Reading Archives (Author)
Achieving Peace
When an individual lacks inner peace, domestic harmony is affected. When domestic harmony is lost, peace amongst neighbors too thins...
Perspective
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...
Science As Spiritual Practice
Spiritual endeavor often begins when a direct experience of suffering (or rapture) drives a person out of the confines of self. From...
Virtues Are Like Vitamins
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...
The Future Is Unknowable
Humans may be the only species that can imagine an unknown future. But that doesn’t mean we’re any good at it. We’re...
Organizing With Love
My favorite life forms right now are dandelions and mushrooms—the resilience in these structures, which we think of as weeds and...
Encountering Pure Mystery
Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought. Realize that you are the mystery, and that...
Fuel For An Endless Fire
Most people are in a constant state of struggle with themselves. Tremendously burdened by the past and in constant anticipation of the...
Liberation is Not a Spectator Sport
The Way of Liberation is a stripped-down, practical guide to spiritual liberation, sometimes called awakening, enlightenment,...
Let Everything End
There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance which...
Movement of Love
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...
True Meditation Has No Direction
True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain...
Truth Comes at a Cost
If I was to translate the enlightened state down into human terms, I.d have to describe it as contentment. Being nobody, going nowhere,...
The Question Of Being
Above the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi were written the words, “Know yourself.” Jesus came along and added a sense of...
When the Real Heart Breaks Open
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...
Unproduced Stillness
Silence, stillness, and awareness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all...
Beyond the Wall of Knowledge
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...
True Meditation
True meditation has no direction, goals, or method. All methods aim at achieving a certain state of mind. All states are limited,...
Response Vs. Reaction
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...
Are You Ready To Lose Your World?
There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-ts’an, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as...
Along the Thread of our Inner Sincerity
Sincerity is a word that I often use in teaching to convey the importance of being rooted in the qualities of honesty, authenticity, and...
Applying Realization to Relationships
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...
That Which is Looking
Only when you turn attention to awareness itself, there isn't anything behind it. That's what returning to the source means. It means...
Rest and Be Taken
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...
To Be In Satsang
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...
The Question of Being
Above the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi were written the words, “Know Thyself.” Jesus came along and added a sense of...
Letting Everything End
There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance which...
Without Ourselves
A clear glass orb floats above the cliff just off the edge representing our conscience, souls, and selves what if it shatters?...
The Rooted Rock
Before you begin reading, adopt the pose of a rock—yes, a rock. Sit cross-legged (or stand if you prefer), make yourself as heavy...
Open to Any Possibility
In using thought in this way we are not demanding a fixed or certain answer. We must remain open to any possibility. If something...
Real Freedom
"Most of the time, however, we find ourselves moving away from that point. That's our habitual reaction to the world -- grasping after...
Seeing Fully
We were poor monks who needed buildings. We couldn't afford to employ a builder — the materials were expensive enough. So I had...
It All Goes Wrong Anyway
Wherever you live -- in a monastery, in a city, or on a quiet tree-lined street -- you will always experience problems and difficulties...
Secret To A Happy Marriage?
Why is it that many priests and monks perform marriage rites when they themselves are celibate? I have conducted many marriage ceremonies...
Quotes
"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...
Love Needs to be Constantly Cleansed
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...
Trapped By Views
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...
Social Action
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...
Understanding and Cultivating Silence
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...
Trust in the Awareness
‘Meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practices, good or bad. But...
Cleaning the Window
We've never really accepted boredom as a conscious state. As soon as it comes into the mind we start looking for something interesting,...
Maintaining Vision, While Focusing
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...
Invisibility In A Time Of Transparency
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...
Stop Eating Our Corn!
[ Fascinated by machinery, a Japanese farmer bought a big foreign tractor to grow his corn and apples in northern Japan. Thirty years...
Preparing For The Extraordinary: An Essential Practice
Preparing for the extraordinary is one of the [...] essential practices of collective wisdom. It requires clear intention and...
Restoring Balance and Meaning in Ourselves
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...
Embracing the Mystery of Uncertainty
A Zen parable captures the mysterious connection between attending to our own consciousness and the external events that enfold us....
The Main Thing
The sage Nasrudin stood on the bow of a ferryboat next to a pompous professor. "Have you ever studied astronomy?" asked the professor....
Turn on the Light
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...
Do You Remember Your Song?
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...
Always Had It, Always Will
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...
Everything Human Is Natural
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...
The World Mirrors The Soul And The Soul Mirrors The World
If you sit still for a while, completely relaxed, and let your thoughts run on, let your mind think of whatever it likes, without...
True Splendor of Science
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...
You Play The Piano
The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That...
Who Wants To Be A Philosopher?
Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself. Other creatures may love and laugh, talk and think, but...
Money is not Wealth
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...
Become What You Are
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...
Hermits in New York
Let's take hermits. People today think being a hermit is a very unhealthy thing to do. Very antisocial, doesn't contribute anything to...
Illusion of Oneself
"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...
One Has No Self To Love
Love that expresses itself in creative action is something much more than an emotion. It is not something which you can...
Making Friends with the Present Moment
Some months ago, for three successive nights, I was awakened by three insights that came to me – persistently and repeatedly...
Thank You Silence
how bout getting off these antibiotics how bout stopping eating when I'm full up how bout them transparent dangling carrots how bout...
Ball of Quicksilver
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...
Ideals That Lighted My Way
"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...
On Education
"Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing...
Everything Is A Miracle
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...
Our Situation on Earth
Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing...
Is the Universe Friendly?
"I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and...
Service of Humanity
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...
Reverence For Life
An absolute ethic calls for the creating of perfection in this life. It cannot be completely achieved; but that fact does not really...
At Once, Beneficiary and Victim
"Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is...
Law of Reversed Effort
There is a Law of Reversed Effort. The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed....
The Difference Between Knowledge And Understanding
Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old experiences....
Can Beauty Save the World?
Dostoyevsky once let drop the enigmatic phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” What does this mean? For a long time it used to...
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing
I am the youngest of eight siblings. Five of us have died. I share losses, health concerns, and other challenges common to the human...
Why Do We Send Flowers?
Why do we send flowers? To make up for what is intangible? Those feelings we can’t hold in our hands and present as a gift to our...
Faith is to Let Go
"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...
Serving Like The Mountain Stream
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...
On Humility
"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...
Utopia Factories
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...
The World Through Your Mind
The essence of all spiritual practice, in our human condition, is to learn to look beyond the sensory world, learn to abide beyond...
Circles And Dots
The teacher drew a large circle on a paper pasted to a board. Then he turned to his students and said, This is the great circle of...
Paying Attention
Attention is thought to have evolved to solve one of the brain’s biggest challenges: There is far more information in our...
We Are Never Alone
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...
Returning to the Language of Life
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...
No Fingerprint On The Infinite
Trauma was not being able to get the hands of the clock off of me. Healing was learning no one has ever laid a fingerprint on...
Is Meditation Boring?
Q: I have been practicing leave the mind and emotions alone, but I often find meditation boring. A: In order for the experience of...
Five Tenets of Life
The five fundamental tenets of [a full life]: 1- Clarity of Intention The first tenet, Clarity of Intention, is the foundation of the...
The Evolutionary Impulse
It is a very rare moment indeed when the evolutionary impulse -- that mysterious urge toward unbounded freedom and our own potential for...
What is Ego?
"What is ego? Ego is the deeply felt sense of being separate and superior. Indeed, it is an emotional and psychological compulsion to see...
Becoming Truly Independent
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...
You Are Not a Prisoner
Q: Why is it important to practice meditation consistently? A: You meditate to remind yourself that you are not a prisoner. If...
Why Do You Meditate?
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...
Peace is Not the Ultimate Answer
It continually amazes me that the majority of spiritual seekers from the most affluent countries on our small planet seem to be looking...
A Realm Beyond Measurement
With meditation, you can't push. Meditation is one of those things that cannot be forced. You just have ot make yourself...
The Attention That Arises From Caring
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,...
Creative Solutions?
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...
Every Seed Carries a Secret
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...
Instilling Discipline and Responsibility in our Lives
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...
Three Universal Human Processes
There are three universal processes that every human being is involved in whether you’re in Africa or China or among the island...
Courage to Risk Telling the Truth
Something definitely changes when we finally summon the courage to risk telling the truth about who we are and are not. The primary...
The Secret To Surfing the Waves
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...
Is There A Real World Out There?
Here’s a commonsense view of perception. Let’s call it the “how things seem” view. There’s a...
Look At The View
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...
Get a Life
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...
Commencement Speech
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...
Seeing Reality As It Is
Meditation entails the difficult task of cultivating concentrated attention on one’s moment-to-moment experience—the endless...
Does The Mind Exist During Our Sleep?
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...
Two Shells Meeting
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...
Gift from the Sea
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...
Technique of the Dance
Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers, not...
What You See Is What You Get
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...
Hiding A Penny
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...
We Were Made For These Times
The world is made up of stories. A secret web of agreements about what is “right” and “wrong”, what is...
Giving Somebody Your Heart
In every interaction you have with another human being—doesn’t matter who—you always have two main choices....
Weaving a New Fabric
[ Below is a contribution by a reader who recently lost a loved one and wrote this in a spontaneous email to friends and family. ]...
Effort Does Not Change The Person
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...
Substituting One Cruelty For Another
Many people swing into action only to make things worse. They're not coming from love, they're coming from negative feelings....
The World Feeling And The Soul Feeling
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...
Can You Just Sit?
The disciples were involved in a heated discussion on the cause of human suffering. Some said it came from...
Life Before Death
All questions at the public meeting that day were about life beyond the grave. The Master only laughed and did not give a single...
Armchair Explorer
"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...
The Job
Enter first applicant. "You understand that this is a simple test we are giving you before we offer you the job you have...
Absence of Fear
"What is love?" "Total absence of fear," said the master. "What is that we fear?" "Love," said the master. - Anthony De...
Thought is a screen not a mirror
"Why are you so wary of thought?" said the philosopher. "Thought is the one tool we have for organizing the world."...
Dropping That Drug
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...
Three Qualities Of Holiness
True happiness is uncaused. You are happy for no reason at all. And true happiness cannot be experienced. It is not within the...
We Want Relief. Cure Is Painful
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep,...
Do You Really Want A Cure
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...
Relief Not Cure
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they...
Listening
"How shall I experience my oneness with creation?" "By listening," said the Master. "And how am I to listen?" "Become an ear...
Goodness Within
"Why is everyone here so happy except me?" "Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere," said the Master. "Why...
Grown-ups Like Numbers
Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask:...
Three Levels Of Happiness
The Buddha talked about three different levels of happiness. The first is happiness that can come from pleasant sense experiences:...
Coddiwomple
Coddiwomple is one of my all-time favorite words, especially as a metaphor for life. It means to travel purposefully towards an...
Sharing Someone Else's Wound
My son was on a trip, a semester-long program in Israel, and then they traveled to Poland for 10-days. On this program, he...
Response Is Different From An Answer
The current moment calls for moral ferocity. We should not sleep well at night when we know others are suffering. Ferocity itself,...
Does God Have A Form?
"Has God a form?" a man once challenged Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian sage. "Who says God has a form?" Ramana...
Open to Release
Let's say you're making something, a simple artistic sketch. You have the sketch in front of you. There's the...
Run With The Unexpected
So many portals to you Hindu, Jew, Sufi, Sikh, artist, lover, dancer, explorer, peace-warrior. Children, strangely familiar,...
Various Quotes
Humor is spiritual because laughing shows the ability to detach from life, to realize that life is just like "froth on a wave." -----...
Time Confetti And The Broken Promise Of Leisure
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...
Space in the Crowded Workplace
The more I live, the more I am realizing the importance of space. Space between thoughts and actions. Space which has room for...
Unattainable Goal of Peace
[Nobel Lecture, June 16, 2012] The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive...
A Spiritual Conspiracy
On the surface of the Earth exactly now there is war and violence and everything looks horrible. But, simultaneously, something...
Beyond The Conflict Of Inner Forces
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.”It is a...
Futility of Search
The disciple looked at the Master. So calm and peaceful while he himself was so agitated, restless and confused. He asked...
Unexpected Strength
A 10-year-old boy decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. The boy began...
Showing Up For Life
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...
The Willing Gift
The sun was soft that morning, and the breeze carried the smell of wet earth. Birds flew low over the fields as Acharya Vinoba Bhave...
Maybe, Said the Farmer
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...
The Act of Giving is the True Gift
In an ancient Indian epic, Arjuna, a famed warrior questions his divine charioteer, Krishna, about the noblest giver in the land....
Gamble On Humanity
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...
To Remember This Dance, We Woke
Once you free your sight once you be for life We are… When I dream, I dream in white, of bells and...
Signals Even GPS Cannot Detect
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...