Tag: freedom
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Only LOSERs: Zen Drop 022
Read time 1 minute. Only Losers is a stand alone article in our BeToKnow series. (nothing to defend, nothing to prove, nothing to win) LOSERs Some view life as a game.(He who dies with the most toys… still dies, nonetheless.)And so they’re caught up in all of this winning and losing. But you don’t win at freedom.Freedom is…
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Feeling Free All the Time: The Oh Yeah State of Mind
Read time 2 minutes. Feeling Free All the Time is the first stand alone article in our Spiritual Immersion series. Back in The Studio Season 1, I was talking about the Kool-Aid Man, Randy Savage, and Slim Jims. I left you with a promise: there’s a connection here. And so… Obviously, the whole “Oh Yeah”…
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Silliness: The Wisdom And Presence Of Playfulness
Read time 4 minutes. Silliness as presence. Lately I’ve been hearing a car commercial with Elaine Stritch singing “Are You Having Any Fun?” Maybe you’ve heard it too—it’s hard to miss. The song is striking in its playfulness, but also loaded with wisdom: “Are you having any fun… laughs?” Or the sharper question: “Who cares for what you’ve got if…
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Wu Wei: Self-reliance As Radical Liberation
Read time 6 minutes. Wu Wei is a stand alone article in our series regarding paradox. Wu wei is one of Taoism’s most vital and misunderstood concepts. Often translated as non-action or effortless action, it can sound like passivity. But that’s not it. Wu wei is not about avoiding action—it is about action so attuned to Tao that effort disappears.…
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Perfect Composure: An All-embracing Remedy
Read time 3 minutes. See how presence and perfect composure dissolve ego’s clouds, offering both daily relief and lasting transformation Some of us arrive at practice with a burning hunger for enlightenment. Others simply want to find a way through the difficulties of the day. Both positions are valid. Both are human. From the stance…
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Fearless Mind and the Advantage of Uncertainty
Read time 4 minutes. Fearless Mind is a stand alone article in our Who Am I series. Early in his book China Root, David Hinton suggests that Zen, “…demands a wild and fearless mind.” Just hearing these words is enough to stir something within us—an invitation to step beyond control and embrace the unknown. Cultivating a wild and fearless mind…
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Good Practice Destroys Itself: The Selfishness of Selflessness
Read time 3 minutes. A good practice destroys itself and the everything that motivates us to do it along with it. Charlotte Joko Beck once wrote: “Practice, if you get right down to it, is very self-centered… But when you do it, something else happens. It begins to eat up the illusions that are making…
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Absolute Freedom: The Endgame of Acceptance and Experience
Read time 4 minutes. Absolute Freedom is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance. Our last lesson on radical acceptance turned toward the subject of authentic experience. With it comes a freedom that cannot be manufactured by the ego. This entire series has been pointing us toward that realization, and guiding us along the…
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Authentic Experience: Radical Acceptance and Absolute Freedom
Read time 4 minutes. Authentic Experience is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance Today we return to the theme of radical acceptance. In doing so, several related ideas emerge: experience, purpose, freedom, and identity. A Zen mindset frames these differently than we are used to. Instead of “personal experience,” Zen speaks of authentic experience.…