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84 Questions to last a lifetime

 

Dear Readers,

 

Here are four questions leading into 80 questions to encourage an exploration of our phenomenal existence. We waste our life if we sleep walk through it. Let us exercise the quiet inner power of consciousness to inquire into our relationship to this field of human being and  human activity. If you wish, read through the 80 questions. There is no single answer to any question.  The genuine answer makes a real difference to your life.

 

Here are four questions.

 

1. Does a question or two among the 80 questions stand out for you as relevant?

2. Would you be willing to live the question or two until a response comes from the depth of being?

3. Do you get a deep and helpful response from within or without?

4. Would you will be willing to live the response?

 

Ten Questions about Myself

 

  • If I am the same person all my life, does it mean I cannot change?

  • If I am always changing, does it mean I can never stay the same?

  • If I am the same and different, which part of me is the same and what part is different?

  • If I have choice, why would I choose stress, anxiety and suffering?

  • If I have no choice, do circumstances determine my life?

  • If I am a product of my past, am I a prisoner to my history?

  • If I am not a product of my past, then what am I?

  • Am “I” substantial or insubstantial?

  • Is my life only leading me to death?

  • Is my life leading me somewhere or nowhere?

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Ten Questions on the Real

 

  • What is the real?

  • What confirms the real?

  • What is deceptive?

  • What dissolves the deceptive?

  • Is there a relationship between experience and the real?

  • Can only experience confirm the real?

  • What is the difference between the real and the deceptive?

  • Is the real the world of subject and object?

  • Does change, impermanence, evolution confirm or obscure the real.

  • Why does realization reveal love and joy?

 

Ten Questions of the Now

 

  • If the past and future are thoughts, is there only the now?

  • If now is made up from the past, is the now only the past?

  • If the now is not the past, what is it?

  • What is beneficial about being in the now?

  • What is not beneficial about being in the now?

  • Is the future an extension of the now?

  • Is the future different from the now?

  • Are we tied to our perceptions of the past, present and future?

  • Is what is now, only the effect of the past and the cause for the future?

  • Does our description of now reveal the present as it is?

  • Do our non-descriptions of the now reveal it as it is?

  • Does being in the now confirm or obscure what matters?

 

Ten Questions on Knowledge

 

  • Is there an ultimate knowledge?

  • What is relative knowledge?

  • What is the relationship between ignorance (not knowing) and deceptive reality?

  • What is the difference between knowing and knowing about?

  • Does a prosperous life obscure ultimate knowledge?

  • Does poverty reveal ultimate knowledge?

  • What thoughts support inquiry into an ultimate knowledge?

  • What thoughts get in the way of inquiry into an ultimate knowledge?

  • What knowledge leads to self-other deception?

  • What knowledge contributes to an awakened life?

 

Ten Questions on Impermanence

 

  • After insights into impermanence, what next?

  • What are the benefits of seeing impermanence?

  • What are the limits of meditating on impermanence?

  • Everything (in mind/matter) is changing, impermanent. What is your response?

  • Is seeing impermanence only a means for letting go of clinging?

  • Does impermanence confirm or refute the self?

  • What shows attachment to seeing impermanence?

  • Does impermanence confirm reality?

  • Is permanence a belief, a view or a truth?

  • Is impermanence a relative truth or an ultimate truth?

 

Ten Questions on Objectivity

 

  • Do thoughts determine an objective world?

  • Do non thoughts determine an objective world?

  • Do thoughts determine a subjective world?

  • If thoughts determine an objective world, why do we disagree?

  • If thought determine a subjective world, why do we agree?

  • If both, why is it hard to know what is objective and subjective?

  • Can matter know itself?

  • Can non-matter know matter?

  • Can one part of the mind look at the other part of the mind?

  • What part of the mind makes the comment on these two parts of the mind?

 

Ten Question on the self

 

  • Why do others see me different from the way I see myself?

  • Why do others see me the way I see myself?

  • When do I rely upon for clarity, the way others see me?

  • When I do rely upon for clarity, the way I see myself?

  • If I have one self, why are there several voices inside of me?

  • If I experience several selves, which one can I rely upon?

  • If the mind is divided, how can get it become whole?

  • If the mind is whole, how can it become divided?

  • If the mind is always the mind, how can it evolve?

  • If the mind is not just the mind, what can it evolve to?

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Ten questions on the path

 

  • How can the limits of spiritual practice lead to the limitless

  • How can non-practice lead to the limitless?

  • If I travel in one direction, what am I travelling away from?

  • If I do not walk the spiritual path, why do I choose to remain where I am?

  • If I walk the spiritual path, could I be going in the wrong direction?

  • If I don’t walk the path, could I be stuck in my conditioning?

  • What dissolves the duality of the practitioner and the practice?

  • Are the path and the goal essentially different?

  • Are the path and the goal essentially the same?

  • What is the basis for saying there is no path and no goal?

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May all beings go deep into the questions of life

May all beings come to realisations

May all beings live with love and liberation

 

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