Dr. Jay Forrest

There are four marks of existence—fundamental characteristics that describe the nature of all conditioned reality. They are not beliefs to be accepted blindly, but observations to be tested in experience.

The first is impermanence. Many things appear permanent, as though they will last. But everything eventually changes and passes into another form. Nothing lasts, nothing is reliable; in the end, everything fails.

The second mark is unsatisfactoriness. Reality is filled with a sense that nothing fully satisfies. We think the next purchase, the next achievement, will bring lasting contentment, but it never does. Satisfaction is a fleeting feeling that soon passes. Nothing in this life gives enduring satisfaction.

The third mark is that existence is without essence. The universe and all things in it have no fixed, independent substance. Nothing is truly solid; all is events and flux. That includes ourselves. We do not have a solid, unchanging soul.

The fourth mark is interdependence. The entire matrix of the universe is an interconnected whole. Every part affects every other, like a web: pull one thread, and another part is affected. Nothing is isolated, nothing completely independent. Everything is interdependent.

At some point, everyone faces a Job moment: a test that asks whether you follow the Good for love of it, or only for its blessings.

The ancient story of Job shows a righteous person stripped of family, wealth, health, and reputation. His first response to loss is not complaint but worship: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” True praise is most honest when it costs you something.

I am no Job, but recently, within a single week, my car was totaled, I lost my job, I fought a cold, and I broke my glasses in a fall. It felt like a small echo of Job’s trials.

Everyone endures such moments. The question is not whether suffering comes, but how we respond. Do we trust the Good when the blessings vanish?

Each loss is an opportunity to lay more of the self on the altar. The difference between earlier crises and this one was not the events, but the surrender that had already been offered.

Progress is real, but so is the warning: if you think you are standing, watch that you do not fall. Peace and steady trust grow as more of us is given up, not as more is kept.

Several wisdom traditions teach that only Ultimate Reality—Brahman—is real, and that the world we inhabit is illusion, a veil of ignorance obscuring the truth that nothing “here” truly exists.

There is truth in this, but only so far. The world is illusory in the sense that it appears solid and permanent. What is actually present is energy and information in constant flux.

Between the idealist who says everything is mind and the materialist who says everything is matter stands process philosophy. It rejects substance ontology in favor of event ontology: matter is simply slow‑changing events, energy that has taken form.

But the illusion is not of something absent; it is an illusion of something present. When a rock falls on your head and leaves a bump, the rock is not unreal in the sense of nothing at all. It is one event interacting with another. Process philosophy insists there is something really there—just not what we normally assume it to be. The world is not unreal; it is misinterpreted.

We have two major cognitive systems. One is instinct: fast, automatic, and always running. The other is reason: slower, deliberate, and mentally costly.
Much of instinct is inherited.

Self-preservation responses like fear of danger or the urge to protect others are biologically wired. But instinct can also be developed. Through repetition and habituation, learned behaviors become automatic, so we effectively train our instinct.

Reason is resource-heavy. It requires focused attention and conscious effort, consuming more cognitive energy than instinct.

When things go smoothly, we mostly run on instinct. We walk, talk, react, and make routine choices without much thought. Reason steps in only when something goes wrong: a surprise, a conflict, or a complex problem. Instinct is the usual driver; reason is the co-pilot that checks assumptions and corrects instinct when it leads us astray.

Imagine your mind as a car. Instinct keeps the engine running at highway speed. Reason slams the brakes, recalculates the route, and prevents crashes when the road changes.

The problem is that our instincts are designed for preservation, not truth. That means we must use mindfulness to bring ourselves back to reality and begin to see it for the first time. This is the only way to turn off the autopilot.

The positive effects of good karma are not a fixed reward handed out from outside; they are the natural result of how causes and effects unfold. You can grow in them, not by demanding favor, but by shaping your actions, attention, and intentions.

No harvest comes without planted seeds. Seeds will not grow unless watered. But if you plant and water, they will grow and yield fruit.

Your resolutions are the seeds; spiritual disciplines are the water; the fruit is the pattern of thought, word, and deed in your life. Like the sun, the overarching influence of karma—the moral principle of the universe—works in and with you, making clearer, more virtuous living possible.

Positive effects are already present in the very functioning of karma itself. Your existence participates in this moral order. Thus all you do occurs under its rays.

Like the sun, the benefits of good karma can harden clay but soften wax. The selfish, rigid mind is hardened; the open, compassionate mind is softened. Resistance makes the heart stubborn; surrender makes it receptive. Liberation arises through this unfolding of positive effects, not through self-centered effort alone.

There is a common practice in Theravāda Buddhism of sharing the merit of one’s practice with others. You will not find this practice in the Early Buddhist Texts. Nor is it depicted as something the Buddha practiced.

If you approach it with a little critical thinking, you will recognize it as an example of magical thinking. “Merit” translates the Pāli word puñña, which refers to the beneficial effects associated with a wholesome action: the favorable results that action produces in a person’s life. Merit is not a magical energy that can literally be stored and transmitted from one person to another.

The only ways a wholesome action can benefit others are for them to be the recipients of the action, to be positively influenced to follow the person’s example, or to rejoice in the good deed and be inspired by it.

Sharing merit with others is rooted in the questionable belief that good deeds generate a positive energy that can be transferred to others, thereby benefiting them, whether living or dead. This is often done through rituals, prayers, and offerings. From a critical perspective, this belief can be regarded as a form of magical thinking.