Post Vajrayana in Kampuchea

13/4 Practice cultivating bodhicitta—love of all beings including oneself—until the sky opens up as a parachute for everyone. But one that hasn’t a single shape or color and is omnidirectional. It is seemingly everything already and yet because it’s completely in the ‘now’ it’s thought to be    ephemeral and nothing at all. It is us and not us, both that and not that, as well. Why then ask what color is your parachute? Better to have it open on its own and be surprised at its color. But what then if it never opens? Try to imagine that…hitting the ground from a great height. It’s OK. I’ve imaged that and didn’t physically die. This is similar to focusing on one’s being that is not a being nor a nonbeing. Then, gathering it all—one’s ontology—into a sum of experiences and stuffing it back into its parachute pack, imagining it as one’s primordial safety net. A security blanket your baby self has now outgrown. Consider this, has it been worth it? The pain versus the pleasure? Did ...

Is there a Buddhist teaching that captures this modern psychological observation: Ulterior motives eventually surface? One may publicly pursue a modest or secondary benefit while privately driven by another, more self-serving aim. For a time the arrangement can remain hidden—even from oneself. Yet once circumstances become complex, resistance grows, and other people fail to cooperate, the concealed agenda often announces itself through disproportionate conflict. Buddhist traditions do not usually frame the issue in modern therapeutic language. Yet taken together, Buddhist ethics, mindfulness, and epistemology offer a remarkably subtle account of how hidden motives form, how they reveal themselves, and how they may be relinquished. Intention Governs Outcome Early Buddhism places intention (cetanā) at the center of moral life. Karma is not merely what one does, but the intention animating the act. As the  Dhammapada  opens: “Mind precedes all phenomena… if one speaks or acts wit...