I am good at doing stuff, always have been. When asked which of the five Buddha families I probably belong to, it was an easy choice, the Karma Family, because the attributes of that Buddha family are activity and the wisdom of accomplishment. I can't speak to having wisdom, but accomplishing stuff… I can do that. And since I am frequently asked just how I do that, I thought I could write something about that here.

Solar flares continue to erupt from the Sun and a strong solar flare alert has been issued by astronomers. Before we talk about that, a few words about these days. It continues to be hot here in Michigan, reaching almost 100 degrees each day, and holding. We hunker down. My newest granddaughter Emma is here with us, so that is a great blessing and passing Emma around or entertaining her is great fun. She is newly into the ‘grabby stage’, having just learned how to use her hands.

Something that you might not see unless you choose to see or want to see is the massive amount of stray and unwanted dogs in third-world countries, especially around monasteries. People know that the Buddhist monks would never harm an animal and probably would try to feed them if they could. I have told this story somewhere before: In the very early morning, around dawn, at Samye Monastery in Tibet (said to be the first monastery in Tibet), there was a dog experience to be had. Samye is only accessible by climbing mountains or taking a 1.5 mile boat trip across the Tsangpo River. We had done that and were staying in the tiny village surrounding Samye. We had to bring out own cook as there was nowhere to eat, although “having your own cook” sounds a lot fancier that it was, but that is another story.

Perhaps I can finish up this series on purity. It is a touchy subject because on the one hand, in order to develop the awareness needed to recognize the true nature of the mind, various purification practices may be involved. It is like cleaning a dirty pair of glasses. On the other hand, once we can see clearly (so I am told), everything is seen as pure. Obviously, here I am focusing on the first part, purifying our view.

I admit I am still on this kick of tracing back my own struggle with purity and how I got there, which for me required holding my feet to the fire -- some kind of purification process. I was already somewhat jaded early on, just by living in this world, but a lot of it was artificial coolness, you know, being "cool." I guess I got that from "The Beats" back in the late 1950s. We listened to Cool Jazz and did our best to be or at least appear "cool." No, I never wore an actual earring, but I wore a lot of figurative earrings, all kinds of them.

This is like when at a music concert the performer asks you if you would like to sing along. Here we will do some fascinating astrology together, if you will. This blog is not only for astrologers, but also for anyone who enjoys astrology. As most of my Facebook friends know, I try to share what knowledge I have with those interested. And this goes for astrology knowledge as well, in this case something very special. I want to share a technique I came up with that is as simple as pie, and yet very, very useful. It is also easy for anyone to do.

In 1995, at the request of my dharma teacher, I took my family on a pilgrimage to Tibet to see the 17th Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje, the young Tibetan lama that the Eddie Murphy movie "The Golden Child" is said to be patterned after. Like the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa is the head of one of the four main lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. At that time the Karmapa was 12-years old, but his incarnation goes back seventeen generations. In fact the Karmapa Lineage was the first of Tibet's reincarnated lamas. The current Karmapa is the 17th, while the current Dalai Lama is the 14th. I had no real idea how this trip would affect me. I will pick up the story from the point where we actually arrived at the Karmapa's ancestral home, Tsurphu Monastery in the Tolung Valley, deep in the mountains of Tibet at some 15,000 feet in altitude. There I sat, with my wife, two of my daughters, and my son in a little room waiting to see the Karmapa. We were about to spend three days there as the Karmapa's guest.

How could the repeal of prohibition in 1933 affect the onset of The Sixties in Ann Arbor? It sounds like Chaos Theory, where the flapping of a butterfly wing in Brazil affects the amount of snow that falls in Greenland. But such an effect did occur. And the sad thing is that the scene I am about to describe is hardly remembered. I keep waiting for someone to write about it, but it might have to be me! That is a scary thought, because what took place back then is pivotal to understand how Ann Arbor grew up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so here it is:

In the past few blogs I have told of some of my life adventures. More exciting to me still are the spiritual adventures I've lived, so here is one story that is related to how I learned to mix Insight meditation with close-up photography. It is part of a book I wrote called "Experiences with Mahamudra," which is a free read here: http://dharmagrooves.com/pdf/e-books/Experiences_Mahamudra.pdf Only here I want to say something about the reverse process, how I learned to separate Insight meditation out from the photography I was doing and use it on its own, not an easy process. It is a story that should interest at least a few of you. It all happened the spring following that summer where I first learned to mix my mind training with the close-up and macro photography I was doing.

Recently I was writing an article on my life as an entrepreneur, a career that almost by definition carries with it a certain amount of isolation, if not downright loneliness, at least it has for me. It's a risky business, taking chances. And I asked myself how this ever came about. The obvious answer is that I dropped out of high school and hit the road, an act that immediately isolated me from society in many ways. It was like throwing down the gauntlet and serving notice that I was not about to just go along. The odd thing is that by nature my first inclination is to try to fit in and be accepted. Like most of us, I just want to be happy and be loved. It is only when I find myself somehow excluded that I begin to take chances. And there was that long time, early-on, when I did as little as possible. This is about that.

This is a story from our trip to India in 1995, primarily when we traveled to West Bengal and Sikkim where I hoped to request the Vajrapani (Thunderbolt-in-the-Hand) empowerment from His Eminence Gyaltsap Rinpoche, one of my heroes, and said to be the emanation of Vajrapani in our lineage. Many years before I had written to His Eminence personally, expressing my deep desire to take (and request that he give) this particular empowerment. I would always receive back the acknowledgment of my letters, but no scheduled trips to America. Now I was traveling (hopefully) for an audience with Gyaltsap Rinpoche in person. It might be helpful to provide some background to this story.

an astrologer for many decades I was more than a little enthused to hear that Rinpoche was taking us to the one spot on Earth where astrology is said to have originated, a very sacred place in China called Wu-Tai Shan. At the time Margaret and I were traveling with our teacher Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, along with a group of his 3-year-retreat lamas, and some other students like us. Also traveling with our group was the 9th Lodro Nyima Rinpoche from Thrangu Monastery in Tibet. We were on our way to spend a week at Wu-Tai Shan. I am not clear whether Rinpoche himself had always wanted to visit there or if he just wanted to make sure his students got that chance. Since he does not speak English (and what little spoken Tibetan I know is restricted to reading sadhanas), I never got that question answered.

Tibetan astrology, like so many of the more ancient astrologies did not have the benefit of computers. Everything was done by hand, and there is much counting forward, counting backward, around, and again. It would be easy for me to fill this talk with all of the many countings you would have to know, and to grasp it you would be taking notes the entire time. And the chances of the notes actually being accurate later, when you get home, are slim to none. You could never be sure where your notes missed a beat. I have an entire 827-page book, fully illustrated, called “Tibetan Astrology” that is available in paperback on Amazon.com, but it is not inexpensive. I also have a free PDF version of this book that each of you can download and keep. It can be found here:

How do I change my mind or does the mind just change and I go along with it? This must be the meditator's version of the free-will argument. Of course the Buddhist answer is "interdependence." Everything is interdependent. In the last analysis we are living in our own dream, watching our own projections. But, as they say, we don't realize that, at least I don't.

For example, how is it that I go along with my life willy-nilly and then one day just up and re-evaluate the whole thing, often ending up heading off in another direction. Certainly, if we study our consciousness even remotely, it is clear that everything cycles. Things go up and down. We can claim to be the victim of cycles or we can learn to surf them as best we can. At the very least we can work with the cycles that be and learn to use them. Otherwise we fall into the dark psychological category of being masochistic, letting the flow of life drag us along rather than meeting it halfway.

It is with a sad heart that I report that my friend and well-known photographer Stanley Livingston, co-other of our recent book “Blues in Black and White: The Landmark Ann Arbor Blues festivals,” died yesterday of a heart attack. It was only last August 2010 that Stanley and I did our first (and it would seem only) book signing event in Ann Arbor for the new publication. Stanley was also scheduled to stop by my place for a visit on his way to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula later this month, where for most of his life he kept a cabin on a plot of land at the “absolute uppermost point in Michigan’s north shore” called “Dan’s Point,” so my brother and co-author Tom Erlewine pointed out when he notified me of Stanley’s passing. The U.P. was Stanley’s favorite place in the whole world and he used to spend three months a year there. I met Stanley back in the mid-1960s and

I'd like to discuss how to tell if we are making progress in meditation or mind training. I am surprised that there is not more information available on this topic, but I find that in many spiritual disciplines there are few recognizable mile markers, no way to know where we are at, much less how far we have yet to go, and most of all where we are going to! Where is that?

One thing about Buddhism is that it is list-prolific, with endless lists of the exact steps for just about any spiritual experience we could imagine. There is only one problem with that, which is that lists are by nature condensed versions of more elaborate procedures. The upshot is that unless you have had the particular experience being described personally, simply reading a one-line description will give you no clue. So Buddhist slogans and lists are more confirmatory than anything else. I often can kind of figure out that I have had a particular experience (if I have had it) by looking at a list, but I am mostly clueless as to what it is about if I have not yet had the experience. It makes looking down the meditation road pretty much impossible. And this brings me to my point in this blog, clear transition points in our mind practice.

The Tibetan Buddhists make a big deal about what they call "gaps," chinks in the seemingly-seamless armor of our self, moments when we time-out from our incessant distractions and come up for air. Without gaps there would be no eventual realization or enlightenment.

Gaps are important because without them we are on an endless subway ride to nowhere – just going along in rapt ignorance of our own mind's actual nature. According to the Buddhists, we have managed to get it just backward and have frozen our gaze looking outward at a world of mostly our own projections. Somehow we have to flip this and learn to also look inward at the projector of all this, our own biases, rather than just outward. For this to happen there have to be breaks or intermissions in this incessant movie of life -- gaps.

I just returned from a three-day intensive dharma teaching, in this case the presentation

and commentary on a "doha," which is Tibetan for a song of spiritual experience. In

Tibet, folks have biographies just as we do here, but there is a difference. At least

Buddhist biographies are not concerned with your personal life, your hobbies, and all of

that. Instead they are all about your spiritual life, the inner changes you have been

through and what you have realized from them. They are called Namtars, and amount

to a spiritual biography, like what we might call a hagiography (of saints) here in the

west.

Yesterday, I mentioned something about realization. Today I want to look at its younger

brother "spiritual experiences." We all have them. The big difference between having

experiences and realization is that experiences come and go, like the tides, while

realization happens just once. When you get it, you got it, and it stays with you because

it is not an experience, but a realization.

As pointed out in the previous segment, realizations don't go away, and are much like

those figure-ground paintings we used to see, where one picture is embedded (and

hidden) in another, and you have to look and look until you see the embedded image.

However, once you see it, you can always see it again whenever you look. Realization

is like that, very practical. You realize once and you've got it.

My mind naturally wants some concentration-intensive spiritual work each day. By "spiritual" I mean a meditation-like workout. Obviously, the various kinds of basic meditation are custom designed for this kind of exercise, but that does not mean they are the only game in town. You may have already learned to use your mind in a way similar to meditation. Like a dull knife that wants to be sharpened, the mind once sharp seeks to remain sharp. We notice quickly when it gets dull and soon miss the clarity and insight that well-honed meditation practice produces and find ourselves seeking it out. Clarity (like all good things) tends to be addictive. And while any practice or situation will do for an expert meditator, for most of us we are lucky if we have even one kind of mental exercise that can get us in the right frame of clarity each day.

Today, astrologically speaking, the Sun conjuncts the planet Saturn. Since Saturn is considered very serious and even a depressive, forgive me if I share with you the chapter on alcohol from a book I wrote called “The Loss of Substance: Stories and Notes on Addiction,” which also goes into topics like nicotine, caffeine, sugar addiction, and so on. This is a long blog folks, so it is probably not for everyone. The whole book can be found here for those interested in my take on those substances.

We had some C-Class and M-Class flares last evening and then around 10:37 EDT we had a major X-Class solar flare (X1.7) just off the edge of the east limb of the sun. It caused a strong R3-Level radio blackout on the sunlit side of Earth. X-Class flares are the largest class of solar flares and we have not had one for quite a long time. This particular flare was not facing Earth and the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that it hurled into space will not hit us. Nevertheless, this is some very intense solar activity, and as this flare turns the corner and begins to be apparent from Earth, we may not have heard the last of it.

A number of you have messaged or emailed me about how I do my photography, so here are a few notes:

Photography is easy to do and hard to do. It is easy to take snapshots of this and that, but harder to take carefully composed and light-balanced shots. The learning curve is rather long to good photography and few would want to put in the hours necessary to climb that curve. Wanting to take ‘nice’ photos or a desire to show your friends what great photos we take is not the kind of motivation that will go the distance. It takes a little more than that.

A few of you have written with some questions on meditation, so I will try to answer those in a bit of a blog here. First, something about the difference between meditation practice and the results of that practice, realization. Many times when a building is built, it requires scaffolding to complete it, and when completed the scaffolding is removed. Meditation is a little like this. If we learn to play music, we practice playing scales and other complex finger and musical exercise. Yet the scales and finger exercises are not considered the final music. Meditation is also a little like this. As kid we learn to draw the alphabet, but we don’t write out the alphabet often once we have learned it. Meditation is like this.

Well this is Midsummer Night, the shortest night of the year and the longest day. From this day on the Sun moves southward toward autumn and winter. Of all the kinds of holidays, celebrating the solstices has always been my favorite, at least since I grew up. The inclination of the North Pole is inclined (as in “I am inclined”) toward the direction of the center of our galaxy and all of the deep cosmic matter at the galactic nucleus. The center of the galaxy (GC) has always fascinated me astrologically. For years I contemplated, analyzed, and even dreamed on what is the meaning of the galactic center? I couldn’t figure it out. Then one day it simply dawned on me. It had been right before my eyes all the time, locked in the traditional meaning of the two signs that define its direction, Sagittarius and Capricorn. If you combine the direct candor of Sagittarius with the practical qualities of Capricorn, you have the meaning of the galactic center. It has been there all the time embedded in plain sight in the traditional interpretations for these two signs. I finally got it and really began to study the galaxy center.

Thanksgiving is my favorite legal Holiday, but you can have the rest of them. I am not much of an officially-declared holiday person, especially if we are talking about New Year’s Eve. My daughter May does a huge New Year’s Eve concert (usually sold out) that reaches beyond midnight, to which I am, of course, always invited, but I have never gone. Where I do go on New Year’s Eve is to bed, and early at that, way before Midnight. I just don’t care for calendar holidays. My family does its best to tolerate me; they like a good celebration, drag out the board games, and party it on up. I am sorry. But I am not completely holiday-less. I have my own idea of holidays, and the Solstices top the list. Those of you who read this blog know I love New and Full Moons, and especially eclipses. I am not sure that ‘love’ is the right word. Let’s just say I observe the lunar cycle. I take note. For example, we just had a rather tough New Moon last Thursday, so we are on an upswing by now or at least having a shift in emphasis. What does get my blood moving, however, are the solstices, especially the Summer Solstice, but the Winter Solstice is second on my list and just as important.

It's been a while since we had a large solar flare, one in the X-Class, much less one that is fully geoeffective and coming right at Earth as this one is, so hang on and don't lose your sense of humor. It has been confirmed that this recent solar flare generated a CME-event (Corona Mass Emission) that is directly aimed at Earth. In fact, there are two CME events heading here, one launched (slower one) on September 9th and the other (faster one) yesterday, September 10th. They should arrive fairly close together on Friday September 12th with a one-two punch, making auroras visible here on Earth perhaps even at mid-latitudes.

As usual I am not immediately that interested in the gross physical effects of sudden solar bursts, but rather the internal and psychological effects. I have written so often about the effect of these massive solar events that I have not much new to say.  here are many articles and some books at this link, not to mention three videos, here:

Scientists say that another even more powerful solar flare has emerged, but this one is not directed at Earth. Meanwhile the CME (coronal mass ejection) event from January 23rd is still working itself out. Some readers have asked me what are the internal signs we should look for in such an event. I can only share my own experiences with these “soul-ar” events. There is nothing quite like a strong solar event to shuffle my options and offer me at least the opportunity for a new deal. The deep imprinting of a solar flux has the ability to wipe out my short-term memory, at least as regards my current plans or direction, and leave me stranded in myself, standing there vacantly looking around for which way to go once again.

It has been relatively quiet on the Sun for a while, but yesterday we had a large M5.9 Class solar flare at 6:49 PM EDT (Friday June 7, 2013). I tend to forget that we are at the peak of the Sunspot cycle this year until one of these eruptions breaks out. I have written a lot of material earlier about solar flares and their effects on our mind, so I won't repeat all of that here. For those who have not tuned in to what solar flares are all about, I have free e-books, articles, and videos on this topic here, so feel free to have a look around the site: http://dharmagrooves.com/#&panel1-1 Not all solar flares are as strong as the M5.9 yesterday. What I would like to mention here is a common misunderstanding as to how solar flares work within our mind when we don't have really strong ones or are not at the peak of the eleven-year sunspot cycle as we are now. And I feel this is important to understand.

Odd as it sounds, but understandable enough, some of you appear to be still having difficulty focusing on how to identify inner change when it is present. I have pointed out that it does little good to look outside in the world for it. I suggested that you look within, but I see that even though you are now looking within, you still are looking for something OUTSIDE yourself. I fear you miss the point, so let me be more graphic. You may be looking for change as if change were something unusual or strange to find, when it is just the opposite. Remember that the wisdom of the ages declares that change is the only constant. Therefore, it is something you are only too familiar with, not something different from yourself. In other words, even when you are looking within, don't look outside yourself for change in there, but rather look at how you (yourself) are changing. I know, it is hard to see because it is you that is changing. It is difficult both to change and witness your own change at the same time. This is not news.

Well we did not have another X-Class solar flare overnight, so I am going to try to wrap this up for now. However, don't be surprised if one pops up. The solar influx (sunshine) each day on the quiet sun changes the self, but gradually. We never notice it. Intense solar change, like we get with these recent strong solar flares injects change into our mindstream in quantum leaps that cannot easily be assimilated. We tend to notice this level of change, but we may not have identified it properly. Some of your comments tell me that you are still looking for change outside yourself, when I keep pointing out that with solar flares it is our own self that is changing. And who is there to monitor that, Me, Myself, and I?

I see that these recent solar flares and their earthbound solar plasma made headlines on CNN, although scientists are only concerned with the exoteric or outer ramifications of the influx. What about their effect on our psyche and inner life? That is too esoteric for science, and for that matter astrologers as well. Until recently, intense solar activity has been, astrologically speaking, totally esoteric. Astrologers have mostly ignored it.

Traditionally the word "Esoteric" just means that only a few folks get it. Esoteric astrology is no different. Not many astrologers get it or to put another way, no one even seems very interested.

I am on the road and have crossed the 45th parallel, headed to the top of the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in hope of seeing the potentially-strong aurorae Saturday night caused by this current CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) event. The huge tide of geo-magnetically-charged solar plasma will sweep past Earth in the next couple of hours. It is 5:30 AM right now and I am near the top of the mitten, as we say in Michigan, and will soon cross the Mackinac Bridge into the U.P. From there I will travel up to the town of Brimley near the Canadian border, about as far north as I can get on the eastern side of Michigan. My daughter Anne, Emma, and her family are minding the home front and taking care of the dogs. I spent most of Friday at the Blissfest Music Festival near Bliss, Michigan where my daughter May and her husband Seth Bernard were performing. The temperature soared somewhere in the 90s, so it was hot. The Bliss Festival is one of the finest music festivals in the Midwest, and harkens back to the 1960s in quality and spirit. I heard a little of the Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band, and some Corey Harris, not to mention my daughter and/or her husband Seth several times.

HUGE SOLAR ERUPTION The Sun erupted last Sunday spewing forth a huge burst of plasma into space, which is heading right toward Earth. It is a coronal mass ejection of particles which will funnel in through the north and south magnetic fields of the polar regions on Wednesday August 4th, 2010. Some have written me asking what this means. Here are some thoughts. This is the beginning (and a strong one) of the coming solar maximum, the peak of an 11-year cycle, the point where the Sun is communicating most with us. And what does it communicate? Can this streaming information from the Sun touch your brain, reach your heart, and connect? That would be thinking only physically. The Sun is way more than just a physical body, just as you are. If you consider yourself more than physical, consider what the Sun is. Just imagine!

Some of you have questions as to how this infusion of solar plasma into our innermost self will manifest or be detected. That’s a good question, so let’s go over it. First of all this is very, very subtle stuff. By subtle I don’t mean we are not smart enough to get it, but rather that we may not have enough awareness right now to be… AWARE of what has happened. Why? Because we are somewhat overwhelmed by the solar information. Remember this information remakes our sense of self, not just the northern lights or some radio interference. Perhaps the best way to get a handle on it is to think back a day or so and get a fix on what your mind was like then and where you thought you were headed, as in: where WERE you headed two days ago?

Solar flares continue to roll in, although only the three X-Class flares so far. Two MClass

flares (2nd highest class) occurred Wednesday, June 11th. Some of you have

written asking for a better understanding of how massive solar influx affects our sense

of self, so here are some comments.

What we call our "self," while tenacious as hell in terms of its attachments, is still a

relatively fragile construct. The Buddhists point out that although what we call the "Self"

has no true existence and is but a useful fabrication, it is "permanent" in its function as a

control center or glorified personal secretary. If we did not have a self, we would have to

invent one, which is exactly what we have done. However, the self is a "persona

delicata," so to speak, and easily upset, as we all should well know.

If you resonate to this solar flare information I have been posting, if it makes sense to you and you feel like internalizing it a bit, there is one major step you can take, if you can realize it. Understanding it is not hard, experiencing it consciously is a little harder, and realizing it can be difficult. It is worth the effort, so I will describe it to you. To begin, I would like to share a few experiences and thoughts concerning the structure in space beyond our solar system and how it might be of value personally (or astrologically if you are an astrologer) for learning more about who we are and what on Earth we might be here for.

Of the many emotional states that are said to obscure our mind (what the Buddhists call ‘kleshas”), perhaps the most powerful is that of desire, and in particular sexual desire. One thing we all know is that sexual energy usually gets our attention, whether it is with our partner or being emanated by a stranger on the street. If it is definitely out there, often hard to ignore, and it can be difficult not have some response to it, sometimes even embarrassing when we fall into it and let it carry us away a bit. This same energy is what makes the world go round and insures that all the species continue to exist, so it is not a weak force.

I had heard of Seth Bernard but had not yet met him. As a father with three daughters and one son, I am always interested in who is dating my daughters. Isn’t this part of what it means to be a father? My daughter May, who was an up-and-coming singer and songwriter at the time, told me about a tiny festival or music event somewhere out in the woods where there were more mosquitoes than musicians. May had gone there to see a band she knew called “Bodega.” Anyway, at this event she heard a musician by the name of Seth Bernard. She was very enthused and I could not tell whether she liked his music, his person, or both. Obviously, in retrospect, it was both.

Since I seem to be giving up some of my secrets lately, I might as well share another, a few of the sensitive points in the body where energy collects. Not everyone knows of these very special points, but if you check them out, you will find that they are there. Not all body processes happen in clock time, time that we can see. Some happen in motion slower than we can mindfully monitor, but that does not mean that they are not there. Among the more interesting of these are the various sensitive contact points on our body. I have found that it is important to keep these sensitive bodily contact areas clean, just as we keep the contact points on the distributor caps in our autos clean.

Consciousness transference is not just an exotic spiritual concept that refers to some live-long event at the end of life. We can benefit from learning it now, and begin the process of transferring our conscious attachment from what makes up what we call our self to the mind itself, that which we will actually be taking with us when we die. We should all learn the difference. Putting all our eggs in the one basket of our personal self, thinking of our self as permanent thing is a recipe for despair, because the process of life (and certainly of death) will painstakingly remove our clinging fingers from each attachment to allow us to go free. And it will be heartbreakingly painful. We shall be released, like it or not, sooner or later.

I have heard for many years from Asians, astrologers from India in particular, who do not understand the western concern of the self. Why? Because they are somehow inoculated at an early age against what we call self-ishness. How can this possibly be so? Are not all humans just plain selfish? Well, the answer appears to be, yes, Asians are also selfish, but no, they are not selfish in the same way we are here in the west. Tibetans regard the "self" differently than we do. The Tibetan Buddhists learn at least two concepts early on in life that those of us here in the west apparently never know, and I will present them here so that we can all be on the same page. The Buddhists emphatically teach that the self is a pure composite, a personality that we pull around ourselves like a cloak made entirely of our likes and dislikes, our habits and experience. The self is our servant, not our master. After all, we created what it is composed of. How this master/servant order reverses itself in our mind would take a lot of looking at, so let's just agree for now that somehow it does. Like the old Marxist axiom, the master becomes dependent on the work of the servant and thus servants become masters in their own way.

The Buddhist teachings point out that we don’t have a truly-existing or permanent Self. What is that all about? They do not say that we don’t have a self; of course we all do. What they say is that the self that we do have has no true existence (as in: permanency), but rather is like a patchwork quilt made up of whatever we have drawn around us and are attached to. Here is an example. For most of us our self is the literal and figurative center of our existence – home base. Our self as center is inviolate and around that center most of us arrange our life. And while the center of our self is always with us, what that center is made up with is constantly changing. In other words, while the center is more or less permanent, what we consider central to us at any time in our life changes.

This week’s "Time Magazine" cover story for their February 3, 2014 issue is titled "The Mindful Revolution" and it is all about secular meditation and how mindfulness is finally taking hold in this country. Of course all of this is easy to foretell since mind training is such a valuable skill that I am certain some years from now proof of mind-training experience and expertise will be as important in your job resume as any college experience. You can do more with it, like: anything. As a former director of a largish company (650 employees), I have hired a lot of people and many college diplomas aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. They guarantee very little. For many jobs I would hire someone with real mind training expertise over college-paper any day.

of you have responded to the discussion. Now I would like to repeat something I blogged about recently that I feel didn't fully take, but is most helpful. Repetition in dharma concepts is not boring, but almost necessary for them to be absorbed. I want to go over those pith instructions of the great Mahasiddha Tilopa one more time, and I suggest you read it again as if for the first time. It is only a question of when they will sink in, not if. And when these very simple suggestions are incorporated (i.e. we actually do them), they are life-changing.