📖THE ZEN COMMANDMENTS

‪The INNER freedom in Zen can lead naturally to kindness. Zen commandments are not actual commandments, they are merely suggestions of methods for freedom and kindness to be vivid in your life. The Zen commandments are as silent as one hand clapping.

Some people are waiting for the sun to shine. The weather is imperfect but that’s perfectly fine as he performs “Singin’ in the Rain”. He’s not just coping with it, he’s celebrating in it. People love this scene because it conveys the uninhibited joy that we somehow feel our lives should be, even as the storms of messy, uncontrollable circumstances rain down upon us. We all suspect such a life is possible. For fleeting moments we may even feel we’ve grasped this secret, while reading philosophy or poetry, listening to Bach or Hendrix, scaling the mountain or making love. The light flickers on but then flickers off again.

But we can have that light as a steady brilliance, if we know where to focus. The light is within you. The dimension of boundless freedom and happiness is not in some external sensation or grand achievement, not in some holy person, but within you. And it is within you— not someday— but is, NOW and always.

And finding this boundless dimension doesn’t affect only ourselves. The more we bask in that inner light, the more we radiate it to others. Love, generosity, kindness are its natural overflow. In fact, as he walks off at the end of the song, he passes a fellow pedestrian the umbrella. It’s not enough to sing in the rain ourselves— we’ve got to pass the torch along to others. (Author’s note, p1-2 paraphrased)

“I’m laughin’ at the clouds, so dark up above. The sun’s in my heart and I’m ready for love.” -Singin’ in The Rain

Eventually every situation, even the must disastrous, becomes not a matter of “Why is this happening to me?” but “What is my teacher teaching me?” (p75)

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NAMASTE DEFINITION

Namaste literally means, “I bow to you.” ... The spiritual meaning of namaste conveys that “the divine in me respectfully recognizes the divine in you.” Namaste invokes the feeling of spiritual oneness of heart and mind, with the person one is greeting.May 29, 2015

https://www.kansascity.com › religion

It's just a greeting, it comes from the sanskrit words namaḥ (a kind of salutation, which comes from the root nam - to bow) and te(to you). This is not something that is a buddhist cultural usage, but rather Indian/Hindu. ... Namaste is a local greeting and sentiment.

https://www.reddit.com › comments

PHILOSOPHY VS PSYCHOLOGY

Both psychology and philosophy are words originating from the Greek language. The word philosophy translates to “love of wisdom”. Philosophers study the essential, important, and underlying issues associated with items such as knowledge, reason, values, and existence. One of the best known philosophical questions is “What is the meaning of life?” The word psychology translates to “the study of human spirit”.

Psychologists study the mental processes used by the human mind including both conscious and unconscious feelings, and the human behavior that results from those feelings. Another important difference is the methods used by each discipline to answer questions. Philosophy studies will generally never result in a single, correct answer. Psychology uses scientific methods that test hypothesis and produce concrete results. -ProProfs.com

Philosophy creates philosophical systems or categories that serve to explain reality. Psychology, instead of studying a whole like philosophy, seeks to isolate individual variables of human behavior. Therefore, psychologicaltheories consider our biology. One example is the study of our brain chemistry.Aug 12, 2019

https://exploringyourmind.com › w...

SOMEDAY IS TODAY

It was always “I’ll do it later."

Eventually I told him, “Look, I get that you’re scared, but if you don’t act tonight, it’s like spending a lifetime being afraid of doing the stuff you’ve always wanted to do, because you feel the time isn’t right." When is the time ever going to be right?

Look - so many of us WAIT until SOME DAY to finally take care of our health, to travel, to knock off those bucket list things. But some day never comes, it’s an illusion.

Some day is today - imagine if my friend decided to wait? Waiting for some day means looking in the mirror, hating the feeling of being fat, and then doing nothing about it. Waiting for some day means promising yourself that Europe trip, and then year after year, continuing to promise it. But the greatest lie in life is the "some day" lie.

And the day you realize that "SOME DAY" is actually today, is the day your life changes.

Ready to get started?

- Alexander Heyne

IDEAS PERSONAL GROWTH MINDSET

SET SILLY DREAMS

Now, when I was a kid, a goal was really exciting, it was something that I celebrated, it was a fun thing! It was “A goal!” But somewhere along the line, maybe around Jr High School, or High School, it became “A goal.” Something that was a responsibility, something that I had to do, and it lost all that feeling. Maybe it had something to do with this- a lot of the teachers, they made me think I had to set goals in order to be successful. It was something that you needed to do. They even wrote it on the chalkboard. You can look at the steps here. Teachers made me think that achieving a goal was as easy as this: 1. Set goal. 2. Make plan. 3. Get to work. 4. Stick to it. 5. Reach goal. Following these steps, you’ll be able to be successful. Looks easy, right? But the reality is that achieving a goal is more like an obstacle course. There’s lots of pitfalls, lots of places where you can make mistakes. They don’t really teach this to you. So as a kid I was really frustrated. In fact, a lot of adults feel the same way. So I came up with something called the Silly Goals. Now anybody can do this, you can take goals that are really serious, and you just add a little bit of silliness into it. Makes it kind of fun, just don’t tell your boss about it. Now Silly Goals, let me give you an example:

… all the fantastic people I met along the way, the beautiful sights that I saw, the experiences that’ll last a lifetime, all because of a silly goal to drink a can of coffee at the top of Kilimanjaro. So what I want to leave you here is this: It’s not achieving the goal, but what you learn on the way to that goal that is most important. We put a lot of emphasis on winning the gold metal, on being at the top. But getting to that point, takes a lot of effort. And that really is what you’re going to remember the most. So if you have to set goals, make them silly. You’ll have a lot more fun.

Speech from: Set Silly Dreams: John Daub at TEDxTokyoTeachers