what’s all the talk about awakening?

Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering

Photo: Roses Street, pixabay

There are countless articles across the web about what it means to awaken, how to awaken, steps for awakening, who is awakened, and so on, but one may ask whether any of this kind of content has any real value at all.

wisdom from a young steve martin
In 1978 I went to a huge concert at the University of Florida to hear a new comic named Steve Martin. One of the make-em-up songs he introduced that night was one with the lyrics, “talk about things you don’t know about…” Not only did these words make an impression on my mind, but also the minds of many others who heard Steve Martin in those early days. Talk about things you don’t know about.

Do we really know what we are talking about? Do we question whether what we have heard and accepted is actually true? How colored are we by our unchallenged beliefs and attachments?

a lesson not learned right away
Later in 1978, after graduation from Journalism school at a major university, I moved to Miami, Florida. I picked up a newspaper one morning to read that Isaac Beshevis Singer, a brilliant and prolific novelist whose books I had read, had just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The article…