illusion

“Show me what you’ve got, Māra!”

Milarepa was a famous Tibetan meditation practitioner and Buddhist teacher who lived from 1052 to 1135. He said, “When you…

March 6, 2023

How to recognize, respect, and love the demon, Māra

This is the first time I've posted here in a while. Virtually all of my energy is going into supporting…

April 14, 2022

Seeing experience as a movie

In my last post I said I'd been teaching meditations based on a Buddhist discourse called the Honeyball or Honeycake Sutta.…

November 23, 2018

The holographic dinosaur; or, How fear is an illusion

You're walking down a busy shopping street, and you hear panicked screaming. You turn to see what the fuss is,…

December 20, 2014

Understanding Non-Self: The boys in the basement, the empty room, and the plagiarist

On the difficulty of getting our heads around "non-self" A lot of people have trouble understanding the Buddhist teaching of…

May 27, 2014

Living in a brainwashed culture of urgency

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D., PsychCentral: Whether you like it or not companies know exactly how to get in your brain and…

June 17, 2013

Born to be free

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, author of Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom, explains that our innate drive for freedom can…

October 28, 2010