Life's Discoveries: God

God is not the angry white-bearded man up in the sky. He is not supposed to meddle in everything keeping us, powerless puppets who wouldn't know better, from committing follies and crimes. He is not the boogaboo that priests around the world for centuries have tried to scare us with. God wants this, God does not want that. God hates this, God love that. There is no need for interpreters because God is accessible to everyone. It can be a long path to get to that point though.

He is more like Allah or the one from St. John's Gospel. Or like the Chinese Tao (Dao). He's omnipresent in the sense that He is both everywhere in the outside world but He is also inside of you.

Believing in God only means tuning yourself in to the right vibration/beat/groove, otherwise you will be out of tune and nothing will be right.

God (Tao, Universe, Positivity, you name it) always loves us, we only need to turn towards Him and stay within His fold. Then nothing bad can happen to us. That amazing state is called Amazing Grace. Things will keep happening around us but nothing will afflict us.

Life's happenings are half God-given opportunity, half up to our free will. We need to exercise it and make the choice. If we go the right way, then everything is fine. His yoke is truly easy, His burden is light, indeed. It is also the God of Japanese Jodo Shinshu. , He is the one who

His presence is real and He is truly alive in the very utter sense of the word. If you open up your heart, you can feel it with you entire being.

On the Financial Crisis

World's leaders and the financial community seem flabbergasted: "We have been bloating something out of nothing for so long and just when it was going so well it went bust. Why?" I can't believe this wide-eyed naivete is not feigned but it seems it actually is real. The old boys really thought it would go on forever.

Last year I was in communication with a City man who I studied with in Japan some time late last century. I said that this big boys' worldwide game with the money that does not exist is none better than poor people juggling their debt between more and more credit cards -- sooner or later you are going to have to pay up. The more you put it off, the more interest you are going to pay. He accused me of negativism and ignorance of how it all works. His stance was: the present financial system is very good, it provides money for big projects. In response I pointed out to the US federal debt closing in on 9 trillion dollars at the time (it's over 10 now so they are one digit short on the clock) and that means that world's largest economy is in fact a humongous negative equity waiting to implode and take the rest of the world down with it. My party wrote it off as anti-Americanism, so typical from a Russian man like myself.

Well I don't know what kind of euphory-inducing drug they inject people in their overpriced MBA in Finance courses but one thing for sure they immunize them against all kind of moral concerns. As long as tweaking spreadsheets and clocking up sheer digits in bank computers makes profit, it's all good fun. To hell with thinking who is going to fork out the bill when the buck stops passing.

Just a month ago the public got frights from the patently dumb rumour that the CERN's collider would create a black hole that would suck the Earth in it. Little did we know the real Black Hole has been in the making in New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong last few decades. It may leave the physical reality as it is but, no doubt, the economic reality will never be the same when the implosion is complete.

+ + + + +

P.S. In the not very likely event that the US Government's assets are really to be liquidated to pay off its debts, Japan, China and UK will get more than a half while Russia - almost 3 percent.

Balance in Love

Balance is everything, it's the Middle Path of Buddhism. It's like riding a bicycle - seems impossible at first but once you the knack of it it's not hard at all although you need to keep pedalling not to fall down.

Human love needs balance too.

On one hand, what could be more foolish than to hinge all your happiness on the fickle and human nature. We don't even know for ourselves what we are going to feel the next minute but we expect the other's affection for us to last "for ever"!

However, that kind of expectation comes from the need to have our void spaces and imperfections to be filled in and made good for by someone else. That's true avidya, ignorance, because that's a patent mission impossible. We look for a relationship needy and unhappy seeking to take something from it. When the other one is full of the same needs, it is a recipe for disaster.

The balance in relationship is not achieved by using the other one like a crutch, it needs to come from within. When you are happy inside and truly love yourself, you will naturally feel the need to share that abundance. You can then pour this overflow onto others - in a variety of ways - and you can also find someone special onto whom you can pour it in a special way.

"Relationship is not about what you can take it from but about what you bring to it."

Like The Inside, Like The Outside

Funny how what goes on inside of you correlates with what happens in the outside world.

First you gain your own empirical knowledge of how your mind works, how emotions and moods arise and pass away, how they affect everything you do quite unbeknownst to you. Then at some point of time you realize that it works the same for the outside world. The physical basis of the inner and outer phenomena is different but the principle is the same: nothing is permanent in this floating world, it all crops up and vanishes and only affects you inasmuch you allow it. Calm equanimous mind calms the world around. Some moods, things even people disappear if you watch them like you watch sankaras inside of you.

To paraphrase the famous hermeneutic principle: "like the inside, like the outside".

The Power of Mind

I have really learnt to be not critical but supportive, focus on the positive rather than stress out the negative. Mind is a great power, if you harness it and direct the right away, everything around will change. If the mind is bogged in negativity and criticism, the reality around - people and things - will be negative and never good enough. And vice versa - cultivate positivity in your mind and you will be surrounded by it. It's amazing we all can make this choice but very few people do.

"All actions and creations in this world begin from a thought."

On Depths and Friendships

It must be the age and the Vipassana: I get to see things in life as they are, the lucid metaphoricity of existence. It is the very meaning and essence of all things and happenings around us but when you are young and not that wise yet you tend to look right past through it, noticing only the obvious material substance.

I'll give an example.

In relationships - love or friendships - you have to meet people at their depth. If you draw them to your depth, they may panic or even drown. Enjoy each person where they are comfortable at. The majority are the beach crowd: let them enjoy their bit of sunshine while you are enjoying yours. Quite a few people are good company to splash along the surf line, with others you can wade deeper in the rougher water. With precious few people you can just swim away never worrying about how deep it is.

The Balance Between Inside And Outside

Last few months I was in an exchange with my Thai Aunt in Bangkok about the political turmoil in Thailand. She is torn between her staunch Buddhist convictions and her indignation at gross injustice done to Thai people by the country's politicians.

It is really very difficult to strike the balance between focusing on purifying your spirit and getting involved with the outside world. This reality is an illusion, Maya, but we do live in it. But as it is said "blessed are the truth-seekers": those who seek truth in the world will find it inside.

I find it truly amazing to learn, slowly but surely, from my own experience of meditation how everything in your spiritual world is reflected, connected and related with the reality outside. The path of liberation is not escapism, it is about learning the truth about reality, peeling off the made up, assumed and imposed to get to the core, which actually seems to lie on the surface, hidden from us by our ignorance.