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Tosh
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- Tosh
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Extremes of thought are: 1. There is no free will. 2. There is total free will. The middle way seems to be that 'free will' is conditional; it's based upon causes and conditions. As an alcoholic I just could not stop drinking for any length of …
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Europe is in really bad shape. Sucks...i wonder how long it will take for all this garbage to arrive in Canada. Europe is a big place you know. It's like me getting robbed in Mexico and saying the whole of the Americas is in really bad shape. I…
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Dinosaurs laid eggs, so eggs came before chickens.
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I was stationed in Germany (Bielefeld) with the British army and on the tail end of a four-day-bender, a mate and myself decided it would be a good idea to go AWOL (though the Adjutant reckoned it was desertion) and join the French Foreign Legion. …
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Is the author one of the 99.999%? It's odds on. Ah, he has a product he wishes to sell!! That always makes me suspicious that does; probably not very Buddhist of me though. Has he a free e-book? I don't think people have to be awake to be teac…
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I barely know how to use my cell phone (which I only have for my job, being on call). I'm a bit like that. Anything more complex than a couple of tin cans and a bit of string confuses the heck out of me. Luckily enough I have a teenage daughter …
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I must admit, that I accept the probability that I am held captive by my Western-world conditioning. What are your thoughts? It's windy outside. (That's a bad joke; I've been listening to too much Steve Hagen I think).
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A bat in the face, we must dodge, right now. A carrot we can always get another day.
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In Abrahamic traditions, it is explained away as idolatry. If God does not occupy our center, then another object will take its place and become our new (and false) god. I don't like the premise here. I believe the deeper meaning to idolatry is no…
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If people are good by nature, why do we keep the doors locked? Why is there so much bullying, brutality, etc.? Apparently we are now less likely to die a violent death than at another point in known history.
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but we seem to forget that buddha spoke of many cases of specific cases of rebirth. I think it's more intellectually honest to say that we have sutras which claim to say what the the Buddha said. But none of us actually know what the Buddha said.…
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My dog; he's always the best thing to happen to me. I wake up and he's there, on the bed, snuggled inbetween myself and Mrs Tosh. She's grumpy in the mornings, but he's like, "Wow, I haven't seen you for like six hours at least!!!" My dog; defini…
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I think you're right on the money, Jeffrey. I think if someone said they had a practise that spanned a long period of time, and they claimed that every meditation was a joy, I'd be a little bit surprised about that. In one of my books a meditation…
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I watched it; I like those debates. Hitchens was my favourite though simply because he was funny and rude. Not very 'Buddhist' I know, and I know he also gave Buddhism a drubbing too. Meh!
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Have you heard of the new and improved platinum rule? http://www.alessandra.com/abouttony/aboutpr.asp I see a flaw!
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The one thing you can say about Buddha is that he wasn't a Buddhist. I agree. Another aspect is that there is a train of thought that if the Buddha never existed and was merely a literary device to make the teachings more interesting, it wouldn'…
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..or Buddha was a Christian? Burn the heretic!!! Ooops, sorry, wrong religion!!
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At night, I set my alarm clock and put it on my tracksuit (my lounging about the house clothes) on the far side of the bedroom. In the morning, when it goes off, it forces me to get out of bed to turn the alarm off. I then pull on my tracksuit. I…
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Maybe 'aliveness' is on some kind of sliding scale, from empty space (which isn't really empty) to rocks 'n' stuff at the lower end of the scale, to more complex creatures like dolphins towards the other end of the scale, before reaching that most c…
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Can't I just be normal? You can only be yourself. Hmm. I'd say that the purpose of Buddhism is to be better than yourself. I thought the purpose of Buddhism was to see beyond the (false) self? (Sorry for being a smarty pants)
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Carl Jung said, "Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you". I think we can infer from that, that being sane ('normal') is actually abnormal, and our normal state is one of abnormality. It's like one of those paradoxes eh? :D
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I personally think 'practising' means a lot more than sitting on my arse dribbling into my belly button, though I do have a regular meditation regime (and it can feel like a regime). To help me maintain the 'regime' I use an app called Insight Medi…
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In a similar vein, here's a 10 minute visual and audio mandala I quite like:
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Rats are lovely; really cute things. I had a couple as a child. The only problem with them is their short life span; 2 to 5 years, so prepare yourself for some sadness if you get them.
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An alcoholic: Someone who refuses to give up a life of failure without a fight.
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Wisdom is not information about something 'out there,' but something discovered in oneself. 'To study the Buddha way is to study the self...' (Dogen) And I'm sure the quote goes onto say, "and to study the self is to forget the self". Nice post, @…
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I'm going through a Steve Hagan phase! I'm fairly sure in Buddhism plain and simple he describes it as a waking up, a bit like waking up to what this picture (he uses) shows: It took me a while, but it's a cow, and once I've seen it, I can't uns…
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He was a very urbane and very English chap....very witty. Yes I chatted with him over a sherry. I gather that later...but I did not witness this , DT Suzuki said to Christmas Humphreys.. " What DO you make of him ? ". I suspect that you're a littl…
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" When we take a sip of Brunello, savour a piece of chocolate, take a shower, go shopping for a suede shirt or silk underwear, make love or hit our thumb with a hammer, Enlightenment is there. It is never separate from where we are. " Nak'chang Rin…
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Who would be there to watch the mind ? Awareness seems to be able to watch the mind. I'm doing it now, bare with me, just to look for an 'I'. The closest thing to an 'I' that's experienced is a slight knot of anxiety I feel in my stomach, and I k…
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My car keys are always there, but I regularly have problems finding them. Enlightenment sounds a bit like that, just harder to find. I've been listening to a lot of Steve Hagen recently, and I'm still none the wiser. He puts emphasis on watching …