Happiness

In a modern world that values activity, achievements and results, it is perhaps surprising that more people are turning to meditation. For all the activity of modern society, many still feel a fundamental need for silence, inner peace, and a moment of reflection. Take a moment to set aside all your problems, goals, ambitions, failures, and achievements. For these things are transitory, and cannot provide us with true purpose and meaning in our lives. True peace of mind is found in the stillness and silence of the present. And it is in the present that the true wisdom of the heart is revealed.

Happiness will never be found with a "gaining" idea! True happiness is synonymous with true love, it is unconditional, before and after all our gains and losses, before and after all of our failures and achievements, and always here in the present.

Take time to meditate daily, and deepen the awareness of the happiness and love present here and now.

Letting Go

Buddhist practice leads to a letting go that is more demanding than what ordinary life usually requires. Beyond relinquishing particular desires and opinions, we practice letting go of the underlying compulsion to cling to desires and opinions.This is not just letting go of outdated and inaccurate self-concepts; it also involves giving up a core conceit that causes us to cling to ideas of who we are or aren't. The practice of letting go is often mistrusted. One good reason being that without wisdom it is easy to let go of the wrong things.
Also it can suggest deprivation, weakness and personal diminishement. However, when someone is clinging to the past, it is not the past that needs to be abandoned, rather it is the clinging . The past may be a source of understanding. When there is no clinging to it, it is easier to learn the lessons the past provides. At times, it is important to understand the shortcomings of what we are clinging to before we are able to let go. Sometimes it is more important to understand the shortcomings of the grasping itself rather than the object of grasping. Grasping always hurts. It is the primary source of suffering. It limits how well we can see what is happening. When it is strong, clinging can cause us to lose touch with ourselves. It interferes with our ability to be flexible and creative and it can be a trigger for afflictive emotions. There is another side of letting go that we learn to let go into something valuable. From this side, letting go is more about what is gained than what is lost. When we let go of fear, it my also be possible to let go into a sense of safety or a sense of relaxation. Forsaking the need to be right or to have one's opinions justified can allow a person to settle into a feeling of peace.
By letting into something beneficial, it can be easier to let go of something harmful. At times, people don"t want to let go because they do not see the alternative as better than what they are holding on to . One of the nice things about letting go into something is that it has less to do with willing something or creating something than it does with allowing or relaxing. A wonderful result of letting go is to experience each moment as being enough, just as it is.
Buddhist practice leads to a letting go that is more demanding than what ordinary life usually requires. Beyond relinquishing particular desires and opinions, we practice letting go of the underlying compulsion to cling to desires and opinions.This is not just letting go of outdated and inaccurate self-concepts; it also involves giving up a core conceit that causes us to cling to ideas of who we are or aren't. The practice of letting go is often mistrusted. One good reason being that without wisdom it is easy to let go of the wrong things.
Also it can suggest deprivation, weakness and personal diminishement. However, when someone is clinging to the past, it is not the past that needs to be abandoned, rather it is the clinging . The past may be a source of understanding. When there is no clinging to it, it is easier to learn the lessons the past provides. At times, it is important to understand the shortcomings of what we are clinging to before we are able to let go. Sometimes it is more important to understand the shortcomings of the grasping itself rather than the object of grasping. Grasping always hurts. It is the primary source of suffering. It limits how well we can see what is happening. When it is strong, clinging can cause us to lose touch with ourselves. It interferes with our ability to be flexible and creative and it can be a trigger for afflictive emotions. There is another side of letting go that we learn to let go into something valuable. From this side, letting go is more about what is gained than what is lost. When we let go of fear, it my also be possible to let go into a sense of safety or a sense of relaxation. Forsaking the need to be right or to have one's opinions justified can allow a person to settle into a feeling of peace.
By letting into something beneficial, it can be easier to let go of something harmful. At times, people don"t want to let go because they do not see the alternative as better than what they are holding on to . One of the nice things about letting go into something is that it has less to do with willing something or creating something than it does with allowing or relaxing. A wonderful result of letting go is to experience each moment as being enough, just as it is.

What is Wellness? Wellness is a multi-dimensional state of balance including emotional, environmental, physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of an individual.The key is to develop balance within each dimension, resulting in balance between all dimensions. Simply put, wellness is balance.

The importance of developing balance between all dimensions of wellness is expressed clearly using "the wheel" metaphor. As the wheel is comprised of many spokes, it only takes one spoke out of tune to throw the wheel out of alignment. As individuals and members of one universal organism, we must realize wellness to live the fullest potential of quality and longevity of life.

The purpose of offering a wellness program is to facilitate supportive environments to help each individual realize total well-being. We will accomplish this by offering educational, inspirational, and experiential opportunities to explore and develop balance within and between all dimensions of well-being.

The spokes:
1) People are disconnected from people. We must learn and develop skillful, compassionate social interaction in all relations. If this is not addressed as a key factor in our individual well-being we will experience toxic relationships within families, cities, states, and nations.

2) People are disconnected from nature. We must come to understand our place as human species in nature, what effect we have on nature, and how we can live in balance with/as nature. We are of nature, if we fail to see this inherent truth of our being we become toxic to nature, which means we become toxic to ourselves.

3) People are disconnected from their physical body. We must come back to functional movement as a natural physical state, we must understand what nutrition is, and we must see how stress (mental/emotional, chemical, physical) effects the body. Look around you and you will see the results of neglecting physical wellness, obesity, heart disease, cancer, chronic back, neck, and joint injury, etc.

4) People are disconnected from their minds. Are we our minds? are we limited to our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc. Do we have control over our thoughts, feelings, perceptions? Are we using our minds in a way that creates harmony and balance in our lived present (Now) experience. Another way to say this, an even more accurate way is to say "when we are truly connected to our minds, we are connected to our hearts". Life is love, love is life, if we do not find and develop a connection with our minds/hearts we will pay the ultimate price, we will not experience true love.

The path to well-being starts now.

Step out of the gym, and into the light

Light is usually underrated as a factor in human health. Modern discoveries in chronobiology are revealing the power of light in health, disease, psychology and
happiness. As it turns out, light acts as a master force, tuning and synchronizing every process in the human body. Unnatural light sources scramble our physiological rhythms and wreak all sorts of downstream havoc with our health and fitness. This is amazing stuff!! This "master force" that is continually fine tuning our physical organism is known as the circadian, day-night rhythm. All animals, including humans, are intimately connected to this cyclic pattern. All organisms on earth are driven by circadian cycles.

It turns out there is actually a functioning part of the brain which comes equipped with a circadian pulse generator called the suprachaismatic nucleus (SCN). This bit of tissue consists of a mere 20,000 neurons that keeps a circadian beat, roughly timed to 24 hours. This is totally cool in itself, but even more fascinating is the fact that this endogenous pulse generator is only a blunt timing instrument that approximates the earth’s circadian rhythm. To manage physiology effectively, it needs to be fine tuned (entrained) by actual environmental conditions, specifically by exposure to direct, natural sunlight.

Our modern world provides weak, ineffective cues to day-night cycles. From the modern body’s point of view, it is almost as if dawn and dusk are constantly shifting in random patterns. It is no wonder that we’re confused. We are not being refreshed by the master system. We stay up late into the night and/or get up before dawn. We watch television and live in front of computers. And even when we are awake during the day, we expose ourselves to artificial lights that are simply too weak to entrain our biological clocks. Clearly, the light coming off a computer screen is no substitute for the sun. It’s no surprise that our rhythms tend to drift. Ultimately, the result is physiological mischief. There is no telling how many physical afflictions stem, directly or indirectly, from poorly synchronized physiology.

As a body professional, I was taught that homeostasis is the body’s prime directive, but that is only half the story. The body drives towards a stable homeostatic state, but it also seeks oscillation and synchronization with the environment. Thus, my physiology is different at sunrise than it is at noon. And of course, it will be different tomorrow than it was today. I am constantly rearranging my tissue in waves of anabolic and catabolic activity. What this clearly indicates is that the timing to my food consumption and exercise is just as important as "what" foods I consume, and frequency and duration of my exercise.

Unfortunately we have not yet tapped into the power the circadian cycles offer. Very few physicians tell their patients when to take medications for example, and scarcely any trainers are scheduling their sessions to match up with circadian realities. And in the world of big fitness, modern health clubs show blatant disregard for light, dark or time of day. With constant levels of illumination in 24 hour facilities, every hour is the same as every other hour. To me this is a reflection of the mentality and underlined motive of most companies and individuals in the health and fitness industries. $$$PROFIT$$$, and that's it.

For now we can work with what we know. Here are some tips to help you take advantage your new found knowledge.For the moment, we can build on a few key findings. For example, we know that tissue repair peaks between midnight and 4:00am. (“Go to bed!”) We know that concentration, logical reasoning and alertness are at their lowest between 4:00am and 6:00am. (“Take your time waking up.”) We know that heart efficiency, muscle strength and flexibility are all highest between 4:00pm and 8:00pm. (“Try for your personal best in the late afternoon.”) With experience, we will ultimately be able to tune our activity to match up with these circadian realities.

And #1 on the list, if the sun is shining, get your butt outside!!!

Be Well,
Abijah, Fat Free Buddha, Offering Outdoor group fitness classes. call for consultation and first class free. 408-469-6764

Move from the center! The practice of Zen meditation and Wing chun kung fu are one and the same, to harmonize body and mind as one. This practice is finding ones center, moving from it and continually flowing to it. The Center is completely silent, still, and empty. From this center all life, love, and creativity arise as a continuous flow of experience. To realize and develop ones intuitive awareness of the center is to find the source of what you are, which is true peace, love, and harmony.

A Zen Master was once asked " after over 65 years of Zen practice and meditation, what would you say is the core of what you have learned? The Master answered " An appropriate response". Moving from the center is another way of saying appropriate response. The Zen master went on to explain that an appropriate response is what is revealed when one can "be close and do nothing". This statement should not be interpreted as nothing is done, or nothing gets done, but who does the doing?

"The art of letting go" is another coined term in the Zen tradition, which is being close and doing nothing. When we consider letting go we see that it takes great faith and trust, faith and trust in the unknown, which is the great challenge for one who sees himself as the one doing his life. One must be patient, attentive, intuitively aware, and in a state of faith and surrender to see the truth that he is not the one doing his life, that there is a power greater than himself that is sustaining all life including his own. Look to your breath, must you will your lungs to inhale or exhale to continue breathing, to continue living? No, but the body continues to respond to each moment with a breath.

When we do chisao (sticky hands, sparing) in the wing chun tradition we must learn to be close and do nothing, to let our body respond rather than our mind react. We must develop an intuitive awareness of our own body's movement and energy as well as our opponent's, to be sensitive and relaxed is the key, even beyond the skill's and techniques that are learned.

What is needed to be known will be relieved upon the time when it is needed. This is an appropriate response.

WingChun with Abijah

Tenets of Wing Chun include practicality, efficiency and economy of movement. Practitioners are encouraged to sense the energy behind their movements. The core philosophy becomes a useful guide to practitioners when modifying or refining the art.

Wing Chun believes in using the least amount of required force in any fighting situation. It believes properly timed positioning and movements can and should be used to defeat an opponent. This is achieved through balance, body structure and relaxation.

Wing Chun uses deflection and counter-attack in the same motion or will intercept the opponent to nullify an attack, rather than blocking then attacking in two separate motions. This means that the opponent's attack is automatically deflected by the arm-structure of the Wing Chun practitioner as the counter-punch is delivered.The "structure" permitting this deflection to occur is controlled through the correct focus of energy from the "core" to the "elbow".

Notice the Key word here "Core", this is a new concept in western fitness but has been the main focus for physical fitness for thousands of years. The development of intuitive awareness of body is an art form, a practice. Wing Chun Kung-fu is one of the many traditional Chinese art forms used to develop this intuitive awareness of body thereby harmonizing the relation of body & mind. The byproduct of studying this art form is the ability to defend yourself in threatening situations.

For me Wing chun has been a physical confirmation to what has been revealed in zazen meditation. Wing chun is moving from the center, and after having realized this has been an amazing teacher of The Way. I would like to reveal some of the deeper insight that I have been so fortunate to see through the practice and contemplation of Wing chun. Over the next few weeks I will be posting these insights every other day or so, I hope you enjoy.

Moving From The Center

Is the main purpose of your body to carry your head around?
If we answer no we should examine our experience a little closer. If we take a moment at any point during the day to examine our immediate, present experience, we will find that this may be closer to how we relate to our body's than we think. Funny how that last sentence ended, the key words (relate, body, think). You may be interested to find that how you relate your own body is very similar to how you relate to some external foreign object. Do we ever stop to feel a foreign object external to ourselves? Probably not, if anything we will give fleeting moments of thought. How often do we actually find ourselves living in the body?

The body has a located center, some names for this center are, the core, the hara, the dan tien, and so on. From the eastern perspective this center is located, but has little to do with the actual physical form of the body. It is perceived more as an energetic point from which the body's life force springs, and is harnessed. From a western perspective this is where the lower and upper halves of the body meet, ( the hip complex). Both perceptions are relevant to moving from the center.

Moving from the center could also be defined as "Moving toward wholeness, from Wholeness". People exhibit this when they are "in the flow" or "in the zone". This is perceived as a centering of the mind in the body or as the body (where body and mind are one). In a sense "Moving from the center" is being in the flow, or just "being the flow". What is the "flow"? How can we find the center, move from it, and be in the flow?

Our whole life in this one pointed "now" moment is the flow. Whatever is now is the flow which is the constant unfolding of our life. So the center is this now moment, all of it. The center is the circumference of now. Makes sense that all these meditation techniques keep directing us to be present for this ever present now moment. The physical body is the vehicle to perceiving this now moment, which is why so many meditation techniques bring us back to the body. We can find the center and move from it by exploring through intuitive awareness our body.

Chi Pat Down

Give yourself a "chi pat down" to wake the body up and get out of your head!

Most of us spend most of our time in our heads. With all the many things we must do in an average day we find that we must be constantly thinking. This dose not leave much time for us to live in our body's. Even when we do something physical like working out or some recreational physical activity we find that most of the time spent in these activity's we are thinking in one form or another. Weather we are aware of it or not this is very draining on our natural energy sources.

We can find a resting point, a still point in a very natural, open "feeling attention of our body". I often use a technique called "Chi pat down" when I don't have time to do a workout or seated meditation. It only takes 5 minuets and does the trick.

Step by step Chi pat down.
1). With both your hands make a slight cupping hand position using "soft hands". You will use these soft cupping hands to pat down your whole body from feet to head.

2). In a standing position start at your left ankle and pat rapidly the inner and outer leg all the way up to the hip and inner thigh. Do the same for the front and back. Then do the same for the right leg, sides , front and back.

3). Starting at the upper thighs pat all the way up the stomach to the top of the chest, then with the right hand pat from the left shoulder down the front of the left arm. Continue patting up back side of left arm into the left arm pit then down left side ribs and obliques to left hip. Do the same on right side with left hand starting at right shoulder ending at right hip.

4). Give yourself a big hug with right arm over left, reach back as far as you can and pat about 5-7 times the back of shoulders, then switch arms to left over right and do the same.

5). Take both hands to the mid back as high as you can reach and pat down mid back to lower back, then over buttocks and down legs.

6). This will have taken you approximately 1-2 minuets as you should move slow enough to cover every inch of the body. Now take the next 3-4 minuets and stand upright with hands relaxed at sides, palms facing forward and shoulders relaxed. Have a soft bend in the knees. Just stand here and breath, bring a deep feeling attention into the whole body, and enjoy the refreshing feeling of chi flowing.

This works great first thing in the morning. Before you go for that cup of coffee during the day try a chi pat down. Your body and mind will thank you for it.

Power of speech (week two)

Week two (Divisive speech)

This week we will be studying divisive speech. Again we will be using our pocket notebook during the day to jot down and note any situations that we find ourselves using divisive speech. At night we will reference our notebook and elaborate in our journal adding our reflection on the 3 check points, 1. before, 2. during, 3. after. Divisive speech is any speech that could cause a rift between people or groups of people. Most of the time this form of speech turns up in gossip, so that might be a place to be extra vigilant.

Again we want to make an objective observation of our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and physical sensations before, during, and after these situations. If you have really put some effort into the first weeks assignment you should see by now that it is difficult at times to be objective. We find ourselves not wanting to look into the situation deeply. But if you have put in an honest effort you should also have noticed that it can be very liberating to gain an awareness of the function of your mind. Just this increased awareness loosens the grip of identification with the sometimes chaotic movements of mind.

Be firm and disciplined with your practice of studying your speech, but also be gentle with yourself, resting as the awareness of who you are. Reflect on the oneness of being and becoming, let go and trust in both.

Contact me with any questions, 408-469-6764

Who Am I?

Free Satsang, Topic "Who Am I?"

The question we are all asking and simultaneously answering but unaware of.

Host: Abijah Crabtree, Fat Free Buddha Health & Wellness

Date: Thursday, April 16, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Our Sacred Space Wellness center
Street: 2075 Lincoln Ave Suite E&F
City/Town: San Jose, CA

Phone: 4084696764
Email: abijahc@gmail.com

Description
Who Am I?
It all boils down to this question. The purpose and meaning in our
life is right here in this moment, in every moment, for it is in this
very moment this question and answer is being worked out, (unfolding).
" Who Am I?" is a process, a process that if woken up to can and will lead to true freedom.

We will begin with a 30 minuet meditation, then go into the topic
"Who Am I?" for an hour, primarily Q & A format. I hope you all can attend:-)

What is True love?
How can I find true love?
How can I give true love?

If you find yourself asking these questions this is surely a talk you want to attend. If you think you know what true love is, but at the same time cant seem to find it , you might not be looking in the right place or you might not truly know what it is.

Take a chance on love... Come join me in an exploration into "True Love:-)

FREE! Donations accepted.

Host:	Abijah Crabtree, Fat Free Buddha Health & Wellness
:
:

Date:	Friday, April 10, 2009
Time:	7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location:	Our Sacred Space Wellness center
Street:	2075 Lincoln Ave Suite E&F
City/Town:	San Jose, CA

phone:	4084696764
Email:	abijahc@gmail.com

Power of speech (week one)

If you cant control your speech, there's no way you can hope to control your mind!

This is a suggested exercise from my workshop "Finding Freedom (Free the Mind)". We will focus on 5 types of speech that are harmful to ourselves and others.
1) Untruthful speech ( words spoken with intent of misrepresenting the truth ).
2)Divisive speech (words spoken that could cause rifts between people ).
3) Harsh speech (words spoken that have the potential to hurt a persons feelings ).
4) Idle chatter ( words spoken with no purposeful intent at all ).
5) Gossip ( words spoken about a person behind their back ).

We will study our speech objectively using 3 check points of observation. Before, during, and after.
1) Before ( notice the focus of intent, why did you say what you said. Notice what feelings, emotions, and physical sensations accompany this intent )?
2) During ( just notice what feelings, emotions, and physical sensations arise during speaking )?
3) After ( notice what resulted from your speech, how did it affect you, what feelings, emotions, and physical sensations arise)?

This week we will study (Untruthful Speech).
Things you will need, ( small pocket size note book, regular note pad for journaling, and pencil or pen).

Instructions
Keep pocket note pad on you at all times. Make note of all words spoken containing untruths, from exaggerating a storie to lying about why we are late for work. Every untruth no matter how petty.Write the time, who was involved, & a brief explanation what it was about. At night before bed find a private place to journal. Reference you notes and journal the before, during, and after of each situation, add any reflections that may come up.

Remember, be gentle with yourself, accept all of who you are. What you are is already perfect and complete. Who you are is an evolution, we have the power to create what that evolution looks like. Relax and enjoy the process of growth & discovery that is taking place. The power of speech is an amazing transformative potential we can use skillfully to change our lives.

Use this blog site to make any comments and or questions during the week. Next Sunday we will explore what insights we have come to during the week.If you have any questions feel free to call ( 408-469-6764).

Enjoy your life:-)

Freedom

Why do we love America?
America is an ideal, an ideal of freedom, and a feeble attempt at it I might say. Why do I say this? Well from the way I see it Americans don't necessarily experience a true sense of freedom. There are two ways to approach freedom. One way is to actualize "the freedom to", the other "the freedom from".

In the west we strive for the first, "the freedom to". We live in "The land of the free". Why can we say this? Well our constitution states it clearly, we have our civil rights and freedoms. We have as Americans freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of association, right to assemble, right to petition, right to vote, basically the right to our individuality. This nation was built on "the freedom to".

A democracies attempt at equal rights is an attempt to protect their peoples freedom, to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is amazing to me that in most if not all democratic countries people don't feel very free.

"Freedom from" is a freedom from that very attempt. Freedom from...Freedom to! Freedom from being an individual with all its views, ideals, religious beliefs, personal history, the story of ME and what I want to have, be, and do. True freedom is much like true love in that both are unconditional. To actualize the "freedom to" there must first be the right conditions, then the "freedom to" can be found from and within these ideal conditions (theoretically speaking). So "freedom from" is the freedom from the futile attempt at finding true freedom in that which true freedom can never be found.

This leads us to a pivotal moment in our search for freedom, and if you haven't figured it out yet this search is exactly what your life has been from the very beginning. All your efforts have been nothing more than your relentless search for freedom. If you look at all you have done no matter how small or large, significant or petty, it all boils down to your search for freedom. Getting a job or quitting your job, going to school to get educated or dropping out of school, getting married or getting divorced, renting an apartment or buying a house, getting high or getting sober. It dose not matter what we think the reasons are for making these moves in our lives, for at the core the real reason is for freedom.

So the pivotal moment in our search is when we ask ourselves, if true freedom cannot be found in ideal conditions, through exercising the freedom to, where then does one look? This moment in which this question of where to look arises most often marks the first awareness that there was even a search to begin with. Well at this point we may come to the blunt reality that in all our efforts at actualizing the "freedom to" we still have not found a lasting sense of freedom. At best we might be able to say we have had short lived experiences of what seemed to be freedom, until the newness of the circumstance or condition which fostered this false sense of freedom wore off.

At this point many become "spiritual seekers". Some may go down the path of western psychology, some eastern philosophy, and others some form of orthodox religion. For me it marked my ever deepening practice of Vipassana, Zen Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta. Being that my personal disposition is one of an extremist, within eight months after starting my Buddhist practice I found myself living in a Soto Zen Temple. Its interesting to me to reflect on those times, what was my motive? I was still pursuing freedom by exercising "freedom to". If I had the freedom to meditate for hours (at least 4-6 a day) and not have all the responsibility of the worldly life (job, personal relationships, ext), then I could find the answers that would lead to enlightenment. Upon reflection of those times I can also say that the first one and a half years at the temple where the most discouraging times of my life.

After a tortuous year and a half I decided the reason for my failed attempt at" waking up" was my insufficient environment. I needed to be in the right conditions, around the right people, and the right teacher. The temple was too loose. They only meditate once a day and no one there takes their practice serious enough. So off I went to the real deal (The Thai Forest Monastery) where real monks lived a life of renunciation, celibacy, and discipline. I was ready to do whatever it took, if the monastery would accept me I would easily leave it all behind. While at the monastery I lived in a small hut called a "kuti". I would work, eat, and meditate with the monks during the day, and contemplate my life as a monk at night in my kuti. How refreshing it was to be there, I knew I had found the right place, the place needed to finally wake up.

I was scheduled to be at the monastery for ten days where at the end of my stay I would decide whether or not to put in my application for resident monk. Though I would not complete my full ten day stay at the monastery. It was on the 5th night that I woke up to true freedom. I was in my kuti sitting in meditation before I was to go to sleep when it happened. The best way I can describe it is, surrender happened or letting go happened. There was all of the sudden this knowing, this deep intellectual understanding that I would never find the right conditions, I would struggle endlessly trying to create the right conditions. Then all of the sudden "I" stopped. I very naturally just "stopped". In this moment of stopping everything fell away, and what was left was complete. There was just this sense of being alive, silent, still, boundless aliveness.

This sense of aliveness is what I am at the core, before I am Abijah and all that that includes I am just alive. For that moment Abijah fell away, and it was from this falling away that I found freedom. I found freedom from my self. What a great relief! Some call this aliveness pure consciousness, just being, spirit, Buddha nature, or my favorite intuitive awareness. I like this way of explaining it "intuitive awareness". Its an all inclusive awareness, it includes Abijah, his thoughts, the world, and all that the human experience is.

This brings me to a very important point in this talk. There are two aspects to our experience of who and what we are. "Being" and "Becoming". Who we are is constantly becoming, constantly changing, evolving. What we are is just being, already complete, never changing, always just alive. Its not that it is necessary or beneficial to suppress ones natural human experience of becoming. The problem is not that who we are as a person exists. The problem is that we miss identify who we are for what we are. If we are always trying to find true freedom, true love, true anything in that which is constantly changing we will fail miserably.

When we look for freedom or truth we look for something permanent, sure, something that always offers the same concrete answer. The key then of where to look is right here in your present experience, for both who you are and what you are, being and becoming are nowhere else but right here right now. If we can use the technique of "being close and doing nothing" we can become intimate with our present experience and give the space that is needed for insight into the root issue at hand.

"Being close and doing nothing" is resting in awareness, open, receptive, all inclusive, intuitive awareness. This very awareness is itself "the freedom from". Before the body and mind, before the sense of "ME" and who "I" am there is this awareness. Who we are arises within this awareness. This awareness is what we are at the most fundamental level. We could call this awareness "just being" before being this or that, before during and after the who that we most often identify with.

Being close and doing nothing dose not mean that nothing gets done or that we sit back and take a passive role in our own life. It means we stop blindly reacting to our life and start becoming aware of what is really happening in each moment.

So try it out, give some time to explore intuitive awareness. The more acquainted you become with this ever present intuitive awareness you will come to realize this as a refuge, your true freedom. I hope this helps. My upcoming workshop "Finding Freedom" will be an exploration of becoming=the freedom to, and being=the freedom from.

Enjoy your life;-) Abijah

Finding Freedom Workshop
"Freedom is a choice we all have the ability to make"

Do you experience confusion, anxiety, anger, fear, depression?

Do you you experience mental and physical stress and fatigue?

Do you find that all to often you want what you don't have, and have what you don't want?

Can you honestly say you are free?

Free The Mind
Identify negative tendencies of the mind that leave us experiencing fear, confusion, anger, anxiety, loneliness, and depression.
Explore the freedom we can experience from increasing our awareness of negative states of mind and how they function to control our lives.
Explore tools and techniques including the study of thoughts, the power of speech, the power of acceptance, body awareness, and meditation to understand and transcend these negative states of mind and realize peace.

During the course of the workshop we will explore each topic individually through lecture, Q & A, and active participation in specific exercises. The conclusion of the retreat will be an integration of all topics where each individual will leave with a daily/weekly program to follow, along with follow up consultations via phone and/or email.


Please join us in our daylong workshop where we will work together and support each other on our journey to finding freedom.


Workshop held at OUR SACRED SPACE Wellness Center. 2075 Lincoln Ave Suite E&F< San Jose, CA 95125 (Willow Glen)

$65 fee will include snacks and tea, and services offered by Abijah Crabtree.
Rsvp by March 25th to abijah@fatfreebuddha.com, or call Abijah at (408)469-6764

What is wellness?

Health benefits are important because health is important. I can remember with every new job I have started people asking me " how's the benefits?". We as a society have come to agree that our health is so important that most jobs out there offer or include health benefits. Health dose not come from having health benefits! The benefits you receive by your private insurance company or employer address illness, disease, and injury. We could more appropriately call the benefits you receive "sick benefits".

What is health and wellness? Where dose it come from? Who's responsible for it? Physical health is revealed when we wake up to the inseparable connection to the innate intelligence in our body. Dis-ease is simply a disconnect from this innate intelligence, disconnect between body and mind, disconnect between the parts and the whole. Total wellness is the strengthening and deepening of an awakening to this connection of body and mind, the parts and the whole.
Wellness comes from within. The path to wellness is an exploration and revelation into this innate intelligence, this natural state of being. Wellness is always present in you (now).
I am responsible for this wellness, you are responsible, we are responsible. My sincere intention and responsibility is to create supportive environments that facilitate each individuals journey to improved health and wellness. It is your responsibility to seek the path and guidance to health and wellness. It is our responsibility as human beings to support and nurture our own and others paths to total health and wellness, our natural state of being.

Self Realization

To know yourself is not to know who you are but what you are. So many times I have heard people talk about meditation and spiritual practice as a path to knowing who you truly are. It is thinking we know who we are that distracts us from knowing what we truly, always, already, and forever are. If the goal is self realization, liberation, nirvana, the final solution, then the last thing we would want to do is develop a stronger sense of " who " we are. Rest in the natural state of just being at ease, "what you are", the observer, silent witness, which never changes, its nature never changing. From what you are, relax with and around who you are. Just watch who you are as it comes and goes, constantly changing, thoughts and ideas about yourself, others, the world around you, feelings, happy, sad, emotions, and physical sensations. Who you are has many different quality's and characteristics that are constantly changing. Can you sit in silence for just one minuet and find any part of who you are that dose not change? Really, give it a try. What you are is the awareness of who you are, constantly changing. It has no quality's or characteristics, it is just aware. It is not definable, cannot be measured, has no beginning and no end, and by its very nature free of limitation. Realizing this is to realize limitless peace and serenity.

Pain vs Suffering a workout

By being aware of physical pain and mental suffering we can transcend suffering.

If we think of the human body as a robot with a mechanical body and a computer for a central communication system it might help us better understand its function. All the mechanical parts are necessary but it only produces movement by the computers command. The major mechanics would be the cardiovascular system, muscular system, and skeletal system. The computer would be the nervous system. The nervous system is broken down into two parts, the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), and the peripheral nervous system (nerves that branch out from the brain and spinal cord) to the entire body. The peripheral nervous system is loaded with sensory receptors that gather information about our internal and external environments, this information gets transferred to the central nervous system for processing, then back out to the peripheral nervous system for the body's neuromuscular response. For example when you touch something hot the sensory receptors in your hand sense the change in temperature, this information gets sent to you brain where it gets interpreted as danger, then this information gets sent back out to the peripheral nervous system and your hand automatically retracts from the hot object. This seems to happen independent of mind activity such as thought, contemplation or rational discrimination.

When it comes to improving the body's physical fitness the body must be stressed according to the intended goal. For example when we are looking to improve the body's stability we must place it in an unstable environment. Keep in mind that when I use the word stress here it has no negative connotations. It simply means to take the body safely beyond its current level of fitness. This means constantly exploring new physical capabilities. Eventually the body adapts and comes to a plateau. If further improvement is desired the body needs to be put under new stresses. You could call this exploring the unknown with the body. The more we look into the actual function of the body we see that its constantly changing and adapting to its internal and external environments which are constantly changing. Now lets take a look at how the mind relates to the exploration of the unknown.

As I pointed out in the last paragraph the body functions as a living organism capable of interpreting its internal and external environments and responding with or without the mind. Yes this comment may seem bold and will definitely ruffle some feathers to those of you who place the highest level of importance on your own rational minds. Now I am not at all saying the mind, rational and irrational as it is has no importance. What I am saying is that the mind is no more important than any other function that makes up a human being. Just like the sensory receptors of the peripheral nervous system, the mind plays an equal role in the survival of a human being.

The mind has an amazing capability to cross reference past experience with present conditions which assist survival. For instance the central and peripheral nervous systems play a role in retracting the hand from the frying pan on the hot stove so it dose not get burned. It seems almost simultaneously the mind records this experience as memory. This memory is what we call knowledge, you now know that when you touch the frying pan on the hot stove you will get burned. If it wasn't for the mind the body would be constantly learning some pretty tough lessons. Just imagine having to touch the hot pan every time you cooked instead of remembering that the hot pan burns. You would be walking around with some pretty charred up hands. So this is the nature of the mind to constantly interpret by cross referencing the present moment with a past memory.

The mind can only dwell in the known or the memory of the known. This is why we are so uncomfortable with not knowing, big changes, and being confused. If we depend on the mind in a fresh new unknown (to the mind) moment we will suffer. In a sense you could say the mind can only judge a book by its cover, and if we remember how the saying goes this will most often lead to misinterpretation. To misinterpret is to not see things clearly and to not see things clearly doesn't give much potential for an appropriate response. If we watch the mind objectively as we are pushing the body beyond its current level of fitness (the unknown) we can see the minds efforts which most often result in aversion due to a past memory or the fact that pain in any form is uncomfortable. So dose the minds aversion to pain mean that pain is bad. I think we all know the answer to that, no, pain is a part of the human body's existence, it is what it is, like it or not.There is a difference between discomfort and pain that signals potential injury to the body. A fitness professional can help you distinguish between the two. The fact is that the body experiences pain from birth to death, but who suffers?

This brings us to an interesting question. Who suffers? If we are aware of the body sensing pain and we are aware of the mind in aversion to it, who is aware of the body and mind. Don't answer too quickly, investigate. Go work out, get healthy and be aware of your body, mind, and the relation between them. Be aware of the sensation of your muscles while they are burning, be aware of your mind resisting or doing what ever its doing. Both are impermanent, be aware as they come and go, be objective, silent, awareness.You will soon discover that suffering is not necessary.

The same is true of your whole life, Enjoy!

Why Fat Free Buddha?

Fat free Buddha philosophy
Fat free Buddha's philosophy is in the name. It's awakening, with nothing extra, no fillers, no spiritual fluff, just direct awareness (It's just like this). Awakening to your life as it is, and responding to it as it is. To be a Buddha is to respond appropriately, and this starts with you, your life, your body , your mind. There's this image of the Buddha as this pudgy, sedentary, inactive, awakened being who promoted seated meditation and a spiritual life -- a life that seems to look nothing like the one in front of us right now. Would the Buddha have not treated his own body with as much compassion as he treated every other living organism?

One of the most common shared understandings is ,"being I have to lead a (house holders) life I don't have the time to give to a life of meditation, better luck next lifetime". What if the Buddha did not want to teach people how to be or what their lives should look like, but how to look at their life directly as it is. What if the Buddha did not teach how to be a good Buddhist, but how to awaken to the true nature of our existence. That becoming a "good Buddhist" is just a natural by product of gaining deeper understanding of ones life. Buddha means literally (the awakened one). What we can do is kill the Buddha or cut the fat off the Buddha, which means throw away the historical image of the Buddha and find the Buddha/awakened one in the very life we are living. What would it look like to cut the fat off the Buddha?

This would mean letting go of all concepts of how to be and not try to be like the Buddha or any historical enlightened being but do what the Buddha and others have done. Have a direct intimacy with our lives, get up close with every moment, objectively study ourselves. Two obvious factors of our experience are, one there is a body that functions voluntarily and involuntarily, two there is a mind that functions voluntarily and involuntarily. The third and not so obvious factor to our existence is this presence,this sense of being before the thought of being this or that , this that makes every thing alive, this that is aware of this body and mind. We can use awareness to get up close and study ourselves. How well do we understand our body's and minds? Have we ever really taken the time to look for ourselves what is happening right here, now, without an idea of what should be happening or what it should look like?

Fat Free Buddha is an invitation to take a look for yourself! Through tuning into the body we have the ability to gain deep insight into our lives. All to often we look to others to understand ourselves instead of looking deeply into the very moment in which what we are trying to understand is happening. We want someone to tell us whats going on so we can know how to respond to our lives appropriately. We want someone to tell us what to do to get the results that we want but we rarely want to become intimate with the proses. Imagine I asked someone for a map of the very territory I was walking on, and as I was walking I was looking at the map to try and figure out the easiest safest route to walk. Now imagine I couldn't interpret the map until after I was already on the territory because my mind could not keep up with my walking. I would be finding myself on unsafe territory and over correcting at times, which would send me right back onto more unsafe territory just repeating the same process. Now that just wouldn't work out to well would it, and for me in my lifetime it hasn't. Not that looking to others is not useful, sometimes others can give us good maps of the territory we are looking to understand. But we don't need to stop there we can use the map to see that we are already on the territory and experience it ourselves. In this case the map will lead you right back to your own life as it is in the very present moment. So start there or should I say start here. Your body, your mind, your life.

It takes a simple approach to find a simple truth, Good Day

Awareness and Appropriate Response

The broader our awareness of our ever present moment and (ALL) that it includes, the more appropriately,(i.e freely) we can respond rather than blindly react to our whole life. What is your whole life? What ever is present right now. If you are a human being reading this, that (right now) includes a body, a mind, and what some might call spirit. What would it look like to respond appropriately to your body? A healthy and balanced diet:proper ratio of carbs, fats, proteins, and calorie intake based on your body type, proper mineral and vitamin intake, and proper hydration. A regular exercise routine done safely and efficiently: flexibility, cardio, stability, core, resistance, balance, and reactive for a total program for functional mobility. Last but not least, adequate rest. What would it look like to respond to your mind appropriately? Simply bring awareness to its function. Awareness brings understanding, understanding breaks down false identification with conditioned, habitual thought patterns which gives space for an appropriate response rather than a blind reaction. What would it look like to respond appropriately to spirit? Spirit is your life, just become intimate with it, bring awareness to your whole life. Regular meditation is key, and not as difficult as it seems. Meditation is always happening (right now), most are just not aware of it due to ideas and concepts of what it is. Being that it is happening every moment we are alive we cant miss it if we just bring awareness to the present moment . Awareness reveals appropriate response, appropriate response reveals peace and clarity of mind.

When I talk about "awareness" its very simple and direct. Not some mystical, spiritual, deep meditative ability. Although the insights one might have upon looking at any aspect of ones life with "direct, objective, awareness" can be profound. Why is that? Objective awareness is awareness before mind activity, that which is aware of mind activity such as thought, perception,and so on. When I turn this awareness on the mental activity happening here and now at any given moment I realize how crazy, creative, rational, and limited this mind is. When I rest in awareness this mind is no hindrance. When its crazy I watch it, then when it judges itself for being crazy I watch it. When its rational I watch it, then if it claims rational superiority I watch it. Being it has this tenancy towards extremes I can find myself in the middle,centered, balanced in awareness seeing things clearly as they are with now the potential to respond appropriately. Profoundly simple, or simply profound! Take a look! An invitation to explore awareness. Have fun!!!!!

Finding meaning and purpose

Whats my purpose in life? Whats the meaning behind it all? This seems to be one of the biggest questions people ask the wise sages of the past and present. How about this, no thing has meaning and every thing is the meaning. The meaning or purpose is whats unfolding as your life right now, like it or not. It seems we only become aware of the thirst for purpose or meaning when we find ourselves in doubt and confusion. When we like the way our life looks we are fine with the purpose being whats happening here now, even though we usually have a skewed misinterpretation of what it is that's happening or what is going to happen. When we don't like the way our life looks we start to look for purpose outside of whats unfolding here now. The meaning behind it all is in every moment, and the purpose is to completely be it, whatever it is in every moment.