Reading Archives (Author)

​Perspective

Aaron Zehah

A poor man lived with his wife and six children in a very small one-room house. They were always getting in each other's way and there was so little space they could hardly breathe!Finally the man...

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23K reads, 7 comments

Science As Spiritual Practice

Adam Frank

Spiritual endeavor often begins when a direct experience of suffering (or rapture) drives a person out of the confines of self. From there a commitment is established to explore for oneself matters of...

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12K reads, 10 comments

Virtues Are Like Vitamins

Adam Grant

Virtues can be a little bit like vitamins. Vitamins are essential for health. But what if you get more than your body needs? If you take too much Vitamin C, it won’t hurt you. If you overdose on...

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10K reads, 11 comments

Organizing With Love

adrienne maree brown

My favorite life forms right now are dandelions and mushrooms—the resilience in these structures, which we think of as weeds and fungi, the incomprehensible scale, the clarity of identity, excit...

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3K reads, 7 comments

Fuel For An Endless Fire

Adyashanti

Most people are in a constant state of struggle with themselves. Tremendously burdened by the past and in constant anticipation of the future, most human beings are rarely able to be fully present fo...

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7K reads

True Meditation Has No Direction

Adyashanti

True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascinat...

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74K reads, 36 comments

Let Everything End

Adyashanti

There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance which manifests as the experience of conflict and confusion and which caus...

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6K reads

The Question Of Being

Adyashanti

Above the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi were written the words, “Know yourself.” Jesus came along and added a sense of urgency and consequence to the ancient idea when he said, “I...

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14K reads, 8 comments

Movement of Love

Adyashanti

Love comes from a place of seeing that the truth seems to be manifested and expressed through a human personality for the sake of the evolution of the whole. The love I'm speaking of comes out of the...

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7K reads

Unproduced Stillness

Adyashanti

Silence, stillness, and awareness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence is itself the eternal witness with...

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11K reads

Truth Comes at a Cost

Adyashanti

If I was to translate the enlightened state down into human terms, I.d have to describe it as contentment. Being nobody, going nowhere, needing no reason to exist. To the ego, that probably sounds a...

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9K reads

When the Real Heart Breaks Open

Adyashanti

When the real heart breaks open, the question becomes, "How can one serve the One? How can one be this Truth?" And there's no final answer to that kind of question. It's always in the moment, at every...

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14K reads, 5 comments

Encountering Pure Mystery

Adyashanti

Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought. Realize that you are the mystery, and that you can’t really look at the mystery because you are only cap...

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9K reads, 6 comments

Beyond the Wall of Knowledge

Adyashanti

An intelligent mind realizes its own limitation, and it’s a beautiful thing when it does. When you stop holding on to all of the knowledge, then you start to enter a different state of being. Yo...

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9K reads, 3 comments

True Meditation

Adyashanti

True meditation has no direction, goals, or method. All methods aim at achieving a certain state of mind. All states are limited, impermanent and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bon...

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31K reads, 6 comments

Are You Ready To Lose Your World?

Adyashanti

There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-ts’an, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-ts’an writes these lin...

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22K reads, 9 comments

Along the Thread of our Inner Sincerity

Adyashanti

Sincerity is a word that I often use in teaching to convey the importance of being rooted in the qualities of honesty, authenticity, and genuineness. There can be nothing phony or contrived in our mot...

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27K reads, 7 comments

Applying Realization to Relationships

Adyashanti

Many spiritual seekers have had glimpses of the absolute unity of all existence, but few are capable of or willing to live up to the many challenging implications inherent in that revelation. The reve...

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210K reads, 17 comments

Rest and Be Taken

Adyashanti

When there is deep abundance there is nowhere to abide. There is nowhere to rest or grasp onto and yet there is rest The sky abides yet it never rests. Neither can we say that the sky is not...

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42K reads, 14 comments

That Which is Looking

Adyashanti

Only when you turn attention to awareness itself, there isn't anything behind it. That's what returning to the source means. It means that nothing is next. There's nothing behind it. With a thought th...

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28K reads, 5 comments

Response Vs. Reaction

Adyashanti

When I was 19 and 20, part of what drove my urge to awaken was that we were still in the midst of the Cold War, and it looked as though we might imminently drop bombs on each other. I saw the insanity...

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89K reads, 18 comments

The Question of Being

Adyashanti

Above the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi were written the words, “Know Thyself.” Jesus came along and added a sense of urgency and consequence to the ancient idea when he said, “If...

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98K reads, 34 comments

Liberation is Not a Spectator Sport

Adyashanti

The Way of Liberation is a stripped-down, practical guide to spiritual liberation, sometimes called awakening, enlightenment, self-realization, or simply seeing what is absolutely True. It is impossib...

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24K reads, 7 comments

To Be In Satsang

Adyashanti

We meet here together to recognize the Truth that is eternal. To be in satsang means to be in association with Truth. In satsang you will ask “Who am I?” or “What am I?”, witho...

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16K reads, 7 comments

Letting Everything End

Adyashanti

There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance which manifests as the experience of conflict and confusion and which caus...

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7K reads

Without Ourselves

Afton Wilder

A clear glass orb floats above the cliff just off the edge representing our conscience, souls, and selves what if it shatters? becoming a puzzle of icy glass and then nothing at all? what i...

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8K reads, 20 comments

Real Freedom

Ajahn Amaro

"Most of the time, however, we find ourselves moving away from that point. That's our habitual reaction to the world -- grasping after things or running away from things. I remember, when I was a...

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5K reads, 2 comments

Open to Any Possibility

Ajahn Amaro

In using thought in this way we are not demanding a fixed or certain answer. We must remain open to any possibility. If something arises, fine. If nothing arises, fine. You are consulting the oracle ...

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6K reads

It All Goes Wrong Anyway

Ajahn Brahm

Wherever you live -- in a monastery, in a city, or on a quiet tree-lined street -- you will always experience problems and difficulties from time to time. This is just the nature of life. So when you ...

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21K reads, 7 comments

Seeing Fully

Ajahn Brahm

We were poor monks who needed buildings. We couldn't afford to employ a builder — the materials were expensive enough. So I had to learn how to build: how to prepare the foundations, lay con...

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36K reads, 57 comments

Quotes

Ajahn Chah

"Only one book is worth reading: the heart." "Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with mustache. You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for y...

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15K reads, 2 comments

Love Needs to be Constantly Cleansed

Ajahn Jayasaro

In the stories that I cherished in my youth, happy endings almost always involved some kind of love, and I began to observe that in “real life” love is not always a guarantee of happiness ...

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19K reads, 7 comments

Trapped By Views

Ajahn Pasanno

We recognize that whatever comes up is just a mental formation within the mind, just a thought or just a perception. We can have a perception about something and realize that it's impermanent, uns...

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14K reads, 5 comments

Social Action

Ajahn Pasanno

To understand what social action is, we must realise that it is not a case of 'me with society around me' as if the two were self-sufficient things; the two are interrelated. What we bring to the soc...

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8K reads

Understanding and Cultivating Silence

Ajahn Sumedho

Just by exploring this you really get to understand what [self] is, how you become a personality and also to see that when there is no person there is still awareness. It’s an intelligent awaren...

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23K reads, 8 comments

Cleaning the Window

Ajahn Sumedho

We've never really accepted boredom as a conscious state. As soon as it comes into the mind we start looking for something interesting, some-thing pleasant. But in meditation we're allowing boredom ...

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6K reads

Trust in the Awareness

Ajahn Sumedho

‘Meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practices, good or bad. But when I use this word, what I’m mainly using it for is that s...

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22K reads, 7 comments

Maintaining Vision, While Focusing

Ajahn Thanasanti

It seems that the key to the practice is maintaining vision and focus. Vision keeps an overview of what one is doing and the greater context in mind. Focus is concerned with the specific task at hand....

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15K reads, 11 comments

Invisibility In A Time Of Transparency

Akiko Busch

What is the difference between being invisible and just landing in a blind spot? In the woods no more than an hour, I am struck anew by invisibility, and its improvisational choreography, as a nece...

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11K reads, 14 comments

Stop Eating Our Corn!

Akinori Kimura

[ Fascinated by machinery, a Japanese farmer bought a big foreign tractor to grow his corn and apples in northern Japan. Thirty years ago he had a conversion, however, to growing organically, a conv...

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39K reads, 7 comments

Preparing For The Extraordinary: An Essential Practice

Alan Briskin

Preparing for the extraordinary is one of the [...] essential practices of collective wisdom.  It requires clear intention and mindful preparation for achieving a greater felt sense of connection...

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14K reads, 14 comments

Restoring Balance and Meaning in Ourselves

Alan Briskin

During a time of great drought, a Taoist master was asked by members of a village if he could help bring rain to their dry fields. They confessed trying many other approaches before reaching out to hi...

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22K reads, 15 comments

Embracing the Mystery of Uncertainty

Alan Briskin

A Zen parable captures the mysterious connection between attending to our own consciousness and the external events that enfold us.  A respected teacher was asked by members of a village if he co...

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39K reads, 10 comments

Do You Remember Your Song?

Alan Cohen

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recog...

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34K reads, 23 comments

Always Had It, Always Will

Alan Cohen

Not this crude leather; luminous beings are we! - Yoda What would you do if someone swore that you knew the secret of life and put you on a stage to tell it? The Totally Hidden Video television sh...

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19K reads, 19 comments

The Main Thing

Alan Cohen

The sage Nasrudin stood on the bow of a ferryboat next to a pompous professor. "Have you ever studied astronomy?" asked the professor. "I can't say that I have," answered the mystic. "Then you h...

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6K reads

Turn on the Light

Alan Cohen

Improving our lives might just be simple, if we let it. We can upgrade all kinds of old patterns and situations in a much shorter time than it took to create them. Before we can do that, however, we...

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5K reads

Everything Human Is Natural

Alan Watts

Man is as much attached to nature as a tree, and though he walks freely on two legs and is not rooted in the soil, he is by no means a self-sufficient, self-moving, and self-directing entity. For his ...

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32K reads, 13 comments

The World Mirrors The Soul And The Soul Mirrors The World

Alan Watts

If you sit still for a while, completely relaxed, and let your thoughts run on, let your mind think of whatever it likes, without interfering, without making suggestions and without raising any kind o...

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20K reads, 7 comments

Who Wants To Be A Philosopher?

Alan Watts

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself. Other creatures may love and laugh, talk and think, but is seems to be that the special peculiarity of human beings is...

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20K reads

You Play The Piano

Alan Watts

The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought ...

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66K reads, 15 comments

Illusion of Oneself

Alan Watts

"We need a new experience -- a new feeling of what it is to be 'I.' The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best...

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20K reads

Money is not Wealth

Alan Watts

Money is a way of measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself. A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft. He needs real wealth, in the...

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41K reads, 30 comments

Become What You Are

Alan Watts

Begin with the practice of concentration, that is, of attentive looking. It is as if to say, "If you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself. But this needs a c...

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19K reads, 7 comments

True Splendor of Science

Alan Watts

The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. However much it ma...

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32K reads, 4 comments

Hermits in New York

Alan Watts

Let's take hermits. People today think being a hermit is a very unhealthy thing to do. Very antisocial, doesn't contribute anything to everybody else - because everybody else is busy contributing lik...

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27K reads

One Has No Self To Love

Alan Watts

Love that expresses itself in creative action is something much more than an emotion. It is not something which you can “feel” and “know,” remember and define. Love is the orga...

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28K reads, 12 comments

Making Friends with the Present Moment

Alan Zulch

Some months ago, for three successive nights, I was awakened by three insights that came to me – persistently and repeatedly – one per night. The first night's message was: "Only the ...

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19K reads, 11 comments

Thank You Silence

Alanis Morissette

how bout getting off these antibiotics how bout stopping eating when I'm full up how bout them transparent dangling carrots how bout that ever elusive kudo thank you india thank you terror thank you...

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10K reads

Ball of Quicksilver

Albert Camus

If I try to taste and understand this delicate flavor that contains the secret of the world, it is again myself that I find at the heart of the universe. Myself, that is to say this intense emotion w...

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18K reads

Is the Universe Friendly?

Albert Einstein

 "I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves. &q...

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316K reads, 90 comments

Ideals That Lighted My Way

Albert Einstein

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from...

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8K reads

Everything Is A Miracle

Albert Einstein

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one e...

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248K reads, 64 comments

On Education

Albert Einstein

"Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school, ho...

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28K reads, 3 comments

Our Situation on Earth

Albert Einstein

Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that ...

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64K reads, 4 comments

Reverence For Life

Albert Schweitzer

An absolute ethic calls for the creating of perfection in this life. It cannot be completely achieved; but that fact does not really matter. In this sense reverence for life is an absolute ethic. It ...

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12K reads, 6 comments

Service of Humanity

Albert Schweitzer

From my childhood up, I was troubled about my right to happiness as a matter of course and about the pain which prevails in the world around me. As long ago as my student days, it struck me as inc...

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6K reads

Law of Reversed Effort

Aldous Huxley

There is a Law of Reversed Effort. The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Proficiency and the results of proficiency come only to those who ha...

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56K reads, 9 comments

The Difference Between Knowledge And Understanding

Aldous Huxley

Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make po...

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8K reads, 7 comments

At Once, Beneficiary and Victim

Aldous Huxley

 "Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain ...

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21K reads, 4 comments

Can Beauty Save the World?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Dostoyevsky once let drop the enigmatic phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” What does this mean? For a long time it used to seem to me that this was a mere phrase. Just how could such a ...

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18K reads, 6 comments

Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

Alice Walker

I am the youngest of eight siblings. Five of us have died. I share losses, health concerns, and other challenges common to the human condition, especially in these times of war, poverty, environmental...

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22K reads, 11 comments

Serving Like The Mountain Stream

Allan Watts

I was taught when I was a little boy that it was good to be unselfish and loving, and I used to think that I should grow up to serve other people. But after a while I found out that unless one has so...

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60K reads, 16 comments

Faith is to Let Go

Allan Watts

"Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water. You don't grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do you will become stiff and tight...

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12K reads

On Humility

Allen Schmeltz

"Humility is a trait that is somewhat of an enigma. For to be humble you must not know you are humble since if you know you are humble and begin to take pride in your humbleness, then you cease to...

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6K reads

Utopia Factories

Alvin Toffler

As we move from poverty to affluence, politics changes from what Mathematicians call a zero-sum game into a non-zero sum game. In the first, if one player wins another must lose. In the second, all ...

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14K reads

The World Through Your Mind

Amaro

The essence of all spiritual practice, in our human condition, is to learn to look beyond the sensory world, learn to abide beyond perception. One way that we can do this is to look upon life as s...

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5K reads

Paying Attention

Amishi P. Jha

Attention is thought to have evolved to solve one of the brain’s biggest challenges: There is far more information in our environment than the brain can fully process. Without a way to filter, t...

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8K reads, 15 comments

We Are Never Alone

Anandmurti Gurumaa

We are never alone. Neither in the womb, nor after birth. The true Self is boundary-less; it is all-pervasive. In terms of existence there isn't any boundary, but at mind, body and speech levels we di...

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16K reads, 8 comments

Returning to the Language of Life

Anat Vaughan-Lee

We do not always know what it is or how to articulate it, but deep inside there is a longing, a longing to live according to a true calling. A calling that comes not from the personality but from a de...

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49K reads, 6 comments

Why Do You Meditate?

Andrew Cohen

You meditate to remind yourself that you're not a prisoner. If there is power in your meditation, if your experience of the ground of being is deep and profound, you will discover and rediscover, ove...

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15K reads, 5 comments

You Are Not a Prisoner

Andrew Cohen

Q: Why is it important to practice meditation consistently? A: You meditate to remind yourself that you are not a prisoner.  If there is power in your meditation, if your experience of the Groun...

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27K reads, 17 comments

Is Meditation Boring?

Andrew Cohen

Q: I have been practicing leave the mind and emotions alone, but I often find meditation boring. A: In order for the experience of meditation to be endlessly fascinating and infinitely compellin...

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68K reads, 14 comments

A Realm Beyond Measurement

Andrew Cohen

With meditation, you can't push.  Meditation is one of those things that cannot be forced.  You just have ot make yourself available, and we do that by being still, being at ease, and paying...

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13K reads, 11 comments

Peace is Not the Ultimate Answer

Andrew Cohen

It continually amazes me that the majority of spiritual seekers from the most affluent countries on our small planet seem to be looking for one thing above anything else: Peace. Peace? Why on earth wo...

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9K reads, 11 comments

Becoming Truly Independent

Andrew Cohen

Many people have told me that they find something and then lose it. They wait and they seek, and then find and lose it again. Most of the time, seekers are trying to rediscover or re-attain something ...

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11K reads, 6 comments

The Attention That Arises From Caring

Andrew Cohen

Bare mindfulness, or attention from moment to moment, is a good technique as far as it goes, but I don’t feel it’s enough, unless you, whoever you are, care about your own effect in this world and...

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5K reads

What is Ego?

Andrew Cohen

"What is ego? Ego is the deeply felt sense of being separate and superior. Indeed, it is an emotional and psychological compulsion to see and feel the self as being separate from and superior to the o...

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7K reads, 3 comments

The Evolutionary Impulse

Andrew Cohen

It is a very rare moment indeed when the evolutionary impulse -- that mysterious urge toward unbounded freedom and our own potential for radical transformation in this life -- arises in awareness, un...

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6K reads

Five Tenets of Life

Andrew Cohen

The five fundamental tenets of [a full life]: 1- Clarity of Intention The first tenet, Clarity of Intention, is the foundation of the authentic spiritual life. It states that in order to succeed in...

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19K reads, 2 comments

Creative Solutions?

Andrew Macnab

When one is confronted with a problem, there is a tendency to classify it, to find a similar problem in one's memory, either previously experienced or heard about, and to apply the previous problem'...

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5K reads

Every Seed Carries a Secret

Angela Fischer

Every seed carries a secret. We will never come to fully know this secret, because it belongs to the mystery of creation. Yet we can learn again what hundreds of generations did before us, namely t...

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24K reads, 5 comments

Courage to Risk Telling the Truth

Angeles Arrien

Something definitely changes when we finally summon the courage to risk telling the truth about who we are and are not. The primary questions become: how and why do we avoid being who we truly are? Wh...

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23K reads, 8 comments

Three Universal Human Processes

Angeles Arrien

There are three universal processes that every human being is involved in whether you’re in Africa or China or among the island people of the world. They are, first, the work with self. That is ...

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17K reads, 14 comments

Instilling Discipline and Responsibility in our Lives

Angeles Arrien

Responsibility is not only the ability to respond to what comes towards us, it is also the capacity to stand behind our actions and to be responsible for all that we do, or do not do. This means that ...

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35K reads, 13 comments

The Secret To Surfing the Waves

Ani Tenzin Palmo

What we need is to be interested and to watch, but not interfere or be caught up in what we are thinking. Don't think of the past, don't anticipate the future, don't get fascinated by the present. S...

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8K reads, 4 comments

Commencement Speech

Anna Quindlen

So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about ...

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8K reads

Get a Life

Anna Quindlen

There are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive w...

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47K reads, 34 comments

Look At The View

Anna Quindlen

I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island many years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless suffer in the winter months. He and I sat on the ed...

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23K reads

Does The Mind Exist During Our Sleep?

Annamalai Swami

Every time you go to sleep you have the experience of being without a mind. You cannot deny that you exist while you are asleep and you cannot deny that your mind is not functioning while you are in d...

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13K reads, 11 comments

Two Shells Meeting

Anne Lindbergh

People are like that here. Strangers smile at you on the beach, come up and offer you a shell, for no reason, lightly, and then go by and leave you alone again. Nothing is demanded of you in pa...

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7K reads

Gift from the Sea

Anne Morrow Lindberg

The beach is not the place to work; to read, write, or think. I should have remembered that from other years. Too warm, too damp, too soft for any real mental discipline or sharp flights of spirit. On...

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26K reads, 15 comments

Technique of the Dance

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers, not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively ...

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102K reads, 12 comments

Hiding A Penny

Annie Dillard

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been s...

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16K reads, 6 comments

What You See Is What You Get

Annie Dillard

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been s...

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38K reads, 14 comments

Weaving a New Fabric

Anonymous

[ Below is a contribution by a reader who recently lost a loved one and wrote this in a spontaneous email to friends and family. ] a new fabric ... the old one is torn with a huge hole in the m...

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6K reads

We Were Made For These Times

Anonymous

The world is made up of stories. A secret web of agreements about what is “right” and “wrong”, what is “normal” and “weird”, and what is “possible...

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14K reads, 18 comments

Giving Somebody Your Heart

Anonymous

In every interaction you have with another human being—doesn’t matter who—you always have two main choices. (The keyword is choice.) One choice usually leads to logical (b...

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147K reads, 35 comments

Three Qualities Of Holiness

Anthony De Mello

True happiness is uncaused. You are happy for no reason at all.  And true happiness cannot be experienced. It is not within the realm of consciousness. So it is with holiness.  Holiness i...

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18K reads, 6 comments

The Job

Anthony De Mello

Enter first applicant. "You understand that this is a simple test we are giving you before we offer you the job you have applied for?" "Yes." "Well, what is two plus two?" ...

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6K reads

Armchair Explorer

Anthony De Mello

"The explorer returned to his people, who were eager to know about the Amazon. But how could he ever put into words the feelings that flooded his heart when he saw exotic flowers and heard the night-...

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12K reads

Dropping That Drug

Anthony de Mello

If we really dropped illusions for what others can give us or deprive us of, we would become alert. The consequence of not doing this is terrifying and inescapable -- we lose our capacity to love. If ...

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71K reads, 29 comments

Substituting One Cruelty For Another

Anthony de Mello

Many people swing into action only to make things worse. They're not coming from love, they're coming from negative feelings. They're coming from guilt, anger, hate; from a sense of injust...

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14K reads, 8 comments

Absence of Fear

Anthony De Mello

"What is love?" "Total absence of fear," said the master. "What is that we fear?" "Love," said the master. - Anthony De Mello We fear this total absence of fear. Why? Because if we...

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9K reads

The World Feeling And The Soul Feeling

Anthony de Mello

For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? —Matthew 16:26 Recall the kind of feeling you have when someone praises you, when you are approved, accepted,...

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11K reads, 9 comments

Effort Does Not Change The Person

Anthony De Mello

Effort may change the behavior but it does not change the person. Just think what kind of a mentality it betrays when you ask, 'What must I do to get holiness?' Isn't it like asking, How m...

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16K reads, 19 comments

Thought is a screen not a mirror

Anthony De Mello

"Why are you so wary of thought?" said the philosopher. "Thought is the one tool we have for organizing the world." "True. But thought can organize the world so well...

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5K reads

Can You Just Sit?

Anthony de Mello

The disciples were involved in a heated discussion on the cause of human suffering. Some said it came from selfishness. Others, from delusion. Yet others, from the inab...

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5K reads

Life Before Death

Anthony De Mello

All questions at the public meeting that day were about life beyond the grave. The Master only laughed and did not give a single answer. To his disciples, who demanded to know the reason for his ...

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10K reads, 2 comments

We Want Relief. Cure Is Painful

Anthony de Mello

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep,...

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26K reads, 10 comments

Do You Really Want A Cure

Anthony DeMello

To a distressed person who came to him for help the Master said, "Do you really want a cure?" "If I did not, would I bother to come to you?" "Oh yes. Most people do." "What for?" "Not for a cure...

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6K reads

Relief Not Cure

Anthony DeMello

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they di...

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9K reads, 4 comments

Goodness Within

Anthony Mello

"Why is everyone here so happy except me?" "Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere," said the Master. "Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere?" "Because you cannot...

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5K reads

Listening

Anthony Mello

"How shall I experience my oneness with creation?" "By listening," said the Master. "And how am I to listen?" "Become an ear that gives heed to every single thing the universe is saying. ...

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5K reads

Grown-ups Like Numbers

Antoine Exupéry

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: "What does his voice sound like?" "What games does he like best?" ...

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14K reads

Three Levels Of Happiness

Anushka Fernandopulle

The Buddha talked about three different levels of happiness. The first is happiness that can come from pleasant sense experiences: delicious food, nice weather, pleasant music, or any kind of positive...

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11K reads, 5 comments

Coddiwomple

April Rinne

Coddiwomple is one of my all-time favorite words, especially as a metaphor for life. It means to travel purposefully towards an as-yet-unknown destination. Isn't that what we're...

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9K reads, 16 comments

Response Is Different From An Answer

Ariel Burger

The current moment calls for moral ferocity. We should not sleep well at night when we know others are suffering. Ferocity itself, though, holds danger. Let’s not forget that some of the worst p...

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15K reads, 14 comments

Does God Have A Form?

Arthur Osborne

"Has God a form?" a man once challenged Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian sage. "Who says God has a form?" Ramana retorted. The questioner persisted, "If God is formless is...

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15K reads, 10 comments

Open to Release

Arthur Zajonc

Let's say you're making something, a simple artistic sketch. You have the sketch in front of you. There's the sketch; you study it, move it inwardly, feel its gestures. Now i...

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9K reads, 2 comments

Run With The Unexpected

Aryae Coopersmith

So many portals to you Hindu, Jew, Sufi, Sikh, artist, lover, dancer, explorer, peace-warrior. Children, strangely familiar, are rushing up to greet and initiate you. Joyful ravens ...

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14K reads, 6 comments

Various Quotes

Asha Praver

Humor is spiritual because laughing shows the ability to detach from life, to realize that life is just like "froth on a wave." ----- Sometimes people embrace the idea of "loving unconditionally" si...

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6K reads

Time Confetti And The Broken Promise Of Leisure

Ashley Whillans

It’s true: we have more time for leisure than we did fifty years ago. But leisure has never been less relaxing, mostly because of the disintermediating effects of our screens. Technology saves u...

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13K reads, 6 comments

Space in the Crowded Workplace

Ashvin Iyengar

The more I live, the more I am realizing the importance of space. Space between thoughts and actions. Space which has room for possibilities despite being crowded with opinions. Space which makes choi...

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21K reads, 17 comments

Unattainable Goal of Peace

Aung San Suu Kyi

[Nobel Lecture, June 16, 2012] The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. It may be questioned whether a...

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1907K reads, 15 comments

The Act of Giving is the True Gift

Author Unknown

In an ancient Indian epic, Arjuna, a famed warrior questions his divine charioteer, Krishna, about the noblest giver in the land. "Karna is without doubt the finest example of generosity in ...

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90K reads, 22 comments

A Spiritual Conspiracy

Author Unknown

On the surface of the Earth exactly now there is war and violence and everything looks horrible.  But, simultaneously, something quiet, calm and hidden is happening and certain people are being c...

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147K reads, 55 comments

Maybe, Said the Farmer

Author Unknown

Once upon a time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said...

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104K reads, 30 comments

Showing Up For Life

Author Unknown

The way we walk into a room says a lot about the way we live our lives. When we walk into a room curious about what's happening, willing to engage, and perceiving ourselves as an active participant wi...

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23K reads, 3 comments

Beyond The Conflict Of Inner Forces

Author Unknown

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.”It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – ...

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400K reads, 104 comments

Futility of Search

Author Unknown

The disciple looked at the Master. So calm and peaceful while he himself was so agitated, restless and confused.    He asked the Master, “What do you know that I don’t know?&rd...

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38K reads, 30 comments

Gamble On Humanity

Ayisha Siddiqa

What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight. Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves. To withstand your own end is dif...

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15K reads, 13 comments

Signals Even GPS Cannot Detect

Aylie Baker

Returning to the US was always hard for me, in part because I began to notice how GPS technology was eroding what was left of our wayfinding capabilities. In the spring of 2013, I flew from Palau back...

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14K reads, 18 comments