Essays
Recent essays I have written on different topics. All my essays are available in the archive.
The Careless Hand
Billion Dollar Idea
I have argued that medical practice in America needs to be reformed. The dominant medical system is too expensive and drugs are too toxic. Instead I suggested a three tiered system. First, health coaches to teach people how to stay healthy through lifestyle. Second, natural medicine to assist the body's own healing mechanisms. And third, conventional medicine for emergencies when there is no time for the body to heal itself or the medical problem has gone too far to heal. While proposing ideas is fine, what matters is to make them happen. Here is a business opportunity for someone who wants to change how medicine is practiced in America.
Seven Verse Prayer to Tara
Jigten Sumgon was the founder of the Drikung Kagyu, one of the subschools of the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was meditating in a cave and had a vision of Tara in the sky as he left the cave. Tara is a female buddha whose traditional role is to protect those who pray to her from fearful situations. Jigten Sumgon asks Tara in this prayer to protect meditators on the path to enlightenment from the obstacles to enlightenment. I made a translation of this prayer as an exercise. It's not difficult Tibetan. I include the original in Wylie transliteration.
A Few Words on Emptiness
It seems that many Buddhists find emptiness difficult to understand. So I want to say a few words on what emptiness is about. There are two streams of transmission of the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings. The first stream of transmission is the record of his talks in the sutras. The second is transmission of enlightened mind from tacher to student. As time passed the second grew relatively weaker when compared to the first, as there were fewer enlightened people with each generation. As a result, there was a need to emphasize what had not needed emphasis before, that is, the qualities that enlightenement revealed. So there was more emphasis on emptiness, culminating in the commentatries of Nagarjuna.
Our Healthcare Crisis
Yesterday I watched a video by Dr. Andrew Winge, who works in Emergency Medicine. During the video he talked about the crisis in medicine. He sees many patients with heart problems, diabetes, and other illnesses that are caused by poor lifestyle. He said that ninety percent of the patients he sees are obese and that visceral fat, the fat around our internal organs, is the cause of most chronic disease. He felt that unless the inceasingly serious problem of obesity was solved, our healthcare system will collapse under the load of new patients. It felt strange to hear a conventional doctor say what Iǘe been saying all these years. So in response I am writing my proposed solution to the heathcare crisis.
Right Livelihood
Last Saturday I attended a talk on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The last truth is the Eightfold Path and one step on that path is Right Livelihood. So the question was asked, what is right livelihood? Typically the answer is a livelihood that does not harm others, either by killing or helping to kill by making weapons or poisons. In out modern world, where everything effects others and the environment, how broadly should we interperet that? Autos pollute the air, fast food shortens life, and so on. The bigger question is, how do we organize our society and economy so that we minimize its negative effects on other people. To solve this larger problem I believe it helps to use some ideas from Rudolf Steiner.