Three Core Issues on the Spiritual Journey

This is a deep dive into three issues I have been trying to understand for a long time in my spiritual journey. In recent years, two teachers have been especially helpful with these questions: Tsong Khapa (1357-1419), the Tibetan Buddhist monk and teacher, and Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), the Christian theologian, philosopher, and mystic. This essay will focus on Tsong Khapa, and a later edition will deal with Meister Eckhart.

Since I do not read Tibetan, and have scant knowledge of their vast literature, the thoughts presented here will rely primarily on ideas shared by Robert Thurman. He was Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University until his retirement in 2019, held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, was the co-founder and president of the Tibet House in New York, and was the recipient of India’s highly prestigious Padma Shri award in 2020 for his work in the field of literature and education. Thurman started his personal Tibetan Buddhist practice in 1962 and was ordained as a monk by the Dalai Lama in 1965, thus probably becoming the first American Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition. Through the years, Thurman and the Dalai Lama have remained close friends. Continue reading “Tsong Khapa on Time and Timelessness” →

This book was written in 1989-90 and used in my first workshops for many years. It deals with the Hero’s and Heroine’s journey, focusing especially on the psychological insights of Carl Jung, as well as the ideas of Joseph Campbell and Helen Luke. In the tradition of these three authors, I take the ancient story of Odysseus as a symbol for the journey we all must make if we are to find meaning and fulfillment for ourselves.

This document is the whole book. To retain all the forrmating, footnotes, spacing – which is hard to duplicate on line, you can download the book in PDF format.  Quest Manuscript PDF

December 19, 2021

For several years our country—and the world—have been going through ever-increasing difficulties: political turmoil, Covid, economic disruptions, mounting climate problems—all increasing the level of polarization, resentment, blame, anger, frustration, loneliness, and despair. It is hard to see what will come of all this.

In the face of these difficulties, these things I know:

1. If there is a way through to a better place in our relations with each other, it will be through an increase in understanding, respect, and consideration for others.

2. If there is any chance to create a better world, the path will be through kindness, compassion, and love.

3. No matter the state of the world around us, each of us has the capacity to increase kindness, compassion, and love within ourselves, and to share those energies with others.

4. Each of us can find a place of peace inside ourselves to organize around, no matter the state of the world. The greatest souls have been forged on the anvil of difficulties, and the great exemplars of humanity have been shaped and molded in the fires of trial and tribulation.

5. As long as we seek only to make our own lives better, we will fail. We are inextricably connected with others and to the greater whole. Without a connection to something larger than our personal ego concerns, life’s trajectory is inevitably downward toward meaninglessness and death. Continue reading “Compassion and Service” →

November 24, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I watch the sum come up on this bright, cold, morning, I want to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving and a bountiful day, and week – and rest of your life.

There are so many problems in our world today I seldom take the time to remember all the blessings. So many people through history have lived through times that were much worse: terrible wars, famine, lack of basic necessities, starvation, and on and on. I have read a good bit about the Civil War this year to remind myself how fortunate I am—we all are today.

For anyone who wishes to be more thankful for what they have, however, it won’t happen by chance: You will have to choose it. As Samuel Johnson said:

“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation.”

At the end of his play, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare has only one final message: Continue reading “Thanksgiving 2021” →

There is a radical difference in how the 4^th wave of Covid is being experienced—between those with immunity vs. those without immunity.

1. Those without immunity are 20 times more likely to get Covid (using the statistic that the vaccines are 95% effective)

But 20 times is very conservative. Only about 0.1% of the people who have been vaccinated in the U.S, have had a symptomatic breakthrough case of Covid. Very few of those who have had Covid are being reinfected, so most all the cases in June and July occurred among those without immunity.

2. Those without immunity are about 100 times more likely to have a really serious illness when they get Covid, compared to a similar population.

An Associated Press analysis from May suggested that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of the more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 1.1%. During this time period, about half of the adults in the U.S. were fully vaccinated, so these two numbers come from roughly equal population size groups. If you included those with immunity from having Covid in the numbers, the dangers to those with no immunity would be much higher. Continue reading “Two Worlds of Covid” →

The twelfth essay in The Ultimate Journey concerns the 4 primary motivations from which we each live, and the choices we make about those motivations. At the end are a few more recommended books.

The heart of what I am trying to convey in the Ultimate Journey is that you have a choice about the motivations from which you will live—and your choice will have dramatic effects on your life and the world you experience. Many people make their choices unconsciously, but doing so is problematic, especially as one gets older.

There are, of course, a thousand things we are motivated to do—eat, sleep, create art, make love, make war, watch movies, make money, buy clothes, serve those in need, build houses, talk to friends, shop, travel, write books, fight, argue, engage in social media, seek fame, run for office, and on and on. We spend a great deal of the time of our lives deciding which of these to do, and when. Continue reading “12 – Your 4 Primary Motivations” →

The eleventh essay in The Ultimate Journey explores the vast range of extraordinary events that have been reported in human history and their relevance for our lives today. At the end are a number of recommended books on the topic.

A fundamental choice you must make

One of the barriers to valuing the wisdom traditions in modern times concerns the stories of extraordinary events associated with the saints and sages of history. Could any of these stories actually be true? Hasn’t science proven them false? But if they are all false, the spiritual and religious traditions are questionable—if the founding stories and confirming events are fictions, why should we take the messages seriously?

Well, perhaps the teachings were given to us by smart people who had good ideas, so we can look at them and just see which make sense to us. The problem with this approach is that, if each wisdom tradition is based solely on a smart person’s ego ideas, and each of us chooses the virtues, values, and meanings from among them our egos like, we have sentenced ourselves to a nihilistic world. In such a world, everyone will be trying to get all the good stuff they can for themselves, and competing interests will in the end be resolved by raw power. As Tennyson put it, we will have chosen a world “red in tooth and claw,” and no matter how sophisticated a veneer we put on it, savage violence and merciless competition will reign in the hearts of men and women. Continue reading “11 – Extraordinary Events” →

The tenth essay in The Ultimate Journey examines the importance of science and spiritual wisdom working in harmony. At the end are a number of recommended books on this topic.

Science and the Ultimate Journey are not in conflict. Further, science is not in conflict with any of the spiritual or religious traditions of human history. To better understand why this is so, it is necessary to focus on what science is, and what it is not.

What science is

Science is a method for understanding the physical world—how it functions as well as how we can use it to better our lives. Science and technology have been crucial components in the development of much that is central to modern life: agriculture, clean water, life-saving medicines, medical instruments, paper, the printing press, trains, boats, airplanes, automobiles, cities, sewage systems, radio, TV, computers, cell phones, the internet, and the ubiquitous use of electricity. Continue reading “10 – Science and Spirit in Communion” →

The ninth essay in The Ultimate Journey considers how we come to our beliefs, and concludes with the beginning list of Books for the Journey. 

All of us live within an act of faith about the nature of the world, as well as about our own identity. To live a human life requires that we have concepts about who we are, what the world is like, and how we fit into the overall picture of existence. For many people, this choice is made unconsciously: They simply adopt the worldview into which they were enculturated.

Some, however, become more conscious. Moving away from home, going to college, joining the military, or getting married can set changes in motion, and the opportunity arises for more conscious choices. Still, the most common path is to acquire a new group of friends and acquaintances and then shift one’s worldview to align with the new community—it is easy to let oneself be carried along by influential others.

Continue reading “9 – Your Act of Faith” →