I’ve gone back and forth in mind as to whether or not I should write a review of the book The Buddha Said . . . by OSHO. This is one of my favorite Buddhist books and I learned a lot from it. It’s entertaining, full of wisdom and fun anecdotes. The reason I’ve hesitated is that while OSHO seems to have had a great grasp on Buddha’s teachings (as well as the teaching of most other religions), he does bring into it the Indian belief of reincarnation. He also tends to be repetitive and wordy, and the book runs long. That said, his grasp of religions, philosophers, and even science is to be appreciated.

Most of all, there are some stellar explanations of Buddha’s teachings, and Osho’s wording has made this one of my favorite Buddhist books. So, instead of writing a review, I’m going to share some of my favorite snippets from the book. If you share any of these please attribute them to Osho:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Buddha is a rationalist. He’s not like Jesus and he is not like Krishna — he’s absolutely a rationalist. Einstein, Newton or Edison would not find any flaw in his reasoning. Any scientist will be immediately convinced of his truth. His approach is purely logical, he convinces the mind. You cannot find a loophole in him. Continue reading “The Buddha Said . . .” »

Orthoceras Fossil

I like rocks, or rather, I am endlessly fascinated by rocks. While many people simply walk over rocks, kick them out of the way, skip them over calm waters, I spend a lot of time looking at, reading about, and studying rocks.

In fact, I often carry them in my pockets, so they eventually end up getting bathed in my washing machine accidentally. But that’s ok, because one thing that strikes me over and over is that rocks don’t suffer. No dukkha of any kind for rocks!

Rocks go through amazing physical changes through heat, pressure, erosion, mixing with other rocks, having their atoms rearranged, being ground down by wind and rain, washed to sea, compacted back into new rock, sucked down into the earth, reheated, liquified, then changed again numerous times over in the course of a few billion years. Through all that, the rocks don’t care. Continue reading “Rocks Don’t Suffer . . . Animals with Consciousness Do” »

I’m very excited to launch a site and community I’ve been working on with Ted Meissner (The Secular Buddhist). This site is one piece of community building for Secular Buddhists, and this site is providing a lot toward that end.

The need for such a site came up over and over again in conversations on Facebook, in Second Life, and in person. Secular Buddhism is gaining popularity, but people have been floundering for good expert information via articles, videos, and interviews, and people have asked for a community (sangha).

As Community Manager and computer geek by profession, I have been eager to work on this project for some time. The planning stages were difficult for me, and an excellent lesson in patience, the virtue of forward thinking, and right timing. Maybe Right Timing should be added to the Eightfold Path:-)

This morning Ted and I did a podcast about the site and community, which will be published next weekend. The site and community, however, are open and ready to serve the Secular Buddhist Community. It’s an exciting time, and I am more than pleased to be one of the facilitators of the new wave of Buddhism in the US.

Please visit the site, enjoy the content, and interact with others in the discussion forums and comments on content pages!

Visit The Secular Buddhist Association.

Beliefs don’t just come with religion. We form beliefs in all aspects of our lives, some subtle, some more obvious. Most, if not all, create filters you may not want to be looking through.

I’ve considered myself mostly free of beliefs, until recently. Continue reading “Beliefs and Mindfulness of Math” »

Neil deGrasse Tyson has said a few times that he thought it would be interesting to do a study on the 7% of scientists who believe in god to find out what drives that belief. I agree, and I think the first question should be: were you indoctrinated in religion as a child? My guess is they were. Continue reading “Why Religious Children Become Atheists” »

Cannon on hike

On a local hiking trail, there is an amazing little grove of madrones, tucked away among a variety of oak trees. I told my friend Heather once that she should check them out, as they seem a great place to allow the emotional floodgates to open. “Of course, they are,” she said. “Madrones have a similar past-life history like redwoods, so they help take your sorrows and transform them.” I don’t know about that. But I’ve been going to the woods for solace since I was a child. Continue reading “In the Company of Trees” »

I’m repeatedly told by confused religious people that without god or religion, one can not realize meaning in life, nor can one be moral. So, I want to address meaning first, and morality second.

Even if you are religious, no one can tell you what the meaning of your life is. Anything they say about this is going to be guesswork, or words that come from some old book. Needless to say, it’s not going to apply to you personally in any shape or form. You can go ahead and believe that what has been said is the meaning of your life, but how can you know this to be true? Continue reading “Morality and the Meaning of Life” »

Practicing Buddhism should help one out of the mire of religion, not get one into yet another religion called Buddhism. It’s a shame that the Buddhist myth has been taken so literally and then turned on its head and twisted into the various traditions that it has. Buddhist teachings ask us to take a critical look at ourselves and the world around us, and that includes this thing we call Buddhism. Continue reading “Making the Most of the Buddha Myth” »

In light of some really big problems going on in the world now, we are not hearing a lot about deforestation, why we should care, or what we can do. But we can not forget this very big problem is going on as we speak, and that we are losing trees at an astonishing rate. Continue reading “Deforestation: Why Care and What Can We Do?” »

It is your right to believe whatever you want. But what about when beliefs interfere with other people’s beliefs or lack thereof? What about when beliefs cause division and hatred between people? Some people’s beliefs can even cause them to violate the rights of others, sometimes going as far as harming them physically. Continue reading “The Right to Believe, and the Nature of Belief” »