Numinous Nonsense

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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Rationalizing Awakening Away

A phenomenal quote from Jack Engler’s article, Practicing for Awakening: Instead of practicing for awakening as a real possibility, we hold enlightenment up as a remarkable and rare attainment, the highest ideal of the spiritual life. But enlightenment doesn’t work as an ideal. As an ideal for a few, it distances us and discourages [...]

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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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Zen and the Arts - A Conversation with John Daido Loori

I saw that John Daido Loori, Roshi was going to be teaching a weekend retreat at Naropa, a few months back. I’m always on the lookout for interesting Buddhist teachers who are coming through town, so that we can invite them to be on Buddhist Geeks. Fortunately Daido Roshi & his organization were [...]

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No Questions

I had an interesting dream a few nights ago, where I was attending a meditation retreat in the Shambhala tradition. The retreat was in some sort of large house with a lot of other folks (mostly younger). There were several rooms, including a large meditation hall, which ironically no one was using. [...]

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Train Attention and Become a Cyborg Buddha!

This is a great video, from the Google Talk series, with Philippe Goldin. Philippe is a research scientist and heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. He spent 6 years in India and Nepal studying various languages, Buddhist philosophy and debate at Namgyal Monastery and the [...]

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