In September 2017, Lila Kimhi, a senior Dharma teacher in Israel, and I met for an in-depth Dharma exploration on a range of topics. We recorded the exchange consisting of Lila asking me a range of questions addressing issues that practitioners often bring up. Several of her questions or concerns were on behalf of meditators. She is a friend for more than two decades. …
This is a transcription, edit, adaption, plus additional sentences, from a recorded session. I gave this guided meditation and talk during a 90-minute Zoom session on Dharma teachings hosted by Sangha Live on 5 June 2022 on the theme of Relative and Ultimate Truth. …
I read an online news report this week of a famous person in the entertainment business slapping another famous person in the same business over a remark at the Oscars in Hollywood.
Their fame has not reached into my living room. I am not familiar with the two men. The report revealed the emptiness of the media wallowing in the insensitive and uncomical comments of one famous person and the aggressive reactivity of another.
Show business converts people into products. The business encourages them to draw attention to themselves, so the stars increase their market value. The craving for attention can gradually become a dominant form of behaviour.
I wrote this poem in 2014 for people to read aloud to themselves who want to be famous.
WHO WOULD WANT TO BE FAMOUS?
I have become a star of my own show,
I want to get myself a status high,
a possibility of what could be.
I rise and rise, then must fall, then I die.
I have no clothes to add to my person.
Why dress myself up seeking name and form?
Why does the cat walk while the dogs do bark?
Then all these thoughts become a hounding storm.
What will I be? How will I be? Will I?
What burrows down into recesses lame?
These dreams can act like sucking ticks on blood,
and scratch again on claims to gain and fame.
Is future life a type of running scared?
Why can’t we make desires come to stick?
I throw my thinking back and forth so much.
Are all my hopes and hooks a cruel trick?
This longing goes,
No more this clueless view,
I wake to this endless splendour at hand,
admit beyond is closer than I thought,
such completion does shatter dreams so bland.
Poems from the Edge of Time
Christopher Titmuss
193 pages
£9.95
Published 2015. Available on Amazon.
Today is the Full Moon of May. The Buddhist tradition marks the birth, death and enlightenment around 2600 years ago of Gautama the Buddha.
The facing of sickness, pain and death served as the trigger for Gotama, aged 29, to depart from the pleasures and privileges of the Royal Palace to explore the depth of experience. …
Every view of I am might seem real, unreal or both at different times.
We might express a few views listed below of I am or many of them.
If a view is problematic about one ‘self’ or ‘another,’ then explore another view(s). …
Who am I? 40 Common Views About Ourselves with Brief CommentaryRead More »
Who am I? 40 Common Views About Ourselves with Brief Commentary Read More »
