The Path Ministry

Topic: The Life of Pi and Facing Adversity Today’s topic is the book and film “The Life of Pi” and the message we get from the story about facing adversity without losing faith and without giving up. In the story, Pi is a humble but deeply spiritual young man who is on a journey across the ocean when the ship he is on sinks beneath the waves. He ends up alone in a lifeboat, lost at sea with a Bengal tiger for 227 days, trying his hardest to survive. (Due to an amusing mixup, the tiger’s name is Richard Parker.) Through it all, Pi is certain that he will make it, that his gods will look after him. He refuses to accept defeat, no matter what the ocean and the tiger throw at him. He also refuses to waste time feeling sorry for himself because of what he has to endure, as he is certain that he will make it. There is an important lesson to be found here. In our lives, sometimes we feel like we are lost at sea, not sure what to do or how to move forward. I felt like that after both of ...

  Topic: Mindfulness, Patience, and Ignorance “Knowledge is wonderful and truth serene. But man in their service bleeds.” Bhartrihari, seventh-century Hindu poet "The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled." -Aldous Leonard Huxley, English writer and philosopher. Sometimes, we encounter somebody who holds an idea that is so ridiculously backwards that it makes any rational person’s head spin. One obvious example is those who firmly and sincerely believe that the Earth is flat. This idea is so profoundly stupid that anyone who asserts such instantly loses about sixty IQ points in my estimation of them. We have known for a fact that the Earth is a big ball for literally thousands of years. And yet, they persist. Now, as beings with intelligenc...

 So, the release of "Intelligent Conversation" has been pushed  back to July to allow time for certain enhancements. However, I have decided to submit my collection of essays and sermons entitled 40 Years in the Desert for publication on Saturday, April 20, 2024.  Cheers, CJ

Topic: The Science Behind Acceptance Core Tenet #4 reminds us that the scientific method is one of the best tools at our disposal when learning about the Universe. Along with obvious things like hadron colliders, cancer research, and drug development, science has also been delving into the reasons behind certain common human behaviors. It seems that many of the things people do, even some things that just piss you off, have a scientific reason behind them. If we know why something happens, we are well on our way to correcting it, so that hopefully people will not be so dumb or so awful at each other in the future. This is also a wonderful perspective to have when you are somehow affected by another person’s idiocy: there is a reason for this, we may someday find a cure, and I do not have to try to fix it because that is not my job. Somebody else is already working on curbing stupidity in humans. You can focus your energies on more productive things and just let the dumb roll off yo...