Leo Tolstoy on God

LEO TOLSTOY ON GOD: "When you look inside yourself, you see what is called 'your own self' or your soul. You cannot touch it or see it or understand it, but you know it is there. And this part of yourself--that which you cannot understand--is what is called God. God is both around us and inside of us--in our souls.

The more you understand that you are at one with God, the more you will understand that you are at one with all His worldly manifestations."

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Are you Ready for December 21, 2012?


It's not as if we don't have enough on our plate just trying to get through each of these days. Now, as some astronomers, psychics and others would have us believe, we have to worry now about December 21, 2012!

Are you ready?

That's the day you're either going to die, with the rest of us.

Or

That's the day you're going to have a renewed awakening to the Spirit within you.


The way I see it ...there's not much I can do about either one, so I'll just have to wait and see what happens on that day. I'll either be here, so fully awakened to the Spirit within me, or I'll be "there."

I really hope I'm alive and conscious on that day! I want to experience what that type of worldly dying would be like...or what type of resurrection of Spirit, we will all have...I pray I'm still alive.

But if it's like the year 2000, when for many years prior, the doomsayers were predicting another end world time, you'll wake up on December 22, 2012 and feel disappointed.

As bad as things in your life may seem today, don't get your hopes up about dying on that day!


And...especially...don't stop doing your spiritual work in the hope that on December 22, 2012, everyone else will be awake to the Spirit within them and we'll all be living in a wonderful world!

Like the year 2000 fiasco, this projection about 12/21/12 is based on another calendar "glitch."

This time, it's based on the Mayan calendar, "which after 5000 years is about to start over," according to several sources in my research. Then, if this were not bad enough, "it is also the day of a galactic alignment in which the sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy, an event that occurs once every 26,000 years. This could have potentially catastrophic consequences because the galactic alignment has the potential to create a shift in the Earth's poles, causing disastrous environmental events."


"The forecast is based primarily on what is claimed to be the end-date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which is presented as lasting 5,125 years and as terminating on December 21 or 23, 2012, along with interpretations of assorted legends, scriptures, numerological constructions and prophecies," according to Wikipedia. Here, you get a VERY THOUGHTFUL analysis of the situation when you google "2012."




There are many books written on the subject, suggesting that all the hype is based on materialistic accumulations rather than sounding any alarm bells.



I say, "So What?" if either prediction comes through:

With the first, we wouldn't know what "hit us!"

With the second would serve the world well.

The thing that has me is that many of the people going around talking about doomsday are also some of the same spiritual leaders and so-called "visionaries," who talk about living in the Moment!


If we trust God in the "moment" we live each day, are we going to trust him less on December 21, 2012?

And even if we don't trust him, what can we DO, to fix the day?


It's not enough that we have to be scared about a threat that Sarah Palin will resurface big time in 2012...now, we've got to worry about saving ourselves from the event that will cause us to DIE?

My Advice:

Live in the MOMENT!

When the Apocalypse hits...you won't even KNOW IT...

You'll be so in the MOMENT!

Namaste',

Che'

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Dreams: Why They Are WAKE UP Calls!


I had a dream, a literal dream, that I'd won the lottery, about $23 million, after taxes. I KNEW I'd won, but I kept on delaying cashing it in.


I kept telling people: "I've won the lottery! I am a millionaire!" Yet, I kept right on acting and doing the same things.


When I began to finally look for the ticket, I forgot where I'd placed it. I woke up still looking...still fumbling... to get that WINNING TICKET!


LOL!

Wow! What a Dream!

It sure was my wake-up call, though, to the events in my life and how I was living below my full potential by acting and being a "loser."

That simply is NOT me...but I could have fooled ME... in the last several years.

All spirit grown, of course, and a necessary part of the "evil" that Leo Tolstoy says, "It is only when you live for your body alone that your suffering seems evil to you. If you think the purpose of your life is to improve your inner self, then you will come to understand suffering is good for you...."


Without a doubt, all challenges I've encountered have led me to a greater TRUTH within myself. Without those challenges, I know that I would have been stagnated and stilted in my ways of looking at, and being in, the world.


I'm grateful for the last few years of seeming misfortune and stagnation and even defeat. I am a better person and CAN and DO look at the world with different eyes now.


Lest I forgot, though, that these challenges had made me RICH, I had my dream to remind me.

That is NOW my wake-up call not to dwell on the issues of recent years and times and NOT to let them define ME today, which is what I was slowly gravitating towards.

NO! I've won the JACKPOT of my SOUL!
I intend to "cash in" before I lose the ticket, too!


How about YOU?

Where are you today in terms of the economy and other crises and challenges you may be facing?

Are you feeling like a loser...a BIG TIME LOS..ER...because the ground has moved under your feet?

Are you feeling that you can't go on...because you've stumbled on a place and time that you DID NOT EXPECT?


Know the TRUTH ABOUT YOU!


Remember these wise words: "The race is NOT for the Swift...but HE who Endureth to the END!"


Let your Soul do its PERFECT WORK through you! Give it time to be BIRTHED through YOU!


You are here for a reason and for a purpose. Even though you've STUMPED your toe, it was simply to correct the direction you were headed down: into a vast world of EMPTY SEA...seeing the world and its ways with unseeing EYES...with the EMPTINESS of an EMPTY SOUL.

Out of NOTHING comes NOTHING.


Out of the DEPTH comes your Soul!

Let it grow FORWARD into the vastness of your experiences.

Let it ring forth in your life, though it may lead you into
pastures that seem like "the shadow of death!"

TRUST IN YOURSELF.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.



Remember your victories...your MANY VICTORIES of yesterday...


Know that OVERCOMING is in your Soul.

Know that you're in the pasture right now, fertilizing the seeds in your Soul.

Know that you are getting RIPE for a victory in your life.

You'll KNOW when you're RIPE, TOO....


You'll know when VICTORY IS ON ITS WAY.

YOU'LL KNOW WHEN YOU'VE TRIUMPH OVER THE seeming defeats and lack and
no "Can Dos!"



Maybe, you, too, will have a dream...and your WAKE-UP CALL!

[HAPPY BIRTHDAY to one of my most faithful Blog Readers: Kathy Simoncelli! Remember, Kathy, you've got the WINNING TICKET in YOU! Go Get 'Em!]

Namaste',

Che'

Sunday, May 24, 2009

When Holy Men Turn To Battle: The Fight of Tibetan Buddhists


In March 2009, there were two reports that passed through on the Internet, catching my attention: “Dalai Lama: Tibetans ‘suffering’ under China,” was the headline of the Associated Press (AP) piece filed on March 10, 2009. Then, “Tibetans attack police station, 93 monks arrested,” was the March 22, 2009 headline of the next AP piece.

Why these reports and why now?

According to the Dalai Lama, the Nobel Peace Laureate, “life for Tibetans under Chinese rule has been ‘hell on earth.’ He added that “These 50 years have brought untold suffering to the land and people of Tibet.”

On March 22, when the second piece was filed, hundreds of Tibetans had attacked a police station and government officials in northwestern China. This was despite heightened security.

Clearly, with nearly 100 monks being arrested, there was a message in this: The Tibetan Buddhists were fed up with suffering in silence, and they weren’t going to take the mistreatment anymore.


For a religion that practices love and peace towards all of mankind, this was a clear departure in responding to challenges. As a matter of fact, the primary goals for followers of Tibetan Buddhism is to find enlightenment themselves, so that they can show others the way to attain that state of being while still on Earth.

Once this “enlightenment,” defined as finding all there is to know, is found, then the person should be in a state of perpetual bliss. Finding enlightenment is also considered to be the same as finding “Buddhahood." So what happened to being in this state of perpetual bliss?


Conflict With the Chinese
The primary conflict with the Chinese comes from Tibetan Buddhism’s two seemingly conflicting practices of skepticism and guru devotion.


The issues stem from the committed practices at the CORE of Tibetan Buddhism: a healthy skepticism is encouraged to foster growth in the followers’ abilities in analytic meditation, and reverence for teachers, who in Tibetan Buddhism, are called lamas. These lamas are revered...the reverence becomes total devotion and unquestioning faith in the guru. This type of reverence for a teacher (leader) is in direct conflict with the Chinese Socialist orientations.




A student typically takes teachings from many authorities and revere them all as lamas in a general sense. Often, though, only one lama is held in special esteem as his own root guru. This most likely is the teacher who first introduced the person into Buddhism. Here's where the problem with the Socialist regime began.

The first military attacks by the People's Republic of China on Tibetan troops began at the end of May 1950 and escalated in late 1951, that's more than 50 years ago. This eventually led to armed conflicts later in the decade, with a failed uprising resulting in the exile of about 80,000 Tibetans, many of them Buddhist clergy members, to India. Some of them went further to the west, which in turn eventually led to the spread of Tibetan Buddhism to many Western countries, where the tradition has gained popularity.

Tibetan Definitions of "Buddhist"

Worldwide today there are about five million followers of Tibetan Bhuddism.

Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India (Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Sikkim). It is also practiced in Mongolia and parts of Russia (Kalmykia, Buryatia, and Tuva) and Northeast China.

Tibetan Buddhism comprises many distinct schools but is primarily divided into four main traditions: Nyingma, Kagyu, Gelug, and Sakya. All schools are said to include the teachings of the three vehicles of Buddhism: the Foundational Vehicle, Mahayana, and Vajrayana, which some, like the Gelug tradition, consider to be a derivative of part of Mahayana.

Introspection as the mark of a Buddhist, is embodied in the Tibetan term for Buddhist, meaning, literally, internalist.


Tibetans specify the criteria for being Buddhist, as either, formal, where one practices; or in belief, where three or four marks of existence are accepted.

Tibetan Practices

Monasticism was the foundation of Buddhism in Tibet. There were over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet and nearly all were ransacked and destroyed by the Chinese communists (many of them young ethnic Tibetan Red Guards), mainly during the Cultural Revolution. Most of the major ones have been at least partially re-established but many still remain in ruins.



Tibetans are fond of quoting sutra (scripture) that one should test the Buddha's words as one would the quality of gold.

On the other hand, at the beginning of a public teaching, a lama will do prostrations to the throne on which he will teach due to its symbolism, or to an image of the Buddha behind that throne, then students will do prostrations to the lama after he is seated.

Merit accrues when one's interactions with the teacher are imbued with such reverence in the form of guru devotion, a code of practices governing them that derives from Indian sources.

Preliminary Practices (ngöndo, sngon-'gro)and the Tibetan Approach to Vajrayana
Vajrayana : said to be the fastest method for attaining Buddhahood but it carries the caution that for unqualified practitioners it can be dangerous. Even for a qualified advanced practitioner, to engage in Vajrayana, without having received the appropriate initiation (also known as an "empowerment") from a lama who is fully qualified to give it, is to court controversy.

From the time a person resolves to accept a Vajrayana initiation, skepticism towards the person giving that initiation as guru is suspended and the utmost sustained effort in guru devotion towards them is essential.

Just as Sutrayana preceded Vajrayana historically in India, so sutra practices constitute those that are preliminary to tantric ones.

Preliminary practices include all Sutrayana activities that yield merit like: hearing teachings, prostrations, offerings, prayers and acts of kindness and compassion. Chief among the preliminary practices are realizations through meditation on the three principle stages of the path: renunciation, the altruistic bodhicitta will for enlightenment and the wisdom realizing emptiness. Without the basis of these three in particular to practice Vajrayana, it can be a very challenging practice.




Dalai Lama, Tulku and Hollywood


The Dalai Lama is a lineage of religious leaders of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lamas were also the political leaders of Lhasa-based Tibetan government between the 17th century and 1959. With "Lama" being the general term referring to Tibetan Buddhist. teachers, the current "Dalai Lama" is often called "His Holiness" (HH) by Westerners, although this does not translate to a Tibetan title. Tibetans may refer to him by epithets such as Gyalwa Rinpoche, meaning "Precious Victor,"or Yishin Norbu, meaning "Wish-fulfilling Jewel."



The Dalai Lama is believed to be the rebirth of a long line of tulkus, who have chosen to be reborn in order to enlighten others. He is also the official leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile, or Central Tibetan Administration (CTA).

A tulku is a person who is recognized to be the reincarnation of someone who is deceased. The practice of recognizing tulkus is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Through the centuries the many lineages of tulkus have become important to maintaining the integrity of monastic institutions and teachings.

Steven Seagal is one Hollywood celebrity closely associated with Tibetan Buddhists. Seagal has been recognized by Tibetan lama Penor Rinpoche as a reincarnated Tulku.

Let's hope that tantra prayers and the peacefulness of the Dalai Lama and other lamas work on behalf of Tibetan Buddhists scattered throughout the world. It would be a welcome sight to see the Holy Men once again just doing their analytical meditation or prostrations, or whatever they choose to do, before the Buddha in their search for "Buddhahood."

Namaste',

Che'

Personal Authenticity: "To Thine Own Self Be True"...

"To Thine Own Self Be True and it must follow as the night, the day, Thou canst not then be false to ANY man."
William Shakespeare.