You are...

HAT YOU THINK YOU ARE?

No you're not. 

Im doing a series of posts on things Im learning thru a Buddhist Monk in Thailand.  His perspective is a little different since he used to live in Hollywood CA and be a dancer while he worked on getting his degree in Family and Marriage Therapy.  So he is a man formed by Western Ideology.  

One thing I will say I am never in alignment with religious fever, that is why the teaching of the Buddha are more in alignment to what I will and will not be able to use in my daily life.  I do not pray.  The times I did made no difference.  I don't believe in this higher spirit.  I do believe the highest level of spirit is inside us. 

I know there's some who just said "well there you go, this is your problem." 

I don't think so.  Name one person who has lived a sincere happy life and God was their pillar?  The Pope? Hardly. Billy Graham, no way....Joel Osteen, not even close.  His message is positive, but he is telling people to use their enlightenment to achieve material wealth.   And we know that is not tangible in the end. All of the above are/were wrapped in Gold and swaddled in misery, or suffering. They die just like Jesus, the Buddha, Muhammad.  EVERYTHING even our Sun will die. 


LEARNING TO LIVE FOR NOW:

You take nothing with you on your journey, do I believe in reincarnation, I am on the fence with that one.  It doesn't really matter does it? One time I went through one of those past regression meditations.  And guess what image I had...I was an African man on the Savannah, protecting and providing for my wife...I felt the heat of the dry wind, saw the wave of the dry grasses as they waved high around me, and was in that moment seeing the world through the eyes of that man.   It was a really weird experience.  

Every session I had I kept saying, "I want to be free." 

If you know the story of Buddha he found enlightenment.  A new state of understanding.  It took him six years of searching and he spent much of that time suffering. He realized that nothing is permanent so why should we live our lives in seek of permanence when it is not achievable? Nothing is forever in other words.  There is no unchanging soul and the belief in reincarnation came from this ideal, if nothing is forever then so is the soul not forever and it changes also...

I'd like to think the loved ones who I grieve for are out there watching me, and waiting for me, but are they?  Maybe one of my dogs was my grandmother.  I may be able to channel them through memories  through thought but the Buddha reminds nothing in this world goes with you in death.  So the point is to live each day as it is your last, actually each moment.  HARD STUFF!

KARMA= "Your thoughts are your Karma."
If we have a good and kind thought for another person, that positive thought will come back to us in a favorable way. But if we harbor evil thoughts, those thoughts will come back to us as retribution.

So my despite of Trump, the GOP, all the people who won't get vaccinated, that is not helping me, so I gotta try to stop thinking about it!! I think the best way I can achieve that is to say "what they say and do is on them not me." I am not a turn the other cheek person, so I have a long way to go.