A collection of radical aphorisms on self, suffering, and the strange machinery of modern existence.
In Across the Flood, Dinuka Mapa crafts a searing tapestry of philosophical aphorisms that weave together the timeless insights of the Buddha, the critical acumen of Kant, and the restless questioning of Nietzsche. This is no passive meditation manual nor abstract academic treatise—it is a raw, unflinching confrontation with the machinery of mind, craving, and identity in a world teetering between spiritual amnesia and algorithmic control. From the psychological roots of suffering to the illusory architecture of self, from society’s institutionalized madness to the commodification of beauty and belonging, these aphorisms cut through appearance to reveal the restless heart of Samsara. Here, Buddhist principles are not merely preserved but reinterpreted—refracted through cognitive science, modern psychiatry, and the discontents of late capitalism. This collection is for seekers who dare to question not only society but their own deepest assumptions; who sense that liberation is not a place but a clarity, glimpsed fleetingly in stillness, rebellion, and radical compassion.
Index
Buddhist Philosophy & Samsara: 1, 2, 5, 6, 9–15, 22–25, 38, 52, 53–56, 60–62, 69, 71, 73, 74, 83, 88, 89, 91, 93-95, 100
Kantian & Metaphysical Thought: 3, 4, 7, 8, 47, 66,
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Psychology: 16–21, 46, 48, 49, 51, 99
Identity View & the Illusion of Self: 10, 17, 67, 76, 78
Critique of Modern Society, Capitalism & Education: 26–27, 29–33, 75, 82, 86, 87, 89, 90, 94, 95, 96
Cultural Critique & Media Analysis: 26, 27, 34, 79, 92, 97, 98
Religion, God, and Spiritual Criticism: 63–66, 68, 70, 90
Mental Health & Modern Suffering: 41–45, 84, 92
Ethical Living, Parenting & Upbringing: 80, 91
Myth, Allegory & Symbolic Insight: 57, 58, 59, 63, 69, 76, 77, 81
Interdisciplinary Synthesis: 39, 47, 67, 94, 100
Time, Impermanence & Cosmic Perspective: 37, 73, 74
War, Politics & Power: 40, 82, 83
The Path & the Seeker: 39, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 62, 67, 88, 94, 100
Alphorisms
1.
In the phenomenal world, all there exists are the five aggregates (skhandas): form (rūpa), feeling/sensation, perception, mental formations (sankharas) and consciousness. When the aggregates proximate as a bundle, heap or localisation, it leads to the establishment of mind. If the mind is uncultivated, unwise, unrefined, undisciplined and unaware it has the tendency to exhibit tanha and grasp the aggregates, saying with respect to them, 'These are mine, they belong to me', which ultimately leads to Identity View, or the construct of 'I'. We can even begin to stylise aspects of this identity via tweaks to our personality, appearance, behaviours and preferences; all of which act as markers. Gotama Buddha highlighted that whilst we cannot change the establishment of mind as this is conditioned (all phenomena are conditioned), we do have control over our minds once they have been established. He offers the solution of bhavana (mental cultivation); via which we work on sila, sati, samadhi (concentration) and panna (wisdom). Cultivating our minds via meditation can help us develop insight so we do not cling or grasp so strongly towards the aggregates. Insight meditation (Vipassana), which strives for the direct, experiential introspection into the nature of reality, allows us to contemplate the three marks of existence (impermanence, impersonality and unsatisfactoriness) and apply them to the aggregates. For example, this physical heap of matter or rupa that my mind claims to belong to me is nothing more than a network of ever-changing processes in constant flux; it is made up of component such as nails, teeth, hair, bile, feces, blood, sweat etc. and is subject to decay, deterioration and dissolution. Letting go of identification with my physical body as well as the other four aggregates is required on the path of liberation from perpetual wandering in samsara.
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1B.
The Circle of Becoming (Dependent Origination): From ignorance (avijjā), there arises the stirrings of volitional formations (saṅkhārā); from these formations, consciousness (viññāṇa) is born and seeks ground. In turn, name-and-form (nāma-rūpa) emerges—mind and body taking shape—followed by the activation of the six sense bases (saḷāyatana), which open the field of perception. When sense organs meet objects, contact (phassa) arises; from contact, there springs feeling (vedanā), and from feeling, craving (tanhā) unfurls like a vine toward its object. Craving matures into clinging (upādāna), a grasping of what is insubstantial. From clinging, the momentum of becoming (bhava) is set in motion, leading inevitably to birth (jāti). With birth, there follow old age and death (jarāmaraṇa), and with them sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. Thus is the great wheel of becoming set in motion—not by divine will, but by the blind mechanics of cause and condition. Each link is not isolated but arises because of the one before it, and gives rise to the one after it. Nothing in this chain is self-originating; all is dependent, conditioned, and contingent. Envisage this process not as a line but as a circle, a looping chain without beginning or end, where death feeds ignorance and the cycle repeats. The end is not found in wandering through it, but in understanding it—seeing that by removing ignorance, the chain collapses, and the wheel no longer turns.
2.
According to Gotama Buddha, a person struck by a poison arrow should not spend her time speculating about questions like 'Who shot the arrow?', 'What bow type was used?', 'What is the caste of the person who shot the arrow?' etc. Rather, she should dutifully extract the arrow and apply an antidote to the poison. Similarly, if we are subject to Dukkha, and subject to the cycle of birth, aging and death in Samsara, then having insight into the limits of reason in determining the metaphysical world can reduce our thirst for noumenal knowledge. This thirst further augments our experience of Dukkha. The Buddha offered the path of Liberation from Dukkha, which is far more valuable.
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3.
We can never have knowledge of the noumenal world, or things-in-themselves. There is a sharp distinction between phenomena, appearances; the world as it is for us and structured by our sensible intuition (associated a-priori space & time) and our understanding; and the noumena, or things as they are in themselves; independent of our faculties perception and thought. Human knowledge is conditioned but noumenal reality lies beyond the structure.
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4.
Human beings are confined to the phenomenal because of the nature of the faculties of intuition and understanding. The faculty of reason oversteps the boundaries of available knowledge when it attempts to answer questions and speculate about things that belong to the noumenal world: Do I have a soul? Is there a God? Is the universe eternal?
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5.
There is no real duality between what I perceive as my body and the external world or Loka. It is 'my' mind that insists there is duality. The mind presumes or asserts that which I have agency over belongs to me, but this agency is an illusion. To explore Buddhism is to face the unsettling idea that everything is predetermined. It's quite possible that we have no agency but act autonomously via preconditioned inputs, and we only think otherwise due to the mind having an afterthought.
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6.
To cling to the five aggregates is like building a house—a house of self. Form (rūpa) lays down the walls of matter and physicality. Feeling (vedanā) forms another wall, reacting to contact with pleasure, pain, or neutrality. Perception (saññā) builds yet another, shaping how we recognize and label our experience. Mental formations (sankhāra) construct the inner framework—volition, intention, habit. Consciousness (viññāna) rests above like the roof, holding it all together through the illusion of continuity. Inside this house dwells a resident: the ego—the imagined self, the “I” who believes it owns and inhabits this structure. But the architect behind it all is craving (tanhā). It draws the blueprints, lays the foundation, and demands reinforcement. And so, the house stands—not as something real or permanent, but as a temporary construction built from clinging. When we see through this, we understand what the Buddha meant when he said: “House-builder, you are seen. You shall build no house again.” — Dhammapada, verse 154. With wisdom, the house falls. The resident vanishes. What remains is not emptiness, but freedom.
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7.
From a Kantian perspective, the sense of duality between “us” (the self) and the loka (the world) arises because the mind naturally applies categories of understanding to organize raw sensory data. These categories—such as causality, substance, unity, and duality—enable the mind to make synthetic judgments, structuring experience into coherent phenomena. This structuring is necessary for cognition but also creates a fundamental separation: the knower vs. the known, subject vs. object, self vs. other. The experience of duality is thus not a direct reflection of reality as it is in itself (noumenon), but rather the way our minds construct and interpret sensory inputs to navigate the world.
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8.
It’s quaint that Gotama Buddha taught the middle way between extremes like externalism and annihilationism, while Kant similarly advocated a middle ground between rationalism and empiricism.
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9.
The five aggregates [01] —form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saññā), mental formations (saṅkhāra), and consciousness (viññāna)—are layered, bundled phenomena. They are unstable, impersonal, and constantly in flux—marked by impermanence (anicca), non-self (anattā), and unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). When I grasp onto them—mistaking them for “me” or “mine”—I inevitably encounter suffering. For these aggregates cannot provide lasting security or identity; they shift, arise, and pass, beyond anyone’s control.
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10.
When I grasp at the aggregates—mistaking them as “I,” “me,” or “mine”—I give rise to identity view (sakkāya-diṭṭhi). This view is the subtle illusion that there is a permanent self residing in or owning these impermanent processes. But the aggregates are not a self, nor do they belong to a self. They arise and pass according to conditions. To cling to them is to build a house on shifting sand—inevitably leading to suffering.
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11.
Our experiences never satisfy the expectations that are forged by tanha, and we encounter dukkha.
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11B.
Trauma arises from the enthronement of selfhood: when one clings to the aggregates, one manufactures the entity that can be wounded. The mind, seeking continuity, constructs a narrative of ownership over form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, and then proclaims, “This is me.” Yet there is no sovereign organ or system; each is contingent, dependent, and impermanent. Moral justice becomes a consolation of the ego, a desperate attempt to impose retribution upon a universe that merely follows cause and condition. Anger rehearsed becomes new injury; resentment binds one repeatedly to past harms. To be born among the foolish is one form of dukkha, but to believe that their limitations define us is another. The body, fragile and temporal, is mistaken for a possession, while the mind decorates rupa with beauty and desire despite its unavoidable decay. Other persons are only phenomena in flux: speech is vibration, sight is electromagnetic interaction, identity is sensation interpreted through conditioned cognition. Aversion often masks unhealed pain, and the world is neither fair nor unfair—it simply manifests causal patterns. The self is the stage upon which craving and grievance enact their dual drama. Liberation begins with disenchantment from form, for the mind is enamoured of rupa, interpreting each moment through its private algorithm of conditioning; wisdom lies in not mistaking that algorithm for a soul.
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15.
All things are conditioned phenomena, and all phenomena is an information flux.
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16.
From a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) perspective, it is the unhelpful rules and assumptions we form through past experiences that often constrain our need-seeking behaviours. These rules and assumptions emerge as coping strategies to manage underlying negative core beliefs. As long as these internal rules are satisfied, the core beliefs remain dormant. But when they are violated, those core beliefs can resurface—often triggering episodes of acute low self-esteem. Identity view, in this framework, functions like the woodwork of self-esteem’s Pandora’s box. It is held together by these very rules and assumptions, enclosing the dormant yet potent force of negative core beliefs.
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17.
If I crave or have tanha for distinction, recognition, appraisal, respect, acknowledgement, authority, rank, credibility, I create rules and assumptions for myself; essentially criteria or expectations that I must meet, i.e. ‘I must be distinguished’, ‘I must be recognized’, etc. So long as these rules and assumptions are met, I remain untroubled. If, however they are broken, my dormant negative core beliefs become activated and I experience dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness.
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18.
But the question remains: why do we experience dukkha in this way? Much of it rests on human psychology and the way craving (tanhā) translates into mental formations or volitions — such as aversion, anger, resentment, envy, jealousy, hatred, and spite. But didn’t we previously render mental volition as karma? [01] The implication is this: when we harbor these adverse emotions, we plant powerful negative mental energies within ourselves — energies that shape our trajectory and experience of reality. We become disposed to act upon these energies and, inevitably, we encounter suffering. Though not necessarily right away.
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19.
When we crave something and live this out through fixed life rules and assumptions, we experience unsatisfactoriness — dukkha — when these expectations go unmet. This often gives rise to mental formations or volitions such as aversion, shame, regret, anger, and resentment. These become karmic seeds planted in the garden of our inner world, and over time, they grow into trees that bear fruit — for better or worse.
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20.
Every time we experience emotions like anger, aversion, greed, envy, or resentment, we nourish the trees they belong to. Within us, we can imagine a tree of anger, planted long ago, and each time we give rise to anger, we feed and strengthen it. Likewise, there is a corresponding tree for each mental volition — aversion, greed, envy, resentment — each one a karmic tree growing within our inner landscape.
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21.
It’s about the trees you choose to plant in your inner garden—whether wholesome or harmful. When I cultivate wholesome mental formations—like kindness, patience, or mindfulness—I plant the seeds of wholesome trees. These grow over time and bear nourishing karmic fruit. But when I feed unwholesome formations like anger, aversion, envy, or resentment, I sow the seeds of harmful trees whose fruit is bitter, even poisonous. The garden of the mind becomes what I continually tend.
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22.
The forging of the twelve links of dependent origination encompasses the manufacturing of the psychosomatic entity via the conditioned establishment of the aggregates. Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations and Consciousness form the walls of the house that is built, and where the ego finds residence in. It is an architectural process performed by the Architect. It is a matter of locating and interrupting him.
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23.
The big bad wolf of the Loka blows down the house every moment to moment and the Architect arduously resurrects it moment to moment. Every moment to moment our psychosomatic self flickers; every moment to moment we experience psychosomatic birth and death.
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24.
One at times can find the tendency of the mind to so tightly grasp a little disturbing. To experience that dread is valid, even deeply meaningful. To witness the mind’s reflexive grasping—especially its desperate insistence that “this is mine” in the face of impermanence—is often unsettling, even uncanny. It's as if something foreign has seized control, clinging blindly to what cannot be held. This can stir a subtle, existential disquiet: “Why does the mind cling so hard? Why can’t it let go—even when I see through the illusion?” It helps to have compassion for the Clinger; to meet the grasping mind with karunā (compassion). Rather than trying to crush the clinging, one can say: “This grasping is just a scared part of the mind. It wants to survive. It doesn’t understand yet.” Bring kindness to the clinger. It will soften more through understanding than force.
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25.
Things that happen in the empirical world (loka) are just phenomena. I transduce information in the phenomena and create karmic energies. Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations, and Consciousness — these are the components of the human machine; a machine that transduces information from the phenomenal world and manufactures karmic energies. Powered by tanhā, the current of craving, it remains active, grasping and generating volition. But when the current of tanhā is cut, the machine falls still. No longer driven by thirst, it ceases to produce karmic energies — and the cycle of becoming is brought to an end.
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26.
We thirst for things that are beautiful, but beauty does not appear to be universal, objective, or eternal, but rather a cultural construct. What is considered “beautiful” is historically and culturally specific — it changes with time and context. The “ideal” beauty standard serves economic interests: it’s designed to keep humans in competition, insecurity, and consumption cycles. In the neo-loka, control is extracted beyond laws and institutions; it is psychological. The control is internalized through shame, anxiety, and obsessive self-monitoring. Humans exert themselves in the neo-loka via time, energy and money in striving to achieve beauty outcomes; often because they subscribe to the beauty narrative on happiness. Mass media plays a central role in manufacturing tanhā and desire by enforcing beauty norms.
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27.
Advertising thrives on the manufacturing of insecurities and creating mindless zombie-like consumerism or tanhā. We as a society are untroubled by the reality of having entire television channels or networks dedicated to shopping, where plastic people are paid to promote an endless parade of products and gizmos with ridiculous names that promise to make monumental change in our lives and our ability to secure happiness via mindless consumerism. We are enticed to phone in and secure these products on illusory ideas of competition and scarcity all on the backs of a capitalist ideology that promises mutual benefit to consumer and commercial or corporate patron.
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28.
At one point in deep time, the Earth was home to multiple varieties of the genus Homo—Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo naledi, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis, and Homo sapiens, among others. Alongside these, species such as the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and Denisovans—close relatives, yet arguably distinct—coexisted and interacted in the shared theatre of evolutionary history. It is a peculiar myopia, then, to presume that Homo sapiens hold a unique or divinely ordained place in the cosmos, as if our present dominance were inevitable or righteous. The extinction of our sister species is not a testament to moral superiority or transcendent wisdom, but rather a historical consequence of our relentless tendency toward tanhā—craving. Whether through resource competition, territorial expansion, or cultural supremacy, Homo sapiens have repeatedly exhibited an insatiable drive to consume, conquer, and outcompete all that is perceived as other. From the cognitive revolution to the agricultural, industrial, and now digital revolutions, our trajectory has been propelled less by wisdom than by a deep, systemic thirst—an unquenchable hunger to become more, to acquire more, to control more. Even our forays into space, framed as triumphs of human aspiration, are born of the same impulse: we ravage one world, then turn our gaze to another. That this species is called sapiens—“wise man”—is not only ironic, but tragically so. Wisdom would restrain thirst, not amplify it. And yet we have built entire civilizations upon its back.
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29.
Society, as we know it, is not a natural entity but a construct—an elaborate edifice erected upon the collective acceptance of imagined orders: laws, norms, hierarchies, and moral codes that lack any objective or transcendental foundation. These imagined structures persist only because enough people believe in them, act according to them, and internalize them as real. From birth, individuals are initiated into these systems through institutions like schooling, which do not merely educate but condition—moulding young minds to conform to protocols that present themselves as inevitable. Deviation from these orders is not merely discouraged; it is often met with hostility that borders on the ritualistic. Society polarizes itself into dualistic categories: the righteous and the wicked, the lawful and the criminal, the good and the evil. People are not understood as complex beings who err, but are flattened into labels—“criminals,” “offenders,” “threats”—thus erasing the human behind the act. This moral absolutism is sustained and reinforced by a media apparatus that fans the flames of division. Turn on the television: the enforcers of the order—the police, the customs officer, the patrol agent—are sanctified as protectors of the public good, while those who challenge or fall outside the order are condemned, caricatured, and othered. The presentation is not neutral; it is a moral theater designed to maintain societal cohesion through fear, shame, and spectacle. In such a world, the police officer is not merely an agent of law, but an agent of orthodoxy, at times indistinguishable from a thought-police officer—subtly or overtly regulating not just actions but thoughts, values, and permissible dissent. Thus, the architecture of society becomes not one of shared flourishing, but of surveillance and obedience. All that remains are churches and prisons—cathedrals of conformity and cages for deviation.
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30.
We are born into the Platonic caves [01] of institutional learning, our heads bound and hands chained from preschool to university, made to gaze upon shadows of high ideals projected on the walls by unseen curators. Conditioned to compete, to compare, to critique—not out of true inquiry but to secure a fragile advantage—we are stratified by marks, honours, and distinctions, tokens that crystallize a worldview of scarcity and struggle. Thus, the rat race is sanctified under the guise of merit and honour, while in truth we are drawn—by design—into the gravitational pull of contribution, into the machinery of societal self-perpetuation. The professions we pursue, exalted as noble, are permitted only insofar as they serve the imagined order. What we call aspiration is often but tanha in disguise—harnessed and repurposed for the growth of the collective edifice. In this, education becomes not enlightenment but indoctrination—a subtle, elegant form of manipulation.
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31.
We move along the great assembly line of life, carried by the silent turning of birth and death’s cyclic gears. From the innocence of childhood, we are ushered through schooling, funnelled into degrees, tethered to employment, paired with partners, married, burdened with children, and finally released into retirement—where the illusory carrot of freedom is dangled just beyond reach. We dwell in checkbox societies, where one’s worth is tallied by milestones met, stages conquered, and qualifiers acquired: a ‘respectable’ job, an ‘attractive’ spouse, a house, a pension. Identity becomes a ledger, its entries prescribed by an order not our own. Along the way, we consume endlessly—goods, titles, experiences—though none will follow us past the threshold of death. Yet we toil at the 9-to-5 not from love but expectation, for when all others endure the same burden, dissent becomes treason. In this, even unemployment becomes a social sin, not for what it is, but for the way it disrupts the herd’s self-justifying yoke.
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32.
There lies a most bitter irony at the heart of modern Buddhist societies: that those who most fervently profess the Dharma are often the most entangled in tanha. Nations draped in saffron robes and chanting sutras with ceremonial precision still relentlessly condition their young—not towards liberation, but towards professional prestige. Beneath the veneer of "noble aspirations," children are rehearsed in ambitions not of wisdom but of social validation, reciting prepackaged dreams of becoming doctors, engineers or lawyers, not from compassion, but from a concealed thirst for status. Thus, Buddhist societies sanctify the very craving their teachings seek to uproot, disguising worldly striving as virtuous attainment, and mistaking conformity for enlightenment.
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33.
In many Buddhist societies, pride is taken in the institutionalization of Buddhist education, yet this reveals a quiet contradiction: for the Dhamma is not a doctrine to be imposed, but a truth to be discovered through personal insight. When the teachings of the Buddha are delivered through rote memorization and enforced recitation, they become mere cultural ornamentation—emptied of meaning, stripped of contemplation. The result is a generation that mouths sutras with mechanical reverence, not born of understanding but of obligation, only to later abandon these rituals for the curated vanities of social media. Thus, what was intended to awaken wisdom becomes another exercise in conformity, where the echo of the Dhamma fades beneath the noise of spectacle and self-image.
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34.
Bollywood extends to the poor and working-class masses of India a lavish mirage—an opulent world of song, justice, and romance that transcends the drudgery of daily subsistence; it is a cinema of dreams, where the powerless can momentarily assume the role of the triumphant, the beautiful, and the beloved. Meanwhile, Hollywood caters to the exhausted middle-classes of the West—those confined by mortgages, school runs, white-picket fences, and the quiet desperation of middle management. To them it offers a different narcotic: a spectacle of superhuman agency, a parade of caped crusaders and fantastical powers that rupture the numbing routine of their lives. These are not mere entertainments but projections of unspoken yearning: to matter, to defy, to rise above the sterile patterns of suburban conformity. Both industries, in their own idiom, serve as cathedrals of escape—one from the crushing weight of poverty, the other from the anaesthetic of affluence. When human beings are reduced to economic functions—producers, consumers, taxpayers—how could they not yearn, in flickering darkened rooms, for a mythic self to emerge from the banal arithmetic of their real lives?
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35.
Though Buddhist cosmology speaks of many hell states, or Narakas—the Sanjīva of reviving torment, the Kālasūtra of searing lines, the Mahāroruva of great wailing, and the Avīci of uninterrupted agony—it is difficult not to regard these as psychological dramatizations, crafted less for ontological precision than to steer the herd with fear and fable. In many Buddhist societies, temples display vivid, theatrical depictions of these hells—grotesque, colourful tableaus meant to frighten the impressionable and the morally obedient into conformity. For what is called “hell” here often appeals to a morality too binary, too bound in notions of sin and virtue, good and evil—concepts the Dhamma subtly undermines. Buddhism, at its core, teaches not of moral absolutism but of conditional arising: action brings consequence, and the fruit is neither righteous nor wicked, but merely bitter or sweet. The wheel does not turn on judgment, but on volition. Thus, one does not inherit a heaven or a hell but constructs it—inwardly, presently, and continuously—through the architecture of mind and the momentum of intent.
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36.
It is the nature of the herd to demand that truth be clothed in narrative, as though the weight of insight requires the scaffolding of story to be palatable. Yet this attachment to the life of the Buddha—as prince of the Sakyas, as infant walking on lotus blossoms, as foretold sage by weeping astrologers, as father to Rahula—though charming and symbolically rich, becomes dangerous when mistaken for the essence rather than the adornment. To cling to these tales is to risk obscuring the Dhamma in mythic fog, allowing binary moral assumptions and misplaced reverence to distort what was never intended to be a cult of personality. The core remains untouched: the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path as the means to end dukkha. When children are told these stories, it is forgivable; but when adults cling to them with devotional fervor, it becomes yet another form of craving—tanha in spiritual disguise. The Buddha is not to be deified or worshipped, for in doing so, we betray the very clarity he sought to awaken in us.
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37.
We dwell only in the present moment—a vanishing fragment suspended between a past that can no longer be altered and a future that remains forever uncertain. This narrow sliver of time is all we truly inhabit, and yet we build entire lives upon it, unaware of how swiftly it slips away. Against the scale of the cosmos, the life of an individual is scarcely a flicker, and even the sum of all human history—confined to this single, fragile planet—is but a faint whisper in the vast silence of the universe. Civilizations rise and fall, names once revered fade from memory, and every heartbeat marches inevitably toward oblivion. Still, it is this very transience that gives our lives their strange, fragile weight. In a universe that forgets, the present moment becomes sacred—precisely because it will not last.
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38.
To meditate deeply is to perceive that all things are intricately interwoven, bound not by chance but by the silent logic of interdependence. Nothing exists in isolation; every atom, thought, and movement echoes across the whole. The flower and the star, the self and the other, the breath and the mountain—each is a thread in the same cosmic fabric of being. The illusion of separateness dissolves when one sees clearly: there is no true duality, only a vast, indivisible unity endlessly expressing itself in form and flux.
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39.
If one dares to synthesize the insights of Plato and the Buddha, one might discern a profound harmony between the tripartite structure of the ideal polis—Guardians, Auxiliaries, and Producers—and the triad of the Noble Eightfold Path—Paññā, Samādhi, and Sīla; for in deep contemplation, the mind itself becomes a city-state to be wisely governed. Treat it valid only as a metaphorical or symbolic model.
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40.
The perennial roots of war lie in scarcity and the competition for resources, in the pursuit of power and geopolitical dominion, in the fires of nationalism and ethnocentrism, and in the lingering shadows of colonialism and historical grievance. Ideological fervor, religious dogma, fear, mistrust, and political instability converge with the proliferation of arms and the psychological residues of our evolutionary past. Yet at the heart of modern conflict escalation stands the global military-industrial complex—a vast machinery that profits from war, lobbies to perpetuate it, manufactures threats to justify it, and weaves economic dependency around it. War becomes an economic engine; death and destruction are monetized; and truth itself is contorted to sustain the marketplace. Thus, the military-industrial complex transforms into a sentient force—insatiable in its hunger for perpetuation—ensnaring the world in cycles of suffering: world wars, cold wars, and wars without end. It is all rooted in tanhā.
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41.
The recognition and treatment of mental illness, both within religious doctrines and modern psychiatric systems, remains lamentably primitive—marked more by dismissal and deflection than by genuine understanding. In many Buddhist traditions, the prevailing view that mental suffering arises solely from a lack of mindfulness or the failure to cultivate one’s mind becomes, in practice, a subtle form of victim-blaming. It imposes a framework where anguish is interpreted as spiritual deficiency, where trauma is mistaken for moral impurity, and where despair is seen not as a cry for understanding, but as a failure of meditation. Such a view, despite its intention to promote inner development, can inadvertently deny the reality of complex emotional pain, social injury, and unresolved grief. The human psyche is not a blank slate waiting to be disciplined—it is a layered, wounded, and meaning-seeking organism shaped by family, culture, history, and silence.
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42.
In turning away from religious counsel, the modern sufferer often finds no greater refuge in psychiatry. The therapist may be more humane, but the psychiatrist, armed with a clinical lexicon and a prescription pad, frequently responds to psychic pain with pharmaceuticals—anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers—drugs that manage, suppress, and tranquilize, but rarely heal. These are often dispensed not as part of a holistic journey of understanding, but as instruments of societal convenience: quick fixes to keep the machinery of normalcy turning. It is easier, after all, to numb the mind than to examine what wounds it; easier to quiet the symptoms than to question the system that bred them.
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43.
What is called mental illness, especially in its depressive forms, is not always the mark of disorder, but often the consequence of being forced to inhabit a disordered world. It is a rational, deeply human reaction to a society that insists on roles without meaning, appearances without authenticity, and progress without soul. Depression arises not from chemical chaos alone, but from existential dislocation—from being expected to perform happiness in a culture that confuses noise for vitality and external achievement for worth. The smiling citizen, the happy little Vegemite, becomes the cultural ideal: one must smile for photos, laugh at appropriate times, attend the function, tick the boxes, remain composed. Beneath this charade, the individual suffocates. The interior world—the one that dreams, doubts, weeps, and wonders—is silenced by the heavy hand of expectation.
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44.
Sylvia Plath, in The Bell Jar, captured this suffocation with searing clarity. The metaphor of the bell jar is not simply a personal symbol—it is a cultural indictment. Esther Greenwood's descent into depression is not irrational; it is the inevitable outcome of being crushed by contradictions: to be gifted but self-effacing, ambitious yet agreeable, free yet domesticated. Plath reveals the great disjunction between appearance and reality: a woman who seems to have everything—opportunity, intellect, beauty—is hollowed out by the pressure to be someone she is not. Her illness is not madness, but the mind's revolt against falsehood. It is the protest of a soul unwilling to die in silence.
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45.
Mental illness, in this light, is not an isolated malfunction within the brain, nor is it solely the result of a spiritually untrained mind. It is a mirror held up to a society that breeds fragmentation, alienation, and inauthenticity. The suffering of the individual exposes the pathology of the collective. And so long as treatments remain fixated on containment—whether through dogma or medication—without attending to the roots of disconnection, inequality, and dehumanization, the illness will remain. Indeed, the true madness may not lie within the so-called patient, but in the structures that demand silence, obedience, and perpetual happiness as the price of belonging. Until society ceases to pathologize the natural cries of the human heart—until it learns to listen rather than medicate, to understand rather than explain away—the bell jars will continue to descend, invisibly, over countless lives
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46.
In seeking refuge from dukkha, many turn to psychology for solutions—whether through cognitive-behavioral therapy or the imaginative prescriptions of Psycho-Cybernetics. The latter, like Buddhism, recognizes the human being as a conditioned, input-output system: both traditions agree that transformation arises through the reconditioning of perception, mental fabrication, and habitual responses. Yet, where they ultimately diverge is in their view of the self. Psycho-Cybernetics urges the construction of a positive self-image—a refined ego-narrative designed to yield success, happiness, and functional stability in the world. Buddhism, by contrast, penetrates more deeply: it teaches that all self-images are fabrications, impermanent and void of inherent essence. From the Buddhist vantage, even the healthiest self-image is but a raft—it may carry one across certain currents of suffering, but it is not the other shore. Maltz invites us to reprogram the self; the Dhamma compels us to see through it. For while Psycho-Cybernetics pursues effectiveness within samsāra, Buddhism seeks its transcendence. Conditioned happiness may console for a time, but only the unconditioned grants true liberation.
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47.
Quantum physics, in unveiling a world where particles arise not as fixed entities but as probabilistic events contingent upon observation and relational context, echoes the Buddhist insight that all phenomena are empty of intrinsic essence, co-arising through dependent origination. Both disciplines, though emerging from disparate traditions—one empirical, the other contemplative—converge upon a reality where the solid dissolves into the flux, the objective collapses into the interdependent, and certainty yields to impermanence. In the quantum field as in the śūnyatā of the Dharma, there is no fixed core to cling to, only process, relation, and conditional appearance. Thus, the physicist and the meditator each confront a universe that denies independent substance and invites the quiet undoing of the self who seeks to grasp it.
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48.
The human mind does not run on infallible software; it is prone to numerous cognitive distortions that subtly warp our empirical perception. These include All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filtering, Discounting the Positive, Mind Reading, Fortune Telling, Catastrophizing, Emotional Reasoning, 'Should' Statements, Labeling, Personalization, Blame, Control Fallacies, the Fallacy of Fairness, Heaven’s Reward Fallacy, the Need to Always Be Right, and the Fallacy of Change. [01][02]
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50.
The heap of matter that our minds render as our body is made up of ever-changing processes occurring within a complex network of systems. There is the circulatory system that transports blood, oxygen, nutrients, hormones and waste products around the body. There is the nervous system which sends and receives processes and nerve impulses. There is the respiratory system that facilitates the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. There is the digestive system which breaks down food into nutrients and wastes. There is the skeletal system which provides structure, support and produces blood cells. There is the muscular system which enables movement and posture. There is the endocrine system which regulates body function via hormones. There is the immunes system which defends against disease and infection. There is the urinary system, which expels waste and excrement. There is the reproductive system which govern sexual function. And there is the sensory and transducer system which receives information input from the world. All these processes run in the background to keep the psychosomatic being alive in samsara. The body is just a system of processes moving rupa around.
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51.
One can cultivate compassion towards the part of us that clings; this being that has perpetually travelled many countless rounds in samsara, that just wants to be happy but out of ignorance has been misled into believing that happiness can be secured by grasping. They remain unaware that in grasping they are only continuing the cycle and their exposure to the blight and suffering in samsara. I can feel empathy and compassion for this being.
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52.
Think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Perhaps the traveller is just seeking their needs fulfilled, but has tried to go about this by grasping? There can be a beautiful integration of Maslow’s framework with the Dhamma. The traveller — that being who wanders through countless lives in samsāra; clinging, striving, suffering—can absolutely be seen as a being trying to fulfill fundamental needs. But due to ignorance (avijjā), it seeks fulfillment through grasping, which only deepens its entrapment.
Let’s explore this:
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Psychological Model)
Maslow identified a progression of human needs:
Physiological – food, shelter, survival
Safety – security, stability
Love/Belonging – connection, acceptance
Esteem – respect, achievement, recognition
Self-actualization – realizing one’s potential
In Buddhist terms, these are valid conditioned needs of a sentient being. They are not evil—but the problem arises in the way we try to meet them.
The Dhamma’s Hierarchy of Release
The Buddha offered a different path:
Dāna – generosity, letting go of clinging to survival needs
Sīla – ethics, providing safety to self and others
Sangha – belonging through spiritual friendship and refuge
Samādhi – inner peace, contentment not based on ego validation
Paññā – wisdom, insight into non-self and cessation
Nibbāna – freedom from all constructed needs; the unconditioned
In this way, the traveller’s search is fulfilled not by acquisition, but by transformation.
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53.
One can have tanhā too for the teachings of the Dhamma, which is why Gotama Buddha advised us to treat it as a raft; once you utilize it to cross the flood, it's best to leave it by the shore and do not carry it on your back with attachment.
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54.
Craving for spiritual progression can in itself be a great barrier on the path to liberation.
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55.
Grasping for supernatural or psychic powers (iddhi) can be a powerful form of craving (tanhā) and arise in the soil of aversion (dosa), delusion (moha) and conceit (māna).
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56.
In Pāli, dukkha evokes the image of a cart with a misaligned axle—each turn of the wheel jostles the rider, making the journey uneasy, unsteady, and unsatisfying. So too is existence when built upon craving, delusion, and attachment.
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57.
Someone that is capable of realization is compared to a lotus flower rising and blossoming above the dirt, muck and deluge of the pond water - which will remain the domain of ignorance (avijjā) and a metaphor of the Loka.
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58.
Those ready to penetrate the truth of the Dhamma are few—like one clutching a handful of leaves, while the forest remains thick with leaves that are unseen and untouched.
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59.
Realization or enlightenment is like a gem immersed in a bowl full of water. when aversion (dosa), craving (tanhā), conceit (māna) and delusion (moha) enter the mind it is like pouring black dye into the bowl.
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60.
Buddhism does not say that magic (iddhi) or magical phenomena (unexplained phenomena) do not exist, but taking fresh delight in the instigation of magic is a huge distraction from the underlying nature of reality as a vessel for dukkha (unsatisfactoriness).
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61.
Fractal mathematical patterns such as the Mandelbrot Set can be used to visualize the nature of conditioned phenomena; examining phenomenal things in the Loka at finer detail reveals that they branch out into multiple infinite regressions or cascades of related phenomena.
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62.
The first link in the chain of dependent origination is ignorance—but ignorance of what? It is ignorance of the Four Noble Truths: that dukkha exists and is encountered by all beings caught in samsāra; that its cause is the relishing of craving (tanhā); that there is an unconditioned state beyond dukkha; and that there is a path to that liberation—the Noble Eightfold Path. Only through deep and direct penetration of these truths does the entire machinery of dependent origination begin to unwind.
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63.
Perhaps Nietzsche was disturbingly accurate in Beyond Good and Evil, where he unveils the unsettling truth that humanity harbors an obsessive fixation on the idea of God—not born from clarity or transcendental insight, but from a deep psychological compulsion. This religious fervor, often mistaken for sacred passion, may instead be a symptom of unresolved trauma, a cry from the fractured depths of the human soul, and a sign of a destiny repressed or derailed. It is not enlightenment that drives multitudes to kneel before the divine, but a desperate need for structure, comfort, and meaning in the face of existential chaos.
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64.
The institutions that claim to uphold God frequently operate not by illuminating truth, but by canonizing hysteria, legitimizing neurosis, and transfiguring fear into faith. The altar is too often a stage where the undiagnosed maladies of the human condition are dressed in robes of sanctity. What is venerated as holy may, upon closer inspection, be a tapestry woven from wounds, disowned desires, social frustrations, and suppressed madness. The God that men cling to is less a being than a psychological artifact—a projection of their need for certainty, authority, and moral absolutes.
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65.
We do not merely believe in God; we invent the creator God. We construct Him to hold at bay the abyss of our own instability, to pacify the chaos that brews in our subconscious, and to guard us from the terror of freedom. This God becomes the imagined guarantor of moral order, a divine overseer fashioned by society to regulate behavior and preserve conformity. But beneath the rituals and the scriptures lies a stark reality: there may be no actual divinity, only the misfiring of human psychology masquerading as revelation. To worship, then, may be not an act of communion with the eternal, but an elaborate defense mechanism against our own unraveling.
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66.
The notion of God, as argued in The God Delusion, is not the culmination of rational inquiry but a vestige of human credulity—an evolutionary by-product of pattern-seeking minds misapplied to the cosmos. Dawkins posits that the hypothesis of a supernatural creator is not only unnecessary for explaining the complexity of life, but implausible in light of natural selection, which offers a far more parsimonious and evidence-based account. Faith, far from being a virtue, is framed as a relinquishing of critical thought—a surrender to inherited dogma and emotional consolation. The improbability of God grows with each invocation of divine complexity, for to explain design with a designer merely inflates the mystery. Religion, in this view, is not a moral compass but a cultural meme—replicated, reinforced, and often wielded as a tool of division, obedience, and control. Thus, the God hypothesis is not only unproven but intellectually redundant: an echo of pre-scientific ignorance masquerading as eternal truth.
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67.
The Übermensch is not one who clings to a single doctrine as if it were a lifebuoy, nor one who succumbs to the tranquil anesthesia of herd-prescribed truths; rather, they are the sovereign cartographer of their own soul, weaving from the threads of diverse philosophies a tapestry of resilient insight. Though Buddhism may serve as the base camp from which one gazes into the abyss of Samsara, it must not become a walled garden. The true seeker, undaunted, ventures across intellectual terrains—Plato to Nietzsche, Upanishads to phenomenology—gathering tools not for blind allegiance, but for wise consolidation. With each insight, they fashion a cloak to shield themselves from the corrosive winds of delusion, until the day they build, not borrow, their raft—crafted from wisdom earned, not inherited—and set forth across the flood. Such is the power and dignity of the Übermensch: not escape, but mastery.
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68.
The earnest Buddhist must guard against the seductive impulse to graft the divine intercessors of Hindu cosmology onto the scaffold of the Dhamma. Though Buddhist thought does not deny the existence of extraplanar beings, it does not assign them salvific power. For the troubled layperson, the notion that all suffering arises from conditioned phenomena may appear bleak, and thus the allure of divine intervention—a prayer here, a blessing there—becomes a comforting illusion. Yet such supplication subtly reintroduces the very clinging Buddhism seeks to uproot. It trades disciplined insight for devotional escape. Liberation from dukkha is not bestowed from the heavens, but forged in the crucible of one’s own effort, mindfulness, and wisdom. No god can walk the Noble Eightfold Path for us.
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69.
Are we not, like Dorothy, wandering bewildered through the dreamscape of Samsara—entranced by the glittering promise of the Emerald City, where the Great Wizard awaits, cloaked in illusion and thunder, a dazzling projection of what we call the self? We follow the yellow-brick path of craving and conditioned belief, hoping to find permanence, control, and meaning in the theatre of impermanence. Yet had we chosen instead the Noble Eightfold Path—subtler, humbler, but true—we might have seen through the curtain, unmasking the delusion of selfhood and awakening not in a city of green glass, but in the clear light of wisdom.
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70.
The world on the surface appears like a technicolor dream.
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71.
We are all lotus plants submerged in the murky bed of the Loka; jealously competing for spiritual insight and a path upwards to the pond's surface.
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72.
We refuse to believe that truth or insight can be attained by our peers or subordinates; our ego, entangled with the invisible scaffolding of societal hierarchies, blinds us. Conditioned to revere authority and status, we dismiss or overlook voices that challenge our assumptions—not on the basis of argument, but on the perceived insignificance of their source. We ask, "Who are they to differ, to invalidate my truth?"—as if wisdom required credentials or seniority. In this way, our clinging to identity view (sakkāya-ditthi) corrodes our philosophical integrity; it is not the truth we seek, but the confirmation of our own intellectual self-image. Thus, our pursuit of insight is often less about seeing clearly than it is about preserving a flattering reflection.
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73
The irreversible cycle of birth and death is mirrored across all tiers of existence—from the perennial rotation of the seasons, the ceaseless march of day and night, the ebb and flow of tides, to the waxing and waning of the moon, and even the rise and fall of civilizations. We are ensnared in an unceasing succession of cycles, each echoing the samsaric law of impermanence, binding us to the ever-turning wheel of becoming.
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74.
Human life unfolds in seasons: the innocent joy of childhood mirrors the freshness of spring; the vitality of adulthood reflects the fullness of summer; the quiet waning of old age parallels the fading hues of autumn; and at last, the stillness of death arrives, cloaked in the cold silence of winter.
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75.
Addiction is no longer confined to heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, LSD, cannabis, or glue. We are equally enslaved by the intoxication of seductive psychological fantasies. In this neo-loka, the definition of intoxicants must extend beyond the boundaries of the Buddha’s time—to include both chemical and cognitive stimulants. Television, cinema, and the internet now function as digital narcotics: they either agitate or sedate the mind, drawing us into illusory worlds designed to shield us from the unbearable weight of truth. Our fantasies are no longer born in solitude but woven collectively through curated images of celebrities, influencers, and algorithmic idols. To uphold the Five Precepts in the neo-loka, one must reinterpret them for the present landscape—for even the one who abstains from alcohol, yet doom-scrolls endlessly in digital haze, partakes in the subtle consumption of mind-corrupting intoxicants. This is the requiem of the dream: we drift through samsara in a lucid hallucination, lulled by the music of dukkha, echoing through the chambers of our craving.
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76.
Much like the figures in Inside Out (2015), every emotion we entertain arises as a distinct mental visitor—Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger—each one a manifestation of conditioned phenomena (sankhāra) shaped by contact and perception. In the Buddhist view, these are not fixed selves but impermanent aggregates (khandhas) that appear, perform their function, and pass away. To see these emotions as passing characters rather than inherent identities is to begin the work of disidentification. Through mindfulness (sati), we learn neither to cling to Joy nor resist Sadness, neither be consumed by Anger nor paralysed by Fear. Instead, we observe each visitor with equanimity, understanding that they too are not-self (anattā) and part of the ceaseless flux of samsaric experience.
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77.
Alice had the right idea in entering the rabbit hole because that's where the societal constructs breakdown; the herd majority, including psychiatrists, call it madness.
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78.
Time is lived moment to moment as if one were to peek through the slots of a phenakistoscope; the being is in motion but there is no anima (soul).
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79.
The neo-loka is a mirror-world fashioned by surveillance capitalism—an evolved system of synthetic sophistication that does not merely harvest identity but engineers it. Behavioral surplus, drawn from the unconsenting flow of lived experience, is rendered into predictive commodities, shaping futures before they are chosen. This capitalism does not exploit labor alone; it exploits the very concept of self—extracting, manipulating, and reconstructing identity to sustain its markets. In this world, the self is not sovereign, but a substrate for algorithmic modification, a resource to be mined, moulded, and monetized.
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80.
In the delicate dance between parent and child, the middle path must prevail. A parent must not be a warden of risk, nor a tyrant of perfection—for to shield a child from error is to bar them from wisdom. Mistakes, even grave ones, are the very texture of samsaric life; they are how the Dhamma imprints itself upon the heart. A child must discover, in their own time, that the flame burns because it is hot. Thus, education is not the sole duty of a parent, despite its cultural exaltation in many Buddhist households. Far more vital is the creation of a home imbued with tenderness, safety, and the absence of fear. From this ground, the love of truth, of curiosity, of insight, will flower naturally. Strict curfews, imposed discipline, and coerced achievement may yield the 'successful citizen'—but such success often signals deeper entrapment in the wheel of becoming. Parents must ask whether they raise children to fulfill societal blueprints or to liberate beings. True love is not control, but spaciousness; not attachment, but reverent release. And children, in turn, should not mistake this freedom for indifference. They must come to see their parents as rare and luminous beings—unique in the cosmos, worthy of deep respect, not because they commanded, but because they loved.
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81.
Aren't we just like Golem chasing after the one Ring; beings caught in tanha? Aren’t we fixated on different things with the idea, ‘My Precious!’
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82.
A Buddhist must not avert their gaze from the architecture of capitalism, for it is a system born of craving, sustained by exploitation, and evolved through ever more insidious forms. Rooted in the glorification of self-interest and structured by class hierarchies, its history bleeds with the wounds of colonial conquest, forced dispossession, and war made profitable. In its modern guise—surveillance capitalism—it no longer merely consumes labor, but identity itself. The poor and the homeless are not seen as fellow sentient beings, but as externalities to be ignored. And though Marx may have rightly diagnosed its ills, even his alternative falls prey to the same delusion: that economic systems can deliver liberation. Economics, in both capitalist and communist expressions, is but the machinery of tanha—the institutionalization of our collective thirst. The wise, therefore, approach the economy not with devotion, but with caution—engaging only so far as is needed to satisfy the basic conditions for sanity and dignity. Beyond that, let one remain inwardly distant, lest the machinery claim their mind.
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83.
The Five Horsemen: War, Pestilence, Famine, Death & Misinformation: will always exist in the Loka; it is the nature of Samsara.
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84.
Suicide is the terminus of a labyrinth, not a single thread—and yet society insists on reading it as a straight line. Those who contemplate or disclose such thoughts are too often met not with compassion, but with condemnation: labelled as selfish, unstable, or deluded before their pain is even heard. This reflex—whether from clinicians, laypersons, or even monks—reflects a deep discomfort with suffering, and a desire to categorize rather than understand. In doing so, society perpetuates the very isolation and despair it claims to abhor. Let it be remembered: spiritual authority does not confer omniscience, and to speak with certitude on the fate of the soul is to trespass into noumenal realms where, as Kant warned, knowledge cannot go. A monk who answers the unspeakable with platitudes does not guide, but silences. What is needed is not the presumption of answers, but the presence of love.
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85.
A true seeker of knowledge must hold a profound respect for books—not as burdens of obligation, nor as mere tools toward practical ends, but as portals to the infinite landscapes of thought and understanding. One must surround oneself with books that do more than fill shelves: they must stimulate the intellect, challenge assumptions, and unlock new corridors within the mind, opening fresh vantage points upon the world, human nature, and the grand tapestry of the cosmos. Frequent the sanctuaries of learning—libraries, those quiet cathedrals of reflection—where the presence of books invites contemplation untainted by haste or coercion. Engage with texts not out of necessity, but from a genuine delight in discovery. Read with curiosity unbound by the constraints of employment or societal expectation; for education in its truest form is the nourishment of the soul and the expansion of perspective. Browse bookstores with the spirit of an adventurer, for the written word is one of humanity’s most affordable treasures. Build your personal collection, however modest, and take joy in the tactile communion with these vessels of knowledge and imagination. Let books become companions, constant and steadfast, guiding you through the ever-unfolding mysteries of existence.
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86.
The lay person gets educated in terms of getting a qualification as a basis for finding employment. This is a basis for financial stability. This is a basis for getting married and having a family and children. It is only after getting to this stage in the wheel of life and death, and after progressing significantly up the corporate ladder, that they suddenly feel inclined to depreciate and devalue all this and take a keen interest in meditation - even driving far out to meditation retreats on the weekends. It is only once they are already immersed and tangled in the net or snare of the Loka, as a mere and pathetic afterthought. But I would say it is too late to make meaningful correction. Why didn't they exert so much meditation in their formative years? No, they were too busy craving chasing and having tanha.
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87.
The requirement of a university degree is a worldly hoop you don't have to jump through for spiritual liberation from Samsara.
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88.
Being grateful performs positive magic on the procedurally generated reality around you. Whether in meditation or through mindful micro-observations in daily life, reflect with appreciation on all that the universe has provided: a healthy body, nourishing food, life-sustaining water, shelter, a safe place to sleep, life-giving oxygen, a stable livelihood, peace within society, financial security, meaningful friendships, intimate relationships, family, creative expression, modes of transport, personal growth, peak experiences, spiritual paths, opportunities for altruism, loving parents, or cherished possessions. Chances are, we have some of these blessings, and contemplating them deeply should fill us with gratitude—reminding us that we are more fortunate than many. Traditional Buddhism teaches that our station in life is shaped by accumulated karma—a truth that dwells in the noumenal realm. Yet, what we can observe clearly is this: embracing gratitude transforms how we filter the unfolding stream of reality ahead, coloring our future experience with positivity and resilience.
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89.
In capitalist economies it is often monetary systems that bind us to tanha and ultimately Samsara; and if one finds an anomaly lifestyle that removes one from the process of exchanging labour power for money it can be a huge blessing.
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90.
When things go our way, like when we find a parking spot in a busy shopping centre, it can be quite delusional to think our good fortune as miraculous and then attribute it to some divine intervention, i.e. some god or deity is looking out for us. But thinking so is often just an inflammation of our egos and reveals how myopic and egocentric our understanding of the world is and our place in it.
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91.
Have metta for others and have metta for yourself; radiate friendship, compassion and kindness indiscriminately inwards and outwards like a bright light that floods all the directions and planes of the universe.
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92.
Everyone films the “Karen,” but few reflect on the unseen psychological wounds that may have shaped her behavior. Public outrage is swift; introspective compassion is rare.
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93.
Alpha personalities are built for worldly success, but I feel it is the Omega wolf that has a better shot at escaping Samsara.
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94.
When you come across the flood you are going to have to build the Raft with all the knowledge that you have accumulated along your journey through Samsara; this is where it pays to have absorbed as many knowledge enriched books, documentaries, films, plays, songs and yes, even tv-series as possible. People confined to monastic life often have a disadvantage here. The Dhamma provides the core structure of the Raft, but you need a rich, diverse expansive knowledge to hold the totality of the Raft together. The themes of the knowledge-content that you consume can often provide deep insight into patterns and natures of the Loka, which all help in grasping Dhamma.
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95
This is the city of Samsara [01], and you can explore it via the city loop. You go to the Showgrounds to see the Show. It is a carnival of fresh delights; tastes, sights, smells and sounds of the Loka. All around people are going on rides, eating hotdogs and cotton candy, petting cuddly animals, buying showbags full of goodies. You go past the grand Football Stadium, the neo-Colosseum, and see fans garishly dressed in their team colours parading to watch the game; shouting, cheering and clapping. Your train goes past the majestic Casino where giant pillars erupt in flames, and people partake in gambling and intoxication. Against the twilight skyline are the gold tipped eureka towers, giant metropolis citadels that rise upwards via the forces of hypercapitalism like towers of Babel. ‘Wow’ you say, ‘This is the city of distractions!’
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96.
The collective outlook of the herd is to revere monetary systems with unquestioning faith, treating them like worship-able deities of human civilization. Rarely is there pause to consider their darker undercurrents—their power to commodify human life, to reduce dignity to purchasing power, and to subtly enslave individuals within the ceaseless machinery of market forces. In the endless cycle of Samsara, where craving perpetuates suffering, money becomes both the object of desire and the means of bondage—ensnaring the many in illusions of choice, while quietly eroding their autonomy and deeper purpose.
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98.
Morpheus tells the Neo-Man in the Training Simulation that not all the Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, and Carpenters are ready to be unplugged from the Matrix-Cave — the digital mirage that is Samsara — but only those who possess the added traits of Re-Programmers, Mind-Hackers, and true Philosophers.
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99.
Mental Formations are the subtle architects of our inner world. They manifest as:
Emotions — the felt pulse of mind and body.
Cognitive Activity — analysing, judging, rationalising, fantasising.
Views and Beliefs — assumptions, narratives, identifications.
Habits of Thought — rumination, obsession, internal monologue.
Memories — the echoes that colour the present.
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100.
The Buddha taught that mental formations — volitional dispositions — pertain directly to karma. Certain thoughts generate mental energy that, over time, carve a trajectory into the future. This energy is potential, like water banked up against a dam, silently shaping what is to come. Karma, then, refers not to the result, but to our volition — the disposition to act following a thought. By acting, we bring about future states in accordance with the wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral quality of our actions. It is crucial to avoid the herd-moralist misunderstanding of karma as the result — as “good” or “bad” karma. Karma is simply governed by the principle of cause and effect. The result is known as the fruit (phala), but karma itself is defined as mental volition (cetana).
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101.
Traversing the Noble Eightfold Path, one begins by cultivating Ethical Conduct (Sīla) through Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood—establishing the moral foundation necessary for deeper practice. Upon this base arises Mental Discipline (Samādhi), refined through Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration, which steady the mind and prepare it for profound inner seeing. This disciplined stillness opens the gateway to Wisdom (Paññā), accessed through Right View and Right Intention, the entry point into Vipassanā, or Insight meditation. Here, one directs luminous attention toward the impermanent, selfless, and unsatisfactory nature of all phenomena, gradually dismantling the illusions of Duality and Identity View. Thus, the Eightfold Path reveals itself not merely as an ethical code, but as a systematic meditative framework culminating in liberating insight.
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102.
Often we are troubled by darker memories of the past. They surface like submarines from the depths of our subconscious. It can feel at times that there is some troubled supervillain deep within us; someone hidden away in a subconscious fortress or base and launching these memory submarines to the surface. It is important to feel mettā for this misunderstood character and deploy the depth charges of loving kindness.
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Let’s Work Together
If you have questions, reflections, or would like to discuss these meditations further, feel free to reach out. I welcome thoughtful dialogue.