October 2025 TAT Forum

Humor {(h)yo͞omər}

“One thing you must be able to do in the midst
of any experience is laugh. And experience
should show you that it isn’t real, that it’s a
movie. Life doesn’t take you seriously, so why
take it seriously.” ~ Richard Rose, Carillon

Confidence, Arrogance & Smugness

Confidence says: “I think I’m right.”
Arrogance says: “I’m probably right because I’m superior.”
Smugness says: “I’m right, you’re wrong, and I rather enjoy the fact that you haven’t figured that out.”

Google AI Overview:

That is a brilliant and highly accurate breakdown of those three traits. It perfectly captures how the difference isn’t just about what someone thinks, but the underlying attitude and motivation behind it:
• Confidence is rooted in self-assurance and facts, but it doesn’t need to put anyone else down to exist. It is secure. 🤝
• Arrogance adds a hierarchy. It isn’t just about being right; it’s about believing one’s inherent worth is higher than others. It is dismissive. 👑
• Smugness takes pleasure in a perceived competitive advantage. It is deeply passive-aggressive and thrives on a feeling of secret (or not-so-secret) satisfaction at another person’s expense. It is a gloat. 😏
Where did you find this quote, or did you write it yourself? It’s a fantastic summary of human ego.

*

~ Anonymous source. Image from writecream.com.

Henri 4, L’Haunting

*

~ Thanks to Leesa W. (“save it for October”). HenriLeChatNoir (Henri the Black Cat YouTube channel).

Find Your Center

*

~ Thanks to Scott Metzger Cartoons (Instagram, Facebook, Patreon). 

Inspiration & Irritation

Irritation moves us; inspiration provides a direction

Strategies

Perhaps inadvertently, I thought Tess’s memoriam to Bart answered perfectly the Reader Commentary question [both citations in the September TAT Forum -Ed.]. The question was about our spiritual laws, and how well we follow them. Tess recalled a time when she heard Bart’s list of Strategies for Awakening (published in the October 2005 Forum), and “made these strategies the ‘laws’ that I followed daily for the next year or so.

I had the list of them, handwritten, attached to my fridge door. I looked at it daily. I chose one to concentrate on each day. I wrestled with what it meant, with how to absorb it into my life and with what I needed to give up, or to take up. In the evening I checked on which ones I had ‘broken’ or which ones I was really adapting in my life. I took the ‘Absorb Teachings’ very seriously.” Maybe without trying, Tess got to the heart of the question, using material she learned from Bart. I looked up the strategies, too. Bart is still teaching.

~ Thanks to Brett S.  The image above is from writecream.com.

Albert Camus Quotes

“In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.” ~ “Return to Tipasa” essay

“We have art in order not to die of life.” ~ The Myth of Sisyphus

~ Thanks to Paul Constant. The image is from Wikimedia Commons, painted in 2023. Camus lived from 1913-1960.

Watching

~ Thanks to Dan McLaughlin, who spotted this on TikTok. The quote comes from Camus’s personal notebooks (Carnets).

Return Home

I recently gave a talk for the TAT Foundation in West Virginia. People attended from all parts of the world. I feel it is one of my better talks. I’ve put together a video combining the talk with my photography and videography as the visual backdrop. People have reported that the combination of the two is a powerful meditation.

This talk is an exploration into the outer landscape and turns inwardly to the inner landscape. It covers becoming intimate with nature and how indigenous people come to understand that everything is related, as well as spiritual transcendence, and coming back home to the body as the Earth walking. ~ Paul Rezendes

Please  your responses to the above questions.

Reader Commentary

Encouraging interactive readership among TAT members and friends

A reader wrote that what would make the Forum more interesting would be:

Hearing from people who are searching—and have questions instead of those providing endless advice and “answers.” What challenges they are facing. What their doubts and questions are. How they perceive their path is going. What they are doing in their lives. Where they think they will end up, etc., etc.

Can you help make the Forum more interesting?

The Reader Commentary question for the October 2026 TAT Forum comes from Brenda Agnew:

How significant is the asking of questions in readers’ practice?  Are there occasions when questions melt away rather than being answered?  Is that seen as part of the self-delusion process or a development on the path?  Do the questions change over time in content or intensity? Do readers seek questions if none naturally emerge? Can there be a path without questions?

Responses follow:

From Dan G:

Asking questions gives voice and space for what’s in my heart. 

Asking my questions about dogmas was the start of a new level of seriousness in my search. Thinking for myself, highlighting what seems like nonsense but with openness to understand if it’s legit, and listening to my heart or intuition. Today, I use a journaling technique most days: I ask something I want to know, then wait for an answer. There are a few variations on this where I tune into different intentions, feeling centers, or mental stances when asking and waiting. I also like group confrontation of beliefs – there seems to be more potential for change from a sincere question than from, say, a presentation.

From Brett S:

I have questions all the time. My feeling is that many of them are not useful. Recently I was thinking about a question I heard Bob Cergol ask: what will make you happy? I think that’s a surprisingly deep question. And I remember Art asking people about whether they believe they can find permanent satisfaction, which begs the question: what will make me permanently happy? (or satisfied, or at peace, etc.). The way I try to answer that is to look at things that have made me happy and ask myself, “what was it that I liked about that experience?” And I try to distill if there was a principle or a feeling associated with it that might be connected to something permanent. An example from my own life is the day I graduated college we had a BBQ with my friends and their parents, and someone pulled out a soccer ball and my friends and their parents started playing soccer together. Instead of joining in, I watched. It was one of my happiest memories. Why? I think it was partly the sense of accomplishment from my efforts as a student, partly seeing people from different walks of life coming together, and partly a sense of resolution, that a chapter was over. So then I ask myself if those values point to more abstract concepts like diligence, unity, completion. And then, if I’m lucky, I may end up asking myself how I might express those things in my life. I’ve gotten far away from the original question, but I want to add that sometimes how I engage with a question (not needing an answer, thinking about it on a walk, getting confronted on it during group self-inquiry) sometimes feels more important than the question. 

From Raphaël S:

Questions have become an important part of my practice, although I’m beginning to see a difference between questions that arise naturally and questions I manufacture because I feel I should be “working on myself.”

The most useful questions for me usually arise out of something that is actually happening: fear, irritation, resistance, wanting reassurance, wanting something to be different, or noticing that I’m strongly attached to a particular outcome. At those moments, questions such as “What do I want right now?” or “How do I know this?” can expose something that I wasn’t seeing.

I’ve also noticed that sometimes a question seems to disappear without being answered.

From Art Ticknor:

I had a practice of meditating daily and working with other seekers on a regular basis for 26 years beginning in 1978, although there was a 6- or 7-year patch after the first 10 or 12 years where I was convinced that it was hopeless for me personally … and I doubt if I did much of any meditation during that period.

I think that both questions and conscious dissatisfaction with life can provide fuel for seeking. My meditation practice didn’t focus on questions. It focused on watching processes of the mind, prefaced by remembering my objective (to become the Truth) and turning my inner head away from what I was watching if it didn’t seem relevant to what I was looking for. I’m sure that I saw plenty of mental processing of questions / problems.

From Jonathan P:

Questions are an essential part of practice. Usually, at the beginning of meditation I set an intention to “stir up,” turn toward curiosity/doubt about what is this, what’s going on here? Different beginnings come up: noticing the dream quality of my view, the repetitiveness of thoughts/feelings, the unfounded sense that these perceptions are “mine,” or that I could die at any time, or my subliminal background mood of dissatisfaction.

Then I attend breathing intimately for a while because sensation is different than chewed-on memories/thoughts. Or I walk slowly and attend the sensation of the bottom of the feet. These sensations are simple and vivid. They just arise and pass away now. Attending them can settle the mind, focus attention and engender clarity. Risks? If too tired, I don’t notice torpor until “spacing out,” falling into a kind of sleep. I’ve taken an intention to stand up if that happens, and sometimes I actually do it.

From Lena S:

The ability to ask ‘good’ questions is the key to directing curiosity, prayer and one’s best intentions.

Self-inquiry is a practice on different levels. When Nisargadatta says focus on consciousness and that there are no questions, that is a level without any dialogue which implies ‘just watching’. To examine identities, beliefs, desires and fears, the constructs of questions seem to pry open a passage for insights to occur, and for the inquiry to proceed further. They help direct our attention.

Good questions seem to only lead to better questions, and in my experience, there are no good answers in the question-answer game, as all answers imply dead-ends. So yes, questions morph into other inquiries or new directions, but the questioning process must be a dynamic one in order to stimulate a progressive movement of one’s attention, an aid to direct ‘just watching’.

From Anima Pundeer:

Looking back on my path, I see that confrontation has been the most helpful practice. I find this a unique practice in TAT. When you sit in the hot seat, and your fellow seekers ask you questions about your beliefs, the mind can’t deflect. Knowing how the mind works, it becomes serious to discover an answer when a question gets its attention. Finding the question that, when answered, will resolve all your desires, fears, doubts is the ‘work’. This is the question that frees us.

Are there occasions when questions melt away rather than being answered? 

It is not that the questions melt away; it’s that your approach to them changes.  The question changes from “What do I want?” to “Who am I?” The way I was looking for it initially changed from ‘self-inquiry’ to ‘Self-Inquiry’.

From Adam S:

Questions wise, the only questions I have are beyond anyone else’s ability to help with (questions of mathematics and spacetime) so I’m still asking questions but only internally, I remember the last time I asked someone a question in the hopes of an answer that would be useful.

And as before, all my questions are about that which is external to me: why something rather than nothing; what is relationship between the nature of numbers and that of the laws of physics; is there a mathematical description of sensory qualia (red, sweet, hot etc).

=> The Reader Commentary question for next month, the November 2026 TAT Forum, comes from Brett S:

I recently read a book by a spiritual teacher who advises seekers to notice their “direct experience.” How do you define direct experience, and what role does it play in your search?

Please  your response by the 25th of October, and indicate your preferred identification (the default is your first name and the initial letter of your last name). “Anonymous” and pen names are fine, too.

PS: What question(s) would you like to ask other TAT Forum readers?

Q for all: What are your thoughts on this month’s reader commentary? Please your feedback.

Richard Rose described a spiritual path as living one’s life aimed at finding the meaning of that life. Did you find anything relevant to your life or search in this month’s TAT Forum?

Colorado Four O’Clocks: Desert flowers native to Colorado that open in the late afternoon (around 4:00 PM) and stay open through the night until morning. Photo © Bob Fergeson. See Nostalgia West for Bob’s photography. 

We like hearing from you! Please email your comments, suggestions, inquiries, and submissions.

Sign up for notices of TAT’s four annual events, other virtual events, and free monthly Forums on our contact page.

Founder’s Wisdom

Richard Rose (1917-2005) established the TAT Foundation
in 1973 to encourage people to work together on what
he considered to be the “grand project” of spiritual work.

On Self-Practice
From The Platform Sutra of Hui-Neng
translation by A.F. Price and Wong Mou-lam

Hui-neng’s mummified body in the Nan-hua Monastery.

The wisdom of enlightenment [bodhiprajna] is inherent in every one of us. It is because of the delusion under which our mind works that we fail to realize it ourselves, and that we have to seek the advice and guidance of enlightened ones before we can know our own essence of mind…. Those who recite the word prajna the whole day long do not seem to know that prajna is inherent in their own nature. But mere talking about food will not appease hunger, and this is exactly the case with these people…. Talking alone will not enable us to realize the essence of mind, and it serves no purpose in the end…. What we have to do is to put it into practice with our mind.

What I can tell you is not esoteric. If you turn your light inwardly, you will find what is esoteric within.

To meditate means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the essence of mind.

Those who train themselves for imperturbability should, in their contacts with all types of men, ignore the faults of others.

As to the dharma [teaching, path] this is transmitted from heart to heart, and the recipient must realize it by his own efforts.

=> Told to him by Hung-jen, the fifth patriarch. This is consistent with what Richard Rose had to say about transmission. He recommended a practice of “sitting in rapport” with other seekers in order to develop the mental sensitivity that would facilitate getting in touch with the mind of the teacher at the propitious moment when the teacher might be able to “push the student over the edge” via a transmission of mind.

All depends on self-practice….

The dharma doesn’t wait for you.

Vehicle [yana; implies motion] means practice; it is nothing that can be discussed but is something that you yourself must do.

=> Compare the above to Richard Rose’s remark in Chapter 6 of The Albigen Papers: “Man must develop a system of work, and work with persevering dynamism.”

Exert yourself in order to see face-to-face the essence of mind, and relax not, for death may come suddenly and put an abrupt end to your earthly existence.

*

 Photo above from The indestructible body of Luc To Hue Nang. See more on Hui-neng [-Ed.]

Definition of Terms

Index of many of the key terms and principles in Rose’s work, with brief definitions, from Richard Rose’s Psychology of the Observer: The Path to Reality Through the Self by John Kent.

Jacob’s Ladder © 2001 Richard Rose. See this transcript of a talk on the topic by Rose.

Did you enjoy the Forum? Then buy the book!
Readers’ favorite selections from seven years of issues.
Beyond Mind, Beyond Death is available at Amazon.com.

Home | Richard Rose | Books & Recordings | TAT Forum | About | Search | Site Map