Thich Nhat Hanh: "To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again [like flickering individual stills run in a series of connected frames of a filmstrip, one passing away and the next appearing] in the storms that make life possible."
Thay (Thích Nhất Hạnh) was a Vietnamese Zen (Thiền) teacher who practiced Engaged Buddhism. He often spoke of mindfulness (Buddhist sati) without, to our knowledge, doing much to define or explain it in detail. He lived it. It is, after all, a practice of doing (karma) much more than a theory of being.
Thiền (Zen) Master Thích Thanh Từ (1924–2022) is credited for renovating Trúc Lâm in Vietnam. He was one of the most prominent and influential Thiền masters of the 20th and early 21st century. He was a disciple of Master Thích Thiện Hoa.
The most famous practitioner of modernThiền Buddhismin the West was Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022), who authored dozens of books and founded the Plum Village Monastery in France together with his colleague, Thiền Master Bhikkhuni (Nun) Chân Không.
Other influential Vietnamese teachers in the West include Thích Thiên-Ân, who taught philosophy at UCLA, said "We all shed salty tears and shed red blood; all is one," and founded a meditation center in Los Angeles, and Thích Thiện Tâm, the author of several books in English such as Buddhism of Wisdom & Faith: Pure Land Principles and Practice.
In recent years, the modernization of Thiền has taken a new global dimension, as Vietnamese Zen is becoming influenced by the teachings of influential overseas Vietnamese Buddhist leaders such as Thích Nhất Hạnh, who have adopted Thiền to Western needs, focusing on mindfulness.
As a result, Vietnamese Buddhists have also now begun to practice these modernized forms of Thiền [17]. More
Should consciousness follow the body (in lab) or the body follow consciousness (on mat)?
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Always be mindful of the here and now.
(Dr. Crazynovich) April 19, 2026: John Titor and the Second American Civil War. On November 2, 2000, a user calling himself "TimeTravel_0" appeared on the Time Travel Institute forums and made a claim that should have been dismissed as obvious fiction. He was a soldier from the year 2036, sent back on a military mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer that his era needed to debug legacy systems inherited from the late twentieth century. He had been routed through the year 2000 for what he called personal reasons. He was there, he said, to observe the world before it changed. Within weeks, he migrated to the Art Bell forums under a new name, John Titor, and began posting with a specificity that no casual hoaxer has ever sustained for long. He described his time machine in engineering detail.
It is deadly easy to laugh at "time travel." But what we are laughing at is not the real thing so much as all our assumptions about it. Is it real? We have reason to think so. Jewish science, for example, in the form of Alvy Einstein, Bibi Spinoza, and Dr. Brucey Goldberg. Alvy drew up no equations making it impossible, did he? Time might go in either direction, and there's the curious case of retrocausation, not to mention "spooky action at a distance," which Alvy doubted, now known as quantum entanglement.
What about God? - Yeah, what about it? When Alvy, who was quite possibly a JewBu, was asked about that it, he stated that his God was Spinoza's God.
However, Bruce Goldberg is the most interesting of the three named, for he says with absolute certainty that not only is time travel possible, we're already doing it. Who's "we"? We as in you and me. What? Here's easy proof. Close your eyes. Close them! Hold perfectly still. More still, samadhi-like stillness, quietude. Feel it?
Right NOW, right here, we're traveling into the future. It's true! Look at the calendar! Look at a watch! Oh, that doesn't count! No proof is good enough, and it never has been. Stubborn!
So we are "traveling" in time, you admit? Yes, look, the real question is, Can we go back (or sideways) in time? That immediately brings up the problem of space, not outer space, not even inner space. I'm talking about the space right here. To go "sideways" is my way of saying bilocation or colocation. For instance, when "now" arrived the first time, I was right here. Might I, on the second occasion, have been somewhere else?
Can I go back to that now and be somewhere else that time? If so, that would be time travel! Can I, or all of us, go back at all? Goldberg says yes, and if you pay him, he'll take you back, so you can shut yer yapper and stop asking all these doubt-filled questions full of investigative energy and childlike curiosity. After all, what will that mean?
NOTE: If time travel becomes possible, WHEN will we have it? WHEN will it be true? WHEN will I get to do it? - These questions were all answered in an instant when we gathered to protest at JPL's back parking lot near the head of Tovaangar's Gabrieleno Trail (JPL). We were all chanting, "What do we want!?" - "Time travel!" - "When do we want it!?" - "Whenever!" ("Whenever"? Shouldn't we have answered, "NOW!"? which is how protest chants usually go? Well, yes, but as many on the scene argued, it won't matter. Why? It won't matter because WHEN we have time travel (due to our ability to go back or forward to any time that's ever been or will be), we will have had time travel all along, and "all along" includes NOW, which is when we have it, if we EVER get it. Get it? See the problem? If not, refer to the increasingly inaccurate trilogy borne out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the genius Douglas Adams discusses the problematic grammar (tense constuctions) of having it.
That is hard to say because it seems to mean various things -- and those things change our view and version of "reality." Sci-fi says going back and changing anything means changing it [and everything else due to the butterfly effect] for everyone.
What if it only changes for us? For example, I said "no." What if I went back in time and were to say "yes"? Just that change, what would it do? Would all the world and universe be different? Would it shatter our dimension? Would I be happy? Would the world regret it? It seems Brucey Baby is talking about not that but jumping timelines to a line (which is to say a time) where I did. And what happened?
I could go see. Would anybody else see? They would in that timeline, but I might like to come back to this timeline. Could I? Yes, Dr. Goldberg says, and he adds that that's what we're doing all the time anyway. (That may be the realization of reality we are not ready for).
So we already are time traveling! Jewish science. Is it a coincidence that those identifying as Ashkenazi Jews are the one who have made these speculations, advancements, and claims?
Maybe, but no one can say anything about it or risk being ostracized, listed, and categorized as an "antidentite." So grin and bear it and not just because our beloved Dr. B. Goldberg of LA is a dentist who may have inhaled some pharmaceutical fumes.
In Buddhist phenomenology, akasha is divided into "limited space" (ākāsa-dhātu) and "endless [or boundless] space" (ajatākasā) [9]. The Vaibhāṣika, an early school of Buddhist philosophy, holds the view that the existence of akasha is real [10].
Ākāsa is identified as the first arūpa jhāna("formless/immaterial absorption," dhyana in Buddhism), but that plane (among the four immaterial planes of the 31 Planes of Existence) and that absorption (by which one arrives at it) is usually translated as "infinite space" [11], with WQ preferring "boundless" space.
Two meanings of "space"
Sir, is 'space' fifth great element?
"Space" (Pali Ākāśa, Sanskrit, akasha) holds two primary meanings in Abhidhamma and Abhidharma analysis [12].
There is spatiality, where Ākāśa is defined as the absence that delimits forms. Like the empty space within a door frame, it is an emptiness (hollow) that is shaped and defined by the material boundary surrounding it.
And there is "vast space," where Ākāśa is described as the absence of obstruction (boundlessness), categorized as one of the nityadharmas ("permanent phenomena") because it remains unchanged over time.
Ether (aether) is real
In this sense, it is likened to the discarded Western concept of aether—a real but scientifically rejected immaterial, bright, lminous "fluid" (possibly like the Bible's "waters above" the firmament) that supports the Four Great (material) Elements (Buddhism's mahābhūta).
These "elements" (dhatus) are actually four major qualities of matter or materiality understood as various particles (RUPA-kalapas), exhibiting a predominance of one quality over the others, which amounts to more than a dozen major expressions placed for simplicity into four big categories.
Now listen up. This is verified Buddhist science.
BUDDHIST "PARTICLE" PHYSICS: A rupa-kalapa or "form particle" is a "corporeal group," a "material unit" that designates a combination of several physical phenomena constituting a temporary, flowing, functional unity.
Therefore, for instance, inanimate or so-called "dead matter" forms the most primitive group, consisting only of eight physical phenomena. These are called the "pure eightfold unit" or "octad" (suddhatthaka-kalāpa), comprised of: The Four Elements (solidity, fluidity, temperature, motion); color, smell, taste, nutriment (pathavī, āpo, tejo, vāyo; vanna, gandha, rasa, ojā).
In The Path of Purification (Vis.M.) and elsewhere, it is also called ojatthamaka-kalāpa, "the octad with nutriment as the eighth factor." The simplest form of living matter is the "ninefold vitality unit" or "life-ennead" (jīvita-navaka-kalāpa), formed by adding "vitality" (jiva) to the octad. Seven decads, or "units of ten" (dasaka-kalāpa), are formed by adding to the ninefold unit one of the following corporeal phenomena: HEART(citta, hrdayam, the physical seat of mind) [the physical seat of consciousness, not formally declared by the Buddha but understood to be located near the physical heart at a tiny spot at the upper part of it where it exhibits greenish hue and mirror-like function, reflecting conscious experience, which may sound preposterous but is personally verifiable by meditative-scientists, as are all of the claims made in this physics section], sex, eye, ear, nose, tongue, or body.
See Vis.M. XVIII, 4; Compendium of Buddhist Philosophy (PTS), p. 164, 250; Atthasālini Tr., II, 413f. Source
Oh, to know the world as the Buddha knew it!
Ether's radiant quality (aether meaning "brightness") often serves as a metaphor for pure luminous (or original) mind or buddhahood, which is described as shining like the sun or space.
In Buddhist samatha meditation, ākāśa is significant in the context of the sphere of boundless/infinite space (ākāśānantyāyatana), the first of the four immaterial absorptions (arupa-jhanas or dhyānas) [12].
Philosophically, ākāśa is considered one of the uncompounded phenomena (asaṃskṛtadharmas) in six Buddhist schools, including the defunct Sarvāstivāda and Mahāsāṃghika, and later the Yogācāra. However, three other schools, including the extant Theravāda, reject this interpretation [12]. More
Chronos (Ancient Greek Χρόνος, Romanized Khronos, lit. "Time," Modern Greek ['xronos], also spelled Chronus like the Wise Woman The Crone but not the Titan Cronus), is a personification of time in Greek mythology discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature [1]. His consort is Goddess Ananke.*
Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan Cronus in antiquity, due to the similarity in names [2]. The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance ("Rebirth"), giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe [3] like Death (Buddhist Mara).
Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel [4]. He is comparable to the deity Aion (kalpa,aeon) as a symbol of cyclical time [5]. More
*Goddess Ananke: In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Ananke (Ἀνάγκη, from the common noun "force, constraint, necessity," ἀνάγκη), is a personification of inevitability or compulsion, and is customarily depicted holding a spindle. The births of Ananke and her incestuous brother and divine consort, Chronos (the personification of time), were thought to mark the division between the aeon of Chaos and the beginning of our cosmos. She is considered the most powerful dictator (director) of fate and circumstance. Mortals and gods (devas) alike respect her power and pay her homage. She is considered the Mother of the Fates, hence she is thought to be the only being to overrule their decisions [1] (according to some sources, excepting Zeus also). According to Daniel Schowalter and Steven Friesen, she and the Fates "are all sufficiently tied to early Greek mythology to make their Greek origins likely"[2]. More
(After Skool) It's all perfect by Ram Dass (formerly Prof. Richard Alpert, Ph.D., Harvard University)
RAM DASS ("God's Servant or Slave") was born Richard Alpert on April 6, 1931 and lived until December 22, 2019) [1]. He became a hippie and is also known as Baba ["Father"] Ram Dass. He was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga [2], academic psychologist, and writer of Be Here Now, his best-selling [3] 1971 book, which has been described by as "seminal" [4, 5, 6].
With the help of his scandalous but loving sex guru Neem Karoli Baba, he helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West [7]. He authored or co-authored a dozen more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013).
Once when he was teaching with his long hair, beard, and linen garments, someone in the crowd asked him why he dressed like a guru from India when he was really a Jew from the U.S. Without missing a beat, his retort was, "I'm only Jewish on my parents' side." Ha ha ha, exactly!
We are born into a faith, and it's usually rammed down our throats before we have a chance to do anything but swallow. And most of us won't question it. But some of us vomit it up, leave or examine, sometimes even come back to it later.
Harvard professors Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert (cool squares rounding out)
However, it seems the job and duty of any human to question it, test it, attempt to validate it, argue against it, learn from it, grow from it, reject it all together, or make peace with it. There's a world of spirituality out there to explore. We usually need a floor, a ground, by which to test things. And almost all major religions have a mystic component or sect. That's a place to start.
Parents, what am I to do but follow my heart?
But question we must, and explore we will, and find? That remains to be seen. We are on a spiritual quest. And maybe the whole rest of the world can't be. But if Americans can't, what the F are you calling yourself an "American" for? Life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness is all you were promised -- and you're not even going to pursue it? Truth means nothing? Just taking sides? Just being controlled by your government, schools, and parents, the "powers that be"? Pathetic. Human up, and get searching.
Ram Dass was personally and professionally associated with hippie Dr. Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s. Then known as Richard Alpert, he conducted research with Leary on the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs.
In addition, Alpert assisted Harvard Divinity School graduate student Walter Pahnke in his 1962 "Good Friday Experiment" with theology students, the first controlled, double-blind study of drugs and the mystical experience [8, 9].
While legal at the time (and not yet criminalized), their research was controversial and led to Dr. Leary's and Dr. Alpert's firing from Harvard in 1963.
In 1967, Alpert traveled to India and became "Ram Dass," a disciple of Hindu Guru Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning "Servant of Ram," but usually rendered simply as "Servant of God" for Western audiences.
In the following years, he co-founded the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. From the 1970s to the 1990s, he traveled extensively, giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes.
In 1997, he had a stroke, which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia which would be better characterized as "fluent, anomic-like with hesitations and word finding difficulties at the conversational level with grossly intact auditory comprehension for high level, low-context information" [10, 11].
He eventually grew to interpret this event as an act of grace, learning to speak again and continuing to teach and write books. After becoming seriously ill during a trip to India in 2004, he gave up traveling and moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers until his death in 2019. More
Thay (pronounced "Thai") is Thich Nhat Hanh, here explaining a candle flame. Where will it go?
When we all fall asleep, where do we go?
Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly in reply to the implicit question in Billie Eilish's "Bury a Friend": Where do we all go when we die? Where does a flame go when it dies?
And when the flame goes out, where does it go?
That's a nonsense question.
No, it must go somewhere!
Well, where do you suppose -- up, down, sideways?
Well, no, nothing like that. I don't know where it goes.
It isn't there like you think (assume), so it does not "go" anywhere after it is said to "go out." Failing to gain new fuel (and four other factors, heat, oxygen, wick, and process-of-combustion), it fails to "come back in" for the next moment of its appearance. This sounds strange because it goes against our assumptions, but it's very true: In one instance, all five factors (aggregates) gather and manifest as "flame." Failing to get all five in the next moment, no flame/fire appears. This teaches us that what we call "flame" or "fire" is utterly dependent on supporting conditions (these five aggregates or factors) and without them, it is not. However, if it is utterly dependent, then how can it ever be said to have an independent existence? Ultimately speaking, it cannot. But in normal usage, in conventional speech, of course we say, "The flame came into being and then went out of being after some time." This is nice. This seems true. But it was never ultimately true. So there is no confusion. And maybe no one cares about a flame or fire. But if the same thing could be said of us, me and you the individuals, what then?
How could that ever be said of us? We are here now. And when we die or "go out," we reappear somewhere else -- like in heaven, hell, another human life, or a life in another realm in the 31 Planes of Existence.
Conventionally, this is exactly what happens. Unfortunately, ultimately speaking, it is completely wrong. Not only do "we" not go anywhere, what we are calling "we" is completely dependently arisen. Our being, our existence, completely depends on the Five Aggregates clung to as self.
What, we're flames?
No, flames depend on the five factors I mentioned above. "We" depend on the Five Aggregates clung to as self mentioned in the Heart Sutra: form; feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and process of consciousness, the khandhas or skandhas in Sanskrit.
So there is no reappearance?
Oh, there's reappearance (rebirth) all right, but it isn't the rearising of some unchanging "soul," "self," jiva,gandhabba, "ego," "personality," or "I." We are clinging to what is not ours, and we suffer for it.
Aha! You said "we" suffer for it! Who's the "we" that suffers?!
That "we" is the Five Aggregates clung to as self. "We" are not that. "We" do not control that, in an ultimate sense. In a conventional sense, of course, that's all "we" are, and "we" have a great deal of control to develop calm and insight to breakthrough to wisdom and liberate "ourselves" from this samsaric mess. But that, ultimately speaking, is not really what's happening. And it can be proven. The aggregates can be refined, purified, stilled and be seen for what they are. Then clinging stops. And liberation occurs. It's as if the fearful dream lets go of the dreamer. The monstrous illusion loses its power to deceive and make frightened, suffering victims of the aggregates clinging to the aggregates as if they were "self."
When I first encountered Buddhism in the U.S. in the 1990s, it was all about "insight meditation" (vipassana) with some voices shouting that the value of the jhanas (meditative absorptions) was being mistakenly overlooked as a regular practice.
Years later, I came across BPS Wheel 463 (Buddhist Publication Society),which states that the value of “wise reflection” (yoniso manasikara) was being mistakenly overlooked as a regular practice.
This weekend I decided to go back and take another look at Wise Reflection (BPS Wheel 463) with the amazing benefits provided by suttacentral.net's because of its multiple translations per each discourse (Pali sutta) and translator Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s errant translations on dhammatalks.org.
Wisdom Quarterly prefers American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations in all cases over idiosyncratic and ridiculous Thanissaro Bhikkhu's efforts.
It was a very powerful refresher course (lesson) in the difficulties of translation and the value of reading multiple [English] translations and the value of [the ancient] commentaries.
The translations of yoniso manasikara (not quite those two words as found in the Pali canon) from the Sabbāsava Sutta (MN 2) are diverse!
EXCERPT: Venerable Walpola Rahula (from BPS Wheel 463), in quoting the Buddha, translates yoniso manasikāra as "wise reflection":
“I say that the getting rid of anxieties and troubles [1] is possible for one who knows and sees, not for one who does not know and see. What must one know and see in order to get rid of anxieties and troubles? Wise reflection and unwise reflection... More
All the good girls go to hell, Billie?
When did you join the Illuminati, Pirate? Did Phineas induct you?
(Paperback) Author Bishop Marc Andrus has 4.7 out of 5 stars (with 105 reviews). This is the never-before-told story of the friendship between American Christian Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh—icons who changed each other and the world.
The day after Rev. King was assassinated in 1968, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a heartbroken letter to their mutual friend Raphael Gould. In it he said: "I did not sleep last night.... They killed Martin Luther King. They killed us.
"I am afraid the root of violence is so deep in the heart and mind and manner of this society. They killed him. They killed my hope. I do not know what to say.... He made so great an impression in me. This morning I have the impression that I cannot bear the loss." More
AUTHOR: Marc Andrus is the American bishop of the Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion). He was the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California until his retirement in the summer of 2024. Prior to his election as Bishop of California, Andrus served as a suffragan bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. More
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