“We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we create our world.”…………….Buddha

This is one of the most famous of all Buddha’s quotes. But what did he really mean by it? The western mind will especially have great trouble with this concept. The statement “we are what we think” is complete. It is total. We, you, me, everyone is a product of what we think on a day to day basis. Our habitual good and bad thoughts.

Thoughts are things. They are the originating energy of any and all creation.  We at a our true nature are pure positive forward moving energy. When our thoughts do not align with this, it causes us pain and suffering.  The problem is that we create with our day to day thinking, not our higher self.

Once we become able to control and thus change our daily thought patterns we can begin to take control of our lives and our creations.  Until we do we remain trapped in a world that is the making of our undisciplined, uncontrolled thought processes.

Buddha became enlightened by quieting his mind and taking control of his day to day thinking.  We can all do the same if we choose to do so.  Remember everything in our world is there because we made a choice, but everything can be changed by thinking differently.

We truly are what we think.

As many of you are well aware I am a martial arts school owner and teacher by profession. But that is not what I am here to talk about today. I want to bring up the connection between the martial arts, zen and self discovery.

The path of the martial artist is one of self discovery. It is a development of the connection between the mind and the body. As we go though life we are aware of our minds, but we forget about our bodies unless something goes wrong.  As you are reading this are you aware of your blood flow?

To be successful as a martial artist you must begin to reflect within. Some will only do this during training, however as the martial artist develops they begin to think of the arts all the time. As mastery approaches the connection of body, mind and spirit begins to reveal itself. When combined with meditation the combination is unbeatable!

Zen is a living truth in the martial arts. I will refer you to this article for more information on this aspect.  As you are searching on your path for truth consider the martial arts as a vehicle. It is an excellent vehicle also! Martial Arts was brought to China by a Zen Master Bodhidharma, so the connection is deep.

Discover the Peace of Mind available in martial arts training.

When most people hear the name Buddha, there minds go to various statues they have seen over their lifetimes. Many consider him to be the a single person, the founder of the religion Buddhism.  The person in question here is only one in the perhaps  thousands of people who have reached Buddhahood.

What is a Buddha? A Buddha is an ordinary person, who has simply been awakened. Understanding this can also be a challenge. First I want to say that we all all Buddha’s. However we are still asleep and therefore don’t realize or understand this. What do I mean by asleep? Like in the sleep we experience at night, we sleep during our waking hours because we are not in control. Our minds fill our heads with illusions of what reality really is, and it is NOT what we think it is. A Buddha sees the world in it totality.

Because of our vision of the world around us, a VERY limited vision, we spend a great deal of time being unhappy. We believe that the world influences our actions (look at the state of the world) when if fact it is us that does the influencing. We think our destiny is out of our control. The truth is we are in the driver seat.

Society has taught us that we are “less” and “not worthy” when in fact the opposite is the truth. It is time to put away the controlling dogma’s and think for ourselves. Our nature is pure positive energy, pure love and joy and we must experience this.  The time is now, to sit in quiet and experience the truth within ourselves.

What is a Buddha? We are ALL Buddhas………

“All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas. It is like water and ice: Apart from water, no ice, outside living beings, no Buddhas. Not knowing it is near they seek it afar, what a pity!”…………….Osho

People will often look in the wrong places in search of truth. Even the definition of the word is elusive. If there are 8 billion people on this planet then there are 8 billion different truths. There is no universal truth, even though there will be great similarities between them.

Truth is not going to be found in ancient writings or scrolls. No religion has the market cornered on truth, when in fact they often times know and understand less than most people do.  Truth does not come from 3000 years ago, 2500 years ago 2000 years ago or 10 minutes ago. It comes from RIGHT NOW.

So am I saying that looking for truth in organized religion and it’s scrolls are a waste of time? Basically yes. There is no truth in past lives, or ancient writing. All of these writings are only vehicles to help you get there. They are NOT the truth in and of themselves.  How can I say this? Because for most people these ‘ways’ are a prison. Truth is freedom. These alleged truths have caused much suffering in the world, especially in the form of WAR.  Blood is still shed today over these supposed ‘truths‘

Real truth, your truth, once discovered will result in joy and bliss, not pain and suffering. Our nature is happiness. When something causes misery it is because it is false, taking you away from your true nature.

To find your truth all you need is to look within. Look within without judgment. Judgment and truth have no relationship. Judgment is only opinion, not truth. Opinion is dualistic, acceptance is enlightenment.

If you are lost the way home is within.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ……..Buddha

When I was about 17 I was in search of truth. I was raised in a Christian home, however we rarely attended any church which was fine with me.  When I was 17 I attended a church service with a friend. I was told at this service not to question the word of God or you will anger him.  This to me defied common sense.

I have said before that Wisdom comes from Extraordinary Common Sense, and common sense comes from questioning.  I attended the church mentioned above for many years. I kept my questions to myself. I hoped that the answers I was seeking would be given to me without upsetting the church elders. I was wrong and left the congregation for good.

This however did cause to me to start asking questions and then questioning the answer I was receiving. The biblical term for me would have been a “Doubting Thomas.” I studied and read about many of the different religions in our world and there was certain things in them that did seem to make some common sense, then other things were obviously only methods created by man to control man. I knew that organized religion was not for me.

I this time I had an enlightening experience. I met a woman from Korea who for lack of a better term could be called a Chi Master. She taught me over the next 5-7 years to understand the energy in my body and it’s connection to the universe. A lot of what she taught me was like Buddhism, yet different. After about 7 years my questions caused me to move on.

I had my ups and downs on my search for the next few years but finally settled down with a serious study of Buddhism and what the Buddha taught.  I studied both Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and found great inspiration in both. However so many things I could just not agree with. The most important thing I learned in these studies was that I began to look within for my answers, not to a guru or master. The final stage of my journey has brought me to a man who many including myself believe to have been a 20th Century Buddha. His name was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, called OSHO by his followers.

His extraordinary common sense has helped me see many things. He is some of what I have seen.

• Doubt and question, as Buddha said are good and necessary things. Believe nothing just because someone tells you that you should. This includes everything I write here.
• If you want to happy hold no opinions either for or against anything. This is challenging, but people hold to many opinions, especially about unnecessary things.
• Meditate to train and quiet the mind. The mind is like an out of control child. It needs to be disciplined.
• Happiness to Joy and then Bliss are internal phenomenon. No event, person or place can make you happy.  You cannot become happy, you must be happy.
• We create everything in our world so we can change it. We do not need to be so serious about our ‘reality’
• Live in the moment, because the moment is all there is.

Someone once told me that there should only be one religion in the world. I have to respectfully disagree. There are approximately 8 billion people in the world, so we need 8 billion religions. My truth is not your truth nor can it be!

I am not a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu or a Jew. I am not a follower of Osho, even though I very much like what he says.  This site is a reflection of many of Buddha’s teaching because they do resonate with me.

What am I? Simply I am.

Are you living on auto pilot? If you are like 97% of the people on this planet you are. What do I mean by this? You are living your life with the Mind in control, just moving through each day, asleep at the wheel, experiencing very little, not in control.

Here are some example of auto pilot.

• Do you remember what you had for dinner last night?
• Do you remember the entire drive to work today?
• Do you remember brushing your teeth last night?
• What you did before bed?
• The list will go on and on

Auto pilot is a way of life and it is OK that some things work this way, but not everything! The average human has 70,000 plus thought each and every day, but they are the same ones as yesterday. How do you change this?

The robot that exists within your mind, like the EGO will automatically take control of a task(s) once learned. You need to undo this, and this is done by becoming alert to the situation. As an example as you are driving to work today simply take control back from the robot and drive in awareness of what is going on around. Watch as you drive the car! Driving is a great experience as we should be present when it happens. For most of us the robot is driving until such a time as something goes wrong.

We can take control back of our lives by learning to watch, be the observer. This is the ultimate awareness. Life is far to amazing to allow it to past unnoticed. There is an old saying that there is no sadness in death. The only sadness is that the person never really lives.

Living moment to moment is the way to love the life you have. Anything else will not bring you happiness.  Work on it, you will be happy you did!

When I was a child my mother would often tell me not to make a mountain out of a molehill. I didn’t really understand at the time what she meant, but as I grew up the meaning came home to me.

Why is it that people love to make mountains out of molehills. The reason is simple, EGO is the culprit.  Whenever a small problem arises the EGO takes charge and starts to look for complicated solutions, often to problems that don’t even need to be addressed.  The EGO loves to do ‘work’, this is how it continues to feel important. We all know people that are always busy, their lives are in a mass turmoil. The cellphone is constantly at their ears. This is all a function of ego.

The EGO feeds the need to feel important to the mind. The mind then torments you with ideas of what is important what is not.  This need for the ego to control is what will make problems seem even larger than they really are.

So what are problems. These are creations of our mind. In ‘reality’ there are no problems. Only those of our making.  The illusion we have from the event of the outside world.  They are only problems because our ego views them as problems. The importance an event has on our lives is only as large as the attention we give it.

As these problems grow in our mind worry comes into play. Both the ego and the mind love to worry. This makes them important. Remember there is never any reason to worry, and a quiet mind, living in the present will never worry.

Are you making mountains out of molehills? A mind in the present makes prairies out of mountains.

Zen is usually looked at as a form of Buddhism. Zen emphasizes actual practice and mediation rather than theoretical knowledge. Zen however causes great confusion for the average person. A lot of the average person’s experience with Zen is in the form of Koans, which seem like paradoxical riddles to most.  Zen is not found in riddles. But these riddles can lead to Zen.

Osho once stated “Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something. Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself.”

Zen is the only living truth, but my truth is not yours. You must find your own. You cannot seek Zen, just as you cannot seek truth, it is and always has been right in front of you. There have been many enlightened being on earth over the course of history. Men like Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammad and Jesus.  However the existence of these man has caused many problems in our world. They all discovered their own truth, but this is and cannot be your truth.

I have read many of the great scriptures of our world. From the bible, to the gita and things in between. None of these writings are truth, they are a vehicle to find truth.  Scripture is like a finger pointing to the stars. The problem is you focus on the finger and never see the stars.  When you look at any scripture as truth it becomes dogma, which destroys creativity, freedom and bliss. History has proven this time and time again. Yet we think we can continue doing the same things over and over again and get a different result. This is indeed insanity.

Now I have known many people from many different religions, who I call friend, who use their scriptures in the contexts of being a vehicle. They are becoming enlightened beings. There is no dogma in their lives.

What is Zen? You are Zen, Earth is Zen, the Universe is Zen. Zen is the quiet you discover when the mind becomes silent. In silence comes realization and truth. In silence comes enlightenment.

How do you get to Zen? As Osho states you cannot forcibly come to it. It comes from quiet meditation.  Zen Buddhist use the riddles and stories found in Koan’s to distract the mind and allow the silence to come.  Osho tells the story of a friend who could not sleep because the neighbors dog was barking at night. He would complain and tell the dog to shut up, the dog never listened after all dogs bark. Osho told his friend to simply listen to the dog. When he did sleep came, the dog continued to bark. This is Zen. The man’s only problem was his resistance to his circumstances, the way he was thinking about them.

All the misery and unhappiness in the world comes from bad thinking.  This is caused by allowing the mind to control your life rather then you controlling it.  Buddha said “We are what we think.” The world, your reality, is a mirror and YOU are reflected in it.  In Zen there is no reflection.

I have been asked if I am a Buddhist, the answer is simply that “I AM.”  I do not follow Buddha, Christ nor any other avatar.  I find great relevance in the teaching of the Buddha, and these teaching help me in the form of being a vehicle. But they are not my truth either. My truth lies within, and it is within all the answers to all the questions may be found.

“Zen is the only living truth” – Osho

Awareness, awakening or whatever term you wish to use is what enlightenment is about. Buddha was asked if he was a god or a prophet, he said ‘no, I am awake.’  Coming to this, our natural state is not a easy task, however it is not difficult either. But you must put in your practice time.

The practice I am referring to is mediation. Meditation which is now a phenomenon in the west has been practiced in the east for thousands of years. It is however very misunderstood here. The only purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind. As the mind becomes quiet we discover our true selves within.  How does mediation accomplish this? Actually with great ease.

The greatest barrier to self discover is your ego.  You ego has an opinion on everything! Some people will read things like this blog and it will cause them to become upset. They disagree with my statement. This is pure ego. What is need is to simply observe things. Observe with no comment, or opinion. This is accomplished through mediation.

While sitting comfortably in mediation simply let go. Your mind will bring up random thoughts and images. Pay no attention to them. Simply observe the thoughts. Do not try to stop them, just watch as they come and go. Be aware of them.  When the mind and ego do not get the attention they are looking for they become quiet. At first this is challenging, but it gets easier each and every time you practice.  Have you ever been awake at night worrying about something? Imagine being able to turn that off. Mediation will provide this.

As you become more and more aware, the mind becomes quieter and quieter. You see the futility of focus on the past, and worry of future. In awareness you live only in the moment. You discover wisdom within yourself you did not know was there.  As you progress in mediation your healthy and vitality will grow. It can be like becoming younger. The reason is that stress will leave the body and it will go back into balance again. Health is restored.

What is the difference between prayer in the west and mediation of the east. Prayer is asking, meditation is giving.  These work best hand in hand. For all my Christian friends “God helps those who help themselves.” Mediation is a giving (helping) yourself the life you intended to have.

What is EGO, by definition Ego is self: your consciousness of your own identity, while this is true information is still missing. Ego is a reflection of the mind. It is the way the mind identifies itself. The mind is only part of our conscious self, it is not the whole. Ego must exist, but it needs to be understood, controlled and then transcended.

Every person favorite topic is themselves.  Movies will often make fun of this very true statement. “I could just talk about myself for hours” is a quote from one movie.  Ego also helps to keep us out of danger. The problem comes when the ego gets out of control. It can go out of control in several different ways. It can become egotistical (too proud) or withdrawn and depressed.

You are not your mind, nor are you your ego. Our mind needs to label things like my name is “Fred” and I was born in Argentina. None of this is of any relevance except to society. It is not a real identity. Who are you? You simple ‘are.’

Ego is also, like the mind based on history. This identity is always changing and developing. It is an illusion of the mind.  The real truth of who you are lies within. However the mind has no real interest in this as it is found only in the present, not in the past. The way to discover the truth of who you really are is to quiet the mind and transcend the ego. This will lead to many self discoveries and certainly your truth. Mediation is the only vehicle I am aware of to do this.

Spend time looking within, observing the mind and it thoughts. Give them no attention, just like you are watching water fall from a cliff. Just be the silent observer. You will understand the truth and purpose of EGO and be well on the way to self discovery.

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