by Adam J. Pearson Most if not all of us human beings have had a strange and unpleasant experience. We have felt our lives go stale. We have felt the world dissolve into a grey, boring mass of tedium. We have felt that we were just “going through the motions” of life, just following the…
Month: April 2011
Growth and Dissipation
I recently had a wonderful discussion with Faniel Darmer in which he suggested that “Being implies growth though. It’s evident in all creation. “persevere” is another word for growth. Nothing just remains static and is considered being. Being is growth, being is change and evolution.” Since my own experience corroborates Faniel’s assertion, I was naturally…
Balance and Beauty: Reflections on the Passion of the Christ (2004)
By Adam J. Pearson To listen to this article as you read, click the play button below: I fittingly watched The Passion of the Christ (2004) for the first time on a Good Friday, the day on which Christians remember the crucifixion of the man they regard as the Son of God, their Savior, and…
On Dealing with Suffering From Past Relationships
Over the years, I’ve known many people who were once united in loving couples, but have since broken up and retained a great deal of suffering, aversion, frustration, and anger at the person they once loved. I’ve been in this situation quite a few times myself. Experience has taught me again and again that the…
On Perspectivism and Spirituality
My friend Swami Omkarananda once insightfully suggested that “every time I have seen thought trying to formulate a truth, it did so at the expense of all “others” and “other truths.” In being Christian, I would target and diminish the non-Christians. In being an Integralist, I would target and diminish the non-integralists. In nonduality, the…
There are No Sentient Beings, and I Vow to Save Them
There’s a saying in the Prajnaparamita tradition of Mahayana Buddhism that expresses a beautiful paradox. It says: “there are no sentient beings, and I vow to save them.” This is a beautiful expression of the absolute in the relative and the relative in the absolute. There are no sentient beings in the sense that there…
The Nondual, Ultimate Reality is the Tree in Your Backyard
Realizing the truth of nonduality does not mean that we have to negate all of the wonderful diversity in the universe and try to erase it all into one bland, homogeneous tapioca pudding of Being. Many try to do this and all to no avail; it cannot be done. The diversity of the One remains,…
On Achilles’s Growth into a Sympathetic Character in the Iliad
Before Book XXIV of Homer’s Iliad, Achilles spends most of his time, first, sulking in his tent while his Achaean companions die in battle against the Trojans, then battling in a crazed frenzy to avenge his dead friend (and possibly lover) Patroclus. It is arguably only in the twenty-fourth and final book of the Iliad…
Life is a Joke, But a Very Serious One
Life is a joke, but a very serious one. Life is a joke because all of our conflicts, insecurities, etc. are founded on illusions of separation that just aren’t true. We think we are fighting separate others and harbor a great deal of fear and worry. However, since no beings are ontologically separate, we are…
There is no Telos to Human Existence
Many ideologies try to define a ‘telos‘ or purpose/end that humans are destined by nature to move towards. The Indic religions say it is liberation; Aristotelianism says it actualization of the perfect human form; Enlightenment philosophy says it is scientific progress and improved rational understanding; Marxism says it is revolution from economic alienation; materialism says…
Words from the Wind 