The Four Pillars of Dharma

Four Dharmic ideals which I constantly strive to embody, embrace and express are Truth, Freedom, Peace, and Love.  I think of these four ideals as the immutable pillar stones necessary for an impeccable moral foundation.  Morality and Dharma are on the decline in our current age (Kali Yuga) and the only way to change and improve things externally is to change and improve ourselves internally.  To manifest the ideals of Truth, Freedom, Peace and Love, first we must stop manifesting Lies, Enslavement, Violence, and Fear.

Lies are broadcast daily from our governments, mainstream media, big pharma, the public education system, pundits, politicians, lawyers, actors, and advertisers all making a living from lying.  To take our power back from the liars we must be devoted 100% to honesty and integrity in our own lives.  We must make a 24/7 habit of absolute sincerity, standing strong in our truth, striving to express as eloquently and articulately the truth as we know it.  We must refuse to believe the lies and help to expose the liars.  Refuse the temptation to lie to make our lives easier and never cheat on our spouses / partners because that is a form of lying too.  We must refuse the notion that some lies are acceptable because "the truth would hurt" too much.  If there is ever to be an actual "Truth Movement" it can only happen through radical, unconditional honesty and integrity.

Slavery is practiced by governments, corporations, banks, private prisons, insurance companies, factory farms, bankers, politicians and lawyers who all make a living from enslavement.  To take our power back from the slave drivers we must be 100% free and sovereign in our own lives.  We must quit our wage slave jobs, stop paying taxes, stop obeying unlawful legislations, get free of debt, learn self-defense, acquire tangible assets, get off the grid, grow our own food, create our own jobs, become entrepreneurs and freemen on the land, start our own interest-free banks and local currencies.  We must completely refuse to be enslaved, refuse to enslave others, and help one another achieve true freedom.

Violence is practiced by governments, corporations, militaries, police forces, private security, prisons, gangsters, mafias, mercenaries, factory farmers and butchers all making a living from violence.  To take our power back from the bullies we must be 100% peaceful in our interactions.  We must refuse to be employed as a soldiers, police or mercenaries.  We must end the animal holocaust.  We must stop domestic abuse and practice peaceful parenting.  We should never hit, harm or even raise our voices to others, especially our friends and family.  All interactions between parents, children, siblings, friends, and strangers alike should be free of all force; even passive-aggression is still aggression which we must personally refuse to manifest.

Fear is employed by governments, corporations, militaries, police, banks, insurance companies, factory farms, mafias, private prisons, politicians, and lawyers who all make a living off victims of fear.  To take our power back from the fear-mongers we must practice unconditional love.  As Jesus, John Lennon and many-a-martyr will agree, no one word, no one concept is so powerful and unifying as Love.  Love is the main immutable pillar for a truly moral foundation.  If you have developed true unconditional love, then you already have the other three pillars of Truth, Freedom and Peace as well, because love is certainly honest, free and peaceful.  Cheating or lying is not true love.  "Loving" a bird enslaved in a tiny cage is not truly loving the bird.  And forceful or "violent love" cannot be called true love at all, in fact it's called rape or domestic abuse.

So before saying or doing anything, remember the four pillars:  Is it true?  Does it promote freedom?  Is it peaceful?  And is it loving?  Or if you're short on time just check the fourth:  Is this a loving thing to say?  Is this a loving thing to do?  Adhere to these and we will be on the Dharma fast-track through morality to another golden age.  All we need is Love.

Practicing the Highest Compassion

Thanks to Druv for sending me this excellent video from Dharma Central elucidating the true meaning of compassion/love, and the Asuric demonic psychopaths who lack these genuine emotions.

The Search For Beauty

Thanks to Edelweiss Pirate for writing the following article. I have felt many of the things he pointed out here, but haven't been able to put them into thought/words so eloquently:

The search for beauty is the preoccupation of every human and living creature in this material world. We search for beauty outside of ourselves for what is within we fail to appreciate and generally take for granted. It seems for most of us, that we must seek personal happiness and validation outside of ourselves. And so we venture further into materialism and further from the source of personal wisdom. We can never ‘know’ another person as we know ourselves. We can never achieve wisdom from another person because knowledge and awareness lies within our own consciousness. Some of us corrupt what is within, due to a lack of insight or personal damage of some kind, and what is within themselves appears rank and poisoned and the inner beauty is lost.

So we project our love and desire outside of ourselves, like plants reaching their leaves to the sun, we hope to find sustenance and a purpose for living in someone else.

This makes no sense spiritually because the person in whom you are trying to find this beauty is also looking for the same thing in you, yet the fact that both of you are looking for something which you lack, in someone else, means neither of you possess what you are searching for, because if you did you wouldn’t have to look for it in others.

Superficially, women are attractive and men are handsome, yet this only appears to be the beauty they are searching for, but it is only a configuration of physicality, it is more materialism. It has no deeper meaning and is only a cipher for beauty but not the real thing. The attractiveness and charm which some see in others is often enough to make them love them, but rarely is it enough to make the person possessing these qualities love themselves to the point of self completion.

The person having the qualities of attractiveness or charm knows that these things are not the real person they are, yet they seem sufficient to make the other person love them. These things are merely tools to enable the person to obtain emotional, sensual, material or financial security. But love is the dream, but it comes from within the self. Why is another person needed to produce a feeling which originates within the self. What is love?

Love is a form of attention. Love takes the attention from ones own personal inner problems and gives one something to focus on outside of the self. But what happens when attention goes outward? The material world expands and grows as the all knowing inner being reaches out into the void. The reality is short lived because true love requires timeless understanding and a still mind. Within a human relationship these things are unobtainable in this world which by definition is constantly in flux and full of a thousand distractions. There are financial pressures, communication failures, misunderstandings. It is easier to find love in yourself and keep it there than it is to search for it in someone by reaching across the void to another consciousness. Why reach across the void at all?

So we all reach out of ourselves because we feel dissatisfied with our own inner beings, and we seek to expand our inner light into the darkened void. The consequence of this is human reproduction, which is actually a form of entropy, or widening chaos. Materially, having children is natural, from a spiritual perspective however it is not.

Reproduction is the consequence of our failure to find God, it is a consequence of a spiritual hunger for completeness which we think the material world can solve for us. But it cannot, it can only offer the temporary excitement of desire followed by a slow loss of the self at the expense of assuming a role as head of a family.

We fracture and divide ourselves. And so from the original harmony we have ‘difference’, we have tribalism, peoples, nations, conflicts, wars which are inevitable when different universes occupy the same world. Reproduction is shattering the hologram into a thousand more holograms. Marriages are not easy and often fail because eventually we realise that we can never really find love outside of ourselves, except as a kind of dozing domesticity, but if we really look into ourselves we will realise that what we were looking for was inside us all along.

Dan the Man with the Master Plan for Peace

Dan McDonald is a raw vegan man on a mission trying to bring the message of fruits, vegetables and love to the world. In these great videos above Dan "the man with the master plan" talks about how to bring about true, lasting inner-peace.

Amazing Message For Mankind

This is 12 year old Servern Cullis giving a speech at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Her powerful words serve as a reminder to humanity of how far we've fallen as a species, and as a call towards personal responsibility (partial transcript below).

"I'm here to speak for all generations to come. I'm here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I'm here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have no where left to go. I'm afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our ozone. I'm afraid to breathe the air because I don't know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my dad, until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct everyday vanishing forever. In my life I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles, and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but i want you to realize neither do you. You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don't now how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back the forest that once grew where there is now a desert. If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it. Here you may be delegates of your government, business people, organizers, reporters, or politicians, but really you're mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and all of you are someone's child...

I am only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties, what a wonderful place this Earth would be. At school, even in Kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do!? Do not forget why you are attending these conferences, who you are doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying everything's going to be alright, it's not the end of the world, and we're doing the best we can. But I don't think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad always says you are what you do, not what you say. Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words."

Breaking the Illusion of Limitation

“I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.” -Helen Keller

“Our demons are our own limitations, which shut us off from the realization of the ubiquity of the spirit. Each of these demons is conquered in a vision quest.” -Joseph Campbell

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” -Patanjali

Interview with Reiki Master

This is a great interview with one of my best friends here in Thailand, a writer, Reiki Master, and all around awesome guy, Tom Radzienda.

A Short Story of Love, Tragedy, and Forgiveness

This is a great video reminder to be mindful, peaceful, compassionate, forgiving, and unconditionally loving at all times.

I Met the Walrus

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatles fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack. A spellbinding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit and timeless message, I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short and won the 2009 Emmy for 'New Approaches' (making it the first film to win an Emmy on behalf of the internet).