Craving Distraction
We don’t live in the real world, we live in a collapsed version of the real world. The ‘collapsed version of the world’ is a version that falls short of the thing itself and to fall short of the thing itself is to miss the…
Literal Reality Is A Projection Of the Self
It’s not that we don’t exist but rather that we don’t exist as this rigid, sharply-defined sense of self. Existing as the defined sense of self means being trapped in an endless meaningless vibration between opposites however – it means that everything we do is…
Everyday Life Is Superficial
Normal everyday life is superficial, just as all games are superficial. In a game we go so far into things but no further and that’s what makes the game into a game. The way things are in themselves however is that we can go as…
Playing ‘The Waiting Game’
What creates the concrete sense of identity that we are so addicted to is playing the waiting game. That’s why the waiting game is so very important to us, although we wouldn’t of course see it like this. We don’t see it like this at…
The Ultimate Addiction
Our basic ‘everyday’ motivation in life is the drive to obtain the illusion of ontological security. ‘Ontological security’ might be explained by saying that it is when we get to feel that we are (without any question) ‘living life in the right way’ and when…
Mindfulness Isn’t A Tool
Meditation isn’t a tool, as we often say it is in the West. It isn’t a tool but rather it is that state in which we no longer see the relevance of using tools, or the need to do so. The meditative state is that…
The Trap You Can’t Ever Tell Anyone About
‘Eternity is the prize’, we might grandly say, speaking of the fruit of our inner work, our spiritual practices. This is misleading, however – if there is a prize then this means that there is ‘an attaining’ and if there is an attaining then there…
The Devices By Which We Are Ruled
Our basic sense of security in the world comes from the formula ‘If I do X then Y will happen’ and this – of course – equals control. If we control successfully then this gives rise to euphoria (which is the good feeling that I…
False Identity
The False Identity’s idea of heaven is a world that exactly matches its expectations of what it wants (or what it likes). This is pretty much inarguable, certainly its idea of heaven doesn’t involve anything else apart from what it wants or likes! What we…
Not Clever To Be Clever
We wear out the shoe of samsara by walking on it, says Chogyam Trungpa. This is a very radical statement and completely contrary to mainstream Western spirituality, it is contrary to how most of us would see ‘spirituality’ because ‘wearing out the shoe of samsara…