Reading Archives (Author)
Experiential Wisdom
"What is wisdom? Wisdom means right understanding. Knowledge of superficial, apparent truth is not true wisdom. In order...
The Real Addiction
When we talk of addiction, it is not merely to alcohol or to drugs, but also to passion, to anger, to fear, to egotism: all these are...
Universality Is Not An Idea, It Is Reality
The word “yoga” essentially means, “that which brings you to reality”. Literally, it means “union.”...
Nine Wisdom Steps From Spiritual Traditions
Each of the first eight [wisdom steps] introduces you to a different spiritual tradition -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity,...
Image of Myself
If the river is flowing and I pull a bucket of water out, as soon as you’ve got the bucket of water out of the river, that water is...
Emotions for Liberation
Many years ago, I walked into the kitchen of my guru’s ashram, and found him shouting at the cooks. Force- waves of anger were...
Transforming 'Some Scars'
The Sanskrit word "samskara" can be translated just the way it sounds in English: as'some scars." Samskaras are energy patterns in our...
The Difficult People In Your Life
We don’t always know why difficult people show up in our lives. There are some good theories about it, of course. Jungians,...
Liberation
If I had to define liberation, I’d say, “It’s the reconciliation that, what is, is.” In that, there is no...
Looking Through A Window
Everyone has had the experience of looking through a window and suddenly catching sight of his own reflection staring back at him from...
To Know Your Mind, Pay Close Attention To It
Certain rare and wonderful experiences are possible. But this is all we need, to take “spirituality” (the unavoidable term...
The Gift Of Threshold Moments
The thrush’s song belongs to a family of experiences that usher us into a threshold where sound trails off into silence, time...
Stumble but Continue Walking
Suppose that a half dozen of us are seated around the walls of a very dark room. We are told that somewhere in the open middle space is a...
Medicine for the Earth
In all spiritual traditions it is taught that everything that manifests in the physical world starts in the invisible realms of spirit....
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
If I have one operating philosophy about life it is this: “Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it’s good luck.” Four...
Serenity not Security
Has this ever happened to you? You pick up a book and a sentence leaps off the page as if it had been written just for you. Or you hear...
Indigenous Intelligence
My mother used to tell me a Jain story when I was a child: Adam was lost in the jungle, and there he encountered two wild elephants....
Going Into the Unknown
Going into the unknown world and confronting it without a penny in our pockets had meant that differences between rich and poor,...
Thousand Branches, Million Plums
As a seed is capable of becoming a tree, all human beings are also capable of realizing their own full potential. In order for the seed...
Beyond Good and Evil
Performing penance as a monk, experiencing ecstasy in love, engaging in evolutionary land reform, walking for world peace, being...
Science and Spirituality
Science without spirituality seeks to work mainly in human interest and gives birth to technologies of comfort and convenience, as well...
A Hero's Journey
A hero is not a special kind of person; every person is a special kind of hero when he or she is without fear. Every life is a hero's...
The Spirit Of Gift
We have learned much from the native Americans, the Australian Aboriginals, the indigenous people of India (adivasis) and the Bushmen of...
Worms Are, Therefore I Am
Perhaps the reason that we do not get enough enlightenment these days is because we do not take the time to sit under a tree. To be an...
Fear and Love
Our lives are ruled by fear. Fear of death, fear of old age, fear of illness, fear of unemployment, fear of failure, fear of...
Four B's Of Resilience And Worth
One thing is certain: It is not the amount of accumulated material wealth, baubles and toys, which lead to self-appreciation and ease...
Disagreements
"Have you ever been in traffic behind someone who doesn't move when the light turns green, so you honk your horn, then you realize the...
Nothing Else Matters
Stop dead in your tracks. It doesn’t matter at all, what you’ve ever done, or not done. It doesn’t matter how...
Time To Stop Pretending
It's time we stop pretending, subtly or overtly, that our particular group is superior in some way. That's a hidden way of saying, "I'm...
Very Simple
Earnestness is the key. Unconditional willingness. All you have to do is pay attention, be honest, and follow through. Truth is...
Returning to the Root
Let go of longing and aversion, and everything will be perfectly clear. When you cling to a hairbreadth of distinction, heaven and...
Abandon Only What Is Not Yours
The wise understand the importance of letting go -- even letting go of the things we strive for and attain. Meditative training is more...
The Opponent Relationship Is Not A Contest
What is combat, after all, but an intense relationship? Your opponent attempts to block and counter every strike you throw as well as...
Faith: Deepening our Power to Inquire
With faith we can draw near to the truth of the present moment, which is dissolving into the unknown even as we meet it. We open up to...
The Power of Patience
If we can be quieter, more in the moment with what is actually happening, a world of perception opens up for us based on where we are,...
I Have What You Need
In the old city section of Jerusalem, there is a wonderful open-stall marketplace. It is a place teeming with life—a deluge of...
What Do I Really Need Right Now?
An essential question we might ask ourselves is, 'What do I really need right now, in this moment, to be happy?' The world offers...
Rebel For A Good Cause
A friend of mine, at the end of a retreat, offered a provocative reflection that intrigued and inspired me. After looking intensively at...
How Generosity Leads to Awakening
The cultivation of generosity is the beginning of spiritual awakening. Generosity has tremendous force because it arises from an inner...
How Generosity Blossoms Into Meditation
The cultivation of generosity is the beginning of the path. [...] The path begins there because of the joy that arises from a generous...
Generosity Helps Us Accept Change
The aim of practicing generosity is twofold, or else it’s an incomplete experience. The first aim is to free our minds from the...
Counting On Our Ultimate Concern
The offering of one's heart happens in stages, with shadings of hesitation and bursts of freedom. Faith evolves from the first...
Force of Kindness
Many of us long for an underlying sense of meaning, something we can still believe in no matter what happens to us, a navigational force...
The Capacity for Successful Solitude
The capacity to be alone is the capacity to know enough about yourself and who you are, and be comfortable enough with that. That way,...
Two Ways of Learning Relaxation
There are two ways of learning relaxation, because there are two distinct levels at which a person can relax. I speak of top-to-bottom...
The Test for Meditation in Action
When we first come into this life we form a self in order to cope with the world. The baby has a rather scant self and commensurately...
Just Note Gone
Which technique would I pick as the quickest path to enlightenment? That is a question that I’m often asked. It’s a...
Three Stages Of Perceiving Impermanence
Impermanence is just appreciating the normal changing-ness of each experience at deeper levels of poignancy. One way to think about this...
Learning to Suffer More Effectively
Psychological grasping is your main source of suffering, not the physical sensations in your legs -- that is to say, how much you...
Recycling Karmic Trash
It’s very common for people on a meditative or spiritual path to develop a kind of sensitivity to the poison and pain of others....
Equanimity: The Radical Permission To Feel
Equanimity is a fundamental skill for self-exploration and emotional intelligence. It is a deep and subtle concept frequently...
Addicted to Thinking
The issue is not so much the presence or absence of thought activity during meditation. Rather, the issue is the degree to which ones...
Share Pain Not Suffering
Just as insight has many facets, so also with service. I would like to talk about just one aspect -- compassion. Compassion is...
Waves in the Mind
When you are practicing meditation, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it...
Water-falls
I went to Yosemite National Park, and I saw huge waterfalls. The highest one there is 1340 feet high, and from it water comes down like...
Zen Anecdotes
~~One day I complained to Suzuki Roshi about the people I was working with. He listened intently. Finally, he said, "If you want to see...
Quotes
"A person who falls on earth, stumbling on a stone, will stand up by means of the same earth they fell on. You complain because you...
Just Become A Swinging Door
When we practice [meditation] our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into our inner world. When we exhale,...
Live As You Like But Renounce Internally
Reality is without attributes: it is not color, it is not music, it is not yellow or black, etc. What you see is only the qualified...
Anyone Else Suffer From Active Laziness?
I was recently reading a book about a boy who becomes acquainted with philosophy through the need to answer questions about living and...
Towards Coherence and Unity
If you believe that your life will end with death, what you think, feel, and do has no meaning. Everything will end with incoherence and...
Two Stonemasons
Consider the story of two stonemasons. you walk up to the first stonemason and ask, ‘Do you like your job?’ He looks up at...
To Walk Unmasked
To have tried on every mask and eventually to have confidence to walk unmasked. Having experienced many places to appreciate, in its...
Creating Welcoming Space
One way of measuring whether our love is genuine, however, is to examine how far we've extended the boundaries that determine whom we...
Technology of Meditation
When you read books about meditation, or often when meditation is is presented by different groups, much of the emphasis falls on the...
Active Laziness
How many of us are swept away by what I have come to call an "active laziness"? Naturally there are different species of laziness:...
Death Connects Us To Life
Growing up with monastic teachings around the impermanence of life, I got the opportunity to apply them when my grandmother passed on,...
The Laughter Thief
I read recently that the average 4-year-old laughs about 300 times a day. The average 40-year-old? Only four. So why do so many of us...
The Divine Superman
It has been well said by one who saw but through a veil and mistook the veil for the face, that thy aim is to become thyself; and he said...
Living Inward
To be and to be fully is Nature's aim in us; but to be fully is to be wholly conscious of one's being. This movement of going inward and...
Moved by Love
In the Himalayas, there lived an infamous bandit named Sultana, who plundered the caravans of rich pilgrims and looted resource-rich...
Be With the Storms
How to free yourself from the grip of storms? This is the only basic problem in this universe. The first thing is to become aware of it...
A Flower's Job Is To Bloom
A powerful moment in My Fair Lady is when Henry Higgins's mother commiserates with a sobbing Eliza Dolittle. Eliza is distraught...
Serenity Prayer
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is...
Art And The Practice Of Being Yourself
There isn’t only one kind of artist in the world, one way of becoming an artist. There is, above all, a need to articulate your own...
Blessings for Earth-Healers
We give thanks for all those who are moved, in their lives, to heal and protect the earth, in small ways and in large. Blessings on the...
Should We Spend Time Like Money?
Benjamin Franklin once said: time is money. He meant this only as a gentle reminder not to "sit idle" for half the day....
Kintsugi
When a bowl, teapot or precious vase falls and breaks into a thousand pieces, we throw them away angrily and regretfully. Yet there is an...
Time Shifting vs Time Management
"I've observed over the years that many people in our culture experience not having enough time in daily life. The...
Time-shifting Not Time-management
"I've observed over the years that many people in our culture experience not having enough time in daily life. The...
The Glass is Already Broken
Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master, "In this world where everything changes, where nothing remains the same,...
Love Is The Highest Form Of Acceptance
Love is the highest form of acceptance. Judgment is the mechanics of non-acceptance. Some may say that without “good...
Silence Between Breaths
There is a silence between breaths when the heart becomes a sacred flame and the belly uncoils which reminds me how remarkable it is...
Freedom
"What most people call freedom is just the ability to satisfy desire. Many say, "I want more freedom" and what they mean is they want to...
The Year-To-Live Experiment
I was fifty-eight years old when I began the year long experiment. When the Dalai Lama was fifty-eight years old, a reporter asked him...
Forgiveness & Your Life's Unfinished Business
As awareness becomes yet subtler, able to discern even the muffled whispers of the mind, we are confronted with what a dying...
Beggarly, Friendly, And Kingly Giving
The greatest gift is the act of giving itself. Traditionally, three kinds of giving are spoken of. There is beggarly giving,...
Faith And Certainty Aren't The Same
What became clear for me is that we cannot control the volatile tides that life brings, but maybe we can learn to build better boats. I...
Fool Realization
In the Greek tradition, tragedies were four act plays that ended sadly and badly -- kind of like situation comedies without the laugh...
Humor Is A Magical Interface
Humor is a magical interface between the logical and intuitive minds. Consequently, it has the power to bypass the left-brain’s...
Be with the Magic
When animals look out of their eyes they don’t see what we see. Some of them see ultraviolet light, some of them can see very...
Green Mountains Are Forever Walking
I've been fascinated by this process of birth and death. I was a midwife for seven years, delivering babies in the bush and it...
Tale of the Journeying Stream
A stream, from its course in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of...
Antithesis Of Addiction
There is something deep within our nature. A guiding light if you will. A voice that always speaks of goodness. A voice that is always...
A Jeweler's Eye
Of my diagnosis, he had asked, “If you could take it all back, would you?” The answer I arrived at was this: “The...
Why DIY Devotion Doesn't Work
We are not seekers anymore—we are shoppers, not always really shopping, perhaps just window shopping. In an age where...
Simple Was Satisfying
The cultivation of mindfulness is key to waking up and fully experiencing simple pleasures. Simple pleasures are small things that...
Freewill And Responsbility
Do I have free will? No. I am not separate from the perceptions, thoughts and actions that make up my world. And if I am what seems to...
Emptiness Cafe
Life moves Like shadow and light, Instantaneously appearing, Though I cannot find time itself. Cities mirrored in thought, Nothing...
Mother Trees In A Wood Wide Web
Elders fill a special role in any community, having earned the respect of the tribe for their life-long wisdom, knowledge, and teaching....
Why Meditate
Meditation is the act of getting quiet and settling the mind. It’s the process of slowing and eventually stopping your thoughts, at...
Un-learning the Ways of Un-love
When you are absolutely happy in your aloneness, when the other is not a need, it is then that you are capable of love. If the other is...
Accepting Others Totally
When you look at the blue sky or the stars, or the birds and mountains, you have no complaints about them. And you are pleased and...
Humility Really Cannot be Considered a Virtue
Ego and pride are closely related, almost synonymous effects born of the same cause, ignorance of the relationship of the individualized...
The Balancing Force
The type of security and protection that we expect in this world of human beings is based on the humanly conceived notion of what is good...
Ego and the Illusion of Darkness
Q: How can we surrender the ego, when this wanting to surrender is itself an expression of the ego? Nithyananda: How are you going to...
Thought Power
Be careful of your thoughts. Whatever you send out of your mind, comes back to you. Every thought you think, is a boomerang. If you hate...
Gaining Mental Power
Uncontrolled thoughts are the roots of all evils. Each thought by itself is extremely weak, because the mind is generally distracted by...
Who Are You To Help
Do not stand on a high pedestal and take five cents in your hand and say, "Here, my poor man," but be grateful that the poor man is...
Slavery To The Senses
We are all slaves to our senses, slaves to our own minds, conscious and subconscious. The reason why a criminal is a criminal is not...
This World is Perfect
Is it not a blasphemy to say that the world needs our help? We cannot deny that there is much misery in it; to go out and help others is,...
Be Not a Beggar
Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you — but do not think of that now,...
Frying the Seeds of Anger
When I am angry, my whole mind becomes a huge wave of anger. I feel it, see it, handle it, can easily manipulate it, can fight with it;...
We Only Get What We Deserve
We must learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it. I have just said, no disease can come to me...
Unfurl Your Sails
The theory that advances the freedom of the human soul is the one theory that does not lay the blame of all our weaknesses upon...
Sip The Honey
If we examine our own lives, we find that the greatest cause of sorrow is this: we take up something, and put our whole energy on it --...
Seat of Power
We know that the greatest power is lodged in the fine, not in the coarse. We see a man take up a huge weight, we see his muscles well,...
The One Goal of All Nature
The grandest idea in Vedanta is that we may reach the same goal by different paths; and these paths I have generalised into...
The Secret Of Work
Whatever we do, we want a return. We are all traders. We are traders in life, we are traders in virtue, we are traders in religion. And...
One Robe One Bowl
In the early years of my practice, a group of Burmese monks were guest teachers for a week at a retreat at which I was a student in...
If There Is No Self, Whose Arthritis Is This?
"If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?" is one of a list of a dozen questions that have been appearing regularly...