Courtesy of L.Shadrack

What makes us human?

Is it our heart, opening…closing, like the windows of God’s eyes.

Is it our brains, constantly scanning, searching, hoping, thinking about what comes next.

Is it our emotions, feeling a single high for every low, always keeping us on our toes.

Is it our ability to recognize suffering? Is it our ability to acknowledge it?

Are we as unique as we think we are…will the journey continue to unfold after death?

In my opinion, none of this is what makes us human. The difference between a rock and an animal is that the rock accepts its fate. The rock knows it has no place to be and needs nothing to survive…now or ever. An animal is driven by instinct, it is always trying to survive. An animal is anxiety, movement, panic. A rock is stoicism, stability, and patience.

Humans are animals, but there is one difference that differentiates us. What makes us human, is that we are connected, we are alive, we are one. We feel the patience hiding inside of the rock. We feel the constant struggle in an animal’s instinct. We are both the rock and the animal.

We are aware of those around us. We know how our actions affect others, but there’s one problem.

We try to forget…

During your daily struggles, don’t become the animal. Remember that you have no place to be, except where you are. Remember that your place is not in your individuality, but in your connection with others.

We are human, but we are so much more. Become more.

Image by Happy Tinfoil Cat

You claim freedom and free will, but how far are you willing to go to back that up? Given the choice, would you take the red pill and risk everything to gain it all, or would you be afraid to leave your “quasi” life behind and cower behind the blue pill?

Many people say that they want freedom, but I’m willing to be that they simply tell themselves that to mask the fact that they don’t have the strength or courage to do what they know must be done.

You have a choice…you can forsake everything you have for the sake of a spiritual journey, or you can remain in place, stuck to a body that will die and a life that will fade away.

How Much Control are

You Willing to Give Up?

The question isn’t so much, how much control do you have – the question is how much are you willing to give up? The true measure of control is the amount that we are willing to let go of and I’m willing to be that given the choice, many of use would retreat to our comfort zone.

You see, I know you feel it somewhere deep inside of you, that urge to break free of your cocoon and live the life of a butterfly. I bet that every day that passes where you haven’t shed a layer has resulted in another layer being added. Every day you feel the emotional energy build up inside of you, but you are afraid. You can’t take the pain of separation, of change.

So where does that leave us? You aren’t alone. We are all tied to our social and physical bonds. However, if we just realize that eventually, everything is going to fade away regardless, then we can accept our life as a butterfly much easier.

The truth is, once you face death and conquer it, you fear nothing. Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful way to live?

When we were children, we were not afraid of much. Maybe the dark or a bully down the street frightened us, but for the most part the only things we really thought about were wondering how things are, our hopes, and our dreams.

The wonders of the universe:

Although I remember a little bit of my own youth, I am best reminded of it when talking to my children. As little ones, we didn’t understand how anything worked and so we were fascinated by it. There was a certain magic to the world that could only be seen through a child’s eyes. The clouds were amazing, insects were spectacular, and things such as the ocean just blew us away.

My son often asks me how things work and as he tries to make sense of the world, I get urges not to give him a normal answer. There have been times where I have done this and felt pangs of regret as I realized that each question he asks me takes him closer to losing the magic that gives him the fire in his eyes. Children are able to see and hear things that adults are not able to and I am convince it is because their innocence allows them to be open to all perception, whereas our ignorance closes many of its doors.

The reason I bring this up is that as we age and mature, we start to find out how thing work and through our analysis we turn the magnificent magical world into the scientifical ordinary universe. In our quests to understand, we wind up thinking we know too much and forgetting about the magic behind the curtain that drives this wonderful existence.

It is my goal, as I progress down this path of living my dharma, to give up much of that analytical mindset that keeps me from the magic and try to return to the childlike innocence that made the world so wonderful in the first place. It is far too easy to get caught up trying to analyze why things are rather than just appreciate the beauty in everything I see. There is magic in everything around us if we only take the time to look. I’ve often thought that in far less technologically advance times that true magic may have existed because people might have been just innocent to. Maybe it still does exist for those willing to look for and accept it?

Were a Buddha to cross your path today and show you how he could alter the world or your perceptions, would you even be aware enough to see him try?

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite poets:

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

-William Blake

Image by J.A.L.E.X

Are We Living in a Dreamworld?

My son asked me a few months ago (he was 5 at the time) if we were really in a dream and if life was real. At the time, I was blown away by the question and struggled to even formulate a token response. Instead, I simply said, “I don’t know.”

The question has since bothered me night and day because it is one I’ve asked myself, although far later in life than my son did. In an attempt to shelter myself from uncertainty, I am guessing that I simply disposed of the question in the back of my head. The catch with that sort of thing is that eventually the question will return, more nagging and burning than ever.

Movies like The Matrix touch upon the subject and music often takes us to a place where we feel dreamy, but still it is difficult to ponder such a thought without becoming very troubled. They say that meditation will teach you that life is a dream of sorts, but one cannot really understand that statement until we reach the mountain top for ourselves. Yes, we all want to get to that mountain top, but what do we do until we get there?

The Riddle

I often imagine that I am living a dream and that this life I am living is simply an imagined construct based on a set of loosely held predispositions and beliefs. If my current dreams are any indication, were we to really be in a dream world, our imaginary world is most likely a gross misrepresentation of the real world we are missing. Laws that exist here probably do not exist in other worlds, at least not in their entirety.

So, an interesting question based on the dream world hypothesis would be, “is everyone else real?” If they are, then are we all dreaming? If they aren’t, then am I living a hallucination? For me, this is the hardest part about the dream world idea, because if the rest of life was not real, then my family, children, and friends would disappear when I woke. Now ask yourself this question: If we had positive evidence that life was a dream and no-one else was real, would you be willing to wake up knowing that you would sacrifice everything you had become and those you have/had loved? Would you even be given the choice? Maybe upon knowing we are dreaming we simply, wake up?

Bringing it Back Home

I know what you are thinking because I am thinking it too. Somehow while hearing this message from my source I’ve stumbled upon a truth of some sort. If meditation and Buddhism/Zen teach us that to climb that mountain we must give up every bit of baggage we carry, then in a way we really do have to give up our current “realities” in order to reach the higher ground. So is that what is stopping us from waking up? Do we purposely stay asleep so that we can continue to live and love our life on Earth? If we have to give up our realities to reach that summit, are we wrong in wanting to just admire the view from below?

I suppose this is where the cycle of death and rebirth nudge us in the direction we must go, but it sounds like a very difficult journey. I’ve dedicated myself to reaching that peak, but I hesitate to do so without my love.

So I ask you, is there a place for love at the top?

Maybe sanity is overrated…

Hard times force parents to send eldest son to orphanage – CNN.com

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) — Ahri’s chin quivers, and his large dark eyes fill with tears the 11-year-old can’t control.

Holding Eka Jaya, Nuraini leads son Ahri, 11, to the orphanage with dad Joni Lubis and brother Mohammed.

“Be tough. I am sorry you have to go,” his grandmother whispers while hugging him.

His parents are taking Ahri to live in an orphanage. They swear they are not abandoning their son.

“I am not throwing my child away,” says his mother, Nuraini, wiping away tears.

“I just want him to get a proper education. I hope that one day he’ll do something useful for this country and help his brothers, because we are living in poverty.”

The family lives crammed into a home that’s 17 feet by 17 feet in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Jakarta. Nuraini runs a small shop the family opened to try to make ends meet. Ahri’s father, Joni Lubis, collects bottles from the streets, selling them to plastic and glass factories. Watch Ahri say goodbye »

Ahri’s parents make $2 to $3 a day, with about half of that going toward their daily rent. With the increased cost of living, what’s left just isn’t enough to send Ahri to school and to feed him and his two brothers, 3-year-old Mohammed and 7-month-old Eka Jaya.

“I never imagined it would come to this,” Nuraini admits.

But for many Indonesians, it has.

More than 80 percent of children in child care institutions have both their parents, according to the most recent survey conducted in 2006 by the Indonesian government. A recent study by Save the Children, UNICEF and the government says Indonesia — the world’s fourth most populous nation — has more orphanages than any other country.

This year, orphanages are reporting even higher number of parents giving up their children because they can no longer afford to feed them or send them to school.

In the past year, the cost of living increased beyond many people’s reach. In May, a 30 percent fuel hike set off countrywide protests.

Ahri peers intently as his mother signs off custody of him to the orphanage. The other children cram their faces up against the window to see the new arrival. At least half of them at the Putra Utama 1 orphanage have been through this before as well.

“The prices have gone up. [Families] can’t balance their income with the prices,” orphanage staffer Utari says.

“By putting their children here, they are hoping that their children’s education will improve.”

It doesn’t take long for Ahri to make new friends. Soon, he’s stuffing rice into his mouth and chatting with the other boys.

His parents stand against the doorway and watch their son playing soccer. Here at least, there’s enough space to do so.

“If my son can adapt, then I am happy,” says Ahri’s father, Joni Lubis. “I can see that it’s calm and peaceful here. That makes me happy. So does the school — my son can be educated.”

It’s all they can hope for: that economic pressures will ease so they won’t have to face such a decision again.

Technorati Tags: dharma, live the dharma, suffering

I sat in a series of briefings and round table discussion today regarding ethnicity and race, which then brought about a great series of conversations about the effects of social and cultural groups from an international perspective. We talked about how we use our “groups” to construct the realities we live in and in doing so use these groups to give us purpose.

Constructing Reality

Whether the logic holds true or not is beyond the scope of this blog, however this got me thinking about how I create my own realities and if the manner in which I do so clouds my judgment or enhances it. Traditionally, I’d view myself as an eastern, Caucasian, non-denominational, Ohio-born, American. So, considering all of those factors, how is my world view affected? To be honest, I’ve spent the greater part of 20 years trying to shed my ties to these categories, not because I don’t appreciate my roots, but because I want to do my own thinking. The question is, do I really do my own thinking?

Social, Religious, and Cultural Divides

Having had Born-Again Christianity beaten into me for 10-15 years as a child and into my teenage years, I still do sense a slight resentment towards Christianity and Religion in general. This led me to actively avoid Christianity for quite some time until I finally understood that not only did my Christian past help me form the broad foundation I have today (because of my search for freedom) concerning religion, but also that my Christian experience was not the only Christian experience that exists. However, this has affected my own created reality in some manner.

As far as other categories go, overall I would say the group think in which I was raised is conservative, somewhat-selfish, privileged, and patriotic. Although I most certainly have not figured out how these roots have manifested into my realities today, I can only surmise that I have a lot less overall experience and understanding than I was raised to believe I had.

Am I Seeing Clearly?

Now, to back to the topic so as not to get long winded on this whim, do I really see things clearly through my lens? That is really a rhetorical question and I am sure you can see where I am going with this. Clearly most of us, upon examination, do not have as clear of a world view as we think we do. Blame however, is not the goal here, rather I propose that introspection should be instead.

Freeing Ourselves from Delusion

Just as Buddhists use the eightfold path to free themselves from delusion and suffering, I would argue that deconstructing our own realities as finitely as we can will help us understand why we act the way we do, as well as see and appreciate truth when we stumble upon it. Chances are we see it every day but do not have the facility to recognize it. If we truly are going to live our Dharma, we must do so without false intention, clouded judgment, or altered perceptions of reality. So the question is, what filters do you use to create your own reality, and had you even realized they existed? Furthermore, have you been susceptible to group think when creating your own world view? Its easy to do, the question for next time is, how do we fix it?