People will often focus on the outside world looking for something that will make them happy. The truth is that all the outside world is merely an illusion created by us.  It has also already happened, therefore they is no chance of seeking happiness within it.

That is right, the entire world we see before us is the past. It is a creation of our past thoughts, never our present ones. Our mind loves to exist here, so it tosses this world up at us, like it somehow actually matters on the grand scheme of things.

So am I saying we should ignore this creation? Certainly not, just understand the value of it. See it for what is really is. The manifestation of previous thinking. With that in mind you have  a different view of things.

Happiness will always be found from within. You cannot find it in any person, place or thing. However you can share that happiness with someone else if they are a match to your vibrations. If they are not, you will find discomfort in the realtionship. If you really want to find happiness it is found inside, no where else.

Newsflash! Life is a terminal disease……

Wow, it really is…..No matter what any one of us chose to think. Death is as certain as birth. There is absolutely no way around it, nor will their ever be.  The time we spend in these physical bodies in finite. And we have no idea how long this might be.

With this mind, my question then is, “why do we take it so seriously?”

No matter what your ‘belief’ system is. If you think we re-incarnate, or go to some form of heaven, even perhaps ‘nothing’….Why so serious? Everything we do becomes history and most of it will be forgotten. What is the big deal? Should be not enjoy the time we have here instead? YES WE SHOULD!

There is only one reason why we don’t enjoy our lives and live to the fullest. We fall into the traps of MIND.  Our reality is created by our thinking, and the constant stream of irrelevant questions and incorrect interpretations of the mind cause us to see the world in the wrong sense. We feel trapped and limited as we look at our ‘reality.’

As I have said so many times the mind exists in the past and tries to write the future from there.  The problem is that it is not disciplined. It is like letting a 2 year old child run a life.  By taming and taking control of the mind it becomes a powerful tool, one that can be used to create the reality of your choice.

The only way to quiet the mind is with mediation. The benefits are worth the effort required 1000 fold.  The results you will see in your lfe for the small amount of time invested with shock you.

Change the way you think and the things in your world will change.

“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

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

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.

I’ve been away for a few weeks on a vacation so I have not written anything in a while. Today I am writing on the problem of the MINDS attachment to the past.  Here is an example. My father pasted away 30 years ago. I still to this day miss him very much. I remember the long talks we used to have, as well as the great advice he always gave me. But like all things in life that time is now PAST and will never return. My memories are fond, but only memories, not reality.

People have such a habit of allowing themselves to focus on and try to relive past events. This is insanity. The only reality is this moment right now, not any time in the past or anything in the future, only now.  How often in your life do you recall a great day or event. Perhaps it was a vacation. It seems like a magic moment in history. Then some time later you return to the same place, hoping to recapture the feeling. Only to find frustration and disappointment.  You can’t go home.

In this example above if the person in question was only living in the moment, and not trying to recapture the past, this vacation would have been just a good as the first, different, but just as good. The mind can only exist in the past and the future. It fights for control in the present and thus makes you unhappy.

Relationships and friendships are another good example. Time changes these. Sometimes the people grow and change together, other times they grow apart. In remembering the way things used to be, we suffer because the past is gone forever.  Everyone reading this has had these experiences, yet we still allow the mind to control our state by forcing us to look back at the ‘good old days.’ The good old days are often not a pleasant as we remember them being.

In the present, each and every moment is special, good and stress free. Focus on NOW.

People are searching for happiness. I hear it all the time. “As soon as this happens I will be happy.” This might be true, but for how long? You need to understand that happiness is your natural state of being.  It is the way you were born and the way you will die. We have forgotten this, and this is what must be rediscovered.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of psychology. From what I have witnessed it often does more harm than good. This is not true in all cases but we tend to forget that this is a business. If you are cured you are no longer a patient. I am not against it, it does have it’s place. Caution is needed however.  Sigmund Freud stated that “Man is incapable of being happy.” This is a ridiculous and irresponsible statement made by a man who was a better politician than doctor. This is what creates a VICTIM MIND.

When we look at society Dr Freud did a good job of explaining his ideas. The norm in our world is anger and unhappiness. In fact if people see you being happy for no reason they question your sanity! If someone walks though a shopping mall alone, singing to themselves and dancing  everyone will stare at them like they are crazy! People will say “What is wrong with that guy!” However if you walk thought the same mall crying you will get sympathy and concern. Everyone will feel sorry because your life is hard, but no one will think you are nuts.

Sadness is not our nature. You need to quit believing the dogmas you are given and look inside to find the truth. Inside is the only place that truth can be found.  All emotions with the exception of happiness, joy and bliss are found in the PAST.  We are creatures of this moment, therefore anything other than happiness is unnatural.

If you want to be happy, really and truly happy, you must ALLOW it. You never become happy, you allow yourself to BE happy. Happiness and bliss are here, right now! And if the world thinks you are insane so be it! You will be in good company with all the others who are experiencing life the way it was meant to be, joyful.

“Happiness needs no cause. It is your simple nature, you are intrinsically happy. No cause, no purpose, no goal is needed. Life is in itself enough. It needs nothing else to complete it. It is complete! It is entire! It is already what it has to be. So there is no purpose in existence and no goal in existence. Existence is a sheer dance.”  Osho

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