Have you ever wondered what it would be like to win a lottery? What opportunities would your good fortune bring? How would it change your life?
Just imagine for a moment you won a lottery with an incredible prize of eighty-six thousand a day, every day, for life… The only condition being that you had to spend the prize each day, you couldn’t carry anything over. Would that be a blessing? Or a challenge? (more…)
A wise prayer, known as the Serenity Prayer, adopted by that noble organization Alcoholics Anonymous, runs like this:
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
And therein lies much of the key to a happy and purposeful life. (more…)
Adeline Yen Mah’s Watching the Tree attracted me for two reasons. Firstly, as a Spiritual seeker I thirst for knowledge of the Spiritual traditions of different cultures in order to discern the common threads common to all. Secondly, as citizen of the 21st century I wanted to gain a greater understanding of China, widely predicted to be the world’s next economic superpower. Watching the Tree didn’t disappoint on either count.
Yen Mah gives a wide-ranging account of Chinese culture, showing how it has been shaped by ancient traditions of the Tao, Confucius etc. She brings the various philosophies to life by describing numerous fascinating episodes from her own past. (more…)
Who are we? What is this reality that we’re part of? Why are we here at all? These questions lie at the depths of our being, and their answers – should we ever find them – would dictate the very purpose of our existence.
As a species we have evolved from single-celled organisms into beings that can travel in space, probe the very building blocks of our bodily nature and the universe we inhabit, and create works of art capable of moving us to the core. And yet for all our tremendous mastery of knowledge there appears to be a boundary that we cannot penetrate. (more…)
Our relationships with others provide many of the most satisfying – and frustrating – moments of the human experience.
On the one hand we are instinctively driven to seek the companionship of our fellow beings, indeed such is the complexity of the modern world that out very survival depends on co-operating with numerous others. But conversely our dealings with other people force us to sacrifice, compromise, inhibit our liberty, and are an endless source of disappointment and anger when our peers fall short of our reasonable expectations. (more…)
A sick man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to leave the examination room and said, ‘Doctor, I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side.’
Very quietly, the doctor said, ‘I don’t know.’ (more…)
In a soccer match, even if a team is getting whacked 6-0, the losing team don’t storm off the pitch. They keep playing, keep trying their best, until the final whistle. Life is like that too. (more…)
Many people feel that happiness somehow eludes them. Whatever they do, whichever new directions they take they cannot reach that most fundamental goal of human existence. Is happiness a gift granted only to some? Or is it within everyone’s grasp, if only they knew how to find it.
Happiness isn’t a place, time or certain configuration of external circumstances. It isn’t a destination reached after a long and arduous journey. Happiness is a state whose potential is always there, here and now included, but one which too often we fail to realize. This article examines why, in the hope that more people may be happy more often. (more…)
2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species and creator of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Although the scientific theories of relativity and quantum physics suggest the underlying nature of reality is very different than what we perceive through our senses, and thus have immense philosophical significance, they actually have virtually no impact upon our daily lives. In contrast, Darwin’s widely accepted, but highly controversial, theory of evolution by natural selection has far reaching implications upon human society. (more…)
How Science and Spirituality Can Serve Our World by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
First published in 2005 this fascinating account of Buddhism (or more generally Spirituality) meets science has particular relevance in 2009 as we commemorate Darwin’s 200th birthday and are reminded of the vigorous scientific vs. Spiritual debate prompted by the theory of evolution.
As anyone who’s ever taken the trouble to truly contemplate the basic tenets of the world’s major faiths will testify, at root all religions describe the same basic truths. However, over the centuries, science has often appeared to be in conflict with scripture. (more…)