Best Of
Re: Being a light unto yourself
The old adage: "If you would know others, first you must know yourself."
Though I am no scholar, no "Great Teacher", I share this minuscule grain, this seed which I carry and occasionally (often?) mislay:
One can not change the world of one does not change him/her self. We have our formal teachers (master, mentors...). They guide us, give us knowledge, perhaps direction. Then there are the other teachers, the other mentors. These mentors surround us every day. Who are they? They are friends, bosses, fellow workers, employees, neighbors, strangers, even enemies...the people we encounters in the course of the day or evening.
The gaze, the smile, the frown, the joy, the tears, the interest, the indifference....all are lessons, subtle and blatant actions and words. All are lessons..all are teachers.
If we wishes to grow, to change, our eyes, our hearts must be open to the lessons. To understand the lesson is to grow the heart (light). To misunderstand or not accept the lesson is to grow the dark within.
Peace to all
Lionduck
Re: Being a light unto yourself
@Jeroen said:
@FoibleFull said:
All spiritual knowledge comes from building and retaining ongoing self-awareness. Meditation is only the tool to learn HOW to be self-aware.This is interesting. So far, I know myself from the things I do to show my feelings, like making coffee in the morning for my mother or hanging up the laundry when it’s large sheets that she can’t manage. I observe my feelings to know my heart.
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I'd say this is where lived experience really shines, knowing yourself. No book can show you that. Or what samadhi is like, or seeing the Grand Canyon. Words or pictures never do it justice.
But this doesn't mean the finger pointing at the moon is bad. It just means that its not the point, the moon is. I suppose at some level rejecting the finger is a skillful means if one is the type of person who tends to get hung up on the finger as a way to move off of it. Like meditating on the ugly aspects of the body.
“You have to do your own work; Enlightened Ones will only show the way. Those who practise meditation will free themselves from the chains of death.” Dhammapada 20.276
person
Re: The AI tsunami
As the article I quoted said, a 10% error rate may be acceptable when looking for a peanut sauce recipe, but imagine your CFO getting the wrong number one time in ten when writing up the financial year report.
Jeroen
Re: The AI tsunami
About AI mania… it seems to have become a religious fervour in the business community.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/25/ai-mania-nikhil-suresh
Jeroen
Re: Being a light unto yourself
All spiritual knowledge comes from building and retaining ongoing self-awareness. Meditation is only the tool to learn HOW to be self-aware.
“You have to do your own work; Enlightened Ones will only show the way. Those who practise meditation will free themselves from the chains of death.” Dhammapada 20.276
Re: Is it better to believe in one life or in many?
No lectures, missives, or sermons. Just an observation:
Belief in One Life or Many Lives is, I think, of less importance than how we are living THIS life. Atheists, the "One and Done" faction, have often displayed strong ethical and moral fortitude than supposed devout religionists, particularly the Monotheists, and especially the self proclaimed (in the US) Christians of the Nationalist and militant sects.
Rather, the challenge is to honor life. The challenge is to treasure ,the gift, the happenstance we know as life. To honor it in ourselves and in others, be they family, friends, neighbors, strangers, even perceived enemies.
The Bodhissatva, who celebrates life and to others sincerely expresses, "Your pain is my pain, your joy is my joy.", is a model we can all emulate.
This regardless of "One life recurring", "Multiple Lives", or "One and Done".
Pece to all
Lionduck
Being a light unto yourself
I have come to the realisation that the Buddha was right to tell us to be a light unto ourselves. There is only so much you can learn from others, and instead of just finding writings that you agree with it is better to develop your own understanding. This requires that you get to know yourself, and understand your place in the world, and comprehend what you think is significant.
In a way, by reading and memorising the sayings of the Buddha you end up adding a layer of conditioning to all those that were there before, and by speaking from that knowledge it is often the Buddha who speaks. Your own voice, drawing on your own understanding, can get lost in the endless thoughts of other people. This happens when you speak on topics you have only read or heard about, but that are not your lived experience.
Getting to know your own beliefs (as opposed to other people’s beliefs) is an important step.
Jeroen
Re: Is it better to believe in one life or in many?
@Jeroen said:
I don’t think they classify meaning at all. The major eastern religions - except Zen - do provide something in the way of meaning, but they don’t talk about it in those terms. It’s as if what it is isn’t important, and instead they talk about why.
Maybe you're talking about some kind of metaphysics about the ultimate purpose of life, the universe and everything? I think there is a fair bit of cosmology in the East, but there also is a more practical focus on what to do in the here and now as opposed to mere intellectual speculation.
I'm not sure if that's quite what you're getting at. I can agree that the Western mindset broadly is more concrete while the East is more fluid. Though there are western schools of thought like existentialism, absurdism or post modernism that are less rigid and there are Eastern schools like Confucianism that are more rigid. So frankly, it is a bit of a Western way of thinking, rigidly classifying them so distinctly.
Regardless, to the extent that this definitional sidetrack is sorted, what's your theory on how a belief in one life vs many creates these different sort of mindsets?
person
Re: What documentary are you watching?
@lobster said:
@Jeroen said:
I came across this heart-warming documentary about the turnaround of Waterstones (and in the USA Barnes and Noble by the same man), really made my day to hear about the way bookstores are surviving on the high street.Made my day too. Many thanks.
I used to go to Foyles a lot, decades ago. The rudest most useless staff imaginable BUT the greatest collection of books on obscure subjects for sure. It retains the name but is mentioned in the documentary as bought but not rebranded.
Tottenham Court Road was one of my favourite spots in London. You had a Waterstones, a Blackwell’s, Foyles and Forbidden Planet within a stones throw of each other, and if you felt like it you could combine it with an outing to the National Portrait Gallery, and there is a great Whiskey Shop near there as well.
In the time I used to live within an hours train ride of London these were some of my favourite outings, together with the Tate and the Victoria and Albert museum.
Jeroen
Re: Ploggers of the world...unite!
Very nice that you are seeing the cleaner perimeter increasing, Kotishka.
I did a bit of plogging the other day - three 10 liter bags in 30 minutes. However, my lower back does not like it. So, plogging on hold until I obtain that telescopic thingy. Otherwise, as always, I see it as very good spiritual practice, and also good physical exercise.
marcitko