Stressed? Read This. Amygdala Highjacking – A Few Brief Thoughts

When under great stress, or when in great fear, our biological fight or flight response is triggered strongly, the amygdala is highjacked, which then highjacks our frontal cortex and our brain, and destroys both our peace, and also our capacity for rational thought. The cortisol and adrenaline stress hormones released also cause serious health risks, impair digestion and nutrient absorption, and undermine quality sleep. Knowing how to respond to – or better, prevent – the highjacking of our minds through fear, is therefore critical for everyone over two years old to know.

Good sleep is essential for good health, maximum performance, well-being, stress management, clarity of mind, emotional balance, or peace. Ideally, go to sleep before nine, and get up at five am. Eat a good breakfast and a big lunch, and a light, early dinner. And eat nothing after 5:30.

Even more important: Avoid stress in the evening before bed, in particular – that means, especially, no “news” or “social media” after (or during!) dinner. Read a book, go for a walk, meditate, pray, play with cats or dogs or kids, cycle, ski, kayak, canoe…play tennis, basketball, or a board game, sit by a river, stream, pond, lake or ocean, or sit in the woods or a park, and just relax, ponder and contemplate… talk with family or friends – directly, not through a screen! …knit, sew, swim, build, fix or make something, cook, bake, garden, do yoga…. Do almost anything else! Unplugging from the electronic mediascape is one of the most critically essential things we can and must do – especially in the morning and evening. Unplug!

You should also know that caffiene and other stimulants, coffee, alcohol, sugar, refined flour, processed food, pesticides and other neurotoxins and hormone disruptors, EMFs, “social media”, cell phone addiction, TV and “the news” – or a lack of sunshine, exercise and fresh air, clean water and nutritious food – will all increase anxiety and stress over time.

Eat a healthy, plant-based organic diet, with loads of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans and other legumes, essential oils and fibre, and that will be a giant step toward greater well-being and peace.

Add daily exercise as essential step number two – along with sunshine, green space time, and fresh air, which are equally critical – and that will be another giant step towards greater well-being and peace.

Third would be to add in other elements that are extremely powerful in supporting well-being and peace, including one or more of the following:

Meditation

Yoga, t’ai chi or chi gong

Prayer and other spiritual practices

Martial arts

Herbal and naturopathic medicine: particularly helpful are maca, St. John’s wort, holy basil, ashwaghanda, macha, raw cacao (sweetened with monk fruit, stevia, real maple syrup or honey, only – not aspartame or refined sugar, both of which are rat poison), turmeric or curcumin, omega-3s, co-Q10 or ubiquinol, milk thistle, borage, hawthorne, motherwort, nettle, gotu kola, dandelion, and a good quality multi-vitamin capsule or liquid (most of these can be taken as drinks or herbal teas, and maca, macha and cacao go well in smoothies)

Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine

Integrative or holistic medicine

Journalling, introspection, contemplation, reflection, silence and solitude, or quiet time

Support groups or psychotherapy

Talking to a close friend, family member, elder or mentor

Building community, building solidarity, building alliances of mutual aid

Time spent with animals – especially outdoors, in a quiet, tranquil, green space

Art, music, dance, or any wholesome form of self-expression or creativity

Gentle, periodic fasting and detoxification

Fourth would be to examine and reflect on your life, and your surroundings, your community and your society. What are your values? What are your priorities? What are your goals? What are your short term and long term plans? Is this how you want to be living? Is this what you want to be doing? Is this where you want to be? Reflect. This is so critically important, it cannot be stressed enough.

But, of all the many things you can do to increase well-being, peace, and also clarity of mind and empowerment, the single most urgent step, is to unplug from the media drug.

Unplug.

It’s a big, beautiful world out there. Live in it.

Don’t flee into media escapism. That will only degrade your life, and make you lonely, anxious, unhealthy, deluded, fat and sad.

Own your sovereignty of body and mind. Get outside – and live!

And remember:

“Only dead fish follow the stream.”

   – Swedish folk saying

JTR,

August 18, 2021

https://www.healthline.com/health/stress/amygdala-hijack#takeaway

Wisdom from the East, Clarified: Paradigm shifts, dying ideologies, and real feng shui vs fast food feng shui

(Some people will think that talk of things such as feng shui is frivolous. To them I say, bracket that distaste – feng shui is a very small part of this discussion, which covers very important ground in terms of philosophy, the philosophy of science, history, anthropology, sociology, political-economy, ecology, science and scientism, and the state of modern industrial society. Please read on.)

Many people who think they are scientific, and even think they are scientists, have an out-dated view of the world, based in a pre-Einsteinian and pre-quantum physics paradigm of materialist reductionism. They are actually the great majority of “scientists”, doctors and academics. They are over a century behind. And they are stridently dogmatic in defending their dying materialist ideology.

Things like feng shui, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), or yogic, Buddhist or Taoist philosophy, are branded heretical and unscientific by these medieval high priests. But in fact, all these things fit perfectly well in the new paradigms, or models, arising out of modern science itself. (Science is the slow man in the race, and is only now catching up with the mystics.) These things don’t fit with the old materialist reductionist model of Newton and Descartes. But that 400 year old model is dying now, and that model itself does not fit with modern physics, ecology, systems theory, epigenetics, or recent mind-brain research.

How then, should we view these things that were previously thought heretical or taboo? Firstly, we must clarify that there is no linear causality. That means control is an illusion. It also means that the position of the stars or the design of your home, for example, do not singularly cause or determine your fate. They are an influence, among many other influences. If we are intelligent, we will take a holistic or full systems approach, and try to maximize positive systems influences and dynamics, while reducing or mitigating negative influences or dynamics. That is what yoga, Ayurveda, TCM, t’ai chi, chi gong, meditation and feng shui seek to do; exactly as permaculture or intelligent systems design seeks to do. The principle applies to ecosystems, landscapes, gardens, farms, homes, buildings, communities, relationships, study, work, spirituality, prosperity, resilience, and health. This is the logic behind feng shui, for example: intelligent design of systems for maximum harmony and well-being.

*

E=MCsquared. Energy = mass x the speed of light squared.

What does that mean? Among other things, it means this. Einstein showed matter and energy and inter-convertible. In fact, both Einstein’s famous equation and also quantum physics show that matter is, in reality, condensed energy. Hence, not only does every living being have an energy field, and every thing, and every material substance, has an energy field, but all beings and things are in fact energy fields. Materialist reductionists quiver and foam at the mouth at such talk, but modern physics proved what I am saying over a century ago, and the materialist reductionist world view or paradigm is crumbling now, in any case.

Feng shui, like Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda and yoga, is based on a knowledge of how various patterns or formations of energy interact. If we are intelligent, we will be curious, and look into these bodies of knowledge, with an open mind and some serious humility, since they fill out the radically incomplete, grossly inadequate, and dying modern Western model or paradigm of science, and of health.

*

There is no longer any question that acupuncture works. (See David Suzuki, The Nature of Things) Western conventional medicine has been forced to acknowledge it works. It has been used successfully for addiction recovery, and has been used as a replacement for anesthetics for surgery, so it definitely is proven to work. That should logically lead us to conclude that the medical model of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is sound, since that is the basis of acupuncture. TCM is based in Taoist knowledge and philosophy, acquired through meticulous empirical observations from more than 2,000 years of field experiments. That should then give confidence, logically, that Taoist knowledge and philosophy is sound. Feng shui is also based in Taoist knowledge and philosophy, and hence, we should have confidence that that system is also sound.

The hubris of modern Western society must be shattered, and now. Time to grow up. We have been boisterous and arrogant adolescents for far too long. It is a much bigger world than we were taught to believe. Our minds must now become open to the East – and on an equal basis, as Bertrand Russell urged decades ago – along with the Global South, indigenous knowledge, and knowledge from the past, particularly from the Enlightenment, the Romantics, the Renaissance and the ancients. Clearly and undeniably, the modern Western and Westernized world is drunk with power, suicidal, ecocidal, imperialist, and hell-bent on a course leading to the collapse of our civilization (sic). Our hubris will be our self-destruction if we carry on like this any longer. It is time for a little humility, and a good deal more open-mindedness.

*

Science did not begin in Europe in the 17th century. That is a conceit that needs to be laid to rest. The Islamic, Arab world preserved science from ancient Greece, and further developed it, before passing it generously to Europe (which was still by and large in an anti-intellectual dark age) through Moorish Spain, in the Spanish Renaissance of the 8th to 13th centuries, and then, 500 years later, to the Italian Renaissance. We owe, not the birth, but the rebirth of science, therefore, to the Spanish and Italian Renaissance, and to Islamic, Arabic society, and only secondarily to people like Newton, Bacon and Descartes. A little humility now will save our skin. It cannot be emphasized enough.

If by science, we mean an empirical method of investigating life, then science began in ancient Greece, and India and China, and probably in many other places, thousands of years ago. Modern science, which is a mere 400 years old, has produced great knowledge, and powerful technology. But we are foolish in the extreme and dangerously deluded if we equate technological power with wisdom, or even understanding. That surge in scientific knowledge and technological power has made modern society arrogant and filled with hubris, presuming we understand more than we do. That is error number one.

Science requires an open mind, and that requires humility. Dogma kills science, and dogma is what we have descended into. That is not science. It is scientism: which is the dogmatic and anti-scientific clinging to presumption, orthodoxy, high priests, official doctrines and an official canon.

Scientism is a form of medieval scholastic dogmatism, which is an ideology, a form of secular fundamentalism. That is what reigns now, not science. That is the second error: to take our over-confidence, and turn it into a religion, and a cult.

The third big error was to adopt Cartesian dualism. The fourth was to adopt a Newtonian mechanistic, atomistic, materialist reductionist model, paradigm or world view.

The fifth great error of modern science was to elevate that which can be measured, to the status of the only things worth investigating. The sixth was then to assume that what cannot be measured is either unimportant or unreal, non-existent.

These six errors, plus the common problems of (7) group-think, (8) egotism and careerism – it is more important to defend one’s ego than to value the truth, (9) corruption by conflicts of interest – science is overwhelmingly controlled by big business and the state, both of which have their own agendas, and truth is not high on the list; and (10) cultural bias, cultural arrogance, or simple racism – modern Europeans know best, therefore indigenous knowledge, Eastern knowledge, ancient, medieval and Renaissance knowledge, must all be worthless… These ten errors, we can now count and list, have blinded science, and have blinded the great majority of scientists, academics and intellectuals, and have blinded modern industrial society more broadly. That blindness will be our downfall, if not corrected immediately.

Again, humility and open-mindedness are imperative, and urgently needed. We are myopic blind men, quarrelling in the dark over shadows on a cave wall. And we will remain so, until and unless we redefine empiricism more broadly, and more thoughtfully, and until we admit our ignorance, so that we can once again learn.

Remember Socrates, the founder of Western philosophy. Socrates famously said, “I am the wisest person I know, because I am the only one who realizes his ignorance.” Begin with an open mind, and an admission of ignorance, or at least, an admission that what we think we know, could turn put to be entirely wrong. Otherwise, we are not practising science, nor are we even practicing basic intelligence.

There is a Zen story worth conveying here. A scholar comes to a Zen master and asks to be taught. The Zen master offers the scholar some tea. The scholar says yes. The Zen master pours the tea into the scholar’s cup, fills the cup to the top, then keeps on pouring. The scholar exclaims, “Stop! My cup is full!” The Zen master replies. “Precisely. Your cup is full. You mst empty your cup before it can be filled.” We are that bombastic scholar, heads too full of preconceptions to learn anything, or even to see or to hear.

As geneticist David Suzuki said, we really have very little understanding of life. He was talking about modern science. But ancient, Eastern, mystical and indigenous knowledge traditions have a great, immense understanding of life, in vast scope and tremendous depth. Modern science, by comparison, is obsessed with the dust on the lens as it peers obsessively through a microscope at the molecular structure of the bark of a single tree. “What is this forest you speak of? Sounds like flakey, voodoo mumbo-jumbo to me!”

Watch Mr. Magoo. That is modern science. Too narrow, too myopic, and therefore, stumblng blindly along. We must take a step back, and broaden and deepen our perspective. As Shakespeare said, “There is more to heaven and earth than is contained in your philosophy.”

To abandon science would be asinine, to put it bluntly; but to worship what we narrowly define as science, and hence, to turn science into a quasi-religious cult of scholastic dogmatism, which we have done, and to presume that what we narrowly define as science is the only valid means of acquiring knowledge, and the only valid body of knowledge, is even more asinine.

Science, to be truly worthy of the name, must be empirical, not dogmatic. But science, even then, can only tell us how the world works, and even that in a very limited and superficial degree. Science, even when practiced well, which means empirically, cannot tell us how to live, what is meaningful, what is ethical or virtu or what is wise or unwise to do. Science offers no values, only facts, or more pften, presumed facts and partial truths. Science therefore, even at its best, must be subservient to philosophy. And philosophy, to be practiced well, must be subsevient to experience, and to a radical empiricism. This is not a circular argument: it is taking empiricism to a much deeper level.

We can call it mysticism, or prophetic vision, but I prefer the term, radical empiricism, borrowing from William James and Allan Wallace. This means we take figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, Shakara, Moses, Meister Eckhart and Hildegaard of Bingen, Mohammed and Lao Tzu seriously. And we take our own experience seriously. Science now proclaims itself empirical, while invalidating direct experience. The radical self-contradiction is not perceived, but that is the root of our blindness in the modern world.

If you want to understand where science went wrong, read William Blake, There Is No Natural Religion. And read Emerson and Thoreau, America’s two greatest philosophers, for good measure. Until we admit our mistake, and radically expand our conception of empiricism and valid sources of knowledge, both science and modern “scientific” industrial society will remain blindly destructive, and we will continue to be on a collision course with reality, with full steam ahead.

*

This short essay began as a brief musing on feng shui, but then I remembered that many people are very narrow-minded about such things, so I wrote a short preamble. That preamble has taken on a life of its own now. But that is ok. Let’s continue.

As I have said before, and written before, the old paradigm, model or world view of Newtonian-Cartesian materialist reductionism, is dying, and we are in the midst of a paradigm shift which has been going on for over a century. (Old dogmas die slowly.) But… What is wrong with the old paradigm? Well, besides the fact that it no longer fits with the scientific evidence, the mechanistic, materialist world view has been blamed for being one of the root causes of our destruction of nature, and for the growing environmental emergency we face. That indictment holds water, and can scarcely be denied, since the mechanistic, materialist world view reduces all living beings, ecosystems, plants, animals, forests, wetlands, oceans, rivers, and human beings, to the level of mere objects, mere things, to be exploited and harvested, and disposed of at will.

For the same reason, the materialist world view has led to a deep alienation between humans and nature; which means, between ourselves and life. That alienation is in turn driving people into mass addiction, addictive consumerism, compulsive escapism and perpetual distraction, mental illness, suicide, anxiety and depression. So yes, for many reasons, aside from purely scientific reasons, the old model needs to be discarded, post haste.

*

One example of the utter failure and disastrous results of the grossly flawed model, paradigm, or world view of mechanistic, materialist reductionism, is the growing environmental crisis, as I have said, and as many have pointed out. Another example is the tremendous failure of modern “scientific” medicine. Despite all our much-vaunted scientific knowledge, we still have essentially zero success in treating the skyrocketing prevalence of chronic degenerative diseases, or mental illness and emotional distress. We can and do push freight train loads of pharmaceutical drugs, but these treat only the symptoms, and even those with patchy and poor success. The underlying causes remain largely ignored, because they require a holistic perspective, and that contradicts the official cannon and dogma of materialist reductionism. People are living longer, yes, but they are in general deeply unhealthy, both physically and psychologically, and they are living longer while saddled with multiple pharmaceutical dependencies, each of which has its own, often serious side-effects.

For context, a couple of figures that are not widely known, should become known. the US government has reported that 80% of pharmaceutical drugs have not been adequately tested for safety or effectiveness. That should be alarming. But why would this be the case? How could this be the case? It is the case because the big pharmaceutical companies are driven by concerns for profits, over and above public health. And it is the case because the pharmaceutical industry took over the medical colleges and the medical industry a century ago. It is corruption above, and dogmatic group think and indoctrination below – in the medical health field, and in our very much business-run society more broadly.

Worse yet, according to the US government, in the US alone, every year 200,000 people die from taking pharmaceutical drugs – correctly prescribed and correctly taken. That’s the equivalent of a fully loaded jumbo jet crashing every day. The US government report never made it on the news media, and the governments and the corporate and state media don’t mention it, because Big Pharma is too powerful to cross. Meanwhile, the much-decried natural health and traditional Eastern (TCM and Ayurveda) medical-health methods produce zero documented deaths per year. This is one of the many reasons why conventional Western pharmaceutical-obsessed medicine is in crisis, and is furthermore seeing an exodus to natural medicine and Eastern methods.

Andrew Weill is right: the future of medicine is integrative medicine. That means, we take the best of modern Western conventional medicine, and integrate it with the best of natural and Eastern medicine. The faster the dogmatists accept the fact, the better off we will all be.

*

Now, to briefly discuss feng shui – from a layman’s perspective.

It seems to be the case that Western feng shui is a modern Western pop culture, New Age invention, and is not in accord with classical feng shui. So, if you are going to use feng shui, which in essence is a practice of harmonizing energy in homes and buildings and landscapes, make sure it is classical feng shui, not fast food feng shui. Second, it must take into account the specific home design, compass orientation, and natal charts. I’d say this is too complex to do on your own. Get a consultation with someone knowledgeable in classical feng shui. Otherwise, it can be like wiring up your own electrical breaker panel – too risky for novice hands. Consult a pro. 

Normally I’d say you can do everything yourself. You can design and grow a garden, and grow your own food if you want to. You can build your own home, design it and build it yourself, even wire it, if you study up. But for wiring a breaker panel, get an electrician. It is out of bounds for laymen and novices. And for feng shui, consult someone who knows what they are doing. Otherwise, you could cause disharmony and harmful negativity when you wanted to do the opposite.

*

I would offer the same advice with regards to yoga and meditation: stick to the classic methods, tested and proven to be effective for over 2,000 years. When you are fully enlightened, then you can invent your own style. Until then, bow your head before the true masters, and humbly learn what they have to teach.

(Be wary of New Age MacThis and MacThat. It is far too unreliable, to hit and miss, too much a case of Russian roulette, to entrust your health or spirituality to it – even though there may be, and are, some gems among that heap.)

For yoga, I know of two schools that are definitely reliable, who teach classic yoga: Sivananda and Kripalu. Other approaches or styles may not harm you, but you may not get the same depth or benefit, either.

For meditation, I would stick to Zen, Theravada, or one of the four traditional schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Again, New Age meditation teachers may not do you any harm, but you may simply be wasting your time, and likely are.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Not in this case. Not with yoga or meditation. Those systems and methods are based on thousands of years of experience. Stick to the classic techniques that have been developed over millennia. Avoid the fluff.

Modern society is addicted to novelty and newness. Everything must be the latest fashion – even in spirituality or health. But this is foolish. The best things remain unchanging. Only the superficial things change. Do not be superficial. Stick to what works. In home design and construction, sometimes in technology (though not always) and in many fields, new ideas are sometimes better ideas. Not when it comes to yoga, meditation, or spirituality.

Remember the saying from Aikido: “Big lake, but shallow. Small lake, but deep.” It is depth you should be looking for, not novelty. This is not a shopping mall approach. Find a path that works for you, and that is not based in some New Age egotist’s self-aggrandizement scheme, and stick to that. Find novelty elsewhere in your life. (Plant a garden, and read widely.) When it comes to health and spirituality, you need to focus, and you need depth. Don’t jump all over the place. Don’t dig shallow wells. Study broadly, think broadly, discuss broadly – but pick a spiritual or health approach that works for you, and go deep. That will produce results. Skittering across the surface of things will not.

*

For clarity sake, let me add this. While it is now imperative that we allow the East into our minds on an equal footing, as Bertrand Russell urged many years ago, and do the same for indigenous knowledge, the Global South, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance and the ancients – because if we do not, modern Western, and Westernized industrial society, will most likely destroy the very basis of life on Earth; that does not mean we must have a mass conversion to Eastern or native spirituality. We must become renewed in our confidence, our dignity, and also our humility, yes. But we can still keep our own spiritual traditions, or our secular traditions, if that is what you prefer. It simply means that we must, of necessity, now broaden our minds.

The stakes now, are not only our wisdom, or capacity for wisdom, or our health, happiness or well-being, but our very survival. We need to draw upon the best of human knowledge and wisdom, from across the world, and across the spans of time. It is truly that imperative. And it should be exciting. No doubt this is a very challenging time. But it is a very exciting time, as well. We are witnessing nothing short of a rebirth of our world. And that is both painful, and also joyous.

JTR,

July 3, 2021

For more up to date scientific models than what the dogmatic materialists are offering, see:

Einstein, Schrodinger, Wheeler, Bohm, Vandana Shiva, Joanna Macy, Ken Wilber, David Suzuki, Rupert Sheldrake, Rene Weber, Michael Talbot, Thomas Kuhn, and Allan Wallace, as a foundation.

Unfortunately I am too new to feng shui to give specific references on that subject at this point, sorry. But stay tuned! I am always learning, and you should be too! That is, after all, the true scientific mindset, and the only intelligent approach to life. Shun dogma. Stay open-minded. And… Keep learning!

What Is Buddhism, and What Is Non-Dualism?

And What Are They Not?

Open letter to Russell Brand, regarding a video (linked below) titled,

Dualism vs Monism EXPLAINED!

Russell, who the hell are you interviewing?! The guy is clearly talking out of his ass. (Sorry for my directness and occasional bluntness. I was heavily influenced by Chomsky, Trungpa and Thoreau, and can’t seem to help it.) He says, “I’m a firm dualist….That’s a very Buddhist view.” No, sorry, flatly 180 degrees wrong.

In Buddhist philosophy or spirituality, the aspect of our own true nature, which is also the true nature of being, which is Wisdom Mind, or Universal Mind, or infinite wisdom, is depicted in visual form as Manjushri. Manjushri is shown seated on a lotus flower, holding a flaming sword in his right hand – which never harms any living being, but is used only to cut through illusions – and holds in his left hand a sacred text. That text is the Prajnaparamita Sutra, also known as the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom. That tells us everything we need to know about the heart of Buddhist teachings. And the teaching is expressly, non-dualist.

Buddhism is expressly and explicitly non-dualist, as is expressed in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom, and as is expressed in the Hriydaya Sutra, the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, commonly known as the Heart Sutra – which is recited daily in Zen monasteries across the world – which states, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form.”

Then, after radically misrepresenting Buddhist philosophy, your guest goes on to misrepresent Plato as a dualist as well. Plotinus certainly understood Plato better than most modern commentators, because he was the last of the ancient philosophers (leaving out Augustine, since he was not a serious philosopher); and because he was a student of Plato’s philosophy, who said that he had nothing to add to Plato, but was simply clarifying Plato’s message – the core of which is: the many are One; the One manifests as the many. Again, your guest is flatly and radically wrong, and is misrepresenting yet another philosophical school of thought.

Then he completely contradicts himself. First he said that Buddhism is a dualistic philosophy. Then he says, “The Eastern religions, they go one step further by arguing that there is no matter at all, that mind is the only thing that exists.” Wrong again. First he says Buddhism is dualistic, then he says it is monist. Do you realize that these two philosophical views are utter opposites of each other?

So, which is it, buddy? Is Buddhism a dualistic philosophy, as you say first, or is it a monist philosophy, as you say later? Clearly he doesn’t have any idea what he is talking about. A first year philosophy professor would have to give him a D-, at best, for both grossly misunderstanding two major schools of philosophy, and worse, for flatly contradicting himself. (YouTube sets extraordinarily low standards.)

Then he goes on to enlighten us on the philosophy of science, with similar results. He says, again with the certitude of Moses coming down from the mountain, with the word of God written on stone, “You can go with science, which is materialistic, which says that everything is physical.” And again, he is 100% wrong. There was this recent event in science, dude, maybe you heard about it, a new discovery, a radically new approach and understanding of science, called, “quantum physics”. It’s a brand new scientific paradigm, just discovered about a century past, which radically undermined and in fact shattered the old paradigm (see Thomas Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) of Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic, atomistic, materialist-reductionism. But then again, you can’t be expected to keep up with everything. After all, quantum physics only arrived on the scene 100-some years ago.

Then he goes back to misinterpreting and misrepresenting Buddhism – which he says, states that, “everything is mind. There’s no such thing as a physical reality.” Wrong again. Again, he is contradicting himself: first saying Buddhism is dualist, then saying it is monist. And secondly, he is flatly wrong in saying Buddhism is a mind-only (idealist) philosophy (eg: Berkeley). In actual fact, the Buddhist teachings explicitly say that the Mind-Only School is a close approximation to the truth, but is subtly mistaken. The Dalai Lama, or any other qualified Lama or Zen master, can correct him on that. Nagarjuna, the preeminent philosopher of Buddhist philosophy, makes it explicitly clear that dualistic views are mistaken, and so too are nihilistic and philosophical idealist views also mistaken – the true nature of being and reality being non-duality. If he wants to argue with the Dalai Lama or Nagarjuna, I say, good luck. He is clearly out of his depth, and is in way over his head.

As the Mahayana texts state clearly, “Nirvana and samsara are one.” How much more explicitly non-dualist can it be? Buddhism therefore, is not about exiting, leaving, or escaping the world – it is about waking up, and being fully aware of the true and profoundly rich nature of being.

The way the guest here presents dualism, as interactionism or interdependence between mind and body, or consciousness and matter, is actually one of the few accurate things he has to say. Interactionism is a more intelligent view than materialist monism, or materialist reductionism, as it is more commonly called, but it is still not the Perennial Philosophy of non-dualism, which has been expressed by all the great mystics, East and West, throughout the ages, nor is it the view of Eastern philosophy, and nor is it, to be specific, the view of Buddhism, Taoism, or the Advaita Vedanta teachings of the yogis. Again, other than accurately depicting what interactionism is, he is pretty much 100% wrong on everything he has talked about here.

Ken Wilber – someone who is an actual scholar, and who does not talk out of his ass, put it well, when he said that Western philosophy for 5,000 years has been a battle between what he called “the ascenders and the descenders”. (Ken Wilber is out of his depth and deeply mistaken in terms of political philosophy, but otherwise is a simply stellar polymath and truly brilliant philosopher and scholar – one of the dozen or so greatest scholars of the past 100 years, along with Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Joanna Macy, Rianne Eisler, Murry Bookchin, Erich Fromm, Mathew Fox, Thomas Merton, Einstein and Noam Chomsky.)

The ascenders view the world, nature, the body, and life on Earth, as unreal, illusory, or less real and less important, than the transcendent realm of pure spirit of consciousness. (The Earth is a waiting room, and everything in this world is inferior and also depraved at its core, and heaven is what we are waiting for., while we suffer through this dismal, sordid, pathetic material plane. World-hating dualists, is what they are.) They are dualists, in essence, who devalue, or occasionally deny the existence, of one pole: devaluing the imminent, the Earthly and the material, while valuing the spiritual and the transcendent. The descenders are the materialists, who want to devalue, or more commonly deny, the existence of the spiritual, the transcendent, or of consciousness or spirit. (They are materialist-reductionists, and epiphenomenalists, clinging to a worldview that is a century out of date, and thus are anti-empirical and unscientific, at least since the discovery of quantum physics.)

The real truth, the true nature of phenomena, being and reality, as Ken Wilber rightly points out, is what the great mystics have all said, and which quantum physics is now corroborating: which is non-duality. But this guest of Russell’s is no scholar – either of religion, of philosophy, or of science.

I mean, he seems an intelligent lad, but he is a novice, clearly, speaking as if he has the pontificate, and is delivering the Sermon on the Mount, the Answer of all answers, when he says definitively and with an air of utter authority, what Buddhism, Plato, Eastern religions, and science are all about. And he got it wrong on all four counts.

Russell Brand, by contrast, your approach is refreshingly humble, yet filled with a very legitimate and indeed important spirit of dignity and confidence – and with humility and confidence in balance, as they should be, and need to be, if we have any good sense, as you clearly do. Your guest, by contrast, is filled with presumption, and what the ancient Greeks would call, hubris. Or flatulence and hot air, to be more direct.

People should bear in mind that it was only recently, in the long view of history, that we humans knew, with full and absolute, unquestionable certainty, that the world is flat, and the Earth is the centre of the universe. Everyone knew these things to be true, and unquestionably true. And everyone was wrong. In fact, when people dared to question the holy dogma of the Earth being the centre of the universe, they were met with the Inquisition, and the serious threat of being burned at the stake for heresy.

How similar to the world we live in today.

Another thing to bear in mind is that, in truth, you are more likely to be struck by lightning seven times in a single life, than to find truly reliable information on youtube, the internet in general, or the media, or for that matter, from academia – to say nothing of pop culture icons, such as your very presumptuous guest.

In fact, unless what you are hearing, reading or watching comes directly – and I mean directly – from a Buddhist, Taoist or yogic master, the odds are that the information being presented is partially or wholly mistaken; and more than likely, not a little mistaken, but more commonly, radically mistaken, if not flatly either propaganda or delusion. People need to learn to have far more discernment, and to separate the wheat from the chaff – and the drivel, pap, dross and dung, from the gems.

I listen to what Russell Brand has to say, quite often, because he is generally very lucid, as well as good-hearted and highly intelligent, and highly articulate, not to mention often witty, and always has something interesting to say. His guests, however, are very hit and miss, at best; and sometimes, I’m sorry to say, simply full of shit.

Russell, when you said, “I feel that we are experiencing the limitations of our current models”, you were bang on. Yes, we have been in the midst of a scientific revolution, a shift in paradigms, or world-view, which began over a century ago. (These things take time – and a century, in human history, is but a blink.) Moreover, we have been in the midst of a cultural awakening of humanity since the late 1950s (the Beat poets, for example, along with the Civil Rights movement), which blossomed in the 1960s, and which did not die out, but has quietly grown and accelerated over the past 50-60 years, and continues to accelerate and to grow world-wide.

I would offer what Leibniz called The Perennial Philosophy – which Aldous Huxley wrote about very well – as a major clue as to where we should look for a better understanding of what reality really actually is. And the Perennial Philosophy echoes the recent findings in quantum physics, which show that the supposed material building blocks of all matter, do not exist – at least, not in the way we had imagined. (“Where is the matter? No matter. Where is the mind? Nevermind.”)

Quantum physics shows us that subatomic particles are not particles – which was a misnomer we put on them, a label we put on them, while we were still steeped in the deluded world-view of Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic materialist-reductionism. Nor are they local. And non-local means non-dual. Subatomic particles are condensations or areas of concentration within energy fields – and as Einstein said, “We should stop talking about particles and fields. The field is everything.” Or as Einstein also said, getting right to the heart of the matter: “The perception of a division between subject and object is a kind of optical delusion.” Or as Shrodinger put it – and he was of course the god-father of quantum mathematics: “The number of minds in the universe is one.” (See Einstein’s star pupil and protégé, David Bohm, for further elaboration.)

Again, non-dualism is the heart of the perennial philosophy, the heart of the mystics’ teachings, East and West (see Meister Eckhart, for example), the heart of Buddhist, Taoist and yogic teachings, and the heart of what quantum physics and modern science is now confirming.

“Science” – and it must be placed in quotation marks, since there are few who are truly empirical, and hence, few who are truly scientific – is the slow man in the race; but is beginning to catch up, despite the foot-dragging of the pseudo-empirical, quasi-scientific majority of “scientists”, who, like Dark Age priests, cling to the old Newtonian-Cartesian materialist paradigm like it was the Holy Grail itself.

Western philosophy, as is widely acknowledged, is at an impasse. I would say a cul de sac is a better description. Academic Western philosophy, and most of what passes for “intellectual culture” alternates between the nihilist morass of polysyllabic post-modernist psychobabble, and the equally nihilistic myopia of stridently dogmatic materialist flatlander anti-science. We need to go back to fundamentals, retrace our steps, and re-think and re-examine our first principles and basic assumptions. We got off on the wrong track with Descartes’ dualism, 400 years ago, and with Newton’s mechanistic materialism, and with a largely unconscious assumption of certitude, which Stephen Toulmin unearths in his important work, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, and which, to a frightening and very real, and very large degree, threw us back into the dogmatic quasi-religious, pseudo-science of the Dark Ages. Uncover and examine these three grossly delusional assumptions which underpin the modern world, and we will be getting somewhere. Then only, will the fog begin to clear.

Until then, we have three main options in the West: post-modernist nihilism; materialist nihilism; and pop culture pap – all of which have the merit and the intellectual rigour of a dung ball. It is time to think more critically, and to take a fresh look at things. Then we will experience a new Renaissance – which is, by the way, emerging now, despite and maybe because of the darkness of the times – and not before.

Overcoming the absurd and grotesque hubris and supreme arrogance of the modern Western world, and rediscovering a little true humility and open-mindedness, would do wonders as well, and is absolutely imperative and essential. As Bertrand Russell said, we will have to allow the East into our thoughts, and on an equal footing. And we must allow the global South, as well, into our thoughts, and also on an equal footing. And further, we must overcome this grandiose smugness, which silently or sometimes aloud proclaims, foolishly, that we have nothing to learn from the ancients, from the “primitive” indigenous peoples of the world, from the medieval world, or from the first Renaissance. What assumptions we make – and what darkness we live in, as a result. When we broaden and deepen our perspective in these ways, then sparks will fly, and the new Renaissance will be secure, and will truly and rapidly blossom, to the great and profound benefit of all.

J. Todd Ring,
March 13, 2021

For a scholarly perspective on Buddhism and non-dualism, Eastern philosophy, and the philosophy of science – and not a gross misrepresentation of them, as was presented here – see:

Choosing Reality – Allan Wallace

World As Lover, World As Self – Joanna Macy

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

The Perennial Philosophy – Aldous Huxley

The Way of Zen – Alan Watts

Tao: The Watercourse Way – Alan Watts

Psychotherapy East and West – Alan Watts

The Holographic Universe – Michael Talbot

Mysticism and The New Physics – Michael Talbot

Dreamtime and Inner Space – Holgar Kalweit

The Tao Te Ching – Jane English translation only

The Gospel of Thomas – Marvin Meyers translation only

The Heart Sutra – with commentary by Thich Nat Hahn

The Prajnaparamita Sutra – see Lex Hixon’s, The Mother of the Buddhas

The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-neng – Shambhala Classics edition

The Uttaratantra – see Buddha Nature: The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra

And anything and everything by the Dalai Lama, Chogyam Trungpa,

or my own teachers, Lama Zopa, Lama Tharchin and Kirti Tsenchab Rinpoche

And to this short list of seminal, core texts, I would humbly, and frankly, offer my own work, as an overview of philosophy, within a broad historical and global perspective, and within the context of sociology, political-economy, culture and ecology, and as a vision for the way ahead: Enlightened Democracy, and, The People vs The Elite. Both are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble now.

My sincere apologies to your guest, Russell, but a person cannot grossly misrepresent Buddhism and Eastern philosophy without being called and corrected on it. He needs to study far more before speaking with such an air of authority. It is inappropriate, grossly misleading, and frankly juvenile.

Why Do Yoga?

 

 

Yoga is now practiced by champion boxers, football players such as the Miami Dolphins, and celebrity musicians such as Sting. Yoga is now being practiced by people as diverse as pre-school children, to 90+ year old grandmothers; and everyone from hippies to red necks, corporate office workers to artists and health care workers, hackers and slackers, stoners and groaners, anyone and everyone, can feel free to join in the benefits.

 

Yoga has definitely hit the mainstream. Yet still, it is not as widely adopted as I feel it should be. Ideally, in an ideal society, everyone, every morning, does at least 15 minutes each of yoga (or t’ai chi, or chi gong), yogic breathing, meditation, contemplation, prayer, and simply walking in the woods, or at least somewhere outdoors, preferably some place clean and green, peaceful and inspiring. That’s a commitment of an hour and a half a day, in order to receive truly indescribable benefits, not only to health and vitality, but to clarity of mind, peace of mind, mood and spiritual life. (I’m still working on achieving that level of daily consistency, and have a long way to go, but any progress is progress, we should bear in mind.) 90 minutes a day is a small investment for an unquantifiable, priceless reward. We are not quite yet at the state of an enlightened society, however, as is obvious to everyone, and such self-discipline and good habits are rare.

 

So, why should someone practice yoga?

 

I mentioned some of the benefits, but more of an overview is maybe helpful, to inspire more people to try yoga, and to inspire veteran yogis to go further and deeper in their practice.

 

It should be noted that yoga doesn’t require any kind of belief. Yoga is radically empirical, and it should be approached with a radical empiricism: as William James urged, and the Buddha also advised, investigate things for yourself, see for yourself.

Yoga can be practiced by Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, agnostics, radical empiricists such as I might call myself, atheists or Jains. Yoga does not require any kind of religious conversion, nor any kind of belief structure at all. You simply practice yoga because it has benefits – the same way that anyone can walk or jog, lift weights or meditate without having to adopt any kind of belief system whatsoever.

You can practice yoga for health benefits, vitality, youth and beauty, energy, strength, stamina, flexibility, balance, poise and grace, longevity, healing, or disease-prevention, to slow or even reverse aging, for greater mental clarity and mental powers, for stress-reduction, for inner peace, for pain management or pain reduction, for building true inner power and resilience that weathers all storms, for greater self-awareness, for developing a deeper level of confidence and dignity, for help in dealing with depression, anxiety, addictions or trauma, for a hot body, or for spiritual enlightenment. Yoga will help tremendously in all these ways and more.

So, you can set your beliefs aside, or keep whatever beliefs you have, and simply do the practice. You can meditate, do yogic breathing, do chanting or mantras, or simply do the physical postures (asanas), which in themselves alone, have powerful benefits that words truly cannot adequately describe.

In the India, where yoga originated some thousands of years ago, in the twilight of pre-history, there are considered to be four major paths or sets of yoga. The physical postures (asanas) which are generally all that people think of as being yoga in the West, are just one part of one set of yogas.

In India, in terms of major paths or sets of yoga, which are pathways to moksha, or enlightenment, there are said to be four. There is karma yoga, which simply means you strive to live with compassion and help others where you can; there is bhakti yoga, which is the path of devotion and prayer; there is jana yoga, which is the path of study and contemplation; and there is raja yoga, which means, the king of yogas. The physical postures, or asanas, are one part of raja yoga, and are viewed as a preliminary practice and a complimentary practice to yogic breathing and meditation. But you can practice just the physical postures if you like. The other yogas are there if you want to practice them, or you can set them aside; although, to practice yoga well, and with the most benefit, I would urge everyone to also practice karma yoga: be kind, and help others where you can.

You can study the theory as much or as little as you like. Theory is helpful, but practice matters more. Just show up and do the practice – that’s all that really matters. That, and be gentle and peaceful with yourself. Yoga is not a race; it is not a competition; it is not about the ego – in fact, that is the illusion to be overcome. Yoga is about coming home – to yourself.

That is yoga: it is coming home.

*

I took my first yoga class in Wales, in 1991, and instantly fell in love with yoga. I had no idea that yoga could be so profoundly relaxing and stress-relieving. Given that I was suffering from chronic severe anxiety and depression at the time, to say that yoga was a God-send would be an extreme understatement.

 

With patience and dedication, the combination of yoga and meditation blew my anxiety and depression to the four winds – not instantly, but over time. Nothing else had had that power, and I had tried nearly everything. And the health benefits are equally amazing.

 

In 1995, I think it was, I took the Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training, which was also a wonderful experience. I cannot say enough good things about either the Kripalu centre, the community there in the beautiful mountains, or the practice itself. It is the gentle and meditative approach, combined with a holistic method of healing and self-actualization, which addresses body, mind and spirit, which makes it so powerful and so special.

 

To my mind, many people take what Chogyam Trungpa called, an attitude of spiritual consumerism, as if they are walking through a shopping mall, and picking up a little bit of this, a little bit of that – but getting no depth at all, and hence, going nowhere but in circles, always on the surface. It’s the flavour of the month club. Never is there the patience or the focus to go into any real depth, and never is there any long term commitment – so it’s always on to the next thing…. And round and round we go. Going nowhere – but with great speed!

 

Would you like your McYoga super-sized? With fries?

 

Please drive ahead….

 

As an Aikido friend and sensei once said to me, relaying what his teacher always said, “Big lake, but shallow. Small lake, but deep.” The sensei meant, of course, that learning many styles and many different techniques might seem impressive, but it can mean sacrificing depth, and depth is what matters. In fact, it is all that matters.

 

Pick a style of yoga that appeals to you, I would say, and do not be swayed by how novel, new, or exotic it may seem. There is a lot of McYoga attitude around – a lot of packaging and marketing and branding of a practice and a methodology for both health and enlightenment, that was developed thousands of years ago, and needs no modifications, bells, whistles or baubles.

 

Sivananda, Iyengar, Bikram and Kripalu are four schools of yoga that I would trust. I am sure there are many others that are also excellent, but I don’t know them personally. Others may give you yoga lessons, and you will probably get benefits of doing yoga, no matter how or where you learn it. So, if you want to swing from chandeliers while sticking your toes in your ears and chanting, Om, broccoli, broccoli, broccoli… then I say, go ahead and do it!

 

But, while I am anything but a traditionalist in most areas of life, when it comes to yoga, I would say, follow the yogis, and don’t try inventing something new or different until you are fully enlightened – and I can guarantee that 99.999% of yoga teachers are not there yet.

 

Kripalu is a safe bet, based in classical yoga that has been tried and tested for over 5,000 years – and it will be a joyous ride, I can assure you. But the important thing is to choose a style, a practice, or a path that appeals to you, or fits with you, and practice that. Don’t keep jumping from one thing to the next, and digging shallow wells. Pick a path, focus, and go deep. Then you will find the wellsprings of Life.

 

Seek and ye shall find. As Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”

 

And remember, as the Zen saying goes,

 

“There are no obstacles on the path. The obstacles are the path.”

 

Every path has obstacles, but the depth of peace, well-being and joy that one can find through yoga, is truly beyond words to describe. Dive in. You have nothing to lose, and an unimaginable bounty to gain.

 

J. Todd Ring,

February 3, 2021

Further Reading:

Light On Yoga – BKS Iyengar

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind – Shunryu Suzuki

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

This short video is also inspiring, and extremely helpful guidance:

Simple, key advice: on health, & peace of mind

You have to refuse, categorically: hurry, worry, self-recrimination and blame. You do your best, and live in peace. I had accomplished that state of mind, four years ago. It is possible – and it is incomparably better. I now find these things difficult, once again.

(20th century modern society was stress-ridden, and frankly insane. Erich Fromm was right. In 2020, we sailed over the cliff. Now it’s a madhouse.)

But yes, these things are worth striving for. And yes, they are attainable. Inner peace is a sensible aim. And I can guarantee you, it is indeed achievable. But as with nearly everything that is worth striving for, you start, one single step at a time – with the ground beneath your feet.

JTR,

August 2, 2020

 

Post-Script:

How on earth do you attain that? How is it possible, in this world, in this society, in this time, to have even some small degree of peace? Not by trying to control things. That doesn’t work. Nor be being passive, hesitating, or avoidant – that doesn’t work either. It is mind training, above all, that works, and transforms your life.

(The Western psychotherapy comparison might be cognitive behavioural therapy, although I am not familiar with it, but have heard very good things about it. Working with your own thoughts is the simple, straightforward way of putting it.)

Also extremely helpful, and complimentary, are:

Mindfulness meditation

Yoga

Pranayama

T’ai Chi

Chi Gong

Saunas

Forest bathing

Walking and hiking

A healthy diet

Unplugging – limiting time with electronic media

Avoiding physical and mental toxins

Nearly any kind of exercise

Prayer (Yes, prayer. See Dr. Larry Dossey on the power of prayer.)

Aromatherapy (No, it is not a cure-all, but it is very helpful.)

Body-centred therapies – many kinds exist, from massage, to acupuncture, to reflexology, and many more

Psychotherapy – and no, you need not be “psycho” to go. Most people have stress, a few bad habits of body or mind, or baggage from the past, if not all three. Various types of psychotherapy can be helpful. So can journalling, solitude, reflection, or talking with a friend. And they are not mutually exclusive, of course.

Nature therapy – meaning simply: Get outside!!!

Choose tools that appeal to you, and suit you, then use them. But above all, it comes down to training your own mind. It is possible. And it is most definitely worth the effort.

 

For more information, see the three best sources – that I know of – for reliable, science-based health info:

GreenMedInfo

Gary Null

Andrew Weil

 

For meditation and psychology, see:

The Dalai Lama

Allan Wallace

Alan Watts

Ken Wilber

Erich Fromm

Joanna Macy

John Kabbat-Zinn

 

Science, “Scientism”, Group-Think, & Radical Healing

 

Like acupuncture, which was pooh-pooh for decades as unscientific bunkum and hocus-pocus, but is now acknowledged by the mainstream conventional Western medical establishment to work – though our crude medical model, which is outdated by a century with the advent of quantum physics, cannot fathom how it works; things like feng shui, t’ai chi, yoga, meditation, or natural grounding of the human bio-electric field, through simply walking barefoot in the garden or on a beach, have been viewed with deep skepticism by the pseudo-scientific crowd who practice scientism, not science; and who practice a kind of medieval dogmatism, scholasticism and group-think, over actual empiricism.

But if we realize that the modern Western “scientific” view of the body, mind, cosmos and reality, is radically mistaken; the Cartesian assumption of dualism, and the Newtonian model of a mechanistic universe, with their attendant materialist reductionism following grimly along behind, are in essence a set of ideologies which are century out of date, and now radically defunct; as quantum physics, ecology, mind-body research, epigenetics, systems theory and chaos theory all confirm; and a non-dualistic view of body and mind, and all phenonmena, as radically interconnected and interdependent – as they are in reality – sheds new light on all these subjects, and many more; and what was once inconceivable, becomes at least potentially possible, if not matter of fact.

A paradigm shift, which is to say, a revolution in science, and in human consciousness, is underway. Such things take time. We have been at it for a mere century. But it is accelerating, and coming to a tipping point – and one that is not a climate disaster (which is also unfolding), but a human cultural rebirth, and a new renaissance.

*

Will yoga, t’ai chi, chi gong, pranayama, meditation, feng shui, or natural grounding of the human bio-electric field, by walking barefoot in the garden, hurt you or anyone else? Not if you do them sensibly – of course not.

Is there reason to believe these practices could be beneficial to human health, mood, or state of mind?

There is overwhelming evidence for all of the above, if we take a broader view of what we consider findings which have been corroborated empirical evidence – such as thousands of years of experience by meditators and yogis, for example. I think that is extremely strong evidence, and certainly enough to give it a try, and investigate these things for yourself, as the Buddha himself recommended.

But, if that is not enough evidence for the prickles, as Alan Watts called them, then yes, even within the artificially more narrow criteria for empirical evidence, the evidence is also compelling, to say the least – if not, in some cases, voluminous.

Benefits from such practices have been shown to include:

Stress reduction

Pain reduction

Inflammation reduction

Improved immune response

Improved cardiovascular health

Improved mood

Increased energy

Improved sleep

And much more.

My view is that if it is reasonably safe, and there is reason to believe it may possibly be of help, then why not try it, or at least investigate it? That was and is my view, and I would recommend such an open-minded, truly empirical attitude for others.

However, these things are not new to me. I can offer my own findings, which have corroborated the findings of thousands of years of practitioners – to the extent that I have been able to plumb them, which, frankly, is to a radical depth.

My own findings are clear to me, and indisputable: these things simply work – and are powerfully healing, peace-giving, regenerating, liberating, and in the case of meditation, truly enlightening.

What have you got to lose, I say? Dive in!

Consider 5 minutes a day, each, of yoga and meditation, and 5 minutes of walking barefoot in your garden, or through the woods, or on a beach or natural shoreline, as a minimal first step, and daily commitment.

Try that for two weeks, and see how you feel. I guarantee you, these things are so powerful, despite their simplicity, that they will be beneficial, whether you notice quick and obvious results or not.

Anyone can do yoga, by the way, unless you are in a coma. Be gentle, go slow, be mindful, breath calmly and deeply and consciously, and do only the postures or exercises that you are able to do without strain. (Start with wrist and ankle rotations if that is all you can do.) Your range of motion will improve with time.

And anyone can meditate. Sit comfortably, back straight, head level, and focus your attention on the sensation of breath at the tip of your nose, or “watch” as your belly rises and falls. Do not try to quiet your mind. Simply breathe.

If you can’t sit still for 5 minutes, then try walking meditation. The point is to be aware of what you are doing, and to focus on that. And yes, such a simple practice has powerful results.

15 minutes a day to feel better, stronger, healthier, happier, more peaceful, more energetic, more alive, and more well? If the benefits can be great, the cost is zero, the risk is zero, and the time commitment is 15 minutes a day, why would anyone choose to ignore the possibilities?

Explore away, I say.

Think for yourself, question everything, keep an open mind – and as the Buddha said, examine things for yourself.
*

The fundamentals of health and healing are, as always:

– Healthy, healing, nourishing food – and not too much or too little. “Let food be thy medicine”, as Hippocrates, the founder of Western medicine, himself said.

– Healthy hydration

– Healthy breathing

– Healthy exercise
(thumb clicking the remote, and index finger scrolling, don’t count)

– Healthy stress management and stress reduction
(Shouting obscenities, silently or aloud, at bad drivers, dumb posts or annoying people, also does not qualify)

– Healthy attitude – including compassion for oneself and others, above all

– Avoid ingesting poison – be it physical, mental or emotional

– Regular detoxification – Dandelion, red clover, burdock, nettle, and milk thistle, singly or together, are very effective; and above all, saunas. Just remember: go slow and gentle, and drink loads of water. Safest practice is to eat lightly while detoxing, and not fast. Fast only if and when your body is strong, and ready for it; and then, go gently, as well. Detox once a month, or at least once a year, at minimum. But daily dandelion, milk thistle, nettle and saunas, is generally best. We have poisoned our world. Until we heal it, we must detoxify regularly, as well as using the best air and water purifiers (Dyson and Berkey), and eating a natural, whole foods, plant-based organic diet as well.

– Utilize nature’s own pharmacy, which is botanical medicine, or herbs, under proper guidance, to supplement the primary healing modalities above.

(Surgery or pharmaceuticals can be useful or even necessary at times. But they should be a last resort, in most cases – of course, depending on the condition; and not a first response. They are invasive and risky, and at present are heavily over-used. Big Pharma may love it, but pharmaceuticals aren’t always the best approach.)

These fundamentals remain the same. To them we can add the more drastic measures of surgery and pharmaceuticals, when and if needed.

But do not underestimate the practices mentioned above. They have more power than most people would dare to imagine.

Above all, trust yourself – and embrace your power. You decide what you will do with your body, your mind, your health, and your life. No one else has the right to make these decisions for you. Only you do. And you are in the driver’s seat.

We are both conditioned and free; but the locus of power is within. Remember that. It is the most critical lesson of all.

Be well, and be free.

J. Todd Ring,
August 1, 2020

Simple pleasures and the greatest of treasures

Ok, it’s that time. Time to put down the pen, or in this case, the keyboard; start cooking dinner – very slowly, for maximum flavour – and cut the grass in the golden sun of the late afternoon… And, crank up the rock and roll on the wireless headphones! Whoo-hoo! After a satisfying and truly joyful day of research and writing, there is little better, to my mind. Then it’s off to yoga to make my body, as well as my mind and heart, feel even more amazing.

Man: a half-decent stereo, wireless headphones, and some books – I could happily live in a grass hut and a loin cloth, so long as I have these three things.

And I guess a solar panel or two to power the stereo would be handy. If I were to get really elaborate and lavish, I’d throw in a laptop and satellite dish for internet connections, but that’s really sheer luxury, and a luxury I could easily do without. Pen and paper work just fine.

Materialism is hollow and unsatisfying, but I must admit, I would be saddened to lose my music and my books. These are truly great treasures.

You can take all the glitz and glitter, the bells and whistles and baubles and trinkets and toys. Just leave me my music, my books, and my peace of mind, and I will be more than happy. Happier, I would contend, than most who live in great sprawling homes, palaces and mansions, for they are owned and enslaved by their possessions and their fear, more often than not.

I am blessed with abundance at present, but I realize the truth of impermanence, and I also know where the true treasures lie, and the greatest of these lie within.

JTR