Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.
- John Bradshaw

Do not seek to follow the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.  -Matsuo Basho

Drizzt by Gaderel Guitarist

An Excerpt from The Orc King by R.A. Salvatore:

That is the line we all straddle, between comfort and adventure. There are those who find satisfaction, even fulfillment, in the former, and there are those who are forever seeking. It is my guess, and can only be my guess, that the fears of the former are rooted in fear of the greatest mystery of all, death.

It is no accident that those who construct the thickest walls are most often rooted firmly, immovably, in their faith. The here and now is as it is, and the better way will be found in the afterlife. That proposition is central to the core beliefs that guide the faithful, with, for many, the added caveat that the afterlife will only fulfill its promise if the here and now remains in strict accord with the guiding principles of the chosen deity.

I count myself among the other group, the seekers…It is not just boredom that propels my steps along paths unknown, but a firm belief that the guiding principle of life must be a search not for what is, but for what could be.

To look at injustice or oppression, at poverty or slavery, and shrug helplessly, or worse to twist a god’s “word” to justify such states, is anathema to the ideal, and to me, the ideal is achieved only when the ideal is sought…So we dare to seek. So we dare to change…

For it is in the seeking, in that continual desire to improve ourselves and to improve the world around us, that we walk the road of enlightenment…that we tried to lift ourselves and our world…to the image of the ideal.

- Drizzt Do’Urden

The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. – zen proverb

Photo by Maxim Bolotnikov

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.”

Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.

- Hafiz

Art by Tomas Karkalas - used with permission

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes –Carl Jung

When you have a choice whether to be right or to be kind, choose to be kind – Wayne Dyer

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

- from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Photo by Maxim Bolotnikov

Now, to tell a child to believe in God is nonsense, utter nonsense — not that God does not exist, but because the child has not yet felt the thirst, the desire, the longing. He is not yet ready to go in search of the truth, the ultimate truth of life. He is not yet mature enough to inquire into the reality of God. That love affair has to happen some day, but it can happen only if no belief is imposed upon him. If he is converted before the thirst has arisen to explore and to know, then his whole life he will live in a phony way, he will live in a pseudo way.

Yes, he will talk about God, because he has been told that God is. And he has been told authoritatively, and he has been told by people who were very powerful in his childhood — his parents, the priests, the teachers. He has been told by people and he had to accept it; it was a question of his survival. He could not say no to his parents, because without them he would not be able to live at all. It was too risky to say no, he had to say yes. But his yes can’t be true.

How can it be true? He is saying yes only as a political device, to survive. You have not turned him into a religious person, you have made him a diplomat, you have created a politician. You have sabotaged his potential to grow into an authentic being. You have poisoned him. You have destroyed the very possibility of his intelligence, because intelligence arises only when the longing arises to know.

Now the longing will never arise, because before the question has taken possession of his soul, the answer has already been supplied. Before he was hungry, the food has been forced into his being. Now, without hunger, this forced food cannot be digested; there is no hunger to digest it. That’s why people live like pipes through which life passes like undigested food.

One has to be very patient with children, very alert, very conscious not to say anything that may hinder their own intelligence from arriving, not to convert them into Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans. One needs infinite patience.

One day that miracle happens when the child himself starts inquiring. Then too, don’t supply him with readymade answers. Readymade answers help nobody, readymade answers are dull and stupid. Help him to become more intelligent. Rather than giving him answers, give him situations and challenges so that his intelligence is sharpened and he asks more deeply — so that the question penetrates to his very core, so the question becomes a question of life and death.

But that is not allowed. Parents are very much afraid, the society is very much afraid: if children are allowed to remain free, who knows? They may never come to the fold the parents belonged to, they may never go to the church — Catholic, Protestant, this or that. Who knows what is going to happen when they become intelligent on their own? They will not be within your control. And this society goes into deeper and deeper politics to control everybody, to possess everybody’s soul.

That’s why the first thing they have to do is to destroy trust — the trust of the child in himself, the confidence of the child in himself. They have to make him shaky and afraid. Once he is trembling, he is controllable. If he is confident he is uncontrollable. If he is confident he will assert himself, he will try to do his own thing. He will never want to do anybody else’s thing. He will go on his own journey, he will not fulfill somebody else’s desires for some trip. He will never be an imitator, he will never be a dull and dead person. He will be so alive, so pulsating with life, that nobody will be able to control him.

Destroy his trust and you have castrated him. You have taken his power: now he will always be powerless and always in need of somebody to dominate, direct and command him. Now he will be a good soldier, a good citizen, a good nationalist, a good Christian, a good Mohammedan, a good Hindu. Yes, he will be all these things, but he will not be a real individual. He will not have any roots, he will be uprooted his whole life. He will live without roots — and to live without roots is to live in misery, is to live in hell. Just as trees need roots in the earth, man is also a tree and needs roots in existence or else he will live a very unintelligent life.