The field of psychology appropriated (hijacked) the Buddhist term "mindfulness" (originally sati but now just "awareness" or "paying attention")
Anyone who thinks it was a commonplace practice in ancient India during the time of the Buddha should look up the Hindu definition of sati, which reveals it used to mean throwing a wife on the pyre when her husband died 😲
The great work of Jon Kabbat-Zin to help therapists led to the unexpected disconnection of the practice with anything, as if it could be a standalone endeavor
"Bare attention" is a component of sati, but it must be coupled with dispassionate (unbiased) looking on, free of greed, hatred, and delusion (wanting, aversion, and confusion)
What is one to be mindful of to advance to insight, realization, and awakening? The Buddha pointed at four things: body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects. What does this mean? Psychology cannot tell us, but the Dhamma can
Who needs Dhamma when we have a corporate bottom line to advance, productivity to raise, and mental health symptoms to abate?
Why call it "mindfulness," Psychology? Why not pick a new name for what you've turned this into?
Ego (buddhism podcast) The Buddha didn't teach us only to be "present." He taught us to remember (recollection, memory, bearing in mind, the faculty of sati)
On the road to Berkeley like Benji (The Graduate)
Personally, in college at UC Berkeley many years ago, I took a "Buddhist Psychology" course in the department and was so excited to finally be able to learn what "cognition" meant and what the Buddha had to say about all these psychological things. Our assigned textbook, written by a psychologist, was called Mindfulness. "All right," I thought, "I'm finally going to advance in my practice and being in college is going to help me. Imagine my surprise when, as I read, I did not recognize what was being called "mindfulness." It did not align with all the translated ancient texts I had read and was continuing to read from the Buddhist Publication Society and the Pali Text Society. A few years in the future I would even visit BPS Editor Bhikkhu Bodhi in Kandy, Sri Lanka, to ask him about all this.
Not yet having him as a direct resource, except through his translations and BPS newsletter messages, I asked my professor in class about how I was left perplexed by reading our textbook. She looked at me and shrugged, "Of course! This "mindfulness" isn't the Buddha's mindfulness. It is psychology's," she explained. I looked around and many students were nodding their heads in agreement. "There are two mindfulnesses?!" I balked. "There are now" was the implicit answer. "Does Berkeley know about this? Why is this class called Buddhist psychology if all we're going to talk about is Western psychology?" She winked because she was subverting the system and introducing Buddhist ideas back into class, but we had to know that the new mindfulness had been taken, changed, and applied in rigorous scientific ways to the behavioral sciences, therapy, counseling, and the mental health field. Sure, it wasn't the Buddha's mindfulness, but that's because it had to be stripped of all spirituality and/or religiosity to get by the gatekeepers of the university system. What a gyp.
We gathered, cleaned, offered dana and took the Five Precepts with the abbot, ate lunch, meditated, then culminated the day with a chanting of the Patthana ("Conditional Relations"), and a Q&A period with the Sayadaw explaining that all things (composites) are "empty," which is to say utterly impersonal. This, however, is only true for one who knows and sees. One can directly see all manner of physical and psychological (material and mental phenomena) particles, kalapas and cittas and see that they are not "self" just as the historical Buddha saw. But why would anyone want to see such a thing?
This is "awakening" from the illusion of the suffering we identify as we remain tenaciously attached to the Five Aggregates clung to as self. What, then, if we were to let go? Of course, we do not have the power to let go. Form will not let go of form, feelings will not give up feeling, perceptions will not stop perceiving, mental formations will not give up fabricating our reality, and consciousness will not stop processing stimuli and data from the outside world.
And so long as the illusion lasts that these five heaps take all of this to be the work of a soul or self (atta, atman, jiva), the possessions of a self (I, me, and mine), just so long will suffering continue and get worse. To be done with it, to lay the burden down, we must bring about calm and focus -- sustained attention to see things as they really are. When that is seen, letting go happens by itself. A woman clutches a rope. How long will it take her to let go in horror and disgust when she realizes it is a venomous snake?
Just so, the aggregates cling to the aggregates (and all that they feel belong to this imaginary "self" or "soul" or "ego" they are constantly constructing). How long will it take to let go when they realize that all of this has been impersonal, impossible to satisfy (because things can never offer fulfillment), and radically impermanent (arising, turning, and hurtling toward destruction)? In an instant of seeing, one clings no more. Therefore, to get there, let us let the mind/heart settle into stillness, develop clear-seeing (vipassana), and awaken to direct insight of the Truth. The Truth will set us free.
This Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026, go to Temple or Church, preferably some place silent and contemplative. We'll be at the new Buddhist temple in the San Gabriel Valley doing "good karma," cleaning and building it up to make a lovely place for everyone to come practice the historical Buddha's authentic teachings preserved in a Southeast Asian country that honors the Pali canon while sitting next to Mahayana China.
With skills specifically designed for intelligence operations (intel ops), Chase Hughes releases yet another groundbreaking audiobook.
In Six Minute X-Ray, learn the most powerful people-reading system in the world.
Hughes exposes and unpacks simple techniques that come together to allow anyone to see beyond the mask that people are wearing.
In less than six minutes, know more about the hidden side of the person speaking than their own friends and family -- no joke.
(N.A.S.A.) "Electric Flowers" (Mario C. Remix) ft. Nina Persson, RZA
How to see behind the masks we wear:
Masks we wear may be better?
Identify anyone's (including our own) hidden fears and insecurities in less than five minutes
Quickly and easily get an 80 percent read of a person before meeting
Enable people to become the most vulnerable, open, confident, and best version of themselves during the first six minutes of meeting them
Discover hidden secrets about a person in six minutes to gain access to their most hidden beliefs and values
Use this information to create undivided attention and cooperation
Exactly how to tune in and adapt language to the internal language of anyone speaking
How conservative Christian views on sex have changed over the years
Thou shalt not enjoy thyself...or else.
Regardless of faith, having an intimate conversation with a partner can sometimes feel odd to broach. In the case of many Christian denominations, relationship to one's partner, through sex and similar intimate moments, only gets addressed after marriage. [That's usually a bit late, like it or lump it because now you can take it, but you can't leave it.]
Get far enough from toilet to avoid splash back.
Although it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, this lack of sex-centric discussions creates a difficult barrier for partners who want to be considerate but don’t know the best practices to do so. So what kind of professional help can assist, and how do faith-centric couples handle conversations tied to relationship intimacy? Join delicate host Lair "Bear" Mantle to share their expertise on the matter are sex therapists and educators Clifford Penner and Joyce Penner, who jointly operate the practice Passionate Commitment (passionatecommitment.com) in Pasadena. Resources
(AOL/RIGBY) After seeing a viral TikTok about “spicy” bookstores, three local reading enthusiasts decided that eastern Idaho is in dire need of a way to spice up access to adult [c]literature.
Bailey Sutton-Moser, Mia Calderwood, and Rachel Moser -- three friends who share a love for reading -- came up with the idea to open Between The Covers after seeing an online video about an Arizona bookstore that specialized in selling romance books for women.
“I was like, ‘What if we just did this?'” Calderwood says. “We talked about it for an hour, and the next thing you know, we’re submitting for a business registration.”
Spicy, smutty, romance fantasy addiction?
Thanks to trends like BookTok, on TikTok, romance novels have become increasingly popular over the last few years, with viral obsessions like Quicksilver by Callie Hart, A Court of Thorns and Roses (series) by Sarah J. Maas, and Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros.
“A romance bookstore is a space that women can go into and just breathe for once,” Sutton-Moser says. “It’s a chance for women to break away from reality, to find books that appeal to our natures, and just relax.”
The owners say everyone is welcome at the bookstore, and it is not an adult business because it doesn’t sell adult items, although some content is age-restricted. More: aol.com
Cruisin' 2 Freedom (car show)
Cali car culture creeps into everything.
Join the Slave 2 Nothing® Foundation’s Cruisin’ 2 Freedom™ event to fuel the fight against human trafficking. This high-octane evening features a Car Cruise, Car Show, and Dinner – all designed to drive real impact! From vintage to 4x4s – this is your chance to showcase your car, cruise the California coastline, and raise funds to support the Slave 2 Nothing Foundation. All guests can take part in a raffle giveaway, bid on exciting silent and live auction items, and enjoy a Double-Double®, chips, and a drink from Cookout Trucks: Cruisin’ 2 Freedom | Slave 2 Nothing
Supreme Court hears arguments over transgender athletes in school sports
Colorful intersex flag (LGBTQIA+)
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments today over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams. Lower courts ruled for the transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia who challenged the state bans, but the conservative-dominated Supreme Court might not follow suit. In the past year, the justices ruled in favor of state bans on "gender-affirming care" [gay-promoting treatment] for transgender youths and allowed multiple restrictions on transgenders to be enforced. The legal fight is playing out amid a broad effort by Pres. Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth. Presented with files from the Associated Press.
This is what proves Trump’s dementia: Psychologist | The Daily Beast Podcast
(The Daily Beast) Sept. 20, 2025: The Daily Beast Podcast. Dr. John Gartner, former Johns Hopkins professor and co-host of the podcast Shrinking Trump, joins the Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles to deliver a chilling diagnosis: Pres. Donald Trump is showing signs of dementia layered on top of malignant narcissism.
Drawing on decades of clinical expertise, Dr. Gartner explains how Trump’s
declining language,
erratic gait, and
disturbing anecdotes
Trump was too busy that day being forgetful
point to brain deterioration that makes him not just unpredictable but uniquely dangerous in office.
Coles presses the doctor on how Trump’s narcissism compares to King Charles’ public persona, whether his cabinet and family are retreating from his volatility, and what it means when a leader with nuclear codes also displays symptoms of mini-strokes and confabulation.
From Hitler’s psychology to Bill Clinton’s benign narcissism, this episode explores how power amplifies paranoia, cruelty, and decay—and asks the starkest question of all:
As Trump weakens physically and mentally while tightening his grip on authority, how far can Trumpism go before it breaks America?
00:00 - Introduction
01:46 - Trump's symptoms of dementia
05:38 - Trump's breakdown in all mental functions
06:20 - Trump's malignant narcissism
09:02 - How Trump's narcissism compares to King Charles
13:30 - Trump's frontotemporal dementia symptoms
17:20 - People around Trump managing his ill behavior
36:45 - Elon Musk exhibits bipolar and psychopath traits
38:20 - Trump meets strict criteria for psychopathy
40:35 - Click "join" link and become an official member of YouTube community
#podcast #news #trump
👂 Podcast: The Daily Beast Podcast
📺 Episode: 589
🎧 Format: Full Podcast
📅 Date: September 19, 2025
👨💼 Guest: Dr. John Gartner
🎙️ Host: Joanna Coles
Get to know Maria Bamford in nine jokes about beauty standards in L.A., having a workplace nemesis and going to therapy as a child.
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult (Audible Audiobook)
Unabridged. Stand-up comedian and author Maria Bamford narrates her Simon & Schuster publication, which has garnered 4.4 out of 5 stars with 994 ratings. It is a Goodreads Choice
Award nominee.
From “weird, scary, ingenious” (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, an instant New York Times bestselling, brutally honest, and “laugh-out-loud funny” (Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems — from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.
Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has always fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.
In Bamford’s “trademark blend of disarming intimacy and dark whimsy” (Publishers Weekly), Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult brings us on a quest to participate in something. With sincerity and transparency, she recounts every anonymous fellowship she has joined (including but not limited to: Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous), every hypomanic episode (from worrying about selling out under capitalism to enforcing union rules on her Netflix TV show set to protect her health), and every easy 1-to-3-step recipe for fudge in between.
Packed with “Bamford’s brilliance, relentless humor, and insatiable instinct for survival (Library Journal), this memoir explores what it means to keep going, and to be a member of society (or any group she’s invited to) despite not being very good at it.
In turn, she hopes to transform isolating experiences into comedy that will make you feel less alone (without turning into a cult following). NOTE: Purchase of this title includes accompanying PDF in your Audible Library along with the audio. Sure, I'll Join Your Cult
Maria Bamford, Amazon.com; Comedy Central; Laugh Society; Ashley Wells, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
(Big Fox News) Feb. 21, 2024: Today is National Breakup Day. (Is it because it's "2/21" -- "two, two, one" as in "couple, couple, single" as in "going, going, gone"? No, this is no May 4th, Star Wars Day, when we say, "May the 4th be with you." It's because it's a week after Valentine's Day and Boo was only sticking around to not be alone on the momentous triumph for Kama/Cupid (Mara/Eros) or to get a gift, dinner, and to avoid the humiliation of sitting alone at a restaurant on the biggest day of the year for daters, lovers, and soon to be heartbroken and pathetic hungry ghost humans).
Love hurts, and breaking uphurts worse. So hu-man up! Don't act like such a clingy ghost. That is to say, get out of Buddhist cosmology'sRealm of Hungry Ghosts.If you can't help it, talk to addiction medicine specialist Dr. Gabor Maté, who says we can become addicted to anything, even a partner (even though no person, sexual act, or substance is, in and of itself, addictive. If it were, everyone partaking would become an addict, and they don't. So why did we? It's because of our history of early childhood traumas. We are predisposed. That history combined with pleasant dopamine-pleasures = hardcore addiction. And today is the day we are disposed.
Now are ye undeceived.*
It gives singles -- and even those who are attached in a committed relationship, marriage, or handfasting -- a day to reflect on past relationships and realize our own personal growth gained from those experiences.
Feb. 21, 2025: The five fastest ways to get broken up with are: (5) hogging the remote (taking too much ownership of the TV, the complaint of 15% of partners), (4) fake listening (failing to communicate because of distraction, ADHD, and not listening), (3) bad money management (splurging, gambling, no control of finances), (2) forgetting [Is it forgetting?], and (1) smoking (the worst thing a partner can do for 64% of people about to breakup with us). Note that neither stinking, snoring, nor cheating made the list. Lesbian Ally Johnson looked it up and presented it to horny hetero co-host Klein on KROQ this morning.
Nothing hurts worse than realizing the person you were in love with is an evil jerk
I'll never write a spiteful song about this guy. He's perfect. And we'll always be happy!
.
Let's stand by this star as the world burns.
*American author Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an allegory, the climactic part of which reads: "by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
“Lo! there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic [now demonic] nature could yet mourn for our miserable [human] race.
“Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived! — Evil is the nature of [hu]mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!”
“Welcome!” repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph. And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this dark world.
A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own.
The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband. “Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!”
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew ("Young Goodman Brown" classic American literature, 1835 short story about 17th century Puritan New England).
If only the Buddha had had anything to say about suffering
On many occasions, being asked questions, the Buddha reminded people that he only really taught two things. Any guesses? Did he teach magic and koans? Yin and yang? Mojo and moxie? The Kama Sutra and The Art of Not Giving a F***?
No. Of course, it was suffering (dukkha) and the end of suffering (nirvana). Why would anyone "teach suffering"? The Buddha had to make clear what "suffering" means. He defined it very handily and broadly, a functional definition for the cure he is about to present. What is the use of being told there's a cure if we haven't realized what disease we have been suffering from? "Pain" is much broader than we've imagined, as it includes disappointment, frustration, loss, separation, and even the excruciating agony of heartbreak.
But that's so pessimistic!
No, it isn't. It's a setup for the presentation of the antidote, solution, cure -- the path of practice to bring ALL suffering to a final end. We never even imagined we could bring it to an end, hoping death would do that for us. Death does not do that at all! Why? There is rebirth, and the reason there is rebirth is because there is craving and karma as yet to bring about its many results of all our skillful and unskillful deeds.
ALL disappointment, unsatisfactoriness, and woe CAN be brought to an end, a final end for it to never arise again. That is the great optimism of Buddhism, the "good news" of the Buddha's message to a benighted world of humans and devas (light beings, shining ones).
Suffering (dukkha): Disappointment is one of the Three Universal Marks of Existence. Various sutras sum up how cognitive processes result in our aversion (resistance, hate, fear, revulsion) to unpleasant things and experiences as we are moved to crave, grasp at, and cling to pleasure (sukha), keeping us in saṃsāra, the Cycle of Death and Rebirth. It is at the root of the Five Aggregates clung to as "self": (re)birth is suffering, aging, illness, death, sorrow, lamentation, mental pain, grief, and despair are s; suffering, asociation with the unloved, separation from the loved, NOT GETTING what one wants, getting what one does not want, all of this is "suffering." In brief, the Five Aggregates clung to as self (khandha, skandhas) are suffering.
The Four Noble Truths are Buddhism in a nutshell because they present the whole of the path of practice in four ennobling (enlightening) statements, like the assessment of a master physician:
Diagnosis: There is a disease (suffering)
Etiology: There is a cause of that disease (craving rooted in ignorance and associated with aversion)
Prognosis: There is a solution
Cure: There is way to the solution (magga, the path).
Early emphasis is on the importance of developing liberating insight (vipassana) to penetrate these fundamental truths about existence is key, and that insight is arrived at by the path of purification, the path to freedom, which is calm leading to samma samadhi, the meditative absorptions (jhanas), to reach a foundation of balanced stillness and intensification of mind able to penetrate them. It is not by thinking or study, belief or powerful faith. One needs to experience these truths until they are self-evident, not statements, not assessments, not doctrines.
The fourth truth is the general Ennobling Eightfold Path, but there is a more detailed summary enumerated in the 37 Requisites of Awakening/Enlightenment (bodhipakkhiya-dhamma).
Brilliant minds, debate, online, asking questions and getting answers. Try Intelligence Squared +: intelligencesquared.com/p...
What is Intelligence Squared +?
ABOUT: Intelligence Squared+ brings live, interactive events online every week. Viewers can ask questions to speakers, vote in live polls, and interact with other members of the audience. Subscription gives access to multiple events, live and on-demand, featuring the world’s top thinkers and opinion formers. #MeToo
Blind to white privilege, implicit bias, sexism?
Deluded that we are a fair meritocracy with mistakes?
Guest Dr. Jordan Peterson, Hostess Anne McElvoy, Intelligence Squared (UK), May 24, 2018; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
.png)
.jpg)
%20wiki.jpeg)
