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…
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…
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…
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…
‘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…
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…
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…
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…
When we’re ‘thinking all the time’ this has the effect of making us fundamentally insincere – it makes us insincere with other people and it also makes us insincere with regards to life itself. It might seem a bit much to say this but when…
Oddly, ‘detachment’ and ‘intimacy’ turn out to be the very same thing. We wouldn’t normally think that this could be the case but it is. Detachment (in the Buddhist sense of the word) may be thought of as distance (or separation) from the ego-construct. It…