Month: August 2025

Posted on by joseph mauricio

IT’S ONLY A MOVIE

“Keep telling yourself ‘it’s only a movie‘” was the famous tagline for Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left in 1972. It may be appropriate to look at the harrowing moments of our mind with the same encouraging detachment. No matter how serious life may feel in the moment, like a movie, it’s seeming realism is the result of a perceptive trick of the tale. (Pun intended). Neurological fake news is an ongoing misinterpretation of reality bent to the purpose of making ourselves more important to ourselves.

Sometimes we are suck into the movie, gripping our nails in harrowing belief; and other times we’re able to step outside the frame seeing ourselves telling ourselves a story. With meditation practice we can slow the process in order to peak beyond the folds of the curtain to the working basis within.

I love moments of hypnagogic consciousness upon awakening, surfing between sleeping, dreaming and waking as if skipping over gadget impressions as we rise into awareness.

But, just before we wake there is a most precious moment.  A moment of “ahhhhh” that precedes all thought. This moment of pure waking precedes every moment. This is the sacred space, or gap, where we have a limitless opportunity to hack our preset turning our mind from rote adherence to habit toward discovery and change. This may be the very space of creation. The moment before, before.

And within this gap we might get a glimpse into the projector. The apparatus that constructs the fantasy of life.

For many humans, with the outsized pressures of modern life, this subtle moment goes by unreguarded. We push past it, bursting awake to the screeching beep of the alarm, sing some innocuous tune in the shower, dress and rush straight to the coffee. In short order we’re following our travel mug down the street to the train. It’s like waking up after a drunken night next to someone you don’t know, trying to sneak out the door before they wake up.  That used to happen to me every morning. And I lived alone. I could be three stops on the train before I start to recognize myself.

When we slow down in order to meet life, we might see life happening in the gaps we blast past. If we train the mind to pause and pay attention to these precious moments, every following moment becomes an opportunity for discovery. When we turn our mind toward discovery our lives become alive. This is what we refer to as waking up. It’s not leaving a dream state for a somnambulist state, but actually awakening. Looking past the curtain and seeing the mechanics of our seeing.

The Buddha experienced pain and suffering – even after his enlightenment, up until his death – or he wouldn’t have had the skillful means necessary to convey a remedy to suffering. He was there with us. He was not a supernatural being who might free us if we were to play along and do as he said. The path of awakening requires our participation.  And yet, that participation can’t be under our control. Aye, there’s the rub. We can’t just close our eyes and wait to wake up and yet we can’t turn our journey into the next story we are scripting.

Buddha took the personal and translated it to the universal. He owned his personal experience, yet his personal experience wasn’t about him. It was human experience. In the same way, our life is personal, but it is not ours alone. Whether we know this or not, we are inextricably part of everything in nature.

But all too often, we fall away from waking, into fantasies projected by inner narratives. We carry the dream of sleep with us into our day. And in our dreams we are too important to regard the life around us unless we can twist it to fit the narrative.  The mind does this instantly with little concern for reality. It creates stories with ourselves at the center that give us the impression that we are in control. But all we control is our narrative. Like a movie “moving” at 24 frames a second our internal movie creates a momentum that renders a false reality that looks and smells like a duck.

Trungpa, Rinpoche said to a group of students in a shrine room that the before we notice the walls, or the columns, or the floor we have a micro instant gap, which he illustrated with a gasp. Gasp, floor. Gasp, ceiling. Before we label anything, or categorize any moment, we have a moment to pause, breaking the momentum that perpetuates the movie, we might see a past the curtain to a brighter, clearer moment.

We may absorbed in be a gripping movie. But the world is nonetheless waiting outside for us.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

A PRESCRIPTION FOR LIVING

The Foundational Truths

Soon after his enlightenment, Buddha gave a teaching that would become the cornerstone of his path we now know as “The Four Noble Truths”. It happened in northern India, in the 5th–4th century BCE, in Deer Park at Sarnath.

Newly awakened after years of searching, Buddha was reluctant to proclaim his insight. According to the early texts, he spent about seven weeks in contemplation under and around the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, processing what he had realized. He questioned whether it was possible to communicate such a profound truth to others.

Eventually, he decided to start where we are. Suffering.

For his first teaching, Buddha sought out five aesthetics who were companions of his that abandoned him when he gave up severe self-mortification. Reunited with his spiritual clan, the Buddha taught them on the middle way, and the four foundational truths.

Suffering is a universal experience, something we all experience. Secondly, Buddha felt this affliction was treatable. The teaching that followed, known as The Four Noble Truths, give a complete map: the problem, its cause, the possibility of resolution, and the method to reach that resolution. Offering a balanced, pragmatic approach to liberation from cycles of suffering.

The Four Noble Truths are:

  1. The truth of suffering (dukkha) – Life contains stress, dissatisfaction, and pain.

  2. The truth of the cause (samudaya) – The root is craving (tanhā), the urge to cling, avoid, or control experience.

  3. The truth of cessation (nirodha) – If craving ceases, suffering ceases. This is nirvana.

  4. The truth of the path (magga) – The way to cessation is the Eightfold Path.

This framework mirrors the way ancient Indian physicians worked, and it’s still recognizable as a medical model today. Diagnosis → Identify the problem (dukkha); Cause → Find its root (tanhā); Prognosis → State that it can be cured (nirodha); Prescription → Lay out the treatment (Eightfold Path).

The Buddha wasn’t positioning himself as a savior, but as a kind of spiritual doctor—offering a practical cure for the human condition.

 

The Treatment Plan: The Eightfold Path

The Eightfold Path is the “prescription” for ending suffering. It’s traditionally grouped into three trainings—wisdom, ethics, and mental cultivation—and each step works like part of a treatment plan.

Wisdom (Paññā) – Understanding the condition

  • 1. Right View – Seeing reality clearly: impermanence, interdependence, and the Four Noble Truths. Modern analogy: learning what your “illness” is and what causes it—no denial, no magical thinking.

  • 2. Right Intention – Committing to letting go of harmful attachments, cultivating goodwill, and practicing non-harming. Modern analogy: deciding you actually want to follow the treatment and recover.

Ethics (Sīla) – Stopping behaviors that worsen the illness

  • 3. Right Speech – Avoiding lies, divisive speech, harshness, and gossip. Modern analogy: cutting out inflammatory habits that aggravate your condition.
  • 4. Right Action – Acting in ways that protect life, respect property, and maintain integrity in relationships. Modern analogy: following your doctor’s “no junk food” or “no heavy lifting” orders.
  • 5. Right Livelihood – Earning a living in ways that don’t harm others. Modern analogy: not working in a toxic environment that continually re-exposes you to your triggers.

Mental Training (Samādhi) – Building the mind’s immune system

  • 6. Right Effort – Actively cultivating wholesome states of mind and preventing unwholesome ones from arising. Modern analogy: taking your medicine, doing your exercises, and sticking with the program.
  • 7. Right Mindfulness – Maintaining awareness of your body, feelings, mind states, and patterns. Modern analogy: tracking your symptoms, noticing early warning signs, and making timely adjustments.
  • 8. Right Concentration – Developing deep, stable meditative states (jhānas) that lead to insight. Modern analogy: focused therapy sessions that reach the root cause.

Followed fully, this treatment doesn’t just manage symptoms—it removes the underlying cause, leading to complete liberation.

In that first sermon, one of the five ascetics, Kondañña, experienced a breakthrough. Hearing the Buddha’s words, he gained direct insight into the truth that “whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation.” This marked the first awakening in the Buddha’s sangha—the beginning of the community of practitioners.

From there, the Eightfold Path spread not as dogma, but as a method. Just as medicine must be taken to work, the path must be walked to bring results. Its structure makes it practical and testable: anyone can try it and see what happens.

Over 2,500 years later, the Four Noble Truths remain relevant because they address something universal: the human wish to be free from suffering. They don’t rely on cultural specifics, supernatural claims, or blind faith. Instead, they start with our direct experience, diagnose the root cause, and offer a clear, compassionate way forward.

The Buddha’s first teaching wasn’t an abstract philosophy or a set of commands—it was a blueprint for healing, given by someone who had tested the cure themselves. In that way, the wheel he set in motion at Deer Park is still turning today.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WHERE DO WE RUN?

Understanding Refuge in Modern Times

Ever wish you could just run and hide? Ever play hide and seek with your life because it all becomes too heavy? Do you ever reach for the panic-button in reaction to difficulty? Ever slump in discouragement because it’s all on you, but you just can’t figure it out?

Well, maybe it is on you. But maybe it’s not your fault.

Many of us have never learned to see our lives as they are. Many of us have never learned how to think. We just accept the mind’s confusion, blame our woes on others, and pray for a way out. But maybe there is no way out, except to be here—to learn to see what’s happening and work through it.

We can do this. With patience, kindness, and love, we can gain agency in our lives. We can become players instead of victims—if we are willing to learn. In Buddhism, we look to the example of an enlightened mind, which reflects the enlightenment inherent in all of us.

It takes training to learn to see beyond the compulsive thinking that grasps at the wrong straws. We create more confusion out of a confused world when we blindly reach for what we think will save us. This might be as grand as a lifelong commitment to a nation or spiritual community—or as quick and impulsive as a harsh word, or hitting “send.”

When we feel pressured and need relief—when we’re challenged, triggered, or brutalized by life—our immediate defense is often to lash out. We turn to anger and aggression, or to something or someone we hope will save us. Or we retreat to a private island in our mind, looking for refuge.

But when we seek refuge in something not grounded in what is, we only deepen our confusion. We stop learning.

Throughout history, there have been countless religious, cultural, and commercial icons of refuge. Yet—if you’ll grant me a cliché—wherever you go, there you are.

And if we’re not willing to be here, how can we ever move beyond?

We’ve taken the beautiful teachings of Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha and used them to condemn one another—or to save ourselves. Perhaps we spin on a bipolar wheel of condemnation and salvation, swearing off our vices each morning and forgetting by nightfall.

When I was lost in the self-abusive cycles of alcohol and drug addiction, I was blind to any direction my life could take. I spent all my time trying to extricate myself from the sins I’d committed the night before. I took refuge in blame and resentment.

The legal counsel of my rattled brain was perpetually building cases against some system or person. The biggest problem was that I thought I could do it alone. I kept my self-professed sins to myself, spinning outward appearances however they needed to look.

The phrase is “close to the vest”—but “vest” is close to the heart. And putting all that guilt, shame, and doubt into my own heart was as unhealthy as it was ineffective. Because no matter how intelligent we are, it’s our heart that communicates. Whether we understand that—or the recipient of our communication does—we still feel each other. No one needs facts to stop trusting us. If our heart is not in sync with itself, our confusion communicates. And the world responds by withholding trust. This only deepens our isolation, as we carry a broken heart in secret through a world of resentment.

At some point, in utter frustration at nothing working, I just surrendered. There was nowhere left to run. Which left me here. The way out is the way in.

We sit. And we sit. Until we begin to disengage the compulsive mind from the mind’s potential. We get lost in fantasy. We train the mind to recognize that—and return to ourselves, and this very moment. At any time, again and again, as we drift into delusion, we can return to now.

That is our refuge.

In meditation, we train the mind to recognize delusions of blame, shame, doubt, and confusion, and to turn back to trust—in our own heart, and in the present moment.

This is the example of the Buddha. No one saved him. He worked through is shit. He awakened.

With nowhere to run and no external salvation, Buddhism offers practical remedies. We turn to the Buddha—not for rescue, but as an example of a liberation we can achieve. How is this different from running to a god, a savior, a corporation, or a country to save us? Well, the Buddha will not save us. He is long gone. But the enlightened mind he accessed is available to all of us if we follow his example.

But taking refuge in his example means being willing to face ourselves, now in this moment. Not blaming ourselves for the past. We have no control over the past, so how can we be faulted for that which we have no control? Maybe there is no fault, but it is an opportunity to change the present. And no matter how difficult that present may be, it is always better to face it than to turn away.

So when we are triggered, panicked, or confused, we have the opportunity to turn to the enlightened mind within us. You may see this as your higher power, the awakened mind, which offers us the strength to face the moment, through each moment of our life.

Instead of grasping for external salvation, we can turn to the example of an awakened mind, which liberates the awakened mind within us.

The Buddha was not a god. He was a human being—who lived, died, failed, and succeeded. He had no supernatural powers. He was a teacher and student of the Dharma (the path to liberation) who worked diligently to free himself from his own suffering. Because he did the work, he understood how others suffer—and offered teachings to guide people to their own liberation.

Turning to this example is Taking Refuge in the Buddha.

“Buddha” means awake. We are taking refuge in our own wakefulness—both the part that already exists, and the part still developing.

To guide us on the path, we turn to the teachings—a map, not a doctrine. This is Taking Refuge in the Dharma.

The Buddha offered his teachings (the Dharma), and he offered the wisdom of the community around him—the teachers and students walking the path together. This is Taking Refuge in the Sangha.

The idea that we could wake up tomorrow free of guilt, resentment, and limiting patterns might seem like magic. But the Buddha offered no magic—only an ordinary path to learn how to see.