Stress Reduction Inspiration
Early Morning Stress Reduction Inspiration - 7/1/2013
"Anyone can practice some nonviolence, even soldiers. Some army generals, for example, conduct their operations in ways that avoid killing innocent people; this is a kind of nonviolence. To help soldiers move in the nonviolent direction, we have to be in touch with them. If we divide reality into two camps - the violent and the nonviolent - and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace. We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence in ourselves. We must work on ourselves and also with those we condemn if we want to have a real impact.
It never helps to draw a line and dismiss some people as enemies, even those who act violently. We have to approach them with love in our hearts and do our best to help them move in a direction of nonviolence. If we work for peace out of anger, we will never succeed. Peace is not an end. It can never come about through non-peaceful means."
~Thich Nhat Hanh
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Posted: 01 Jul 2013 09:00 AM PDT
Few things strike fear in a person more than the thought of sitting across the table from someone negotiating.
Read more »Whether it's at the car dealership, convincing a toddler to take a nap or navigating through an argument with your spouse; life is all about negotiations. From birth we learn how to go back and forth in an effort to get what we want. In fact, we perfect this skill by early adolescence and use it to manipulate others. I often share with clients how we listen to the same radio station, WIIFM or What's In It For Me?  Read More @ Source |
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Posted: 01 Jul 2013 08:00 AM PDT
Or, How I Made Room for LifeBy Leo BabautaFor the next 12 months, I'll be conducting a personal experiment that I'm calling A Year of Living Without.It's my way of finding out what's truly necessary, of simplifying my life, of making room for other things. I'm testing the boundaries of my needs. It's good to test your personal boundaries now and then (or, if you're me, all the time). So what's the Year of Living Without? Each month, I'll go the whole month without one thing I do every day. Something that I tend to not want to give up, for various reasons. I'll give up something for a month, then evaluate whether it was something I enjoyed giving up, whether it's worth leaving it out of my life, or if I want to put it back in after the month's over. The next month, I'll try giving up something else (see the list below). The 12 Things I'll Live WithoutEach month, I'll try a different experiment:
At the end of each month, I'll decide whether I want to keep doing without that month's Living Without item. It will really depend on how the experiment went. Some things I've already given up:
Why Am I Doing This?If you ever thought something like, "Oh, I could never give up cheese!" (or coffee, or sugar, or your car, or TV, or Facebook, or the Internet), then you know what I'm faced with. I'm faced with a year of this reaction, inside myself.And I'm faced with a year of learning that, perhaps, none of it is true. We can give up that which we hold dearly to. We can push those boundaries, and feel them push back, and be OK with the push. I'm doing this for myself, to learn about myself, but also to show others that our initial reaction is false. We can give it up. And in the process, make room for something that just might be better. You'll never know until you try. Q&AsSome questions you might have:Q: How can you give up the Internet when you work online? A: Well, I plan to still write, but do little else. I'll figure out a system where I can write but not do anything else online. I haven't worked out the details yet. Q: Isn't this a bit extreme? A: Possibly, depending on context. Honestly, I don't think some of this will be incredibly difficult, but the computer-related ones will be hard (and alcohol seems like it'll be missed as well). And I'm not afraid of a little extremes — when we push ourselves a bit, we learn about ourselves. Q: I've already been going without these things for years! A: Awesome! I don't claim to be the first to do these things. This is simply a series of personal experiments, to see what I can learn. I would love to learn from you — share your story with me on Twitter or Google+, give me some tips. Read More @ Source |
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Posted: 01 Jul 2013 07:00 AM PDT
In the 12-step tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous it clearly states in the third step that we need to make a decision ' to turn our will and our lives over to the care of a God as we understood him', if we are to maintain sobriety and abstinence.
Buddhists whether in recovery or not, or have an addiction or not, turn their lives over to the Buddha, Dharma the Sangha. When we surrender to this action, we are placing positive refuges at the center of our lives. We are placing the ideal of liberation and freedom, the teachings of the Buddha and the spiritual community at the center of our lives. What this means is that we surrender to the potential of waking up to reality and begin to see things clearly, without the story, judgments or interpretation. This is what helps to take care of our lives. 'In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized.' From the Bahiya sutta. It is a different way of experiencing the world one that helps to dissolve our obsessions and addictions.  For a free sample epub chapter of Detox Your Heart and a sample from Vimalasara's online course on working with anger, submit your email address here.
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'We are likely to have used our addiction as a refuge to cope with difficulties, and we may have engaged in other damaging behavior, such as self-harm or getting involved in destructive relationships, to manage painful emotions. We call these refuges that don't help us in the long run, false refuges. False refuges look like they are going to be reliable, are going to relieve our pain, but they let us down. They don't work, except perhaps in the short-term. They are like a derelict house, empty, no life, or breath, with weak walls and a leaky roof. We flee from the storm only to find that the rain starts to come through the roof. Then as the wind picks up, the whole structure blows over, and we are left exposed to the elements with pieces of the building falling on us. We are no nearer to safety. Instead we are soaked and have cuts all over from the fallen timber.' 'When we reflect on what is truly valuable to us, what we really want our lives to be about, and what sort of person we deeply want to be? If we are clear about what is important to us and what we really value, it is easier to steer our lives in a meaningful direction, and it helps us to keep going when the going gets tough.' Eight Step Recovery – Using the Buddhas Teachings to Overcome Addiction – Publication date 2014 A God of our understanding does not have to be a person – do not let that fool you. A God of our understanding can be the compassionate care of practices, like mindfulness, loving kindness or ethics. Far better to have qualities like these at the center of our lives rather than relationships, people and teachers, because inevitably one day these relationships will cease. We may abandon the practice of mindfulness, loving kindness and ethics for a while, but we can always go back to them and cultivate them again in our lives. They will not let us down in the same way people will. They are far more reliable.
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Posted: 01 Jul 2013 06:00 AM PDT
 EIN Newsdesk: Forbes recently released an article highlighting a Brooklyn-based start-up that is concerned with the psychology of well-being and a mindfulness approach to the culinary experience, an effort praised by chef and restaurateur Geoffrey Cambal. The article begins by discussing the project called Windowfarms, and how the start-up is interested in "making food choices that can help you flourish and thrive."The report defines culinary mindfulness as the eating, "cooking, shopping, sharing, remembering, and even talking about food. The purpose is to build awareness of increasing well-being in all the food choices one makes, to accrue mental wealth from every aspect of one's calories."… Read the original article » Read More @ Source |
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Posted: 01 Jul 2013 02:00 AM PDT
This may be a sensitive subject for many readers of my blog, and for that I do apologize beforehand if it either bothers or offends you. I have only hinted at, in the past, my relationship to drugs and I have never really come out and spoken fully about my past and trust me I will only hint at it here. It is not something I am proud of, yet it is still a part of who I am today. Those who are close to me have heard many of my stories yet I have been hesitant to come out and talk openly about this interesting path that led me into becoming a Meditation Monk. The song in the video by Lou Reed is about Heroin, which was one of my favorite pastimes back then, he takes you on a journey through the 'rush' and the 'calm' that follows, and most of you won't understand, nor should you. Lately though, I have noticed that Lou Reed's lyrics keep going back to "and I guess I just don't know, and I guess I just don't know." I will discuss this later. During those years I did not know that I could actually turn off my brain, and as the pain and the thoughts were always rushing in, the only way I felt even close to sane was when I was high on some substance. During my young adulthood, from age 16 to 24, I was experimenting or strung out or used every illicit drug that existed in the 1970's; luckily, back then, "Crack Cocaine" had not yet been invented. I also abused many of the legal prescription drugs like "ascodine," "percodan," "percocet," "dilantin," "quaalude," "valium," "dexedrine," and many others, preferring to snort them by the way, as well as som! e of the natural plants that are still not regulated, and by the way everyone should steer clear of jimson weed (loco weed) as it it highly psychoactive and I had several of my friends locked up for mental instability because of this plant. I hated jimson weed, but I was so out of control probably took it over forty times. When I was 18 I overdosed twice on amphetamines and was hospitalized for several days following each of my seizures. I smoked pot or hashish every day, yet that was never good enough, so I tried cocktails of mescaline, LSD, Cocaine and Benzedrine. Based upon my own experience it is easy for me to see how drugs took the lives of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Belushi, and more others, both famous and unknown, these people may or may not be remembered, yet their internal struggle remains, lest we forget Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston. I can only say that I am surprised that I survived the experience. I used to love hitting "white caps" on the bong, which was a combination of heroin, thai weed and sometimes either quaaludes or amphetamines. I can honestly say that from my 18th Birthday until about 24 and a half I was stoned out of my mind every single day on one substance or another. I know that once I went on a three week acid (LSD) run where I took acid every day for the three week period. By the end of the experience I had become bored with the results and just quit for a time. 
This picture was taken on May 30, 1976 and at the time I was lucky if I weighed 118 pounds, and for the record I am six feet tall. I also know that it is a bit strange for those who know me to even comprehend that I was ever this skinny (I am currently about 300 pounds); however, I do believe the years of methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs severely screwed up my metabolism.
I had a difficult time finding myself, yet I have never exploited my past to justify what I do today. Nor do I depend or lean on it. Yes I was a hard rocker as well as one of the original punks for a time, I loved the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Boomtown Rats, the Circle Jerks, the Adolescents, and even had a close relationship with Rikk Agnew (an icon in the Punk Community), but never felt any of this was important to the path I finally discovered. I have never tried to glorify my past or use it as an endorsement or a way into any counter culture group, I am merely trying to share a story of a path.
There are those who sell Punk Buddhism, and Twelve Step Buddhism, and although I believe these can help individuals to a point, they are self limiting. Ch'an Buddhism is limitless, why, because it has no bounds or objective. Had I taken on a persona from my past and used it to teach others, they would have been limited ! by my own! persona. This is a mistake made by many awakened teachers. Waking up upon the lines of some 'sub-culture' identity leaves you limited in the end.
I have had many rough patches in my life, and yet today I can say that all of that no longer exists, and the person I am speaking about was left far behind in history. I believe this is why I have not pursued the path of discussing drug use and recovery as a path toward spirituality. Once we leave that past behind, that persona, that individual, that person no longer exists. Zen Master Seung Sahn taught me that "not knowing" was the only important aspect of living. Once I had permission to "not know" life began to fall into place. It is is an ongoing discovery and some 35 years later I am still discovering it.
(I know I will get all kinds of shit from the 12 steppers out there for saying this, and this is why I have chosen to keep my mouth shut 30 years. Have at it my friends as it is all just noise in the Cosmos.)
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Posted: 30 Jun 2013 11:00 PM PDT
The familiar phrase in Buddhism: "All things are not the self" (sabbe dhammâ anattâ), which is found in verse 279 of Dhammapada, logically says, "All things are Mara the Evil One"!
Read More @ Source Here is why. When you consider that "All things are not the self" and the Five Aggregates are always said by the Buddha to be 'not the self' or anattâ, and that these same Five Aggregates are also Mara, which is confirmed by the following passage from the Samyuttta-Nikaya: "When there is form, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed. Therefore, Radha, see form as Mara, see it as the killer, see it as the one who is killed. See it as a disease, as a tumor, as a dart, as misery, as really misery. Those who see it thus see rightly. When there if feeling ... When there is perception ... When there are volitional formations ... When there is consciousness, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed" (S. iii. 189).It certainly becomes clear, both to reason and to logic, that "All things are Mara the Evil One"! This also applies to what is impermanent (anicca) and painful (dukkha). All this is also Mara. Presented now as a sequence of equals we have the following: All things = not the self or anattâ = Five Aggregates = Mara. So what is the Buddha really teaching? The strong case is: avoid what is not the self or anattâ. Now we might ask ourselves, what should then be our foundation since what is not the self, including Mara, is abandoned? We find it in the beginning of the Self as Island Sutta (attadîpa-suttam). "At Savatthi. Dwell Monks with the self as an island (attadîpâ) with the self as refuge, with no other refuge; with the Dharma as an island, with the Dharma as a refuge, with no other refuge. When you dwell with the self as an island, with the self as refuge, with no other refuge; with the Dharma as refuge and no other refuge, the origin should be investigated. From what is sorrow, lamentation, suffering, displeasure, and despair born? How are they produced?" (S. iii. 42-3). |
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Posted: 30 Jun 2013 10:00 PM PDT
OK, admitted: my previous post about a Speculative Non-Buddhism essay was pretty damn intellectually intense for summer reading.
Read More @ Source I thought of writing about something lighter today, but decided to make another attempt at conveying what I like about what little I know about what those guys at Speculative Non-Buddhism seem to be up to. (Hope that last sentence conveys my uncertainty about what their goal is; these are the most articulate, deep, philosophically-sophisticated Buddhists-who-aren't-really- Buddhists I've ever come across; hard to fathom them after just a little reading.) First, a note about my own split personality toward Buddhism. Part of me loves it; part of me hates it. Sometimes I think Buddhism is the best non-religious religion there is. Other times, it strikes me as just as supernaturally deluded as other religions are. I've put up numerous posts here concerning how unlikely it is that something like "pure awareness" exists. The brain is a highly sophisticated collection of 100 billion or so neurons, all connected in vastly complex ways. Out of this, almost certainly, human consciousness emerges. Where and how the notion of "pure awareness" fits into neuroscientific reality is beyond me. Though I used to believe that it was possible for consciousness (or soul) to be a detached observer from above, so to speak, this now strikes me as religious dogma. So I resonate with another Speculative Non-Buddhism post, "The Myth of the Witnessing Mind, Or: It's Thinking all the Way Down." This is an easier to understand take on the same general subject addressed in my previous post: there is no getting outside socially, culturally, and I guess, genetically conditioned ways of looking at the world. What we see is what we've learned to see; been guided to see; evolved to see from among countless alternative ways of seeing. There is no absolute vision; no objective perception of reality; no mountaintop of consciousness from which the varying slopes of awareness can be discerned at a glance. Before sharing some excerpts from "The Myth of the Witnessing Mind," here's an explanation of x-Buddhism:
"Buddhism" suggests an abstract, and abstractly static, One. A study of this One would show it to be of the (abstract) type of cultural-doctrinal systems (religion, philosophy, mythology) that claim grand authority concerning human knowledge. "X-buddhism" means to capture a crucial fact about "Buddhism," the abstract One: it loops incessantly.
We could study the x. Such a study would be historical and comparative.
We could compile a descriptive catalogue of Buddhist schools from a (atheist) through m (Mahayana) to z (Zen), graphing their relations and tracing their divergences. In so doing, we would discover differences concerning, for instance, each x's version of the means and end of the One's grand authority. From such a study we would begin to see that the One, Buddhism, breeds infinite interpretation not only of the world, but of itself. Hence, Buddhism splinters into unending modifiers, x.
With that background, here's the excerpts -- which actually amount to most of the essay. Or, jump to the full essay.
I want to present a comment that Tom Pepper made in response to questions posed by Matthias Steingass. I think that both the questions and the response constitute a brilliant crystallization of recurring, and quite stubborn, issues in contemporary x-buddhism. The issues hover around the interplay of self, no-self, person-formation, ideology, and meditation. But first, some background.
Perhaps the gravest criticism of contemporary x-buddhism we make on this blog is that its proponents refuse to adequately think through the very postulates that comprise their x-buddhism. Sometimes this refusal manifests as blatant hypocrisy.
Patricia Ivan's previous post on the shunning practices of x-buddhist figures is a good example of this. The people she mentions there are typical x-buddhist examples in that they preach values such as compassionate engagement, the wisdom of doubting, and having the courage to be proven wrong, yet routinely shut down dialogue that genuinely and robustly tests their commitment to those values.
While such hypocrisy is unconscionable, it is at least correctable. Even darker consequences follow from the x-buddhists' refusal to think through their premises. I am speaking of the x-buddhist penchant for reacting against and obscuring the very teachings they aim to disseminate.
One such teaching is the sine qua non Buddhist principle of anatman. This principle holds that there exist no self-entity over and above the socially-linguistically-constructed networks of discourse within which we are embedded. This principle has extraordinary and far-reaching implications for the ways "Buddhism" might contribute to a clear-eyed assessment of what it is to be human.
And yet, as many essays on this blog and at non + x have shown, x-buddhists refuse to dispense with atman, positing at every turn some version of a transcendent self. These essays have typically been met with (i) confused, convoluted, and desperate "arguments" to the contrary, (ii) hostility, or (iii) silence (see above). You can see for yourself that the beating heart of atman is being well-preserved by x-buddhist figures.
It's all over the place–as mindfulness, non-judgemental awareness, the silent observer, the witnessing mind, pure awareness, Buddha mind, not to mention the traditional formulations of rig pa, tathagathagarba, mahamudra, and so on ad nauseum. It's one of the places where the conservative-traditional forms of x-buddhism join at the hip of the liberal-secular varieties.
...Tom Pepper. Matthias: I'll offer my thoughts on this problem. When you say "I know that I think," you are reproducing the error that produces belief in the atman. If you think you are attending to the content of your thoughts, you are, of course, attending to some of them, but not to the thoughts about that content.
These thoughts – the belief that I can passively "watch" my thoughts arise and dissolve – is just another set of thoughts produced in a discourse, socially produced, but which we are taught to mistake for an unproduced "true self." In the "mindfulness" practice of watching your thoughts with detachment, you are actually participating in a socially produced discourse of "mindfulness" and not realizing it.
The mind always and only thinks, and consciousness is always and only in socially produced symbolic systems produced between multiple individuals.
Can the body act without thought? Sure it can – have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off? Sometimes they can walk about and respond to stimuli for hours. But there is no mind there. Even a brain-dead body can be stimulated to orgasm, but there is not mind that "has" the orgasm, except in a symbolic system which gives the bodily response meaning.
...My original understanding of Vipassana meditation, years ago, was that it was an attempt to recognize exactly this – the real causes and conditions of all the thoughts we believe "we" are having. We then realize, like Hume when he "looks within," that there is no self, only another discourse (not the term Hume would use, but..) which is always produced socially.
Even the "looking within" is just a socially produced discourse. Then we lose the need to find the directing "will" deep within. Instead, we see that the "self" is socially constructed, and we can begin, also in "sati" meditation, to examine the causes and the effects of this particular construction of conventional self, and determine (again, in a collectively produced discourse) what actions might produce a better "self."
Of course, Vipassana as I've encountered it over the last couple of years has become the opposite of this – it is now an attempt to produce a discourse in which we are fooled into believing we DO have a core transcendent mind that is undetermined by discourse and social formations, and this is what they now call "anatman": the mistaken belief that this "witnessing mind" is NOT created by the discourse/practice of retreat buddhism.
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Posted: 30 Jun 2013 08:00 PM PDT
 So you're here to learn something about meditation. From me, a person who enjoys sharing his experience. Perhaps you're grateful that I do that. I'm grateful you're here.I learned meditation from many people, the first of whom was a man called Susiddhi, another Scot, who was teaching at the Glasgow Buddhist Centre in Scotland. And now that I think about it, I am very grateful for what he taught me, and I'm grateful to the many other teachers I learned from, who often taught each other. This process of teachings being passed on isn't a linear process of teacher to student. Teachers are also students of each other. Often students teach their teachers. So I'm going to say "thank you" to all these teachers, including the teachers who have been my students. Most of those people who I learned meditation from learned to meditate, originally at least, from Sangharakshita, an Englishman who went to India to become a Buddhist monk. Now I'm very grateful indeed to Sangharakshita for having gone to India, and for having explored meditation there, and for having sought out a number of teachers, some of whom were Indian, several of whom were Tibetans who had recently left their homeland in order to escape the Chinese occupation and the persecution of their religion, and one Chinese man who happened to be living in Kalimpong. And I'm grateful to all of Sangharakshita's teachers for having passed on meditation instructions along with their other Dharma teachings. Thank you, Sangharakshita. Thank you, Dhardo Rinpoche, Yogi Chen, and all the other teachers who spent time with him. And I'm very grateful to Sangharakshita for having returned to Britain after something like 16 years in the East, and for having set up what was at first the Western Buddhist Sangha, but which became the Western Buddhist Order, and is now the Triratna Buddhist Order, of which I'm a part. I often wonder what my life would be like without the Dharma, and without the spiritual community of which I'm a part. I was a difficult person in my youth, and I'm not sure any of the other Buddhist organizations that were around in my young adulthood could have offered me the challenge and the friendship that I needed. We'll never know. But when I think of all the people who helped me, even though I made it hard for them to do so, I'm very grateful indeed. There have been times I've choked up and been unable to talk while expressing my gratitude. Thank you to all the people who have helped me and challenged me to grow. I often wonder what my life would be like without the Dharma, and in fact wonder if I would even have a life. I was prone to isolation and despair when I was younger. Two of my friends, one of whom was my best friend for several years, killed themselves. I think it's possible that that might have happened to me. So I'm grateful to be here, and grateful for the Dharma that made it possible for me to be here. And the Dharma made it not only possible for me to be here, but possible for me to live more happily, and to be a better person — easier for others to be with, and less prone to making others suffer. I'm much happier and kinder as a result of my Dharma practice. And this Dharma, which I've immersed myself in, and which was made available to me because of the actions of a maverick monk from England who decided he was a Buddhist at the age of 16 and who spent 16 years living and teaching in India, goes back, of course, all the way to the Buddha himself, 2,500 years ago. How many teachers are there between the Buddha and Sangharakshita? We've already seen that the process of Dharma "transmission" (I use the scare quotes so that what I'm saying won't be confused with the linear Zen idea of transmission) isn't linear. The route back to the Buddha isn't like a river flowing straight to the ocean, but like entwined braid of criss-crossing streams. The number of teachers between me (or Sangharakshita) and the Buddha is literally uncountable. How many people there are for me to feel gratitude for? There's no shortage! And there's the Buddha himself. One of the things I most admire about him, and that I'm most grateful for, is that he refused to settle. He said he felt a "thorn in the heart," and he didn't settle for putting up with that. He had a comfortable life, even if he wasn't the prince that legend makes him out to be. He didn't settle, and went off wandering. He attained deep states of meditation with Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, and could have settled for those spiritual accomplishments, but he didn't. Nor did he settle for becoming a leader of either man's group. He explored asceticism, and didn't settle. And then he rediscovered the jhanas, and didn't settle for those, either, although he realized that these were the path to awakening. And he didn't settle until he'd found the thorn in his heart and plucked it out. He could have just enjoyed the rest of his days peacefully meditating, but again he didn't settle, and spent 45 years relentlessly wandering and teaching. How fortunate for us! Or for me, anyway. I'm deeply grateful for his perseverance, and even though he's long dead I say "Thank you," and bow deeply. And it's incredibly lucky that the Dharma found its way through the centuries — found its way to us. It seems that had been enlightened teachers before the Buddha, but they were pre-Iron Age, and a society living at a subsistence level couldn't support an ongoing spiritual community. We call these previous awakened individuals Paccekabuddhas, solitary Buddhas, not because they lived alone (as people erroneously think) but because they were isolated in time, leaving no enduring legacy. In the Buddha's own day there was once a drought so severe that people criticized the monks and nuns for begging from householders. This was potentially a lineage-killing event. We're lucky the sangha survived this. Yoga was in fact wiped out in India by persecution from Hindus and Muslims, and it's only because Buddhist scriptures were transported to Sri Lanka that we have an extensive collection of records of early Yoga. There's much to be grateful for. Being grateful makes me happy. And every moment in my life is an opportunity to be grateful. I should make more effort to remember that! PS. You can see all of our 100 Days of Lovingkindness Posts here. Read More @ Source |
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Posted: 30 Jun 2013 06:01 PM PDT
An interesting perspective from George Carlin that I have always loved. It echo's Buddha's urging to question everything.
"Once a week, Father Russell would come in for "Heavy Mystery" time. And we would save all our weird questions for Father Russell. In fact, we would make up strange questions. The class would take a whole week thinking up trick questions for Father Russell. 'Hey, hey, hey Father! Hey, uh, if God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so big that he himself can't lift it? Ha, ha, heeeeey! We got him now! Ah, ha, ha!' Or else you'd take a very simple sin and surround it with the most bizarre circumstances you could imagine...to try to, you know, relieve the guilt in the sin. We would usually end up with the, uh, statement, 'Would that then be a sin then, Father?'"
So, here is an example. There was one sin which was not receiving communion during Easter time. You had to perform your 'Easter duty'. As good Catholics we had to receive communion once between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost Sunday and if we didn't receive it, it was considered a mortal sin. Provided, of course, we had said to ourselves, 'Hey, I'm not going do it this year!' And, there were not many mortal sins on that, but many of us boys went to Venial City on Easter duty and so we would ask the priest 'Hey, Father, hey, uh.' Remember guys would leave their hand up after they got called on, right? And the priest would say, 'What are you, the Statue of Liberty, Dunn?' 'Oh, sorry Father. Anyways, Father. Suppose that you didn't make your Easter duty...and it's Pentecost Sunday...the last day...and you're on a ship at sea...and the chaplain goes into a coma...but yo! u wanted to receive. And then it's Monday, too late...but then you cross the International Date Line!' 'Yes, I'm sure God will take that into account. Sit down, Woozie.'
– the Late Great Philosopher George Carlin
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Posted: 30 Jun 2013 06:00 PM PDT
An interesting perspective from George Carlin that I have always loved. It echo's Buddha's urging to question everything.
"Once a week, Father Russell would come in for "Heavy Mystery" time. And we would save all our weird questions for Father Russell. In fact, we would make up strange questions. The class would take a whole week thinking up trick questions for Father Russell. 'Hey, hey, hey Father! Hey, uh, if God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so big that he himself can't lift it? Ha, ha, heeeeey! We got him now! Ah, ha, ha!' Or else you'd take a very simple sin and surround it with the most bizarre circumstances you could imagine...to try to, you know, relieve the guilt in the sin. We would usually end up with the, uh, statement, 'Would that then be a sin then, Father?'"
So, here is an example. There was one sin which was not receiving communion during Easter time. You had to perform your 'Easter duty'. As good Catholics we had to receive communion once between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost Sunday and if we didn't receive it, it was considered a mortal sin. Provided, of course, we had said to ourselves, 'Hey, I'm not going do it this year!' And, there were not many mortal sins on that, but many of us boys went to Venial City on Easter duty and so we would ask the priest 'Hey, Father, hey, uh.' Remember guys would leave their hand up after they got called on, right? And the priest would say, 'What are you, the Statue of Liberty, Dunn?' 'Oh, sorry Father. Anyways, Father. Suppose that you didn't make your Easter duty...and it's Pentecost Sunday...the last day...and you're on a ship at sea...and the chaplain goes into a coma...but yo! u wanted to receive. And then it's Monday, too late...but then you cross the International Date Line!' 'Yes, I'm sure God will take that into account. Sit down, Woozie.'
– the Late Great Philosopher George Carlin
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