Reading Archives (Author)

Embracing Deep Transitions With Wisdom

Vanessa Andreotti

As we stand at the precipice of endings—of species, ecosystems, organizations, and systems themselves—the work of hospicing is to move beyond fear and embrace the deep transitions ahead wi...

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8K reads, 13 comments

Transforming The Wandering Mind

Ven. Master Miao Tsan

Meditation is the reversal of the process that establishes our habitual tendencies. Consequently, the establishment of habitual tendencies is due to the repetition of similar thoughts. If we are able ...

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23K reads, 22 comments

Fakers and Teachers

Vernon Howard

How can you tell whether a certain advisor or book is truly accurate? What if the teacher or book is just as confused as you, while cleverly concealing it? What will you do? There is a way out of...

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5K reads

Dance of Life

Vernon Kitabu Turner

Your body is composed of the elements of nature -- earth, wind, fire, and water -- the ancients said. Your mind and spirit are beyond calculating. You are part of all you see and more. Embrace the ...

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5K reads

Mushin

Vernon Kitabu Turner

The idea of marital arts was that a person who is working for the good of humanity does not develop an aggressive nature but a peaceful center, and his purpose is to defend, not to attack -- to defend...

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6K reads

If You Don't Go Within, You Simply Go Without

Victor Frankl

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficie...

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19K reads, 10 comments

Worthy Of Your Suffering

Viktor Frankl

There were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you ...

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12K reads

It Is Life That Asks The Questions Of Us

Viktor Frankl

The question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me? Now we also understand h...

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23K reads, 10 comments

To Be Worthy Of Our Suffering

Viktor Frankl

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose beh...

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74K reads, 10 comments

Deep Place Within

Vilayat Khan

As your consciousness descends deeper and deeper, you move from a peripheral mode of thinking toward the creative source of thought itself: ex nihilo, out of nothing, come creative thoughts. Here, t...

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6K reads, 5 comments

Growing in Spontaneity

Vimala Thakar

Never argue with one's own understanding. The whisper of intelligence is always there, whatever you do. If you create a time lag between the whisper of intelligence and understanding in you and your...

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26K reads, 5 comments

The Lovely State of Observation

Vimala Thakar

There are two parts of life. Motion and motionlessness. Movement is one part of life but to be in a state of no movement is also a substantial part of our life. Speech is on...

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24K reads, 7 comments

The Essence of Spirituality

Vimala Thakar

To be spiritual is to be related to the visible, invisible and the infinite aspects of life simultaneously. True spirituality never provides any escapes for fear-obsessed people. We may find other esc...

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21K reads, 8 comments

How Observation Changes Relationships

Vimala Thakar

When we sit in silence what do we do? We sit and observe the voluntary and involuntary activities of the body and mind. Slowly the voluntary activities come to an end, but the involuntary activities...

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18K reads, 8 comments

What is Meditation?

Vimala Thakar

"This awareness of the so called outward and the inward movements of life, is meditation. The simultaneous awareness of the total movement is meditation. If I am aware of the nature of my reactio...

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19K reads, 7 comments

Privacy Is Not Possible

Vimala Thakar

Traditionally, the investigating of psychological weaknesses in relation to social action has been taboo, not acceptable. As long as a social activist provided service to others, it was considered irr...

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14K reads, 11 comments

The Delight in Exploring Inner Territory

Vimala Thakar

As long as we cling to the idea that this is "my mind, my own, personal mind," we will have a strong tendency to look as good as possible. But if we observe the mind from a non-personal view...

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14K reads, 8 comments

Force Of Love Is The Force Of Total Revolution

Vimala Thakar

A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts if any of us is to survive. And our lives will be truly blessed only when the misery of one is genuinely fe...

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45K reads, 9 comments

Watching Volcanoes Explode

Vimala Thakar

We must become deeply aware of our bondage if we value freedom. We begin to watch our behavior throughout the day; we notice the fear, the anxieties, how much behavior is controlled by acquisitiveness...

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66K reads, 9 comments

Each of Us, a Miniature Wholeness

Vimala Thakar

Internally, we are divided against ourselves; the emotions want one thing, the intellect another, the impulses of the body yet another, and a conflict takes place which is no different in quality, alt...

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11K reads, 7 comments

Spirituality: The Seed of Social Action

Vimala Thakar

The study of our mind, the psychological structure, does not require isolation, but it does require attentiveness. The movement of the mind is very swift. The shades of movement are so subtle, that un...

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11K reads, 6 comments

Moving in Wholeness

Vimala Thakar

A new challenge awaits us at the beginning of the twenty-first century: to go beyond fragmentation, to go beyond the incompatible sets of values held even by serious-minded people, to mature beyond th...

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17K reads, 6 comments

A Human Society

Vimala Thakar

A self-centered person can never look at anything in life, a self-centered person cannot get related with other human beings. He is so busy with his own self, his ego, his likes, his dislikes, his th...

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4K reads

Inner Social Responsibility

Vimala Thakar

Viewing the world as a large pieced-together collection of fragments, some of which are labeled as friend and others as foe, begins internally. We map out our internal territories with the same posi...

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7K reads, 11 comments

Sacred Nothingness

Vimala Thakar

"Vimalaji," I say, "these days a lot of people are interested in spirituality and yet it seems that only in very few is there a radical transformation of their consciousness and of their life." Vima...

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22K reads

Theory and Practice

Vincent Horn

If we look at what theory is, it’s essentially an abstraction, or representation, of direct experience. It’s a way for us to take our understanding and transmit, through the medium of idea...

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18K reads, 10 comments

A Servant Leader

Vinoba Bhave

To progress, society doesn't need 'leaders' anymore.  This doesn't mean that we won't have great men amidst us.  I think great men will come and they will be vital for progress of humanity...

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41K reads, 22 comments

Moved by Love

Vinoba Bhave

I am a man who belongs to another world than this, one that may seem very strange. For I claim that I am moved by love, that I feel it all the time. I do not deal in opinions, but only in though...

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8K reads, 2 comments

Action Without Desire Of Outcomes

Vinoba Bhave

To protect self-interest individuals exploit others, nations go to war, and businesses undercut each other, because people in those situations see a conflict between self-interest and the interest of ...

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25K reads, 8 comments

The Sun Is The Perfect Example

Vinoba Bhave

The sun is the perfect example of acting without desire. When the sun rises does the idea enter its mind to say, 'I shall banish the darkness, I shall urge the birds to fly, and I will set people ...

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34K reads, 14 comments

Every Piece is Meant For You

Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

Ever since I was young I enjoyed solving puzzles and having the pleasure to see the bigger picture afterwards. But even after all that, I found that life could be the most challenging puzzle we have t...

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18K reads, 6 comments

I Am Me

Virginia Satir

I am me. In all the world, there is no one exactly like me. There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentical...

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39K reads, 16 comments

Good and Evil

Vivekananda

Good and evil are inextricably combined, and one cannot be had without the other. The sum total of the enregy in this universe is like a lake; every wave inevitably leads to a corresponding depressio...

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4K reads

Work Like a Master

Vivekananda

The whole gist of this teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do slave's work. Do you not see how everybody works? Nobody can be altogether at ...

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12K reads, 2 comments

Attachment With Detachment

Vivekananda

Attachment is the source of all our pleasures now. We are attached to our friends, to our relatives; we are attached to our intellectual and spiritual works; we are attached to external objects, so ...

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31K reads, 6 comments

Sacred Vs. Survival Language

Vyaas Houston

Avidya is the defining of a self which is not the self; with happiness in what is actually suffering; with purity in what is really impurity; and permanence in what is really impermanent. Avidya pe...

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6K reads, 9 comments