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...

  Topic: One Hundred Sermons & What We Have Learned So Far This is my one hundredth sermon; I have been writing and publishing one per week for over two years, taking a couple of weeks off here and there for holidays and vacations. We have learned a lot so far, about ourselves and one another as well as the Core Tenets and Virtues. I would like to review the last ninety-nine sermons, to talk about the Tenets or Virtues to which they apply and also how popular they have been with our readership. We started this whole adventure by going over the Eight Core Tenets of the Path, in order. The ideas expressed in my first sermon about the first Core Tenet and its meaning have been touched on several times in following sermons. We talked about the combination of Compassion and Self-Control it takes to truly do no harm, which we went over again when we discussed each of the Virtues later on. We also mentioned exercising Patience when dealing with people who do not seem to be activel...

 Today’s sermon is about being kind, even when you cannot be fond of someone. To illustrate that concept, here is a quote I found online, this one from Tupac Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996): "Just because you lost me as a friend, doesn't mean you gained me as an enemy. I'm bigger than that. I still wanna see you eat, just not at my table." Tupac was a wise man. This is an incredibly Compassionate statement, and it expreses the fact that you can be kind to somebody you dislike. Compassion is not about being everyone’s friend, it is about not being anyone’s enemy. (I would define an “enemy” as somebody who would trip you if you were both running from a clown.) You can help and support people even if they do not appreciate it or you cannot otherwise stand them. My partner still buys Yule gifts for the very few people she personally does not get along with. One of my friends is doing the one drug I vehemently disagree with, but I am still paying for their ca...

  Topic: Music and the Healing Power of Sound Sound, particularly music, has been a part of the human experience for millennia. Everyone has their own tastes and preferences. In his novel The War of the Flowers, Tad Williams writes of “…that youthful certainty that there was good music and bad music and that they knew which was which. ‘Bullshit,’ he’d told them once. ‘A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it’s all the same. If it takes you there, it’s good.’” He is right. Music, just about any kind of music, can lift the human spirit. But it goes deeper than that: Sound has healing properties. One example I find interesting and compelling is that the sound of a cat purring can reduce blood pressure, ease inflammation, and aid in the healing process. Another is the sound treatment that effectively breaks a...