Numinous Nonsense

A Methodology for Being

In a recent episode on the Precision Change podcast David Allen, the “productivity guru” as he is called, offers some great high-level reflections on the importance of his GTD system. Using the dichotomy of being and doing David says that [I’m paraphrasing] if you want to “just be” see how long you can be [...]

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The Power of Real Sangha

While I was on retreat recently, one of the teachers reflected back to me how important the three Buddhist refuges are: refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. She mentioned that the sangha wasn’t just everyone that I practiced with, but was really those people who knew something about the path or who [...]

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The Hyperbolic Time Chamber of Enlightenment

When I was growing up one of my favorite programs was a Japanese anime called Dragon Ball Z. Each day after school a friend and I would go and watch the saga of warriors who were fighting to save earth, to transcend to higher and higher states of perfection. For those of you [...]

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Why Geo-Social Networking Matters: The Unification of Virtual and Real World Relationships

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been trying out a new geo-social networking tool called BrightKite. They call themselves a “location based social network” which basically means that they encourage users to check-in (using the web or SMS) to various physical locations, and to then broadcast that location to other users. One of [...]

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How We Approach Enlightenment and Why it Matters

It’s often recognized by meditation teachers that the notion of enlightenment carries with it a whole host of misconceptions and unhelpful interpretations. In Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, Theravada teacher Daniel Ingram writes about this at length in his section on the models of enlightenment. He describes and distinguishes between the [...]

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The Death Series, Pt 3: The Transhumanists Take on Death

In the first post of this series I defined death more broadly than the common understanding of biological death, to mean the ending of things. And in the second post I showed how this understanding of death leads to living more fully, and can if explored adequately can actually lead to a transformation of [...]

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