Again, again, and again!

When does it stop?

Never, never, and never!

Unless you stop it.

   Soldiers and horses entered Mt. Yun-ju. The master (Yun-ju) sat upright and    motionless.

   The commander,  without bowing, sat facing him and asked, “When does the world    attain peace?”

   The master said, “Waiting for the commander’s mind to become satisfied.”

   The commander then bowed and made him his teacher.

So long as everyone thinks “that’s none of my business,” it never stops. It is the karma of thinking so and acting so. Isn’t it karma of the people here?

   Men of great power, why can’t you lift your legs?

Even though great, one cannot lift even one’s own legs. Why? Because: one is bound by karma.

   Men of great strength, you row so hard! But, your boat is moored.

However hard one may try, one cannot advance. Why? Because: one is bound by ego.

   Seeing a fire…

In a previous entry (Do You Really Want Peace on Earth?) I mentioned the upcoming Mindfulness Day. We had a nice event, meeting new and old friends and enjoying “golden wind” on a clear autumn afternoon. In my presentation, one of three offered that day, I talked about why we have problems and how to solve them.

All problems come from selfishness due to self-preservation. The accretion of four billion years of self-preserving action and its results (karma) has created hard shells with which we shroud our individual and collective selves, like shellfish. Confined and limited, we can no longer move freely, knowing and acting well.

No one likes the selfishness of others, but everyone loves one’s own. Selfish individuals or groups are hated, hit, hypnotized in hubris, but eventually humiliated due to their own karma, like iron crumbling in its own rust. Like cancer, selfishness grows from its essence and destroys…

The 8th century B.C. stele of Kuttamuwa (Credit: Eudora Struble, University of Chicago)

University of Chicago archaeologists have uncovered an ancient monument to the soul of a royal official in southeastern Turkey. The find, a sort of tombstone called a “stele,” is significant because it indicates a belief in the soul apart from the body. The inscription writes that the royal official’s soul now inhabits the stele itself.

This also means that there was ancient diversity in beliefs about the soul. As The New York Times puts it: “the stele provided the first written evidence that the people in this region held to the religious concept of the soul apart from the body. By contrast, Semitic contemporaries, including the Israelites, believed that the body and soul were inseparable, which for them made cremation unthinkable, as noted in the Bible.”

This latter idea of “embodied soul,” of a deeply integrated concept of body and soul woven together,…

After reading the posts about salvation and purgatory, it got me thinking. Thinking about how little I think about those things. So I wondered, is it just me? Or as a Jew, are these topics not really at the forefront. The answer is, I don’t really know.

One of the most exciting aspects of being a part of this blog is the opportunity I have for a greater understanding of my religion and others. Because, when I ponder these and other questions, the answer usually is – I don’t really know.

So, I did a brief online search on Judaism and afterlife and came across this excerpt on myjewishlearning.com:

Judaism is famously ambiguous about this matter. The immortality of the soul, the World to Come, and the resurrection of the dead all feature prominently in Jewish tradition, but the logistics of what these things are and how they relate to each other has always…