Wake Up

Wake Up Each morning we are born again. It is today that matters the most. Buddha

Alan Watts Awakening

Awake Bodhi is an abstract noun formed from the verbal root budh (to awake, become aware, notice, know or understand) corresponding to the verbs bujjhati (Pāli)  and bodhati or budhyate (Sanskrit). (Wikipedia)

Alan Watts Spiritual Awakening

Bodhi (Sanskrit: बोधि; and Pali) in Buddhism is the understanding possessed by a Buddha regarding the true nature of things. It is traditionally translated into English with the word enlightenment and literally means awakened. (The verbal root "budh" means to awaken.) (Wikipedia)

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© 2015 MU-Peter Shimon

Realizing True Wealth

Realizing True Wealth Before he wrote the book The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith the father of capitalism, wrote another, as a framework for it, The Theory of Moral Sentiment

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.
Henry David Thoreau

Realizing True Wealth by Americ Azevedo, Nov 24, 2014 We are born with true wealth, but constantly forget to realize the wealth we already have. Failing to acknowledge our true wealth we keep grasping for more, like hungry ghosts who are never satisfied while constantly eating! Thus, we go about despoiling the earth, corrupting relationships, and twisting societies into grotesque forms that promote needless suffering for ourselves, others, and the earth-at-large. Realizing true wealth leads to personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal fulfillment. Furthermore, the long term survival of life on earth depends upon true wealth realization. We need deep psychological and spiritual healing of individuals, groups, communities, nations and the earth at large. The bedrock of this healing is a return to this present moment, not in a selfish, narrow way, but in a way that includes the totality of what is here-there as well as past-present-future. It is nothing less then the ancient ideal of enlightenment of all sentient beings.

Health  is the greatest gift, contentment  the greatest wealth,  faithfulness the best relationship. Buddha

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. Ernest Hemingway In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. Confucius We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis D. Brandeis

We may have money but little time. We may have time but no money. We may have love but neither time nor money. Coming to a point of balance between these factors is mastery of the art of living which is true wealth. It’s been said, "He who dies with the most toys, wins!" This is both true and not-true. Some say, “money does not matter" -- but quietly and privately we fear poverty. Fear of homelessness, hunger, and a drop in social status drives many to insane focus on money at any cost. If you are poor with a positive state of mind, you may still suffer a sense of emotion degradation just from the social stigma of poverty. Such fears are well founded in societies that fail to attain true wealth, since the members of those societies know they can and do fall into poverty. A world based on fear cannot be wealthy in any real sense. Our possessions can own us. Attach ourselves to our possessions and we immediately lose our sense of true wealth. The very desire for possessions not yet owned breeds greed and lust. We suffer endless rounds of grasping for the goods that will make us “happy and full”. We get “more”, but immediately need to get “more” again. There is no end in sight. “Business as usual” means a life filled with urgency, running to keep up, and without time. “Oh! If only I had more money, I would do the work I love.” Or, “If I had that big new house on the hill, people would respect and love me. My wife would stay with me.” Such conceptions of wealth are very childish. Many of the “richest” people in the world are always “hungry”. Much shopping is for useless trinkets which act as displacements for lack of meaning and love in life. Many a parent, for example, who has no time for talking with their children, will just buy toys. Most people identify with the stuff that they own as an extension of their personal ego. Consider automobiles and houses which function as symbols of wealth, but are also destructive to the natural capital of nature. True wealth goes beyond the concerns of the skin encapsulated ego. True wealth includes the social, political, and transpersonal levels. What about a friend or relative who needs help? What about broader environmental concerns? True wealth goes beyond the individual, and even national, egos. What you spend your money on, changes, impacts society. Buy an SUV because you like personal leg room, but consume the air and warm the environment for everyone else as well as yourself.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Henry David Thoreau

Time, Love, and Money An old man asked me, “With what do you buy your money?” I said, “With your life.” He said,“Right! I wish I had known that when I was young. I spent my life working for money instead of living.” Time, love and money are the three legs of truth wealth’s stool. The time allotted to your life is utterly fundamental; a finite constantly depleting resource. Have you loved enough? Have you made money, invested money, and spent money in a way that sustains life on this earth for seven generations to come? Most don’t think we have time for these questions. We can be occupied working for money that we buy cars, drive to places, buy food from thousands of miles away, thus depleting earth’s natural capital without noticing it. Many people will say that they are making good money, but have no sense of free time. They hope that someday in the future they will have time for the things they really enjoy like family and nature. Often that day never comes. I once worked at the headquarters of Standard Oil. My life had become the company. When I went home, my mind was preoccupied with Standard Oil. One day I awoke to realize that I worked in an environment that was loveless. I had money, but love and time where in short supply. What is money? It’s a symbol for value, it is information; it is abstract. Humans are driven by symbols to go to war and fight for abstract causes. Money, being utterly abstract, is often valued more for itself than for what it actually buys – it is the ultimate “field of dreams”. Individuals and societies measure self-worth by financial net-worth, but this devalues the deeper qualities of awareness and soul that are the true source of all value. Walking by a beautiful garden filled with iris flowers, someone might think: “I don’t own it, how unfortunate!” So they miss the simple of joy of the experience. You don’t need to own things in order to enjoy them. To really “have” something we must be present to it. Taking time to appreciate the existence of an object, a friend, or a place is really having that object before us.

Wealth is transpersonal because it is “beyond the personal”. Everything that we do to accumulate wealth depends on past human efforts; as well as the Earth, the solar system, and the cosmos at large. You are not your own source of supply. Companies create private wealth by extracting resources from nature as if nature is "free" and unlimited. Water, for example, was always free. Industrial pollution turns water into another commodity with price barriers for the poor and helpless. This situation creates transpersonal poverty. There can be a wealth of time. Societies can make time for living, for singing, for family, for just sitting and watching. This wealth is greater than the focus on consuming goods and working to pump up the "gross domestic product". A man can become homeless and starve to death in a big city filled with apartments, hotels, and food. It is not just lack of money that brings us to the homeless state. Depression, lack of faith in life, lack of friends, and lack of family ties can bring one to this place. Call it lack of love. We cannot be truly wealthy in such societies with extremes of poverty and riches. The expansive homes of the few wealthy are beautiful, but the society is really poor and ugly. So many become restless and debased is such a society. I cannot relax in a mansion without security systems and insensitivity to the disparity around me. Just like the Buddhists who say they cannot become enlightened until everyone is enlightened, you and I cannot be truly wealthy until all are “wealthy”. Clearly, a new meaning of wealth needs to emerge for the culture at large.

Balanced Wealth Portfolio An investor will diversify her assets into different categories of assets so as to balance out risk with the changing tides of market fortunes. The seeker of true wealth balances the assets of time, love and money across the dimensions of personal, interpersonal and transpersonal – thus optimizing abundant life for themselves, neighbors, future generations, and Earth. A balanced wealth portfolio can be attained by disciplining the ego and personal pride. This spiritual practice has ramifications for self, society, and life on earth. Portfolios are lists of assets by categories. We could begin by playing with lists of “assets”. One simple list of categories for grouping our assets would look like this: 1. Personal-money 2. Personal-time 3. Personal-love 4. Interpersonal-money 5. Interpersonal-time 6. Interpersonal-love 7. Transpersonal-money 8. Transpersonal-time 9. Transpersonal-love These categories are not absolute; they are starting points to help us on the road to true wealth realization. Make up your own categories and lists. Begin from where you are, and expand to include larger dimensions of wealth.

True Wealth Realization Practice Wealth is usually defined by external measures: affluence, millionaire money levels, ownership and control of companies, and influence over people. Look deeper; and, there is the feeling of being wealthy or poor more or less independent of external wealth measures. Work with that feeling so as to become more independent of the strictly personal illusions of money-wealth and poverty.

Remember who you really are. This means giving yourself the time to contact your own ultimate wealth: the soul. Your own soul is your own ultimate wealth. As you begin to be wealthy in yourself, you will be able to extend your sense of wealth to include others and reality at large. Every soul is the same soul – only covered by different personality, history and circumstances. I could have been any one of the other people that I see everyday. To awaken to this very moment is truth wealth. This moment is in truth all we really have and own. Everything else is just on loan; we must give it all back in the end.

This article, written by Americ Azevedo,

was originally published in What is True Wealth & How Do We Create it?

Edited by Verna Allee & Dinesh Chandra. Indigo Press, New Delhi, India. 2004. Pages 124-130.

One day a father and his rich family took his young son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing him how poor people can be. They spent a day and a night in the farm of a very poor family. When they returned from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?" "Very good, Dad!" "Did you see how poor some people are?  the father asked. "Yeah!" "And what did you learn?" The son answered: "I saw that we have a dog at home, and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden,  while they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lamps in the garden, and they have the stars.  Our patio reaches to the front yard, they have a whole horizon." When the little boy finished, his father was speechless. His son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are!"

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money...  they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination. Alan Watts

Money Pink Floyd

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© 2014 MU-Peter Shimon

This Mortal Coil

This Mortal Coil (Inspired by an episode of Cosmos, 2014) "For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil"

Charles Darwin died on April 19th in 1882 at age 73 We know individuals die. Darwin showed that species also die, they become extinct. Yes to life, but living forever may not be desirable. Mortality is a part of life. In fact, it is necessary. If nothing died not only would the world be a crowded place but life itself would become unbearable. It is the ephemeral nature of life that makes it so much more precious. But it also makes it viable.

Alan Watts discusses Nothing

Sasha Sagan Discusses Life & Death Click here to read the entire article.

Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father,  Carl Sagan “You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,” they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way. My parents taught me that even though it’s not forever — because it’s not forever — being alive is a profoundly beautiful thing for which each of us should feel deeply grateful. If we lived forever it would not be so amazing.

To be, or not to be, that is the question— Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep— No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes Calamity of so long life: For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time, The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely, The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay, The insolence of Office, and the Spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn No Traveler returns, Puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of. Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all, And thus the Native hue of Resolution Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard their Currents turn awry, And lose the name of Action. Soft you now, The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in all thy Orisons Be all my sins remembered. from Shakespeare's Hamlet

Alan Watts - The Dream of Life You couldn't stop yourself from being born and You won't stop yourself from dying Alan Watts - Becoming nothing

Depiction of a Neanderthal burial

Of course no one wishes to die before their time. But we really must accept that there will be a time. And in so doing, appreciate the time you've got. Some say religion was born from death. That the realization of our mortality evoked our spiritual feelings.  Different cultures have different approaches to death. I like those that have funerals as a celebration of that person's life rather than a mourning of the loss.  But I do not need religion as a consolation. I will return from whence I came.  The bubble on the ocean returns to the ocean and nothing is lost.

It is of no use to try and escape the inevitable... Cocteau Twins - It Will End In Tears- from This Mortal Coil

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© 2014 MU-Peter Shimon

It's A Living

It's A Living Work, Work, Work

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.

Siddharta Gautama 

What If Money Were No Object - Alan Watts

The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy

Work= Force X Distance Another way of putting it is: Exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something. Re-Working Work RSA Animate by theRSA.org

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

Henry David Thoreau

Work is love made visible.  And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. Khalil Gibran

When you do things from your soul  you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Rumi

Motivation RSA Animate by theRSA.org

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,  which does not forsake us  in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. Henry David Thoreau

Happiness With Money & Work ~ Alan Watts

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© 2014 MU-Peter Shimon

Awakening Doesn't Need To Be Rude

For some reason, I like this quote from the Way of Zen by Alan Watts.

"First, liberation is not revolution. It is not going out of one's way to disturb the social order by casting doubt upon the conventional ideas by which people hold together. Furthermore, society is always insecure and thus hostile to anyone who challenges its conventions directly.
To disabuse oneself of accepted mythologies without becoming the victim of other people's anxiety requires considerable tact. Second, the whole technique of liberation requires that the individual shall find out the truth for himself. Simply to tell is not convincing. Instead, he must be asked to experiment, to act consistently upon assumptions which he holds true until he finds out otherwise."

I agree. And hopefully...
as you point at the moon, people don't just stare at your finger.

© 2007 MU-Peter Shimon