The Tao of Enlightened Conversation

Steve and I have been trying to define what Rebel Zen is all about and one thing we want to convey is that it’s not just meant to be a mega-phone for what we have to say, but rather what we really want is to be part of the conversation.

Ok, that sounds like a bit of a Web 2.0 cliche I admit, but nevertheless it’s true.

Our reason for starting this website was to help others to see that there is so much information out there now that everybody who is seeking what we loosely call “Enlightenment” can truly ‘do it themselves’. Hence the DIY Enlightenment tag.

As for what enlightenment means, well that’s not something that we feel we have the right to define for you either. Defining what enlightenment is (and realising this enlightenment) is a totally personal and subjective thing. You might completely disagree with us, for example, by believing that your guru is the one and only path to true salvation. That’s okay as long as you’re prepared to enter into a discussion about that.

Or to give a less extreme example, you might not be so sure that everybody is already enlightened. So write about that (or make a video or whatever) and let us and every body else know.

Can You Hear the Voices?

I personally have been delighted by the bloggers and thinkers that I have discovered are out there over the months since we started Rebel Zen. With the motivation of wanting to attract some “traffic” (horrible term that) to this website, I started taking the time to read more blogs, and follow their commenter’s links back to their own blogs and I must admit I have been surprised and impressed. I now truthfully surf around each day just because I genuinely love reading the words of all these awesome people that are out there, shining their lights for all to see.

There are so many great thinkers who have been given voice by the social internet and so many different opinions, ideas and strategies for personal liberation. I just think it’s a wonderful thing. Not just wonderful but, really, it’s quite amazing, especially if you stop to think about how things were in the past, when information of this type was a scarce, top-down commodity. These days, to get back to the DIY Enlightenment theme, it really is possible to wade through mountains of inspiring words, sounds and images, and even better, to start or join in conversations about ideas you either don’t get, don’t agree with, or just think are so amazing that you must share them with the rest of the world.

So stay tuned to Rebel Zen over the coming weeks and months, because we have plans to really “open-house” this little corner of the web. They’re loose plans, and better to show than waffle on about them (because some of these ideas might not stick) but these cautions aside, we hope it’s going to mean that RebelZen.com becomes a very useful place to visit if you’re interested in deciding for yourself what “it’s all about”.

To kick things off, and why I made up the new category of “Worth A Look”, I am now going to roll through some of the most inspiring stuff I have come across via the tubes today. Feel free to point our noses in the direction of anything complementary (or not, doesn’t matter) via the comments function:

A Singularity in Time Part II

Here author Peter Russel talks of the dawning of a Wisdom Age, sprouting off the back of the Information Age. He says, “Never before have we been able to access so much spiritual wisdom.” – and that’s exactly what I was yammering on about above. Further to this Russel says, “Something completely new is emerging: a single spiritual teaching that is a distillation of the world’s wisdom traditions” and he gives the reason for this as being the amazing availability of information that the internet has facilitated. I couldn’t agree more. I see the perennial philosophy being discussed around the cyber-traps every day.

Don’t be a Sellout: A Guide to Staying Real

Jonathan Mead is back with a cracker of a post over at Illuminated Mind. This dude’s getting real popular and it’s in no small part due to the uncompromising stance he takes on a number of issues, mostly how to live an authentic life on your own terms. He includes a couple of links in this post, the following two of which really rocked my little socks.

What is the Meaning of Life?

Good question.

Umm, is it cheese cake?

I’m pretty sure it’s a cake of some kind…

Zen practitioner Mary Jaksch offers up some words for the wise here – pointing out that if you see life as a path then you’re likely to miss the point. You’d be forever projecting into the future instead of actually being aware of the present moment (i.e. reality). I like her quirky suggestion that life is better viewed as a spot than a linear progression.

Not Being a Real Person: The #1 Self-Development Anti-Hack

As I said in its comments section, this post really made me feel better about being a freak. I mean to say, I’m pretty cool with that fact most of the time, but today I was sort of feeling a bit guilty that all I really could be bothered doing was just lazily surfing through my RSS browser and eating butternut snaps.

Well – good God damn – why the hell shouldn’t I? For I am an “unreal person” not some lame-arse ‘fraidy-cat conformist.

Shit yeah.

And the late, great, drunken Rebel Zen Master, Alan Watts supports this unreservedly in Life and Music.

Don’t fall for the hoax kids! Live the here-now with passion and leave the future be.

Cheers,

Seamus Anthony