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Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

While this is obvious, it is something that most people, to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps. We have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be, but many do not want to make this effort.

Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy. Their views of the world narrow and misleading.

By the end of middle age, most people have given up the effort. They feel certain their maps are complete and they are no longer interested in new information. It is if they are tired, only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.

M Scott Pick.

Welcome to the imperfect Buddhist. Where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Maps of Meaning.

I've had a couple of experiences recently that have pushed me to talk a little bit about maps of meaning and how we navigate our. The way that we label our world as we move through it how that can differ from how other people have overlaid the different experiences of life with different meanings.

Maps and how we associate with the world and what it means

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can really create a lot of struggle between mother and son, father and daughter, best friends, enemies, lovers, all because of how we interpret. The

chaos of life. The different meanings we can assign to a certain look someone gives us when we tell them a joke. We're really excited for them to hear.

When we give someone a gift, how they say Thank you. This could all mean very different things for different people.

I moved to Florida and started working at this grocery store. After working there for a year, we hired a kid at the time he was a kid named Daniel. And we started hanging out and talking. He was into some of the same philosophies as me, a little bit more yoga, it was cool. So we connected on that.

We connected on music . We had both stopped working there. We continued to hang out and he mentioned to me, he was like, Hey, I'm going down to this Michael Singer talk. And I was like, What? What do you mean Michael Singer talk? He's like, Yeah, dude. He has a teaching center here in Florida. It's called the Temple of the Universe.

I was pretty surprised. I didn't know that. It kind of peaked my interest. It'd be cool to hear this guy talk. Flash forward about a. We plan out to go down on a Sunday we leave Jacksonville around 7:30 AM and make our way down to outside of Gainesville. And it's beautiful.

The temple's out in the countryside and you drive a winding road probably 10, 15 minutes off the highway and then you take another right turn down, another more narrow. Road and then a left onto a dirt road, and the dirt road turns onto this paved road that you follow, that winds its way up to this temple that I think it was built.

Don't quote me on this, but it looks like it's a little bit older. Maybe it was built in the eighties or the late seventies, early nineties. And so we get there and it's this wilderness retreat center. it's almost like you're hiking. Through a forest and you come upon this retreat center, we park the car and we make our way up to this building all these shoes are out front.

We take off our shoes and we come inside. It's very quiet maybe 25 or 30 people sitting. Most of them cross-legged in the meditation hall . This is about 30 minutes before the talk is supposed to start. Very, very similar to most retreats or meditation centers, if you've ever been to one.

There's a collective quiet maybe it's a little bit expected or appreciated. So you dive into that we sat quietly for a while there's a period of singing. That I wasn't as familiar with, wasn't necessarily used to or comfortable with at first. It's sending praise to the different awakened teachers as some would say. Some people believe that there are different awakened beings that have lived such as Jesus Krishna Aah, Buddha.

So in some traditions they look to all of these figures as beacons of enlightenment, truth and awakening. there Was this long mantra, like singing Budda, Budda. And then, then ther...