Where Did I Come From? Who Am I? How much money is enough? What is love? “What do I want to do with my life?” “Why do people hate?” “What is happiness and how do I achieve it?” I recently published a post containing, Tips on living a better life in 2008, which sparked some serious debate over number 28, “God heals almost everything”. With over 12,000 views in one week and 30 comments, I was pleased this post had such a great response. I allowed all the comments, both negative and positive, to fly as I watched the debate progress. Very few chose the middle ground, but those comments happened to be my favorite. What I loved most about the post was that I learned a little something from its publication. Notably, the following comment seemed to strike a cord with me by JM, “Reading the above postings was a special experience. It’s as though #28 ruined the day for everyone who read it. I’m agnostic or atheist or I don’t really know what, but it’s really irrelevant. I’m just blown away by the negativity that one comment can provoke in people who are logging on to a website based on “enlightenment.” My personal advice would be to “F&*$# lighten up.” But perhaps more sage advice would be what a Buddhist monk once told me when I struggled with one of the teachings: “Ignore that teaching. If it is a roadblock to accepting the good parts in the other passages, then you must discard it. Maybe one day you will feel differently about it, maybe not, but don’t let it get in the way of the parts which are helpful to you.” That’s my two cents. Feel free to get angry, I won’t.” So as a follow up to this post, I am asking the following question and I hope that my readers will continue this debate and we can all learn a little something from each other. What are the most important questions in life? Are they about religion, happiness, freedom, love, etc? Can any answers satisfy everyone, or are the answers only personal ones shape by ones experience in life? So what are the questions that are most important in life? Have you found any answers? What answers? To start things off, I have listed some questions to get the ball rolling. I hope you will share your knowledge, love, hate, wisdom, or whatever you feel like ranting about. I will allow everything except personal attacks on others to be published. What are the most important questions in life? Is it……………… What is the meaning of life? Where Did I Come From? Who Am I? Where Am I Going? How much money is enough? What is love? Is there a Supreme Being and is his name really God? How far does space go? Is there life on other planets? “Why do people hate? ”What is the meaning of life? How much is it? Are you married? Will there be an open bar? “What kind of job will I have in the future or even right now”? “Where will I live?” “Who will I marry?” “WHAT DOES GOD WANT ME TO DO WITH MY LIFE?” “What do I want to do with my life?” “What are the most important questions I need to figure out to be happy?” “What is happiness and how do I achieve it?” “Why is an all-knowing God not naturally known by His human creation?” Is there real proof that God cares for you?” What is life all about?” “Is there life after death?” “Why does God allow pain and suffering?” “Can we know God?” Does God choose sides?” Does God want freedom? Why does God let war happen? Whom should we pray for? Is my life significant? What really matters is life? Why should I get up in the morning? Is there life after death? DO I have free will? Why are we here? 
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Tags: , debate, important, Life, questions
Here are some amazing tips for a better life in 2008. One of my close friends Chris sent this post to me on Facebook. I inquired as to who the author was, but he didn’t know, it was a chain email that was sent to him. Whoever it was, the Tips are amazing… The photo was taken by Chris (it’s his girlfriend Nadia)
- Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the
ultimate anti-depressant.
- Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Buy a lock if you have
to.
- Buy a DVR and tape your late night shows and get more sleep.
- When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, ‘My
purpose is to __________ today.’
- Live with the 3 E’s — Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
- Play more games and read more books than you did in 2007.
- Make time to practice meditation, yoga, tai chi, and prayer. They
provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
- Spend time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6.
- Dream more while you are awake.
- Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is
manufactured in plants.
- Drink green tea and plenty of water.. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan
salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
- Try to make at least three people smile each day.
- Clear clutter from your house, your car, your desk and let new and
flowing energy into your life.
- Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, issues of
the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest
your energy in the positive present moment.
- Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are
simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class
but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
- Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a
college kid with a maxed out charge card.
- Smile and laugh more. It will keep the energy flowing.
- Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
- Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
- Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
- You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
- Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
- Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey
is all about.
- No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
- Frame every so-called disaster with these words: ‘In five years, will
this matter?’
- Forgive everyone for everything.
- What other people think of you is none of your business.
- GOD heals almost everything.
- However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
- Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will.
Stay in touch.
- Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
- Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
- The best is yet to come.
- No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
- Do the right thing!
- Call your friends often. (Or email them to death!!!) Hey I’m thinking
of ya!
- Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements: I am
thankful for __________. Today I accomplished _________.
- Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
- Enjoy the ride. Remember this is not Disney World and you certainly
don’t want a fast pass. You only have one ride through life so make the
most of it and enjoy the ride. Anonymous
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Tags: better, Life, living, tips
“Shambhala vision teaches that, in the face of the world’s greatest problems we can be heroic and kind at the same time.” Chogyam Trungpa This is part 5 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4.
Daring to let go, the warrior is great in friendliness.
- We are attracted to our cocoons, our selfishness, and afraid of stepping beyond ourselves. To overcome hesitation and to commit oneself to others’ welfare, the student warrior has to jump. A leap is necessary. This occurs in the practice of meditation when you step beyond the ups and downs of your thinking process and let yourself go with your breath. Let it dissolve. By letting go, you develop trust in the strength of your being. Then, you also find that you have tremendous willingness to give selflessly to others.
The humble warrior is Supreme.
- You need to cultivate gentleness, so that you remain humble, soft, and open. Allow tenderness to come into your heart. Renounce putting on a new suit of armor or growing thick skin. The warrior who has accomplished true renunciation is completely naked and raw, without even skin or tissue. You are able to be, quite fearlessly, what you are.
You cannot possess basic goodness.
- The goal of warriorship is to express basic goodness in its most complete, fresh, and brilliant form. This is possible when you realize that you do not possess basic goodness, but you are the basic goodness itself.
The warrior’s discipline is like the sun.
Join the arrow of intellect with the bow of skillful means.
- With the sharpness of your intelligence, the arrow of intellect, you can clearly see the setting sun, or any degraded tendencies in yourself or the world. Then, you need to harness your insight with skillful action, which is the bow. When the arrow of intellect is joined with the bow of skillful means, you are never tempted by the seductions of the setting-sun world. Temptation here refers to anything that promotes ego and goes against the vision of egolessness and basic goodness. Together, the principle of the bow and arrow allows you to say “no” to ungenuineness, to carelessness, crudeness, or lack of wakefulness.
This is part 5 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4.
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Tags: , heroic, humble, kind, Vision, warrior
Do everything with a mind that lets go.
Do not expect any praise or reward.
If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom.
Your struggles with the world
will have come to an end.
Insight Meditation - Achaan Chah
When I despair,
I remember that all through history
the ways of truth and love have always won.
There have been tyrants, and murderers,
and for a time they can seem invincible,
but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always.
Mahatma Gandhi - early 20th century
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be well.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be happy. Ancient - Tibetan buddhist – Meditation
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
St. Francis of Assisi - 13th century
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye - 1932
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured
into a huge basin. All religions, all this singing,
one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity. Sunlight
looks slightly different
on this wall than it does on that wall and a lot different
on this other one, but
it is still one light. We have borrowed these clothes, these
time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise, we pour them back in. Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century
May we love ever more.
May we motivate ourselves to committed love in Action.
May we motivate ourselves to live the life we wish to see in the world.
May we be the transformation we wish to see in the world.
From the inside out . . .
From the roots branching upwards . . .
From the heart
to thought
to word
to action.
Through life’s trials and hardships
we can arise beautiful and free - Julia Butterfly Hill
If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart. Chinese Philospher - Lao-Tse - 6th Century BCE
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Tags: , love, meditation, peace, prayer
I hope you enjoy these wonderful illustrated Paulo Coelho quotes from some of his books such as Brida, The Fifth Mountain, Eleven Minutes and more. Check out his blog or the official website for more amazing information on this great author. 
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Tags: , author, Brida, eleven minutes, quotes
It is said that Buddhism played an important role in the development of the Shambhala society. The legends tell us that Shakyamuni Buddha gave advanced tantric teachings to the first king of Shambhala, Dawa Sangpo. These Teachings, which are preserved as the Kalacakra Tantra, are considered to be among the most profound wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. Chogyam Trungpa This is part 4 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 5. The warrior delights in heedfulness
- Heedfulness here refers to paying attention to what is taking place in your world. For the warrior, interest happens spontaneously. You feel that the world is naturally full of interest: the visual world, the emotional world, whatever world you might have. So interest or heedfulness manifests as raw delight, delight together with rawness or tenderness.
Let the Great Eastern Sun illuminate the way of discipline
- The Great Eastern Sun, sun of human wakefulness, creates an atmosphere in which you can constantly move forward, recharging energy all the time. It provides the means to take advantage of your life in the fullest sense. This discipline is an organic process that expands naturally from your own experiences…You don’t need an architect or a tailor to redesign your world.
When doubt arises, contemplate warriorship
- Absence of doubt comes from trusting in the heart, trusting yourself. Being without doubt means that you connect yourself, that you experience mind and body being synchronized together. When mind and body are synchronized, then you have no doubt.
Propagate health as a basic discipline of warriorship
- The Great Eastern Sun is wakefulness and genuineness reflected in every aspect of your being. Physically, psychologically, domestically, spiritually, you feel a gut-level sense of health and wholesomeness in your life, as if you were holding a solid brick of gold. When you feel healthy and wholesome, then you cannot help projecting healthiness to others.
Celebrate the feast of faith and joy
- Faith is based on genuineness, trusting in yourself and your vision. You are not faking anything, and you are not trying to impress anybody. Faith inspires discipline. Here, discipline is not based on punishment or arbitrary rules and authority, but rather on becoming thoroughly gentle and genuine. When the warrior has unwavering discipline, he or she takes joy in the journey and joy in working with others. The joy is like music, which celebrates its own rhythm and melody. The celebration is continuous, in spite of ups and downs of life.
Chogyam Trungpa Click here for Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.
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Tags: buddhist, Dawa Sangpo, Shambhala, teaching
The following Passage from The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, is one of the most amazing passages I have ever read, it’s about fighting for our dreams and overcoming the many obstacles in life. I like to think it was fate that left a copy of this book for me at my bedside table while I was traveling in Spain; it was an omen that inspired me to begin my own Pilgrimage and travel to the sacred Cathedral of Saint James in Northern Spain. It was the first piece to a literary puzzle that I would begin to unravel regarding my destiny in life.
“It is the pleasure of searching and the pleasure of the adventure. You are nourishing something that’s very important-your dreams. We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don’t, our soul dies… …The Good fight is the one we fight because our heart asks it of us… …The Good fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we’re young our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result or our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the good fight. The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is lack of time… The Busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The Truth is, they are afraid to fight the good fight… The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the good fight. And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams-we have refused to fight the good fight. When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves…What we sought to avoid in combat-disappointment and defeat-came upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breath, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from out certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons.” The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho P. 58
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Tags: Coelho, dreams, good fight, The Pilgrimage
Only the fool compares the true beauty of a sunset or mountain top view. They must be admired individually without any attempt to compare or contrast. Just sit back, take a deep breath and suck it the entire splendor of the moment before you. For me, gazing upon sunsets is a truly wonderful experience. The soul of the universe reveals its grand and vast beauty in the sky as the sun sinks down below the horizon line: the sky changing with each moment before you in an escalading array of remarkable colors that grow more beautiful as time fades before you. I tried not to miss a single one during my stay in Costa Rica. To the true admirer, each is as spectacular as the next. You can feel the wonderful power of the sun that makes the seasons change; the flower bloom, and brings life to our planet. A captivating experience no writer could ever hope to transcend to his or her readers. Even those unknowing souls can peacefully enjoy a moment of enlightened clarity and soothing calm. It is a moment to enjoy alone, with friends or a lover: enlightenment seeping ever more closely to the heart and mind. Before you are some pictures of the beauty I want to share with the world from my journey to a new distant land; each individually as beautiful as the one before it. I hope are able to enjoy; for I was able to marvel.
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Tags: , breathtaking, enjoy, splendor, sunset
