Good afternoon Ben,

“If you feel inspired, please send me an email and let me know,” I’ve just read in the November issue of Lion’s Roar.

Inspired? I’m not sure about that, but I am writing anyway.

Now and then I trek over to the downtown library and peruse a few issues, and while I fully concede there’s tremendous and powerful wisdom contained within their pages I also know in my heart that if humankind is ever to grow beyond its current plight, truly comprehend our place and what might be termed a ‘meaning’ in life even Buddhistic teachings as practiced today will need be transcended.

Big words I fully admit.

Words, I should add, which come from an individual who has never formally studied any branch of Buddhist teaching.

But didn’t the Buddha attain to his so-called enlightenment, or had his awakening symbolized at any rate, after he had gone beyond what constituted the sum total of teachings of his day?

The same going beyond the teachings of the day pattern, archetype if you will, can be seen in the story of Jesus as well.

Just patterns and archetypes, you might say.

Anyway, we, and especially us citizens of the West, have felt ourselves on the cusp of something new and revolutionary for decades, and perhaps even a century now. The ferment that was the sixties saw it erupt into the mainstream, but, with all the New Age speak, the Burning Man festivals, the best efforts of the well intentioned and even Lion’s Roar, has anything changed? Have any paradigms shifted?

Is the New truly budding forth, or is it the same old same old?

I apologize for the implications of what I say, but questions need be asked if answers are ever to be forthcoming.

Well, as crazy as this sounds, I’m saying here and at the Omphalos Cafe the answers to the conundrum of Life lie all around us, if only we have the eyes to see that is. However, those eyes won’t be peering out at the world from the same outworn perspectives handed down to us from millennia to millennia.

That’s all to say the shift is upon us. I see it hinted at or adumbrated everywhere, although completely unsuspectedly, including for instance in Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens.

And I speak of it more directly, if not more clearly, in my YouTube video titled The Omphalos Cafe’s Four Noble Truths.

Seeds need planting.

Ok, why not go all out?

Seeds of the last great paradigm shift.

Beyond even Buddhism.