About Dukkha (Suffering)
Central to Buddhism, from early on – and even somewhat earlier – is that dukkha (suffering, stress, fundamental unsatisfactoriness, dis-ease) exists and can be alleviated. Buddha showed a way to do so; I show two. The flower bud You find this metaphor as the first one in my e-book nr. 2, a collection of 12 primary Read the full article…
Compassionately Strong
Compassion – or what people associate with the term – may seem weak. It isn’t. Therefore, the fear of ‘weakness’ should not deter striving to be strongly Compassionate. From the inside out Basically, Compassion is related to Inner Strength, being the primary source of any durable outer strength. Without it, anything on the outside is Read the full article…
Confucian Open Leadership
In my view, Confucian Leadership is about Open Leadership after transcending some inconsistency. Allow me at first to transcend. Then – some patience needed – I will come back to Confucianism itself. Heavenly Any theorizing about ‘heaven’ as if it is conceptually graspable is not Aurelian. It denotes a direction toward the ungraspable, a direction Read the full article…
The Importance of Subconceptual
It may be invisible and even – consciously – unthinkable. Yet, it is there 24/7, being who you are. It’s vital in every human endeavor. The subconceptual is about how the mind works intrinsically. Looking at your thoughts, such as right now, you may have a much more conceptual impression. It seems like any thought Read the full article…
Goodness – it Exists
This is fundamental for a promising future, even though there has been no consensus on the matter for centuries. Are people intrinsically good or bad? This question has engendered huge discussions over many centuries, with much animosity involved. Both sides have seen moral depravity at the other side. Science, too, hasn’t very well answered the Read the full article…
The Abuse of ‘Holistic’
The term ‘holistic’ is abused very frequently, very deeply, and very inconsiderately, in many cases meaning something pretty unholistic. A holistic approach looks at the whole person, considering his physical, mental (including emotional), social, and spiritual wellbeing. The focus lies on a person’s wellness, not just his illness. That’s a great start. Away from pure Read the full article…
Is Woke Awake?
Many ‘woke’ people are so heavily against intolerance that they make an intolerant impression. This contradiction begs for insight. Several wokenesses ‘Woke’ is a weak term. Behind it also lies a weak concept. There are very diverse kinds of being woke. Unsurprisingly, there are also various ways of looking at wokeness. It’s not always the Read the full article…
Healing without Nonsense
Anything – including sheer nonsense – can positively influence health in mind and body. Still, it is crucial to get beyond. Wishing good health Most people want to see themselves as rational beings. Also, most people find their health most important, wishing each other good health, spending much money to get it for themselves and Read the full article…
Global Changes Start Inside
This is: deep inside the human mind, upon which one has little direct conscious control. ‘Global’ points to what happens between people at the grant and even global scale. Deeply ubiquitous All people share in-depth propensities that can be realized one way or another, thus on diverse domains orienting the streaming underneath in a direction Read the full article…
Rationality – Science – Technology
It all seems pretty clear. Yet there is fuzziness within that clarity. Rationality leads to science. Science leads to technology. Rationality is a specific state of mind. A human is rational if he has that state of mind. From that state of mind, he can think together a body of knowledge that is internally congruent Read the full article…
Is A.I. Dangerous to Human Cognition?
I have roamed around this on several occasions within ‘The Journey towards Compassionate A.I.’ (of which this is an excerpt) The prime reason why I think it’s dangerous is, in one term: hyper-essentialism. But let me first give two viewpoints upon your thinking: Essentialism: presupposes that the categories in your mind – such as an Read the full article…
The Sense of Creativity
We need to be creative to feel alive. The shortest history of creativity In ancient Greece, artists were not seen as creators but imitators [as to Plato, in The Republic]. However, the Muses were seen as mediators of inspiration from the gods, and Socrates had his famously creative daemon. Later came Christian inspiration as divine, Read the full article…
42. Not yet Out of the Woods!
The SARS-CoV-2 virus keeps changing, finding new ways for viral success. We’re relatively lucky with Omicron. What with the next variant(s)? January 28, 2022 Daily Total Cases worldwide 3.479.527 370.273.350 Deaths worldwide 10.595 5.667.742 Curves and numbers (from Worldometers) The present week-average mortality lies at 8.732 per day globally. This is higher than the Read the full article…
Ego Bubble
Being stuck in an ego bubble doesn’t make one a wrong person. However, it hinders any personal growth. Growing the bubble is just aggrandizement of ego. A starters From the start of a new bubble, there is competition in the attention this little one gets from the mother figure. At first, the competition is vague. Read the full article…
Do not Thought-Control the Children
Molding children to the image of (molded) adults should be something from the past by now. Especially in an ever more complex society, children need much Inner Strength, which they can only grow by themselves. Another brick in the wall This 1979 Pink Floyd song was written as a protest against overly rigid schooling that Read the full article…
Growth versus Repair in Therapy
The confusion between growth and repair is rampant in therapy of all sorts. Generally, there is too much emphasis on repair. Medicine fundamentally wants to repair In the wake of the physical model, this is logical. For instance, if your car breaks down, please don’t wait until it grows towards a solution. Likewise, if you Read the full article…
Is Meditation Selfish?
Meditation is the opposite of ego-selfishness. Even more, they are incompatible. Theravada, Mahayana These are the two biggest strands in worldwide Buddhism. Mahayana may have been mainly developed historically as a reaction to what people saw as the Theravada monk’s ‘selfish’ attitude: the arhat who meditates especially to reach Nirvana for himself. Of course, this Read the full article…