Every Suffering is Buddha Seed

When the mind reaches nirvana, you don't see nirvana, because the mind is nirvana. If you see nirvana somewhere outside the mind, you're deluding yourself. Every suffering is a buddha-seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can't say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field. Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain. The buddha in the mind is like a fragrance in ...

 The Mind is the Way

Someone who seeks the Way doesn't look beyond himself. He knows that the mind is the Way. But when he finds the mind, he finds nothing. And when he finds the Way, he finds nothing. If you think you can use the mind to find the Way, you're deluded. When you're deluded, buddhahood exists. When you're aware, it doesn't exist. This is because awareness is buddhahood. If you're looking for the Way, the Way won't appear until your body disappears. It's like stripping bark from a tree. This karmic ...

 Prosochē - Stoic Version of Mindfulness

Prosochē (προσοχή) [pro-soh-KHAY]—the attitude and practice of attention—is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude.1 It is a state of continuous, vigilant, and unrelenting attentiveness to oneself—the present impressions, present desires, and present actions which shape one's moral character (prohairesis).2 When you relax your attention for a while, do not fancy you will recover it whenever you please; but remember this, that because of your fault of today your affairs must ...

 Zen Meditation is Proactive

The negativity of not-to also provides an essential trait of contemplation. In Zen meditation, for example, one attempts to achieve the pure negativity of not-to—that is, the void—by freeing oneself from rushing, intrusive Something. Such meditation is an extremely active process; that is, it represents anything but passivity. The exercise seeks to attain a point of sovereignty within oneself, to be the middle. If one worked with positive potency, one would stand at the mercy of the objec...

 Empiricism in Buddhist Spirituality

Both Buddhism and neuroscience converge on a similar point of view: The way it feels isn’t how it is. There is no permanent, constant soul in the background. Even our language about ourselves is to be distrusted (requiring the tortured negation of anatta). In the broadest strokes then, neuroscience and Buddhism agree. How did Buddhism get so much right? I speak here as an outsider, but it seems to me that Buddhism started with a bit of empiricism. Perhaps the founders of Buddhism were pre-...

 Religion is a Solution to a Non-Problem

At the 2005 World Religions Conference, I was asked to represent atheism, sitting on the stage with a Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Sikh, Hindu, and Native American spiritualist. (I accepted the invitation only after making it clear that atheism is not a religion, and they agreed to include it as a “world philosophy.”) The theme of the conference was “salvation,” and each of us was asked to summarize our respective positions on that topic. After pointing out that “sin” is a re...