On The Eve of Construction
.... and Life Coaching with Joe
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On The Eve of DeConstruction Today is the eve of a consequential election in American politics. There is an adage that when politics comes down to money and momentum, momentum wins. At this moment, one side has the money; the other has the momentum. Either way, it is difficult not to develop expectations. We hear […]
Building a Coalition of the Heart Buddhism does not speak much about the soul. It tends to look instead toward impermanence, changeability, and the fluid dynamics of situations. In much of Western civilization, by contrast, the soul has often been imagined as a thing—an independent and perhaps permanent essence that lives on after the body […]
Learning to Stay Awake Through the 3rd Act Whether we realize it or not, we are all aging. It is happening even as we speak. And yet I find myself struggling to remain cognizant of that—to identify myself as an older person, or more unsettling, as someone approaching the end of their life. We die, […]
Pressure and Procrastination as (Poor) Coping Strategies: The title “Critical Mass” refers to Hexagram 28 of the I Ching, often translated as “Great Exceeding” or “Preponderance of the Great.” Its image is a ridgepole sagging beneath too much weight: strong in the middle but weak at either end. It describes a moment when the structure […]
Some are calling for a “war on woke.” Why are people so threatened by the idea? Admittedly, the term is meant to be provocative, still I can’t help feeling that parts of society harbor an underlying fear of being awake. What is “waking up”? Is it seeing past the firewall of self-perception or beyond the […]
Turning the Mind Toward Freedom Karma is one of the four reminders. The others are the preciousness of human life, impermanence and death, and the unsatisfactory nature of samsara. Together, these contemplations wake us up to our situation and how we create a path to liberation or further embed ourselves in suffering. This life gives […]
Understanding the Grand Cycle of Suffering Today I want to talk about samsara—a word many of us know, although, unless we are discussing the designer fragrance, most of us do not entirely understand it. To be honest, few of us understand the fragrance either. Samsara is a Sanskrit term shared by several Indian religious traditions, […]
From Suffering to Freedom What distinguishes the Buddhist path from more rule-based or solely academic traditions is its emphasis on direct experience. Study deepens our understanding, and guidelines provide important direction, but our immediate experience is where the teachings come alive. In the game of rock, paper, scissors, each choice defeats another and is defeated […]
Mapping Human Experience It is said that the Buddha, speaking to a community of priests, adepts, and teachers, was asked why he didn’t speak about the gods. His answer was purportedly a rather dismissive, “That’s not important.” This was taken to mean that speculation about the afterlife—and any preexistence we may have had—has only a […]
Remembering 2 Remain Human in The 6 Realms A Tibetan Buddhist saying warns that the bandits of hope and fear come to rob us of the present. The present being the precious moments that comprise our life. The true gift of opening this present is that it’s not only where we find our life, but […]