mindfulness

In the 14 precepts for Thich Nhath Hanh's community the first goes: Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth. Does he mean that we should skip Buddhism? probably not. But we cannot be sure of anything Buddha said, he didn't write anything down. other did, all a long time afterwards. Maybe it's right maybe not, maybe some of it are right. Maybe the first writings are the more accurate As the four Noble truth and such. But I'm sure T N H is hanging n to mindfulness, i guess because it works for him. For me its a great help too -  but its not a miracle cure. You have to combine with another things. As exercise. I play a lot of table tennis with not mindfulness trained bur nice people. There I can use mindfulness to try to be concentrated. But its all about to win too. And it would be foolish not to to try to do it, that's import...

Is  something happening that we are involved in without to understand it? Some say that human consciousness should be a part of science and of the development of the world. Consciousness have led us to go to the moon, has helped us make UN och to build bombs. It has given us internet that are connecting the world. Let's say that art, science and  infrastructure  is a part of the earth and therefore a part of the universe. It's a kind of nature made by the human mind. And the mind is made by life on earth. Ants and beavers also build places to stay and birds sing and dance. But they don't write books and direct films. We enrich the earth with these human phenomena and hopefully enrich ourselves too. As somebody said; Hamlet and other fictional characters exist, in a special area that are not connected at all to for instance, science and astronomy. So  to say something holistic about the universe is really impossible, as it contains so many different ar...

Maybe a question we don't use so often. Of course I'm the ruler of me! Well after some years of meditation training you may anyway want to look for what is the "king" or ruler in me. And the answer may be; nothing in particular.  Different parts of me rules in different times. The environment wakes up different parts of the brain. If we are scared probably the fight area or the flight  area will react. And they react before we are aware of it. Of course inheritance and environment may influence what part of the brain will react. But neither inheritance or the environment i come from is the king. We can train to not follow our impulses. A swedish monk in California have cancer, and in a talk he empathies the benefits the Buddhist training has given him. It has learned him to let go. To not be overwhelmed by feeling and so on. He led a retreat i visited some years ago, but then he had so much energy. In this talk he is another, but still a sympathetic man. ...

We live in an era where we seem to be more mighty and at the same time more vulnerable than ever. The word Anthropocene can help us to understand why. I can collect many questions under it wings and bind them together in the same discussion.  We can, for instance, se climate change and extinction of species as connected phenomena.  We can also see that something happened with the human society after WW2. ( se more at  http://www.anthropocene.info/great-accele ration.php  ) Until recently not many understood that we could change the surface or the earth so much. That we also have influenced the atmosphere and the big oceans a lot. That we are causing a mass extinction of animals and insects.  In the site above there are many suggested solutions to look at. And the situation  is very severe.    The new view of humankind is that we really can influence the Earth. We have not been aware...

Will all fall apart if we don't have anything to believe in? The importance of the  old gods in Greek and Rome faded away. And instead came Christianity. Now, in the west, the belief in God and the truth of the Bible is fading away too... This painting of Goya is said to illustrate this; The dog is looking for his master in a cold and empty world, but he (God) is nowhere to be found. What myths do we have insteadS Maybe the one of liberal democracy . It may be a good one, even if its now threatened by old fashioned ideas. In Brunei, for instance, sharia-laws are introduced, as stoning for homosexuality and adultery. In other part of the world nationalism is growing. Yuval Harari points out that liberal democracy has a hidden weakness, the belief in free will. We have never had much free will, but in the future it may be totally gone. We will be in danger of being hacked by the algorithms in AI. Governments or companies can send so much false news , that we st...

David Deutsch writes in his book "The Fabric of Reality" about ethics and aesthetics; .... beauty and rightness must be as objective as scientific and mathematical truth. How come? Well D D is known for his spectacular ideas, even if he works in the scientific field. He advocates the theory that comes from Quantum experiments. A photon that splits into a real photon and a "shadow photon" in the double split experiment, goes really into parallel universums. For D D that indicates that parallel universes really exist. Many think that already there he goes too far, but others says that is the plausible outcome of the math formulas of quantum physics. D D also means that the parallel universes can be in some kind of contact with each other. And why not have a common strive to better and better knowledge, even about beauty and rightness? So, in that case the Kantian "objective" moral laws is a reality (even if they can change as scientific knowled...

Let's take some help from the Philosopher Ricoeur and the author Auerbach to approach the question. But first; Religions learn that there are some state, probably in the future, that will be a salvation. - or a hell. Even Buddhist texts talks about it in the sense of karma and afterlife. Some modern Buddhists, as Thich Nhat Hanh means that hell is a state of mind, ebut with mindfulness and awareness of every step you can reach some kind of heaven. In here and now you don't regret the past or worry about the future. When I practice mindfulness its really like that... But my tinnitus gets more obvious and maybe hidden feelings will come to the surface. When I practice with my sangha its a bit easier.  Originally Buddha wanted us to see the terrible sides of life, like sickness, changes and other unsatisfactory things in life and of course old age and death. Its better not to be reborn. Its better not to think so much... Its better not to collect things for yourselves, a...