“Many people place too much importance on spiritual knowledge itself, and don’t concentrate first on the basics of simple goodness, such as the virtues of Unselfish Love. Knowledge is meaningless without this. Using imagination and visualization, we can make a ‘mental illustration’ that clearly demonstrates this ( Read more... )

The teachings in this book weren’t created for the purpose of being “enshrined” or “worshiped”, nor to influence the reader to worship any religion, book, or religious leader. These ancient teachings are thus “non-denominational”, and/or “omni-denominational”. They are not from, or by, any religion - and they are not “religious” teachings. Yet they ( Read more... )

Now let’s consider God in a different, un-humanized way ( Read more... )

So before we delve deeper into the teachings, let’s clarify the meanings of a couple of words/concepts ( Read more... )

The name of our order is unfamiliar and odd to most people. One reason is that we have deliberately avoided public notoriety, generally preferring to live and work in peace, undisturbed, behind the scenes. The “dark ages” are still with us, despite what history books say. Sometimes specific members become famous, but only when necessary for their ( Read more... )

As I said earlier, part of our training at the monastery was to learn about the various cultures and religions of the world, so many of my earliest courses as a novice monk were about religions. At the time, as typical with my young ego, I thought I already knew all there was to know about the subject, but there was really far more to it than I ( Read more... )

“This goes hand-in-hand with your meditation problems too. Self-discipline is directly related... (swallow) to concentration. If you have poor concentration, you will likely have poor self-discipline, and vice-versa. They are very much the same thing, only each affects a different ‘time span’. Concentration involves using your will to hold your ( Read more... )

“To a person who lacks humility, ‘appearing’ to ‘be right’ is more important than actually ‘being right’ (which might require admitting making a mistake in order to correct oneself so they can actually ‘be right’). A person who is humble, doesn’t ‘personally’ or ‘selfishly’ care if they are right or wrong, they are just concerned with being right ( Read more... )