Say that we go to Boston, you and I. Everybody wants to go to Boston. Boston is fun and interesting and once you’ve been there, you’re a changed person. Boston goes with you. It becomes a way of life. Say, too, that we have heard stories about a certain Boston experience – a way theContinue reading “Transcending Even Awakening: A Haibun”
Author Archives: Sean
Looking at “I AM”
One has the sense that there is a kind of permanent presence – a unified whole – that attends this experience of existing. Before anything occurs – any seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching – there is this awareness, this boundless flow in and to which all phenomena and sensation appear. In contemporary nondual traditions thatContinue reading “Looking at “I AM””
Spiritual Teachers, Spiritual Parents
The human observer has a specific neural architecture (brain) which is instantiated in a specific perceptual system (body). Allowing for neural a-typicality, which happens, all human observers are having an approximately similar experience – language-based, tribal, biased, et cetera. Thus, the world that you see and think about is not vastly different than the worldContinue reading “Spiritual Teachers, Spiritual Parents”
Observation and Description of Phenomena
In a way, the so-called spiritual process is akin to noticing – and then sustaining in awareness – the distinction between what is happening and an observer’s description of what is happening. The description is not the thing. Say that I am sad. You say, “Sean is sad. I can tell by the tears flowingContinue reading “Observation and Description of Phenomena”
Spiritual Poverty and the Mystery of Subjectivity
The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its sound but dost not know where it comes from or where it goes. ~ John 3:8 Yet the utterly subjective nature of our experience as human observers must be entered as into a mystery, its apparent infinities and eternities robustly explored. The interior is allContinue reading “Spiritual Poverty and the Mystery of Subjectivity”
Being Homo Amans: Happiness as a Spiritual Practice
I say sometimes to my students: “take what you learn and act in the world with it. Do something.” And when they ask what they should do, I tell them to help somebody in a way that makes both parties happier than they were before the encounter started. Related to this – especially when itContinue reading “Being Homo Amans: Happiness as a Spiritual Practice”