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Showing posts from December, 2016

Impermanence, Karma, And The Zen Of A Broken Heart

I broke up with my girlfriend this week.  Or maybe she broke up with me.  Honestly, I'm not sure what you call it when two people who say, "I love you" every day mutually decide that things aren't working out. I just know that I started this holiday season with a significant other, and I'm going to end it all alone.  What's confusing the hell out of me, however, is that she's a good person.  And I'm a good person ... I think. So what does it mean when two good people can't make a relationship work?  This is the question that I've been pondering the past few days as I power through the five stages of grief , and the word that keeps popping into my head is, "impermanence".  Buddha tells us that everything arises and everything passes away. In other words, impermanence is a permanent part of life (see what I did there).  Furthermore, it's our desire to keep things from changing that causes suffering. That makes sense whe

Finding Peace In The Midst Of Emotional Chaos

The grey winter skies dampen my mood as I look out the window.  My mind begins to tear away at itself as I sit cooped up in the house until suddenly there is a knock at my door.  I answer, and see Depression standing on my porch. He wears an expensive suit, and there is almost no emotion on his face.  The cold day grows even colder as he walks into the house, and my body goes numb as he embraces me in a hug.  I try to hide from him.  I wrap myself up in thick blankets and lay on the couch without moving.  I hope that if I'm quiet enough, he'll get bored and go away. But Depression is a patient beast.  When I refuse to speak with him, he simply sits down at my desk, and whispers just loudly enough for me to hear.  He tells me that it's pointless to get up.  He reminds me of how cold and uncaring the world can be.  "Trust me," he says, "It's much better in here.  You're much safer alone in your house; with the lights off and the curtains closed

What Does Spiritual Practice Look Like?

I have a job in corporate America working as a business analyst.  The money is good and the hours are great.  My coworkers are reasonably friendly, and my stress level rarely goes above a six on a scale of one to ten.  In short, I have very little to complain about. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like my job is interfering with the real work that I should be doing.  Every day, I sit down in my cubicle and begin my daily tasks.  As the day progresses, a feeling of dark discontent grows in my stomach. Eventually, the feeling in my stomach reaches my brain and becomes a question...  Why am I wasting time responding to email when I should be focused on my spiritual practice? To be fair, this feeling of discontent isn't new.  I felt the same way when I worked my last mid-level corporate gig, and I responded by quitting my job and going to work on organic farms for eight months. It was a great experience.  Seriously, you can't spend eight months pulling weeds an

The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play

One of the habits that I've stumbled into recently is watching movies that were produced in the mid 80's and early 90's.  Back then, I was old enough to watch the movies, but I was too young to really appreciate what was happening.  So I'm finding that watching some of my old favorites is a lot like seeing them for the first time.  The most recent feather in my movie-nostalgia cap is War Games starring Matthew Broderick and directed by John Badham.  The plot of the movie is fairly straight-forward.  Broderick's character is a hacker who gains access to a military super computer named Joshua that controls all of the nuclear weapons in North America.  I don't want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say that by the end of the movie the super computer is convinced that Russia is launching a nuclear strike against America, and World War III nearly ensues.  However, Broderick saves the day by getting Joshua to run simulations of all the possibl