Our Zen story this week is about spiritual bickering. You would think that spiritual people would be the people that would get along the most, right? You’d think that because we believe in love that everyone should magically get along. Somehow it doesn’t work out, does it? It always seems to go wrong in every …
Author Archives: Zareen
If Enlightenment Looked Like Something
One of my own little sayings is, “If enlightenment looked like something… then everyone would try to look enlightened.”
Proving Your Meditation
In the story of Rinjai’s cat, killing the cat was really, really stupid. But the point of this story is that we have the same fantasies about spirituality today. We think spiritualty will look like something… and we also think the enlightened master would have to be perfect in all ways. What Zen is saying …
What is Real?
So what’s real and what’s not? In the story of Rinjai’s Cat the master is asking all of these monks to simply be able to show him that they know the difference between what’s real and what’s not real. He’s asking them to be able to show their meditation, but that’s not to show how …
Rinjai’s Cat
A long time ago, back in the land of Zen, there was a monastery. This monastery had two wings. There were 1000 monks in the monastery. Half of them, 500, were on one wing and half of them, 500, were on the other wing. The master had this beautiful cat. The cat was so friendly. …
Strength #nonduality
So many spiritual teachings these days are about happiness. But I think it’s better to teach about strength. Because just think… If you are strong? What does it matter?
The Crux of the Matter: Focus
In this week’s video, we are getting into the real crux of why I am doing all this. It’s about focus. But why would we need to focus? So many spiritual teachings these days are like, “Everything’s OK, everything’s fine. Don’t worry about anything.” I disagree. We should be worried. We should be very worried. …
The Straight Arrow Focus
This week’s Zen story is about focus. The human mind is so amazing because it can wander to so many things. Imagination can be vivid and real. It’s easy for our attention to be drawn from one thing to another. In fact, that’s one of the things that distinguishes a child: the mind and imagination …