Category Archives: Philosophy

What does it mean to be a man today?

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Picture: Nick Zart

I was stomped when asked what does it mean to be a man in today’s society.

The gist is there is no manual.  It surely can’t be the stereotype weight lifter at the gym, nor the attitude guy driving his car hand on the other side of the steering wheel.  Being a man today is much dynamic, with fuller depth and surely much deeper than meets the eye.  It has to be that inner most wisdome we have neglected over the decades.

What It Means To Be A Man Today.  A man today should be many things, including something most aren’t used to, deep, in touch with their inner wisdom and feelings.  Ancient societies provided young men rites of passage, today we have no such things but to sit down and think it through.

so What Is A Man, Then?  A man who acknowledges when wrong, one who knows with quiet confidence when right, one who uses wisdom and compassion wisely.  Most of these attributes I realized were found in Dzogchen, the purest esoteric form of Tibetan Buddhism… of all place.

Here is a passage I was reading this morning on Gyalshen: “Dzogchen practice gives us a clarity that is powerful enough to recognize that whatever emotion we experience, be it anger, depression, fear, or joy is not separate from the true nature of the mind. This recognition is wisdom.  It gives us the strength to leave things as they are. Our ability to leave things as they are reduces our subconscious attachment to the conditioning that judges or manipulates our emotions. We are accepting our feelings. We are becoming aware of what we are feeling right now, and we stop right there. We don’t allow that emotion to take over our life. We do not allow it to obscure the true nature of the mind and to become an obstacle.  ”

In other word, shouldn’t a “man” be one who accepts who he is without judgement, looks at what is front of him without preconceived notions, accepting his moods and feelings as that present moment, not more, and holding that space sacred so that what is to come happens untainted from expectations?  I’m going off on a limb here but I felt a strange sense of finding a clue in an ancient esoteric tradition about what it means to be a man.  Something worth while exploring for all those young guys without guidance.  I should know…

Imagines of me

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I wake up, blink my eyes a few times as I try to recall where am I, who am I.  You see, my dreams are as vivid as what we call reality.

The gist is moving through life, we need a certain amount of self image if we are to interface and communicate with others.  The problem is that self image might not be accurate, nor are others, which can explain a lot of the current problems we run into.

Self Image As A Starting Block.  We need to start somewhere in the road to self discovery, the trick is to not take it at face value, nor take our embellished self image seriously.  We are born naked and often exit the same way, with ourselves.

While we it is equally possible to say that all is illusion, therefore nothing is real, we can always remind ourselves of this proven fact, an illusion hurting another still hurts.  The trick is maintaining that careful balance of putting one foot forward into the unknown, with a hefty amount of unknown and self illusion.  After all, we must start somewhere.

In many ways, we are like computers computing for an impossible answer with little to false data.  Ours is a strange quest and yet the answers as so simple once we fear not what lies within us.

Our chemical addiction

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Chemicals or natural products?We ave been almost completely chemical free in the house for a few years now.  The last problem is convincing our cleaning lady to sparingly use those organic concentrates in little amounts.

The gist is once you do the math and research, white vinegar and baking soda clean as well as chemical, with the added plus that it doesn’t leave chemicals behind not flushes it down the drain to mother nature.  After a few years of using these natural products, our house is still clean, none of our friends have ever reported being sick from coming over and we don’t subsidize meg-chemical corporations.

The Cleaning Lady’s Learning Curve.  Unfortunately, our cleaning lady, however well meaning is well set in her ways of copious use of chemicals.  We tried using concentrates from organic chemical free products, but her heavy hand makes it expensive and we are replacing one chemical for another concentrate, however purer it is.

Funny thing is, she has a daughter and should want her to live in a purer world then the one she is leaving behind.  It’s funny in the end that the hardest part of living a purer life is training the cleaning people to use healthy products instead of using the chemical industry’s infernal death spiral.  The more chemical we use, the more profits for them, the more pollution for Earth and the the more our health degenerates.

It’s high time we break our chemical dependance from companies that massacre the Earth and drain our health down with formidable financial consequences.  How hard should it be to use natural products that clean as well, disinfect and clean, while not submitting your body to poisons?

A shopping mall on a Saturday, a glance at western society

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Picture, Nick Zart

Gasp… Horror!  A shopping mall experience on a Saturday afternoon getting back from India.

The gist is sometimes it sounds as if we live in isolation in the middle of a crowded society.  This incredible brain twister can be felt any tie we witness people rushing to be first in line, rummage through sales, drivers who have to be the first at a traffic light and then drive slowly.  Why?  Most of us live in seclusion, disconnected form others and share little sense of being part of a community.  So, here is my experience at a shopping mall.

We just got back from India where your sense of what is important seriously challenges your priorities.  We went off the beaten path and witnessed life in secondary cities.  What we saw were people living in conditions we would deplore back home, where their main worry was if they would have food on their plate tomorrow.  Yet, somehow, these people were incredibly warm, gentle, inviting, sincere, open to us with a small we rarely witnessed back in the West.  Now fast forward back in the west…

We went to Nordstrom the following Saturday feeling we needed some new clothes.  What we witnessed was so disturbing after coming from an environment so starch and harsh with reality.  We saw people elbowing each other in order to get to the best deals of the day.  We saw people who didn’t seem to have much spatial awareness, even less as to others around them.  It felt their endeavor to be the first one to get that deal trumped any other notions of life.  It was shocking, to say the least.

It’s not to diss our society.  We have everything we need to thrive and be happy, we are not educated to look within for happiness.  Their society, on the hand has little in terms of shared material wealth but have boat loads in terms of inner values and spiritual upbringing.  Would it be great finally using all that we have at our disposal?  Don’t we owe it to our parents who built our so-called modern and developed societies?  One of the best ways is to partner with a coach in order to dig deep within and have a better vantage view.

The meek shall inherit the Earth

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Small but powerful One puzzling and recurring thought in many holy scriptures throughout our different civilizations is the central thought around the well quote Bible passage: “… and the meek shall inherit the Earth”

The gist is it finally dawned on me, the deeper meaning of this often misunderstood quote when we were traveling India reading about Ghandi’s life and the horrendous British subjugation of the country.

This little scrawny looking person, fiercely determined in his will and action made an empire with its mighty armies bow down.  If this doesn’t explain that, I don’t know what will.  Too bad it takes a person to achieve all of this but that society so readily disperses itself once that person is gone.  How easily society falls into the Machiavellic and divisive games of politicians…

Spiritual, religious? What does it mean anyway?

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As I’ve raised the question of spirituality at work these past few weeks, I noticed how people interchange religious with spirituality and vice versa.  Both are different, so how come the confusion?

The gist is spirituality and religious can be the same, spirituality encompasses religious, and sometimes, not the other way around.  It’s a question of connotations and how we view religious these days.

Spirituality versus Religious.  As with many, I find myself to be deeply spiritual but not religious at all.  The fact is for me, spirituality embraces the essence of religion and more.  Yet I noticed many people use both words to say the same thing and often time view the way I use spirituality as religious.

While in essence everything is spiritual, religious is a way of following a faith based system that is dogmatist.  The initial attraction might be spiritual, it usually ends in a closed system based on faith and patience.  Spiritual usual is more encompassing and can, or not take in parts or entire religious system.  Where the line blurs are with certain systems and ways that border on both lines.  Traditional Indian Buddhism is more a thought school that is spiritual in essence but where spirituality is not the main point.  Tibetan Buddhism aims squarely at spirituality and finding your personal deliverance via a series of systems that can be taken as whole, or parts.

Come to think of it, that is a very personal understanding of what spirituality is for me.  What is yours?  I’d be interested in hearing form you.

Celebrating a day without electricity

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There is something to be said about how addicted we get to modern amenities…

I woke up and saw no lights this morning.  Darn, thought I, no electricity!  I could feel my mind confronted with the choice of the usual chain fear reaction and the possibility to take time to observe the situation.  The thought was for catching up on work today.  I just hadn’t planed on no electricity.

After a few seconds of debating whether to freak out or not, I laughed and called it a day of celebrating no electricity.  So I read, went to the pool in the rented house we have and slept.  One other thing I am thankful for is that this family has an electric boat!

What drives you nut, enough to do something about it?

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Let me know if you feel like this.

Are you sick and tired of what you do day-to-day? Are you not fulfilled at work or personally?  Are you fed up with business as usual?  Do you find yourself taking on tasks that conflict with your personal values?

Many of us feel like that but what are we doing about it?  Let’s talk about what we can do about it in a group where there are no experts, where we can share in a safe environment to learn and observe from each other.

Let’s have virtual champagne, come and share your stories in a secret Facebook group under my Tap The Source page.  Once you find me under Tap The Source, befriend me and I will invite to this secret group where we can chat and brainstorm.

Let me know what you think.

How do you teach English to a Tibetan monk?

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And that’s my latest dilemma, which I’m happy to embrace.

I’ve been going to a local Tibetan monastery for sometime and like the benefits I ge out of it.  A whole post of its own.  Of course, being a very enthusiastic person who rarely shies away from a challenge, I agreed to teach English to a Tibetan monk.  After saying yes, I wondered how I would do it.

I was an ESL teacher back in Europe and Japan, and have the fundamentals but I wanted to do something different this time.  I want this to be done naturally and organically.  I’ve been thinking it should be done while walking and talking about life, his, the monastery and his views on the West.  We’ll see how this develops.

So you’re lost, now what?

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One of the hardest and most frustrating phase of life anyone has to deal with is the part when they feel lost.  Now what?

The gist is feeling lost at some point in life is inevitable but it doesn’t have to mean non-action, or even less lead to despair.  Teachers come in many forms, some with bodies, others through situations.

One of the toughest thing for a person, especially like me is non-action.  I’m a Leo, I love to be the center of the attention and am usually active, busying myself with many projects at the same time.  However, I’m also aware this is to mask what is going inside that needs my attention.  In other words, we sometimes keep busy in order to delay the inevitable, solving our inner questions.

Being lost usually means having no understandable point of reference or sense of direction.  It can be frustrating and downright disheartening but it serves as a major red flag, clearly signaling an unwanted situation, usually after many wrong turns in life.  Acknowledging the way we are feeling is crucial and the first step.  It should force you at some point to stop, take scope and deal with the real issue… why are you asking yourself these questions?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at how to make sense of the situations, looking back to get clues and the final scariest of them all: “What am I to do?”