Truth, Justice, and Humanity's Potential for Good

I want to talk about Superman.

Yep, you heard me right. Superman. I'm not talking Frederich Nietzche, but Clark Kent - THE Superman - blue suit, red cape, you know the guy.

Your first thought of course is, why Superman and what does he have to do with Eastern Philosophy? Many people consider him to be a bit of a weenie, or a boy scout, never one of the cool super heroes. I beg to differ.

What Superman represents is exactly what Buddhism teaches us - the potential for humanity to do good by its own actions. Not by divine intervention, but through ourselves.

Check this out - (you'll have to click to enlarge, but trust me, worth the few seconds):


This comic book page right here epitomizes what Superman is about - an iconic figure in pop culture not as a savior, but as an inspiration, to make those fictional characters of Metropolis, and possibly some real-life people stand up and show the world that the world can be a better place if we each choose to do our part and make it one.

Buddhism teaches us that we all possess the ability to control what we think, do and say, and to make our lives a representation of compassion and wisdom, rather than one of greed, fear, and selfishness.

The ability is within each and every one of us to refrain from acts (be they in body, speech, and mind) that can cause pain to ourselves or to others. With that said, we each also have the ability to perform acts this those same ways that promote happiness and peace.

How many times to we see people who are constantly negative about everything talking about how terrible the world and everything around them is? As we've said before, negative, brings forth negative. We have the potential to cleanse ourselves of that negativity and purify our minds - making each one of us another step towards a better world.

That is a huge part of what Buddhism is about - it's not about dogma or rules to follow. It's about the potential inside each of us.

Buddha said that looking at ourselves honestly, we'd find that the root of much of our pain is our own ignorance and the misconceptions we hold about the true nature of our existence.

The path to our own happiness lies in getting rid of our wrong ideas about why things are why they are, and create a mindset of generosity and morality.

Generosity not only helps take away our selfishness, but brings us a joy and good feeling that creates bonds of friendship and love with others around us. The less we grasp at possessing things and worrying about what we don't have, the more we can open up to the world around us and contribute positively to it.

In Buddhism, morality is looked at as refraining from using negative words and deeds. By not feeding the negative, we begin to free ourselves from falling into its grasp and start to live more positively, hopefully inspiring others to do the same.

So take a cure from Superman - stop looking for a savior to fix everything and start realizing we have the ability to do it ourselves. It starts with each and every one of us. Use your gifts to help others, and to inspire them to do the same.

Be the kind of person you want the world to be filled with. Over time, you might find that the world isn't so bad. :)

Our thoughts, our world

"All that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world."

I came across this quote on a little app on my fiance's IPod that presents you with a handful of Buddha Quotes each day. In fact, I believe it's called Handheld Buddha. This particular quote stuck out in my mind and has been swimming around in my brain ever since.

What we think shapes the world around us - how we act, how we speak, how we perceive. We've heard many a time that a negative mindset brings about a negative reaction from the universe right back to us. In turn, a positive mindset will return a positive reaction from the universe.

Let's take it one step further.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop on a rainy Fall day and had one of the most memorable conversations with my friend and noted author, Larry Trivieri Jr., where we talked about the concept of manifestation.

I was reading a book called "An Unlikely Prophet" at the time, by an author we were both big fans of - Alvin Schwartz. The concepts in this book led Larry and I to discuss some bizarre instances in our own lives. On my end of things, we were discussing concepts, situations, and realities that I had written about in stories, scripts, and films, that later, whether you believe it or not, started becoming true.

At the time that they were written, they were merely visualizations of ideas, ideals, and desirable outcomes that I was writing out of my own subconscious mind and onto the page (and in some cases from mind to page to film). However, as years went by, I could look back and realize that life situations that had materialized had evolved and developed very much in the way I had created.

One of our mutually favorite writers, Grant Morrison, has talked about this for years. Morrison wrote a comic series called "The Invisibles," where he based one of the series' key characters - King Mob - after himself. Morrison notes that many of the trials and tribulations that he put the character of King Mob through throughout the series - whether it was meeting a particular type of woman, or having his lungs crushed - it, over time, began to happen to Morrison as well.

In these cases, whether my own, Morrison's, or Larry's, thoughts literally had created a world - a reality.

We do it every day, whether we realize it or not. You, yes, YOU, are creating the world around you, your life of tomorrow with your thoughts of today. You an disbelieve it, you can shun it, or you can embrace it, and start creating your world today!

Precept One - Epic Fail

I tried. I really tried.

I know I put out the challenge to anyone reading this blog to join along with me as we tried to live out a Buddhist precept each week. The first was to not say, act, or think in a harmful way toward any living being, no matter what it was.

I failed...and miserably at that.

I struggled. I tried keeping my mouth shut at work when someone would say something ignorant or harmful toward something or someone else at work...I tried to take in everything around me as a part of the living connection between the universe.

I made some progress, but I can't in any way say that I made it happen. I kept my mouth shut...but it didn't mean I wasn't thinking some harmful comment to someone. And you know what I ended up doing last weekend? Pulling out the weed-wacker and taking out every weed I could find in the yard.

Perhaps I'm just not there yet. There are certain aspects of Buddhism that perhaps I AM capable of handling, but there's still so many more that I'm just not at the level of yet.

Maybe with time. We'll see. A brief reprieve before we try another one.

I wonder if other people had been or could be any more successful at it than I. Would love to know and get any tips if anyone has them.

This challenge will prove interesting...

Okay...this first challenge is definitely going to prove to be tough.

How do you act in a capacity as a boss and have to question why things aren't done or done right, yet not say so in a way that would be considered "doing harm" by Buddhist standards?

Day One and already some interesting questions arise. If anything, this challenge will prove educational.

Buddhist precepts - A personal challenge - Week #1

No one owns our minds but us.

And Buddhist precepts are a means of realizing this. They are an opportunity to learn how to live that freedom as best as we can.

With that said, let's learn the Buddhist precepts and put them to practice through a personal challenge.

Do your best each week to try and follow one of the five Buddhist precepts. I'll do my best to do it and chronicle my progress and failings as they occur. But here's something for you, the reader - give it a try along with me, and let me know how you do.

This week, we're going to start with the first Buddhist Precept, and vow to bring no harm to any living creature through our words, deeds, or thought, including ourselves. Pay attention to all the living beings in the world that we might normally ignore - whether it be birds, bugs, or even the weeds coming up through the pavement - and believe, me, this time of year we've got plenty along the side of our house.

Let's cultivate a sense of care and reverence for all the living things in the world, and give thought to how they are all buddhas, just like us.

I look forward to the challenge. I hope you do too.

Fighting hate with hate only fuels more hate

This caught my eye today...

"Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love."

It's a quote from Buddha that makes me think about negativity.

There are countless times where something makes us so angry that it seems the only way we can react to it, and the easiest way to react to it, is to lash out back with just as hateful a thought or word as was thrown at us.

But let's stop for a minute and think about it. When I react to hate with more hate, what have I accomplished? Have I put out the fire and resolved the issue at hand?

Absolutely not.

More times than not, all I'll have ended up doing was feeding the fire, the fire of hate, making it larger, full of even more bad potential.

It's kind of like that saying - "two wrongs don't make a right." Just because someone hates me or hates something I do, is the situation then alleviated by my return of that hate? Nope. It just keeps that wheel turning.

I thought of a recent statement that a friend who's going through a very painful divorce said regarding the situation - "It's very sad when people become consumed by revenge." In this particular case, one person was so upset, and so hateful about the split, that they have become all-consumed by their need for revenge and their need to create as much hurt as they can.

They do so because THEY are hurt. But it certainly has not helped the process, nor the hurt inside of them. My friend understood this, and has been doing their best not to react the same way...not to meet that revenge with more anger, but with an understanding of the pain the other party is going through.

What Buddha tells us to do is to stop for a moment before we react in anger, before we return the hate, and calmly ask ourselves what the right thing to do in the situation is.

If we love, if we forgive, if we show compassion, instead of returning hate with hate, only then can we start to douse the fires of hate that come into our lives.

Media consumption

Much like the food that we take in several times a day, media too, gets ingested into our system on a daily basis, quickly becoming a part of our make-up. All that violence and cynical mindset that we view on the TV, read in the paper, see on the web...it all gets planted in our brains and in our psyche...seeds that can harm both us and the environment around us.

I say this, of course, being, a card-carrying member of the media. I fully admit that from the inside, as well as the outside viewer-standpoint, it does get into our system, shape us, and change us.

All of these things that we witness every day desensitize us to the world we inhabit. When I sit back and realize all the horrific scenes I've witnessed, wrote about, talked about in daily discussion...I once in a while pause...and ask myself 'how is this normal?' Discussing brutal crimes, or the corruption of political systems and the like...those things have a way of just becoming such a part of our normal lives and intake that we lose the sensitivity to all the life around us.

It's a scary slope to walk...and it doesn't surprise me that I've run into so many jaded journalists in my day.


Look at the figures - by the time an average American is 18 years old, they have seen 16,000 simulated murders, and another 200,000 other acts of violence. That's insane. No wonder it's so hard to find non-cynics in the world today - we just continue to breed that jaded cynism...and as a member of the media, I find myself just as guilty, if not moreso.

I've always tried to keep my optimism churning, even when it seems difficult. Even I will admit, however, that the more time I spend in the business, the harder it can become. I laugh when I think of my first year or so in journalism. I was sitting with a colleague and discussing some situation, and trying to look on the bright side of things . Her response to me was "I just want to take off those rose-colored glasses of yours and stomp on them!"

No, I was not actually wearing rose-colored sunglasses...but you get the point.

I've always looked at that moment as one of those that epitomized my conflict with the business I was in. Here I was, an eternal ball of optimism for most of my life, fairly new to the journalism game...running smack-dab against the wall that was a journalist...and the inherent cynicism that she the career had already started to fill her with.

Sometimes when I find myself becoming a bit too caught up in the doom and gloom of the news business, I try to remember that moment and remind myself of the wealth of optimism that used to surge through my system, and strike it again like a match against a matchbox.

In other words, I find those rose-colored glasses, dust them off, and throw them back on my face. They're not broken...they can never be broken...unless you let them.

I'm not talking about banning all the media we take in. I'm not lobbying for some massive shutdown.

While we hold the switch to turn on this cynicism and ingest the material that may be desensitizing us, we also have the same power to turn the switch it off.