So as part of an at-home retreat, I’ve recently restarted my dharma practice, devoting the first 5 hours of the day to sitting meditation, reading dharma texts and contemplation.

While it would seem that spending a good part of my day doing not much of anything would reduce my productivity; ironically it has the opposite effect. When I start work after practicing all morning, my head is clear and I am focused. Frivolous distractions have less power to pull me away and if they do I come back faster–just like comng back to the breath.

Things that Id been putting off due to some subtle fear or aversion, now I just lean in and do it fearlessly. What a great feeling.

This insight is not new to me I’ve known it for years. Yet it is still easy to fool oneself into thinkng that the more one works the more one gets done. But as usual quality is more important than quantity. Do less to get more done.

And from a spiritual perspective the only way to get anything done is to do absolutely no-thing.

When the ‘08 presidential election was happening, I read a lot of news, I became a sort of Obamaholic, wanting to read anything about the inspiring man and his plans. A month after the election is over, I’m in retreat, not thinking about Obama or politics at all and a few times I’ve woken up in the morning having dreamed about him and petty political scenarios.  Something is going on here, obviously all the news reading had some sort of lasting effect on my mind, otherwise I wouldn’t be processing it in my sleep.

Powerful movies and video games also seem to have this hang-over affect on the mind. Sometimes after watching a movie, I’ll go to bed and the whole dream world will be filled with the theme of that movie. The same occurs when I work many hours on the computer just before going to bed. My dreams are often a strange version of the computer world.

All of these examples are to illustrate that all of our actions in fact have an effect down the road. These are strong examples, but it can also be quite subtle as well.

Even everything we think matters. When I first heard this taught in a Buddhist course, I’m not sure I believed it, but I was shocked at the idea of it. Now, years latter, after having pondered it, I believe it to be true.

Extreme examples always popup, so lets address one. If the thought of killing someone arises, does that matter? Should I be afraid of my thoughts? No, not really. I think the main point is that thinking in certain ways for prolonged periods of time can actually change our way of being. The more emotionally charged these thoughts, and the longer periods of time, the stronger the effect.

An example, I do a lot of work for non-profit groups. In the beginning of projects I often think, ‘how wonderful I am helping out this great group’ but there is also another thought, ‘oh and I’m making an income as well.’ The project begins with joy, but as my mind dwells again and again on the money I’m making, near the end of the project I sometimes think, ‘I’ve worked so hard on this, and got paid so little.’ What happened was that over time, I unconsciously cultivated the selfish thought about money over and over again, subtly. In the end my altruistic attitude changed to a selfish one solely due to this seemingly innocent thought.

What are we in the moment other than a culmination of everything we’ve ever done and thought.

The more we do or think something, the more we are creating the momentum for that to happen again in the future. It is subtle, but over time it is surely true. I think we can all accept this as true, the more I am an angry person, in time, I just become more and more like that. This is true for all states of mind. The momentum does not stop on its own, it is a never ending cycle that fuels itself. When things get too hot, or a catastrophe occurs, only then do we change our ways.

Do we start with a fresh slate when were born and does all of this end when we die? The Buddhist would say no; there is some continuity of mind between each lifetime we live. Does that mean we have a soul, that ‘I’ am going to come back? Not really, the teachings say that it is just the moment to moment stream of consciousness that continues, and in that contains all our habitual tendencies. (There is no enduring self that continues or fundamentally exists. But it is not a nothingness either, as there is this clarity of awareness always with us.)

It took me many years to come to terms with believing in reincarnation, and it was only through the scientific evidence by Prof. Ian Stevenson that I now lean towards it being true. He documented thousands of cases around the world of young children who remember past lives. Some of the most striking evidence involve children with birth marks that match the death wounds of the previous incarnation. In another article I’ll go into depth on this subject.

The above description of the continuity of mind between lives I can begin to understand and accept-if I’m a very desirous person in this life, then I shall be as well in the next, or at least choose parents that have that trait which then reinforce it in me over time.

What I have had a difficult time accepting is the Buddhist idea of karma where something that happens to me in this lifetime is the result of something I did many lifetimes ago. Notwithstanding the potential social misunderstandings of this teaching, (i.e. being poor or sick is one’s own fault because of something one did in a past life) I still could not understand exactly where those actions are stored. None of the descriptions made any sense to me. The teachings say they are kept in the store-house consciousness, the eight consciousness, well where exactly is that?

Only after having my world view shaken by a number of ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru did I begin to get a glimpse of what it might all be about. The most profound experiences, and the most transformative are largely beyond words. But they led me to start to trust that everything is a divine unity. Time, which seems linear to us now is in fact not linear, rather it is merely an appearance, illusory.

These experiences, or glimpses into the nature of reality, are just that, glimpses. During these times, one is in an intense state of hyper-awareness, there can be an overwhelming amount of energy in the body and in the world. One has trouble staying focused on one thing as these overwhelming energies push us around like a ball on an open ocean. But in this experience, there can be vivid glimpses into the multi-dimensional nature of reality: that all things are made of vibrating energy, that all things are in fact a great perfection, that there is a spirit world filled with divine entities. There is more too, but much of what is experienced is forgotten, as it is just too much to bring back. The term Great Mystery is quite apt for this experience. (Granted, this only happens one in every ten ceremonies, it’s not always that intense.)

If time is just an appearance, not solid like we experience it, then the greatest problem in accepting past life karma is gone. There is no need for a place to store the karma if time is illusory. We do actions, and these actions have an result, a fruition. For us in the illusion of time it can seem like much later, but as things are a unity, it is much simpler. An action causes an effect which may seem like it is in the future, but when looked at as a unity, it is all just happening in the radical now.

This fundamentally different view of existence might also explain how fortune tellers can predict the future. But never 100% as we still have free choice in every moment.

Do we always have to experience the results of our actions? The teachings say that if we remain ignorant, then yes, but through practice these past seeds can be purified. I have also experienced powerful energetic purging in ayahuasca, which seems to be a similar thing. Many people have reported that after a powerful purge, they are free of something they did not even know they were holding on to.

Over the years having studies many Buddhist teachings, I have never believed any of them until I had the experience or evidence that it was true. That has made things hard, and progress slow for a while, but in the end, every single thing that I doubted has shown itself to be true to me. There are still a few more left that I continue to doubt-all in the esoteric tantric teachings-but I’m staying open.

So everything we do matters, whether moment to moment, day to day, after many years or even over lifetimes. This is the basic teaching of karma, and I encourage everyone to look and see if it is true.

• Helping other people helps me.
• Having guts always works out for me.
• Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
• Starting a charity is surprisingly easy.
• Being not truthful works against me.
• Everything I do always comes back to me.
• Assuming is stifling.
• [Addictive] drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
• Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted.
• Money does not make me happy.
• Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
• Keeping a diary supports personal development.
• Trying to look good limits my life.
• Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
• Worrying solves nothing.
• Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
• Actually doing the things I set out to do increases my overall satisfaction.
• Everybody thinks they are right.
• Low expectations are a good strategy.
• Whatever I want to explore professionally, its best to try it out for myself first.
• Everybody who is honest is interesting. 

Easy, free, immediate access to vast amounts of information can be addictive. I meditate daily, and attempt to have some mindfulness and awareness of my actions. I notice that the more I use the internet the more my mindfulness slips away from me to be replaced by habitual desires to be entertained or informed. While reading a book I find it incredibly easy to be distracted, a thought will pop into my head and rather than let it go and get back to my reading, I’ll hop on the computer and look up the answer to my question. What is most interesting is that while on the computer, something else will catch my attention and I’ll start learning about that subject, this continues until some external event brings me back to the ‘real world’. Other times I’ll be bored, wanting to fill space, and I will habitually look up sites that I know will entertain me: nytimes.com Google news, youtube.com, technology sites, anything to feed the desire to be entertained or to get information.

The end result is that one looses one’s mindfulness, and rather than riding the horse, the horse is riding you. My current way of working with my case of ITAD is to take breaks. When there is a natural gap in my regular work on the computer, instead of filling the space with my habitual tendency to look up news (granted I write this during the 2008 presidential election new frenzy), I stop and look out the window, or get up and stretch. Another thing I’m working on is to not follow each and every distracting impulse. When I’m working on a task, stick to that task until it is complete. Let those thoughts go that call me to distraction again and again.

After a little internet research (!) I did find a definition of a similar condition called Internet Addiction Disorder.  But it does seem to be focused toward people who are total internet junkies, rather than just technology addicted.

monks taking a break from practice at the Maha Bodhi temple in India

An example of what I mean: I am an environmental activist doing good work in the world, but on a day to day basis we are hard on ourselves and treat others with disrespect, frustration and sometimes anger. Because we are so focused on protecting the environment and see that as the most important thing, eventually we burn out or become jaded. The alternative is to do environmental conservation work and at the same time realize that how we are matters, we are more relaxed, caring, gentle, and ironically because of our authentic approach we might even be more effective, but that is not the point.

At the end of our life, we are a cumulative product of how we have been, not what we did. What we did is simply a thought, a memory, whereas how we have been is the moment to moment accumulation of habitual tendencies—or karma—that creates who we are in this present moment.

I believe what we do is still important, I’m not advocating being a compassionate bank robber. I’m simply noticing the need for moving away from doing towards being.

This is a short video I put together highlighting some of my experiences in peru over the last year. I hope you like it. And some photos highlights as well below:

So the reason for this blog/journal is multifold.

• I want a place where I can just share thoughts and insights and interesting things I come across on the web. I do this now on Facebook, but only my friends can see, for some insights about dharma, entheogens, and cosmology, I’d like to interact with a larger group of people.
• I am looking for a way to organize my thoughts. I feel that in writing about my interests and things I am learning about it will help me integrate them better. I read so much stuff, but I find that sometimes it just goes in one eye and out the other. I know that by writing I will better understand and assimilate the things I am writing about. 
• I plan to use the Wordpress platform as a content management system for new website projects in my company Blue Mandala and this will give me an opportunity to really play around with it and feel how it works in a real world environment.
• I am enrolled in school at the University of Waterloo Independent Studies program and plan to use this platform as a means to journal about my experiences in my classes, and as a way to complete certain coursework.