Sonnet 19 by John Milton

This used to be one of the most famous poems in the English language. Maybe it still is, I don’t know. The basic idea is that blindness prevents the author from using his talents to serve God. This troubles him but then he remembers that we serve God not only by doing but also by […]

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Hot spot! Hot spot!

I’ve been pretty sick lately. Due partly to arthritis, partly to two chronic sleep disorders, partly to who knows what else, I haven’t been in deep sleep in about two months. As a result I have migraines nearly every minute of the day and can barely function. My mind is like a boat in fog. […]

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Do It Without Ceasing

Do it without ceasing at 0:37. A quieter version of the same message: Self-inquiry must be done continuously. It doesn’t work if you regard it as a part-time activity. —Annamalai Swami: Final Talks, page 30. Links Free Copy of Annamalai Swami: Final Talks

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What is suffering?

This thing we call suffering — what is it, really? We hate it so much that we take it for granted. Taken to extremes it’s a state in which we wish we didn’t exist. But even if that’s true it doesn’t answer the question. Can we use suffering as a gateway? As a target for […]

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The Endless Search for the MacGuffin

Even the simplest creatures move toward food. For example, the cuddly little organism in the picture above, Escherichia coli, a bacterium that lives in our intestines, swims toward sugar. I do pretty much the same thing every time I happen to see a container of ice cream. Not all living things can control their movements, […]

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Is this post a private message for somebody?

On my way home from the supermarket a few minutes ago, the idea popped into my head that I should write about something that happened in India in 1985. This story doesn’t seem very interesting, and it’s not related to enlightenment in any obvious way, so I rejected the idea. But the idea won’t leave […]

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The Hole

You live your life on the edge of a hole incomprehensibly wide and deep. The funny thing is that you think you’re not aware of the hole when everything you do, see, know, and feel including you itself is merely your effort not to fall in. You don’t have to find the hole. It’s what […]

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When your attraction toward the Self increases

Richi asked the other day: Will sustained effort transform into effortlessness or is effort the very veil separating me from my Self? And in this second case, how can the mind make no effort, at all? I think this is an exceptionally good question because it leads straight to the heart of the matter. It’s […]

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Department of totally missing the point

Somebody once asked me, “How do I free myself from conditioning?” I said, “Stop believing your opinions.” He answered, “But my opinions are true!” Photo by Felipe Carranza was taken during a sunrise in Bagan, Myanmar. Courtesy National Geographic.

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The stick that stirs the fire

Let’s look at this well-known quote from Ramana Maharshi’s pamphlet Who Am I? The thought ‘who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, will itself in the end get destroyed. There are two separate ideas in this statement: 1. A thought exists which, when you […]

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