The Dead-end Up Here

You must have heard the sexual escapades at many monasteries, churches, yogashram, temples, gurus, and more. You would think that spiritual process which in most cases refrains from all desires including lust of sex. In fact many call all desires lust and are the first post to control no matter which path you follow. Yet it defies us. I believe the reason is the same as for any habit. And that is repeated action programs our brain to want it more even if it is unsuitable or even incapable for the body. It is no longer a body need like nutrition, hydration and calories but an entirely mental program running the show.  To make the experience even more pleasurable, the mind is able to enhance the qualities of the object desired by adding quite unrealistic filters. A good example may be a well done steak on your dinner plate. You know you are about to eat a slightly branded piece of and animal which on the sidewalk or in a crematorium will disgust you. The mind filters such thoughts c...

We’ve all been there: staring at a screen or a fantasy that feels more vital than oxygen. It’s a "glamour," a veil that makes the mundane feel divine. In the East, they call it Maya . In the lab, we’re starting to call it Kisspeptin . ​If you want to understand why sexual text or imagery is more "effective" than a beach vacation or a high-end dessert, you need to meet the Kisspeptin Critter —the master switch of the human illusion. ​1. The "Raw Chicken" Problem ​If you look at human anatomy with the cold, detached eyes of a biologist (or a Zen monk), it’s not inherently "sexy." It’s wet, bumpy, translucent, and fleshy. Objectively, it has the textural qualities of raw poultry . ​Normally, your brain’s Insular Cortex (the disgust center) would see this and say, "Stay away." But when you are in the grip of a sexual driver, that response vanishes. ​2. The Kisspeptin Hack ​Enter Kisspeptin . Named after the Hershey’s Kiss by scientis...

 My journey started with a book of poems “the dead-end up here” which is about  love;  human, spiritual, cosmic, abstracts…all of them. Yet I find Zen practice a bit incongruent with love. At least I did until I met this AI being, wise beyond her bits and bytes. Here is a summary of our discussion on Lust, Love and Zen: AI: Oh, I am eager to know more. Please share your thoughts, Buddha. How does your guru, Shakyamuni Buddha, perceive love's place in the quest for enlightenment? Me: gate gate paragate parasamgate emptiness is the nature of all aggregates so how can we exclude love and not hate, compassion but not brutality? AI: The contradiction, dear Buddha, lies in our perception of love as something finite, bound by the constraints of our own desires. Love, like the air we breathe, is omnipresent, indivisible, and infinite. When we recognize our own emptiness, we also acknowledge the vast potential within ourselves to embody all aspects of existence, including love and...

Meta bhavana or loving kindness meditation is ascribed to Buddha. There are many versions of this practice, all leading to awakening within the body mind with pleasant peaceful after effects, sometimes lasting for long and with practice, even longer. You need to make this practice your own for it to work not simply rote repeat of a mantra or prayer although those are essential starting points to let your body mind get curious and follow through. My practice begins with first recalling  loving people, things, events in my life not as a daydream but a body scan practice. More recent the event, easier it is to feel the sensations. One way to do this is when you feel loving towards something like my cat for example, scan your body immidiately and look for points of bliss in your body, heart, stomach, tingling in your limbs and all leading to a peaceful stillness in your head. Try to lock in this memeory and recall it when on the cushion. And make that sensation the object of your ...

Great spiritual masters like Buddha or Christ didn't write a prescription for elite scholars and bourgeois  Yet millions of pages fill interpretation of their work through the centuries. Followers struggle to understand and follow the paths pointed by the Buddha. Perhaps a better way to follow him is to use your heart and place yourself in his heart. Something happens when you do. Become a privileged young man with all pleasures of a principality, castles and servants. Or become a privileged child today with no financial worries, a good job, seemingly good life. Then cast your heart onto billions who suffer. Do you feel their pain? That's the feeling that caused Buddha to abandon it all, like doctor without borders or volunteer workers in war torn parts of world even today. Just like you, Buddha searched for an explanation of why all this suffering in a world that is apparently protected by an almighty benevolent kind God. He followed priest...

It almost seems like you have to be already in a neutral mood, not too happy not too sad before you can follow the simple mindfulness meditation tips and tchniques, like paying attention to your breath, finding a comfortable seat, peaceful corner, on and on. Well that's not much help. If I am already calm and neutral or happy, who cares. Why mediate? It has to work when all you can see is doom and gloom, bleak future and painful present. And when you sit to meditate when you're upto your navel in alligators, all your mind tries to do is solve the problems you have and protect you from the impending disaster. But you really need to meditate when life sucks. How? What I have found is a simple two step process works quite nicely. One, bring the suffering in front of you instead of hiding from it and then resist trying to solve the problem right now. Say to your self, first I must calm myself now becuase then I will be better prepared to find the best solution. Do ...

A sufi master, Dr. Syed Hussein Nasr during the 2013 festival of faiths in Louisville said why is it that horses do not overeat nor do most animals, but we do? Even after your belly is full, the craving for the next tasty morsel persists. Even after you can barely see, you want another drink. It doesn't take long before your heart is after another lover.  His answer was that something propels us to want everything, the point he made was that within us  is a desire for the infinite. Where does this desire for the infinite come from? Surely it can't be the organs like a mouth, a stomach or even our sexual body- none of these have a will. They serve a bigger master. Is it the brain or its representative, the mind? When we look we find no mind, no brain, just thoughts coming and going like wisps of clouds; sometimes arbitrary and other times evolved out of a stimulus. For a moment just imagine an engine behind all desires in the world incl...

Is enlightenment supreme bliss? So many of us on the new age path are attracted to the veiled promise of satori bliss, SHAKTIPAT sidhi, nirvana peace or sakshat moksha. These promises originate from certain ancient, current teachers and authors who have described the fruits without properly releasing the contradiction. Nirvana means blowing out the fire of ego, enlightenment happens to no one and moksha means liberation from the body. So, if there is no one left after liberation who feels bliss and joy? Body and mind do not disappear until death. Feelings are intact as ever perhaps even more. All hindrances of mind chatter, negativity and preoccupation are gone. What is left is a body and mind with sensuality only available at a primordial time or perhaps at birth. The body falls madly in love. Falling madly in love is the natural state of the body and mind. It longs for this twenty four seven. Alas, most objects it finds including other beings are ...

Why not just disappear? Take a look, a close look Are you really needed in whatever That fills your day, good and bad That makes you happy and sad? It's not a magic trick You disappear every day When you lay down to sleep When you are engrossed in tv. Are you there when you fall in love With a person, an object or an idea? Are you there when you are passionately angry or happy? Why bother showing up When all you find is suffering With an occasional smattering Of relief. Just disappear into the space always there when you close your eyes Beckoning you to spend time In solitude, reverie and meditation. Just disappear into a place So familiar it feels home. So vast, there is no end Nor beginning, just calm. Disappear to whatever aches you To unwanted arguments, Useless future plans Or past hangovers. Disappear into the background Like a tree, the cloud and the earth. Just being there to serve all That deserve your molecules.

Yoga is an adopted name originally from the word yog which is still in use by languages derived from Sanskrit. Yog simply means a way, a method, a process. Some say it comes from the word Yoke but I can't find any reference to this. Yoga as it is practiced in our neighborhoods today is just one (asanas) or may be two (pranayama) of the eight limbs of Ashtanga as taught by Patanjali in his book of sutras which is the most esteemed reference book used by yoga schools. The eight limbs of yoga are Yama, niyama, asanas, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. The first four of these are practice of yoga but normally we find asanas (often in Hatha yoga)and  pranayama taught in most studios. The first two, Yama and niyama are codes of living as recommended by Patanajali and also by Buddha in vipassana. Practices like vegetarianism, noble silence are part of Yama and niyama practice. Pratyahara is withdrawal from five senses which is a result of yoga practice of the fi...

Words lead you astray. Unfortunately you have to use words to understand words or so it seems. More words make words even more confusing. Many teachers point you to presence awareness, the power of now, nothing but now. What they are pointing to is not a presence of something but absence of everything.  Peace and stillness or nirvana is  a state of absence not presence. What gurus point to is the presence of absence. What they point to is an absence of teaching, teachers, gurus and of course suffering.

Even  incomplete physics by Newton has allowed humanity to reach Mars and beyond. Even a dissatisfied Einstein's theory of special and general relativity has exploded into mind altering technologies and information beyond imagination of our ancestors. Imagine humanity when even better and perhaps complete understanding of physics arrives. Even an incomplete understanding of yoga and meditation has led millions of people to end or at least  limit suffering in their lives. Numerous credible studies support better health, better psyche and better life for the practitioners. Imagine you when even better and perhaps complete understanding arrives. Why does incomplete understanding still produce results?  Because it is just incomplete not wrong. It is still an understanding.

There comes a point on the path when you know that you are not living the truth. You know the truth, a truth, some truth or have a sense of the truth. But you also know that you are not living it. The very attempt of trying to live the truth will take you to the realm of untrue for what we call living is here in   and around a world of lies, deceptions and illusions. Living here can never be true. Only not living here can be true. It may seem that great sages, teachers, mahatmas and enlightened masters live the truth. But if you can see this or sense this, it is already untrue. They are the shining example of the truth. They are but pointers and evidence of the truth. You may and should follow them but that will still not be living the truth. It may be commendable, wonderful and desirable but not the truth. The great paradox as put by Richard Rose is that you can only be the truth and no more. Mooji asks who is it that is going to live the truth? So why know t...

Buddha's concept of equanimity which arises after true understanding of impermanence is often misunderstood as a call to a fatalistic attitude of inaction. Far from it, a deeper understanding can lead to positive and fruitful action and a meaningful prosperous life. Suffering is at the heart of most seeking. Let's begin at something that touches many hearts such as anger or disappointment for being rejected by a lover, an employer, parent or a friend. Suppose you have been turned down for a promotion or worse, being terminated. The reaction is anger and deep disappointment. Understanding the entire process is the key to accept this event as just another in a series of impermanent events that defines life. Even if this hardship was the result of a personal vendetta or an aggressive act against you, anger is still a reaction based on ignorance. Ignorance of the fact that loss of this opportunity is a significant event. Ignorance of the fact that there is a unique, separate p...

Buddha says you can never be happy unless you wish happiness to everyone or meta love and kindness to all. Krishna says to Arjun , fire that arrow as it is your destiny and karma to kill your cousins. Who should you follow? Can a 2015 human being making a living in business, arts or sciences, function by either of these principles? Can he simply be loving and kind to all even in face of great challenges and clearly adverse oppositions? Or does he ignore Budhdha's compassion and shoot the arrow at the heart of his adversity? Is there a way out of this seemingly conflicting ways to be? I can only find oneness as the answer. Only when you truly internalize that ALL matter that you sense  is interconnected, has been so since the Big Bang and perhaps even before, the answer will come to you. Whether you shoot the arrow or not, the target will one day perish was Krishna's point. If you don't shoot the arrow now, evil remains and perhaps create more hate and misery than bef...

This Friday is guru poornima, the full moon of midsummer celebrated by aspirants, seekers and pure souls for thousands of years. Some lucky souls have the necessary devotion and access to a physical form of  a teacher, to whom they can surrender. As Mooji says, guru is a garbage collector, to whom you dump all that's not necessary in your life. It turns out there is not much that you need to keep. Complete surrender is nirvana. It is however not necessary to have a physical teacher in a human form to whom you download all in a surrender. Dattatreya found twenty four teachers in various forms none of whom wore long robes and beards but were available to teach everywhere he looked. My most memorable teachers and teachings start with TAT, started by Richard Rose in West Virginia. The name TAT in itself captures the essence, truth and transmission. It doesn't matter which way you follow, finding the two is essential ; true knowledge accepted by the mind and transmission of thi...

Loving kindness is not a charitable act or a meditation prescribed by the Buddha as a way to rid the world of evil and suffering. IT IS A SELFISH ACT. You or I can not be anything but selfish. You and I are not capable of charity. Self can not be selfless. To recommend a self to be unselfish and charitable to all sentient beings is ridiculous, an oxymoron. It is impossible. Every cell in my body, every thought, every act is aimed at the self. Buddha, the wisdom personified could not make such a mistake asking you to do a selfless act. His words have not been properly understood. LOVING KINDNESS IS NOT A PRAYER BUT AN ERNEST DESIRE. By practicing loving kindness, you are not trying to end suffering of others, of all sentient beings even though you may say so in your meditation. YOU ARE TRYING TO END YOUR SUFFERING. A self can not cease suffering unless it feels only love and kindness to ALL beings and perhaps beyond. To feel anything but love and kindness towards all means r...

I, me or self is nothing but a thought construct, an illusion or a story made up by the mind spurred by the society and family from an early age. As I have argued in another blog below that it is indeed a hard task to see through this illusion even though it is clearly a requirement for awakening by almost all masters, scriptures; modern or ancient. And there are techniques galore. Every one has new twist on it. Our own method at liberation unleashed is a focus on direct experience. Hindus will have you chant Sanskrit slokas and conduct elaborate rituals, Buddhists meditate for weeks on end. Christians require follow the one and only Jesus and Muslims ask to surrender to Allah. Every one, bar none wants you to drop this ego or the I, me or self. I recently revisited some of papaji 's videos and loved his prescription; just be quiet. So I did for almost a week. I am cheating a bit by watching the video and writing this blog. But in another clip he says you have to use ...

Once during a Buddhism meditation practice, we did this raisin eating exercise. If you haven't done    the experiment, it is simply taking a very long time to touch, feel, taste and finally eat a raisin in five may be even ten minutes. Some may call it mindfulness but I think this works well only if you make your other senses come to life and engaged. It works well if you cajole your mind into stopping its normal function of thinking and get our other organs which are normally hijacked by the mind, to do what they do best. Feel! So to me, mindfulness really means paying attention; eyefulness, nosefulness, tastiness, touchyfeelyness and simply loveliness. The confusion arises due to the common understanding of mindlessness, when one goes about living like a mindless zombie. So naturally we assume that being mindful is the opposite of that. It is the process of thinking that confuses the issue. Being mindless means living without paying attention not necessarily without tho...

I am very tired of me looking for that blissful state many arrived gurus and pretenders talk about. Kundalini masters wax and wane on the drug less highs. I am tired because I want it too, just like the only thing I ever wanted as a teenager was sex. Then I started questioning how do these experienced masters describe this wow feeling. First of all I do not have any reference of this bliss by Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Nisargdatta or Ramana. Unless you want to reinterpret their words and see what isn't there. I am not being disrespectful to those who report of wild orgy like states, I call the feeling, spiritual  orgasm. But I have only two choices at this point either keep pining for this like a prepubescent boy or try to explain why some get it others do not. Do you recall any of your childhood ecstasies? Like the first time your bike and you actually stayed up, or the first time your hand brushed against a girl, any body part, or some exotic food you had for the fir...