Mirdad

Two weeks ago I wrote about spiritual evolution from the perspective of long term cycles. This week I will go into the more practical day to day questions relating to our own soul transformation process. Personally I can’t take 2012 seriously enough worry about it. I do however have to deal with personal challenges just [...]

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Spiritual evolution, cycles, 2012 and wisdom

This is a bit of a rambling post. I hope you’ll enjoy a few of the nuggets I’ve gathered together. In classic theosophy it’s explained that one reason to assume there are wise sages is simply to extrapolate from the presence of wise people in general. Similarly: because our society is so obviously more advanced [...]

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10 simple mindfulness exercises

I was eating at an Ethiopian restaurant yesterday. For those not familiar with that cuisine, the food is served on thin pancakes and one is supposed to eat one’s dinner with the right hand. For me it was a painful exercise in overcoming my conditionings. The table went quiet: a measure of the concentration we [...]

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