Dear Sensei Tony- What does the Buddha Shakyamuni mean to you? This is Samuel. Thank you for this question. Wow. It’s a big one! Well, there isn’t really enough room in this exchange to tell you everything he means to me because he literally has been a central figure in my entire life. My devotion to his teachings and legacy are so intertwined with my own, that I really can’t separate them. That being said, let me outline what some scholars have written: ‘The Buddha was consi

Dearest Sensei: Can you please describe the True Self? This is Bob. Hi Bob -What most people mistake as their selves is the outer shell, the Ego Self. It is created out of physical and social conditioning and is experienced as separate from our True Self. And while I’ve written about this in several books ( https://www.asksenseitony.com/store ), I will summarize here in brief: • The True Self lies beneath the ego, and is our true nature and ground of our personal being. It i

Dear Sensei Tony:  What do you think of what people call“the law of attraction”? This is Paul.   Hi Paul. What an interesting query. My personal understanding is that everything in nature obeys certain laws of action and reaction, that in an interdependent reality, all things are connected. Now, I also believe that consciousness is primary and that it is creative, but I know that this creativity is greatly affected by our own human limitations. Please see The Second Principle

Hi Andrew. That’s a deep question. My immediate answer is no, but this is an important and complex topic. Some scholars have said that the practice of sacrifice reflects some sort of primal blood lust or instinctive death drive, but I believe that evolutionary psychology reveals that the origin of sacrifice is in the feeling of safety with one’s fellows when such an act brought survival of the group.   I believe that blood sacrifice, of either animals or human beings, was ori