Best Of

Yes, ‘tis the season to be merry… but I came across this the other day:

“If the holidays have ever made you feel pressured, guilty, or oddly exhausted…
You’re not broken, Chris.
You’re responding to something designed to make you feel this way.
Relief comes when you realize this.
So does permission to relax.
Let me show you how deep it goes.
What if the most famous figure of Christmas wasn’t created by religion…
But by a soda company?
Sounds crazy, right?
Yet, that’s exactly what happened.
Before Coca-Cola stepped in, Christmas was a quiet church holiday.
Easter was the big deal. Resurrection. Drama. The main event.
Christmas was a simple birth story.
Beautiful.
Definitely NOT built for a global shopping frenzy.
Then Coca-Cola looked at their sales numbers.
Summer: booming.
Spring: fine.
Winter: no one drinking cold brown sugar water.
So they asked the most dangerous question in marketing:
“How do we change what people feel?”
They took St Nicholas, once thin and dressed in green, blended him with old folklore, made him older, jollier, and dressed him head to toe in Coca-Cola red and white.
Then they flooded the image everywhere.
Billboards.
Magazines.
Packaging.
Repeat a myth long enough… and it becomes “tradition.”
Slowly, Christmas shifted from:
“Quiet reflection”…
To shopping, pressure, guilt, and emotional spending dressed up as “holiday spirit.”
Love became something you could prove with receipts.
And now…
• Entire economies rely on December
• Hanukkah has been inflated to compete
• Childhood itself got branded
All because a soft drink company wanted winter sales.
This goes beyond marketing.
It’s cultural hypnosis.
And here’s the spiritual punchline.
If a corporation can rebrand a saint, rewrite a holiday, and colonize our emotions…
What else in our lives quietly came from a boardroom?
So this year, you get to choose.
Presence over presents.
Connection over consumption.
Meaning over marketing.

Enjoy the lights.
Enjoy the food.
Enjoy the warmth.

Just don’t let a soda company define your spirit.”

Have a Buddhaful season folks

I knew that being a Christian was beneficial. We started our Christmas in November. It has been less frantic and more relaxed for sure. Since doing more Christian style meditation and mealtime sharing, I am wondering what sort of Xtian-Buddhist I am.

I am reminded of a meditation used by a Christian desert mystic I met years ago. Sweeping away everything that was not God. This morning I was sweeping away meditation, all thoughts, mantra, prayer etc. Soon there will only be clear light or Nothing.

Seems good to me... as that slowly dissolves...

@Jeroen said:
I see that you’re grappling with the problem. For you, philosophy and the mind are a support for when your empathic gifts bring other people’s emotions too close. I hope this approach affords you peace and equanimity.

I wonder, have you ever approached a Buddhist teacher about your empathy? It seems to me an obstacle in the way of practice, and they may have a way of coping with it.

In some ways it is an obstacle, in other ways its helpful. I also take in emotions that are positive that may have taken work to develop. And once seen and experienced are easier to remember and train.

More importantly though it helps with non attachment and not identifying as strongly with what is occurring in the mind.

With internet communities there has been more information and help from others. And even more talk and recognition in the psychology sphere. But at least so far there doesn't seem to be a "cure" but there are plenty of strategies for adjusting and coping to manage the more negative aspects.

Happy Boxing Day!

I was with my aunt yesterday for a Christmas lunch, had planned to go together with mum but she wasn’t well, and so I went by myself to bring some flowering Helleborus plants and chocolates. We had a long talk of about an hour, about how to create social networks when you are older. She lost her husband to cancer a few years ago, and has just been pensioned from her work. So she has lost a circle of colleagues as well as daily occupation, on top of her husband.

I really liked that movie. Most people hate it. Too Hollywood-y, + the ending... but I thought it was one of the better sci-fi mysteries.

Tao bless us, every one!

I will be listening to Carols, watching a film. Eating whatever scraps we can scrooge together and I am finally gonna open the port for the Baby Cheeses mentioned by @Shoshin1 on choccy digestives (well it is Christmas)

I will be watching the Queen/Kings speech, hoping for abdication and selling of countless generations of thieving. What a great Xmas present that would be.

I will be sending whatever messages of goodwill I can muster to family and friends.

And hope to continue why mantraing to enter the Purelands to cause some wake up there...

Have as always a wonderfilled day...