Reading Archives (Author)
Experiential Wisdom
S. N. Goenka
"What is wisdom? Wisdom means right understanding. Knowledge of superficial, apparent truth is not true wisdom. In order to understand the ultimate truth, we must penetrate apparent...
The Real Addiction
S.N. Goenka
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 addictions. All these are addictions to your impurities. And a...
Universality Is Not An Idea, It Is Reality
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
The word “yoga” essentially means, “that which brings you to reality”. Literally, it means “union.” Union means it brings you to the ultimate reality, where individ...
Nine Wisdom Steps From Spiritual Traditions
Sage Bennet
Each of the first eight [wisdom steps] introduces you to a different spiritual tradition -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Native American spirituality, Taoism, and New Thought -- a...
Image of Myself
Sailor Bob
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 dead, its finished, and the river is left behind. That’s wha...
Emotions for Liberation
Sally Kempton
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 bouncing around the room, almost visible to the naked eye. Then, in...
Transforming 'Some Scars'
Sally Kempton
The Sanskrit word "samskara" can be translated just the way it sounds in English: as'some scars." Samskaras are energy patterns in our consciousness. I always picture them as mental grooves, like the ...
The Difficult People In Your Life
Sally Kempton
We don’t always know why difficult people show up in our lives. There are some good theories about it, of course. Jungians, along with most contemporary spiritual teachers, tell us that AL...
To Know Your Mind, Pay Close Attention To It
Sam Harris
Certain rare and wonderful experiences are possible. But this is all we need, to take “spirituality” (the unavoidable term for this project of self-transcendence) seriously. [...] We sp...
The Gift Of Threshold Moments
Sam Keen
The thrush’s song belongs to a family of experiences that usher us into a threshold where sound trails off into silence, time disappears into timelessness, and the known world is engulfed by the...
Stumble but Continue Walking
Samuel Johnson
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 chair. Who would find it? Not those of us who sat still an...
Medicine for the Earth
Sandra Ingerman
In all spiritual traditions it is taught that everything that manifests in the physical world starts in the invisible realms of spirit. We must remember that a baby grows in the womb. Trees and pla...
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
Sarah Adams
If I have one operating philosophy about life it is this: “Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it’s good luck.” Four principles guide the pizza dude philosophy. Principle 1: Cooln...
Serenity not Security
Sarah Ban Breathnach
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 a revelation in the lyrics of a song. Sometimes an angel seems...
Beyond Good and Evil
Satish Kumar
Performing penance as a monk, experiencing ecstasy in love, engaging in evolutionary land reform, walking for world peace, being imprisoned in France, facing a bullet in America . the many dimensions...
A Hero's Journey
Satish Kumar
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 journey. When I trust in the universe, I am not afraid to take r...
Going Into the Unknown
Satish Kumar
Going into the unknown world and confronting it without a penny in our pockets had meant that differences between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, all vanished; and beneath all these divisions...
Science and Spirituality
Satish Kumar
Science without spirituality seeks to work mainly in human interest and gives birth to technologies of comfort and convenience, as well as control and consumerism. Science denuded of deep values and t...
Indigenous Intelligence
Satish Kumar
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. They began to chase him. In order to escape from these frightening...
Thousand Branches, Million Plums
Satish Kumar
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 to become a tree it must be planted in the soil – underground...
Worms Are, Therefore I Am
Satish Kumar
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 Earth Pilgrim is to revere Nature as our sacred home, and see ...
Fear and Love
Satish Kumar
Our lives are ruled by fear. Fear of death, fear of old age, fear of illness, fear of unemployment, fear of failure, fear of superiors, fear of inferiors, fear of responsibility, fear of committmen...
The Spirit Of Gift
Satish Kumar
We have learned much from the native Americans, the Australian Aboriginals, the indigenous people of India (adivasis) and the Bushmen of Africa. We have been guided by Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Mohamm...
Four B's Of Resilience And Worth
Saul Levine
One thing is certain: It is not the amount of accumulated material wealth, baubles and toys, which lead to self-appreciation and ease with one’s life. So, what is it? The genuine appreciation...
Disagreements
Scott Adams
"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 car is stalled and there is nothing the driver could've done?" ...
Time To Stop Pretending
Scott Morrison
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 superior," (and therefore not inferior). Let's bring our wounde...
Very Simple
Scott Morrison
Earnestness is the key. Unconditional willingness. All you have to do is pay attention, be honest, and follow through. Truth is discovered when you simply refuse to lie to yourself anymore. Love is d...
Nothing Else Matters
Scott Morrison
Stop dead in your tracks. It doesn’t matter at all, what you’ve ever done, or not done. It doesn’t matter how grandiose, self-centered, arrogant, or neurotic you’ve ever bee...
Returning to the Root
Seng T'san
Let go of longing and aversion, and everything will be perfectly clear. When you cling to a hairbreadth of distinction, heaven and earth are set apart. If you want to realize the truth, don't be f...
Abandon Only What Is Not Yours
Shaila Catherine
The wise understand the importance of letting go -- even letting go of the things we strive for and attain. Meditative training is more about letting go than it is about attaining levels of absorption...
The Opponent Relationship Is Not A Contest
Shannon Lee
What is combat, after all, but an intense relationship? Your opponent attempts to block and counter every strike you throw as well as land strikes of his own, which he will do in direct response to th...
How Generosity Leads to Awakening
Sharon Salzberg
The cultivation of generosity is the beginning of spiritual awakening. Generosity has tremendous force because it arises from an inner quality of letting go. Being able to let go, to give up, to renou...
The Power of Patience
Sharon Salzberg
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, not on where we one day hope to be. "Nobody sees a flower, r...
Counting On Our Ultimate Concern
Sharon Salzberg
The offering of one's heart happens in stages, with shadings of hesitation and bursts of freedom. Faith evolves from the first intoxicating blush of bright faith to a faith that is verified through ou...
Rebel For A Good Cause
Sharon Salzberg
A friend of mine, at the end of a retreat, offered a provocative reflection that intrigued and inspired me. After looking intensively at her inner experience for nine days of meditation and seeing ma...
How Generosity Blossoms Into Meditation
Sharon Salzberg
The cultivation of generosity is the beginning of the path. [...] The path begins there because of the joy that arises from a generous heart. Pure, unhindered delight flows freely when we practice gen...
Faith: Deepening our Power to Inquire
Sharon Salzberg
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 what is happening right now in all its mutability and evanescence...
What Do I Really Need Right Now?
Sharon Salzberg
An essential question we might ask ourselves is, 'What do I really need right now, in this moment, to be happy?' The world offers us many answers to that question: You need a new car and a new...
I Have What You Need
Sharon Salzberg
In the old city section of Jerusalem, there is a wonderful open-stall marketplace. It is a place teeming with life—a deluge of sights and sounds and goods for sale. When I was teaching in Israel...
Generosity Helps Us Accept Change
Sharon Salzberg
The aim of practicing generosity is twofold, or else it’s an incomplete experience. The first aim is to free our minds from the conditioned forces that bind and limit us. Craving, clinging an...
Force of Kindness
Sharon Shalzberg
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 to pull all the disparate pieces of our lives together into som...
The Capacity for Successful Solitude
Sherry Turkle
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, when you are with another person, you’re not trying to make...
Share Pain Not Suffering
Shinzen Young
Just as insight has many facets, so also with service. I would like to talk about just one aspect -- compassion. Compassion is practiced in two ways: subtly and overtly. You can subtly serve any per...
The Test for Meditation in Action
Shinzen Young
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 little ability to deal with the world. We develop a self to deal w...
Two Ways of Learning Relaxation
Shinzen Young
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 relaxation versus bottom-to-top relaxation. "Top" refer...
Learning to Suffer More Effectively
Shinzen Young
Psychological grasping is your main source of suffering, not the physical sensations in your legs -- that is to say, how much you are tightening psychologically around those sensations is the ma...
Equanimity: the Radical Permission to Feel
Shinzen Young
Equanimity is a fundamental skill for self-exploration and emotional intelligence. It is a deep and subtle concept frequently misunderstood and easily confused with suppression of fee...
Addicted to Thinking
Shinzen Young
The issue is not so much the presence or absence of thought activity during meditation. Rather, the issue is the degree to which ones thought activity is driven, unconscious and fixated. The great m...
Three Stages Of Perceiving Impermanence
Shinzen Young
Impermanence is just appreciating the normal changing-ness of each experience at deeper levels of poignancy. One way to think about this is in terms of three aspects of impermanence: the trivial, the ...
Recycling Karmic Trash
Shinzen Young
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. Sometimes it’s formulated with the phrase “I pic...
Zen Anecdotes
Shunryu Suzuki
~~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 virtue, you have to have a calm mind." ~~A student asked in d...
Just Become A Swinging Door
Shunryu Suzuki
When we practice [meditation] our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into our inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitle...
Waves in the Mind
Shunryu Suzuki
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 come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try...
Quotes
Shunryu Suzuki
"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 think earth is the problem, having caused your fall. Without the ...
Water-falls
Shunryu Suzuki
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 a curtain thrown from the top of the mountain. It does not se...
Anyone Else Suffer From Active Laziness?
Sif Anna Dal
I was recently reading a book about a boy who becomes acquainted with philosophy through the need to answer questions about living and dying and the meaning of life after his mother is killed in a car...
Towards Coherence and Unity
Silo
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 disintegration. If you believe that your life does not end wit...
Two Stonemasons
Simon Senek
Consider the story of two stonemasons. you walk up to the first stonemason and ask, ‘Do you like your job?’ He looks up at you and replies, ‘I’ve been building this wall for as...
To Walk Unmasked
Sir John Wilson
To have tried on every mask and eventually to have confidence to walk unmasked. Having experienced many places to appreciate, in its infinite variety, one's own place. To achieve for one's depen...
Creating Welcoming Space
Sister Marilyn Lacey
One way of measuring whether our love is genuine, however, is to examine how far we've extended the boundaries that determine whom we are willing to be in relationship with. When these borders rea...
Active Laziness
Sogyal Rinpoche
How many of us are swept away by what I have come to call an "active laziness"? Naturally there are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style consists of hanging out all...
Technology of Meditation
Sogyal Rinpoche
When you read books about meditation, or often when meditation is is presented by different groups, much of the emphasis falls on the techniques. In the West, people tend to be very interested in th...
Death Connects Us To Life
Somik Raha
Growing up with monastic teachings around the impermanence of life, I got the opportunity to apply them when my grandmother passed on, followed by my grandfather in quick succession. I told myself tha...
The Divine Superman
Sri Aurobindo
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 well again that the nature of man is to transcend himself. Th...
Living Inward
Sri Aurobindo
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 living inward is a difficult task to lay upon the normal consci...
Moved by Love
Sri M
In the Himalayas, there lived an infamous bandit named Sultana, who plundered the caravans of rich pilgrims and looted resource-rich monasteries. The very mention of Sultana, it was said, made wealthy...
Be With the Storms
Sri Sri Ravishankar
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 and stop regretting it. Like waves come and go, storms in your l...
A Flower's Job Is To Bloom
Srikumar Rao
A powerful moment in My Fair Lady is when Henry Higgins's mother commiserates with a sobbing Eliza Dolittle. Eliza is distraught because Higgins did not congratulate her after an exemplary perform...
Serenity Prayer
St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is da...
Art And The Practice Of Being Yourself
Stanley Kunitz
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 source of being so you will recognize the source and know who ...
Blessings for Earth-Healers
Starhawk
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 composter, the gardeners, the breeders of worms and mushrooms, t...
Should We Spend Time Like Money?
Stefan Klein
Benjamin Franklin once said: time is money. He meant this only as a gentle reminder not to "sit idle" for half the day. He might be dismayed if he could see how literally, and self-des...
Kintsugi
Stefano Carnazzi
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 alternative, a Japanese practice that highlights and enhances ...
Time-shifting Not Time-management
Stephan Rechtschaffen
"I've observed over the years that many people in our culture experience not having enough time in daily life. The feelings: frustration, anxiety, panic, pressure, stress. It's ...
Time Shifting vs Time Management
Stephan Rechtschaffen
"I've observed over the years that many people in our culture experience not having enough time in daily life. The feelings: frustration, anxiety, panic, pressure, stress. It...
The Glass is Already Broken
Stephen and Ondrea Levine
Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master, "In this world where everything changes, where nothing remains the same, where loss and grief are inherent in our very coming into existenc...
Freedom
Stephen Levine
"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 be able to have more of what they want. But that is not free...
Beggarly, Friendly, And Kingly Giving
Stephen Levine
The greatest gift is the act of giving itself. Traditionally, three kinds of giving are spoken of. There is beggarly giving, which is when we give with only one hand, still holding onto wh...
The Year-To-Live Experiment
Stephen Levine
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 what he was going to do next with his life. He answered that he w...
Forgiveness & Your Life's Unfinished Business
Stephen Levine
As awareness becomes yet subtler, able to discern even the muffled whispers of the mind, we are confronted with what a dying musician friend called “the Unfinished Symphony” – ...
Fool Realization
Steve Bhaerman
In the Greek tradition, tragedies were four act plays that ended sadly and badly -- kind of like situation comedies without the laugh track. Comedies, on the other hand, had a fifth act where the...
Humor Is A Magical Interface
Steve Bhaerman
Humor is a magical interface between the logical and intuitive minds. Consequently, it has the power to bypass the left-brain’s linear gatekeepers and allow outside-the-box ideas to come in unde...
Be with the Magic
Steve Karlin
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 clearly for hundreds of yards, some of them can’t see further ...
Green Mountains Are Forever Walking
Subhana Barzaghi
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 was always a great privilege and honor to be invited to a birth...
Tale of the Journeying Stream
Sufi Parable
A stream, from its course in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the str...
Antithesis Of Addiction
Sukh Chugh
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 moving us towards more love, towards more life. Can we hear...
Emptiness Cafe
Susan Kahn
Life moves Like shadow and light, Instantaneously appearing, Though I cannot find time itself. Cities mirrored in thought, Nothing standing alone. There is no seer without the seen, No though...
Mother Trees In A Wood Wide Web
Suzanne Simard
Elders fill a special role in any community, having earned the respect of the tribe for their life-long wisdom, knowledge, and teaching. They help link individuals to the broader community as a whole,...
Why Meditate
Suzanne Toro
Meditation is the act of getting quiet and settling the mind. It’s the process of slowing and eventually stopping your thoughts, at which point you can bask in and feel the silence, trusting all...
Un-learning the Ways of Un-love
Swami Chaitanya Keerti
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 your need, you can only exploit, manipulate, dominate but canno...
Accepting Others Totally
Swami Chinmayananda
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 happy. You see the rocks on the riverbed; they did not do anything ...
Humility Really Cannot be Considered a Virtue
Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Ego and pride are closely related, almost synonymous effects born of the same cause, ignorance of the relationship of the individualized sense of I with the world. (...) Although, graced by free will,...
The Balancing Force
Swami Krishnananda
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 and necessary for the welfare of all people. But God [Dharma] ...
Ego and the Illusion of Darkness
Swami Nithyananda
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 surrender the ego, when it does not exist? Suppose you are sitt...
Thought Power
Swami Sivananda
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 another, hate will come back to you. If you love others, love w...
Gaining Mental Power
Swami Sivananda
Uncontrolled thoughts are the roots of all evils. Each thought by itself is extremely weak, because the mind is generally distracted by countless and ever-varying thoughts. The more the thought...
Seat of Power
Swami Vivekananda
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, and all over his body we see signs of exertion, and we think the ...
Sip The Honey
Swami Vivekananda
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 -- perhaps it is a failure -- and yet we cannot give it up. We know...
This World is Perfect
Swami Vivekananda
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, therefore, the best thing we can do, although in the long run,...
Who Are You To Help
Swami Vivekananda
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 there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yoursel...
We Only Get What We Deserve
Swami Vivekananda
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 until the body is ready; it does not depend alone on the germs, bu...
The One Goal of All Nature
Swami Vivekananda
The grandest idea in Vedanta is that we may reach the same goal by different paths; and these paths I have generalised into four—viz., those of work, love, psychology and knowledge. But you must...
The Secret Of Work
Swami Vivekananda
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 alas! we are also traders in love. If you come to trade, if i...
Be Not a Beggar
Swami Vivekananda
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, it will come back multiplied a thousandfold — but the atte...
Frying the Seeds of Anger
Swami Vivekananda
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; but I shall not succeed perfectly in the fight until I can get d...
Slavery To The Senses
Swami Vivekananda
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 because he desires to be one, but because he has not his mind under...
Unfurl Your Sails
Swami Vivekananda
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 somebody else. Men in general lay all the blame of life on their ...
One Robe One Bowl
Sylvia Boorstein
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 southern California. They were housed in one of the cottages at the...
If There Is No Self, Whose Arthritis Is This?
Sylvia Boorstein
"If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?" is one of a list of a dozen questions that have been appearing regularly in my email. I think it’s the choice of arthritis, out of ...