Came across the lovely title, Sex, Drugs, Enlightenment: Noble Secrets from an Orthodox Buddhist ex-Monk. From the blurb, it was written by a Boomer – a self-described WASP – and it's all about how LSD, Buddhism, meditation and tantric sex turned one Alex Walking into a higher being. I don&
I'm blessed to live with two cats. One is a young orange tomcat who started life in a feral cat colony. He was rescued and ended up with a foster mom affiliated with the local humane society. Found him on the Internet one day and said, "He&
This is probably my most ambitious rambling blog entry of all time... The spectrum of feelings and thoughts I have about Christianity range from appreciation to disappointment to perpexlity. Of late, I've become especially negative towards Yahweh and his various schools and, whereas in the recent past I
I've gotten back in my groove this year, with meditation becoming daily. I'm not up to two hours a day of walking/sitting, but I'm getting in a good 45 - 60 minutes. It's like anything you practice and then cut back
This is an excellent piece insofar as it compiles various quotes critical of Buddhism from older Catholic sources. It's a fine basket of old chestnuts and provides ample material for a looooong blog post. Ecumenical dialogue has been an object of obsession on the part of Western churchmen
It's not too early to do a self-indulgent entry on the previous year. I lead an incredibly dull life outwardly but inwardly, the last few years have been quite wonderful. 2021, 22 and 23 were good years for me spiritually. 2024 in contrast saw a gradual decline in
One of the thoughts that occurred to me about year or two into the practice was that it was really about disassociating ourselves from the very things that give a sense of me, myself and I. The Buddha in his discourses returned again and again to the question of what
Our American Empire is backed by a petrol dollar. It is the reserve currency of the world and every country, if it wishes to buy or sell oil on the international market, must have a central bank fully stocked with greenbacks if it wants to do bidness. This basic fact
Thursday night was the first debate between Biden and Trump in the 2024 race. I lasted about twenty minutes before tapping out. Decades ago, I worked for almost a year in nursing home as a certified nursing assistant. The world was different then and I was young, directionless and looking
I posted a few days ago in my Memorial Day reflection that the New Americans have never been conscripted to fight into one of the empire's many wars. The last active conscription was at the height of the Vietnam War and it didn't go over very
Today is Memorial Day and I went to work. In my decades as a member of corporate America, I've never worked on Memorial Day until now. This year is different. Many companies now are doing away with the traditional calendar of July 4th, Memorial Day and so on
Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. The behavior includes lethargy, boredom, depression and non-responsiveness to negative environmental conditions which would, under normal circumstances, lead to the subject's acting so as to achieve a neutral or positive position.