Just realize the praying to Marici can provide maximum physical protection, financial protection and during any disaster. Please watch and practice ASAP for our peace of mind in this chaotic world. Here is the sutra in Chinese: 佛说《摩利支天菩萨陀罗尼经》・Here is Sangha community praying for Devi Marici in Sanskrit: 摩利支天心咒 (六臂Six-armed Devi Marici ) 法王僧團唱誦.
Reverend QingYang explain in succinct way the ritual of practicing Devi Marici’ methods. 清揚法師 分享摩利支天菩薩法門汉传佛教的修持方法及實例. 节目听众问請問法師大德：字幕裡顯示的音譯是：
The pure land school of Buddhism provide the most popular and easily learned way to end our suffering which is recite “Namo Amituofo“. ‘Namo Amituofo’, may be the shortest text among the whole collection of Mahayana scriptures. Yet, it contains the most profound and subtle teachings of the Buddha. The mere few words of Buddha’s name, embodies all the doctrines of the sutras, incorporates the essence of all the Buddha’s teachings, clearly defines the fundamental and functionality of the teachings.
Reciting ‘Namo Amituofo’ not only brings us merits and wisdom in this life but also the attainment of Buddhahood in our next life. It is the core teachings of all Mahayana scriptures and the essence of Buddha’s Dharma. Here Dharma Master Huijing from Pure Land Buddhism Australia shows us the methods and benefits of reciting “Namo Amituofo”.
Envision that Amitabha Buddha positions himself above our heads, protecting and embracing us with his light. The recitation helps us overcome our restless and inattentive minds. We will feel peaceful and calm, our body and mind will also become calm and composed. As the vital energy fills our body, we will feel warm and cozy as well. When karmic obstructions surface, we are bound to feel perturbed and bad luck typically follows. Amitabha-recitation subdues our minds, eradicates negative karma, increases our meritorious blessings and enhances our wisdom, thereby bringing us good fortune and fulfilling our aspirations.
Even if one does not intentionally work towards great success, good interpersonal relationships and favourable circumstances will conspire to make good things happen as a matter of course. Problems that we encounter in our daily life can be resolved through Amitabha-recitation too. It’s relatively simple, produces tremendous results and is highly effective. The efficacy of which is affirmed by those who experienced it. So please recite ‘Namo Amituofo’ to experience it, be inspired and be filled with gratification.
In this video Jiawen shares the story of Bodhisattva Mahathamaprapta (Great Strength Bodhisattva, Dashizhi Pusa 大勢至菩薩) & how the 13th Patriarch of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism Master Yinguang is the incarnation of Dashizhi Pusa. Jiawen also introduced the famous Ten Recitation of Nianfo method by Master Yinguang to help us overcome our monkey mind, especially negative thoughts. This is considered by many practitioners as one of the most effective way of meditation due to its simplicity that anyone can practice it easily. The program from (馬來西亞淨宗學會) Amitabha Buddhist Society recall The Teachings of Great Master Yin Guang which is very much relevent today.
Master YinGuang （印光大师 1862-1940） is regarded by Chinese Buddhism society as the reincarnation of Bodhisattva Mahathamaprapta (Dashizhi Pusa, 大勢至菩薩)
There are a lot of legends about Great Master YinGuang. He had predicted the breakout of the WWII in China, and by the end of October 1940, he arranged his own Nirvana day on December 2, 1940. He show by example the feasibility of the Buddha Recital methods and the importance of determination in the faith. This video with English caption detailed how Master YinGuang rebirth into Elysium.
The recent report of Dalai Lama apologizes for asking a young boy to suck his tongue reflect a long time under spin of public uneasiness about abuse of spiritual power by the teachers who are in the position of doing so. This is valid concerns. There is really a delicate dance in searching for spirituality and avoiding falling into trap of abbassy. For that very reason, the Buddha had taught us for the sake of protection the precepts as they are Protection for Buddhist Practitioners. I personally came from an area in China where Chan Buddhism (禅宗）is the dominant force, so I am not familiar with the Vajira Buddhism tradition.
Chan Buddhism is Chinese version of Buddhism popularized by the the 6th Patriarch of Chan Buddhism Master Huineng. He spent all his life in the south part of China, mainly taught from Nan Hua Temple (南華寺) in GuangDong Province of China. Master XuYun , (simplified Chinese: 虚云; traditional Chinese: 虛雲; pinyin: Xūyún; 5 September 1840? – 13 October 1959), a renowned Chinese Chan Buddhist master and an influential Buddhist teacher of the 19th and 20th centuries, was also came from south east part of China.
What I learned is, the function of Buddhist precepts is not to prohibit us from saying or doing certain things, but, rather, to remind us not to do things that may cause harm, both to ourselves and to others. In other words, the Buddhist precepts function to protect ourselves and others. Therefore, the Five Precepts and the Bodhisattva Precepts are protective shields that allow one to a) feel peaceful in the practice, b) cultivate an appropriate sense of shame, c) repent frequently, and d) regulate behavior at any given time, in order to continually uplift one’s character. These five precepts are:
1) I undertake the rule to abstain from killing.
2) I undertake the rule to abstain from taking what is not given.
3) I undertake the rule to abstain from sexual misconduct.
4) I undertake the rule to abstain from false speech.
5) I undertake the rule to abstain from taking intoxicants that cloud the mind.
There are no lacking of abuse of power in every religions. Catholic church had notorious coverup for the abuses of public trust. In 2019, the death of Sogyal Rimpoche, author of the best-selling Tibetan Book of Living and Dyin, unleashed a new torrent of victim revelations, accounting questions and legal rulings that further illuminate the trail of injury and insult he left behind. The imposter guru ended his days as a refugee in Thailand, beyond the reach of police and civil investigations in several countries. In 2018, at Longquan monastery in Beijing China, High-profile Chinese monk accused of sexually harassing nuns in China . An article of 1989 about Ösel Tendzin, the first American accepted lineage holder of Kagyu tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism. America’s largest Tibetan Buddhist group, has been thrown into turmoil by allegations that its leader knew he had AIDS and transmitted it to his sexual partners in a report: Buddhists in U.S. Agonize on AIDS Issue. Another report 2012 by Mary Finnagan about Young Kalu Rinpoche’s traumatic revelations highlight the dissonance between Tibetan tradition and 21st-century life. These confessional sending shockwaves through the Buddhist world.
Chris Chandler’s Expose of Shambhala as a Mind Control Cult Is Required Reading The Shambhala organization is in crisis, and Chris Chandler is perhaps the most fearless and best-informed of its critics. Shambhala’s spiritual leader, the “Sakyong Mipham,” has been outed as a sexual assaulter and heavy drinker with a bad habit of assaulting his female followers. Ms. Chandler shares her journey and reveals her understanding of the Tibetan Tantric belief system. As an insider, she was privy to much that is unavailable to newcomers and those who have not progressed sufficiently along the Tantric path. She reveals a hidden agenda, an upending of Western values and democratic governance by stealth. The Dalai Lama and the Sex-Slaver Cult of NXIVM.
These horrable instances show us the dark side of spirituality when fall into the trap, and demands us to seriously consider the implications, to raise important questions practitioners need to ask: such as, if gurus are not all perfect, what measures are you going to apply to determine if you should follow one or not? If other Tibetan Buddhist leaders are not willing to unequivocally and specifically denounce such a clear case of abuse, what does this say about the value of Buddhist practice?
The detail accounts in Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche by Mary Finnigan and Rob Hogendoorn is well worth a read by anyone involved in or interested in any spiritual movement to be aware of such issues. This is a work that everyone connected with Vajrayana should read. It serves as a grave warning to exactly how far people can delude themselves. It shows exactly why people should not trust what is popular or fashionable. When eight students wrote a letter accusing Sogyal Rinpoche of decades of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, Tahlia Newland set up an online support group for abuse victims and students of his Tibetan Buddhist community, Rigpa. Appalled by the lack of ethics, the group undertook a journey of discovery during which they uncovered the depth of the trauma suffered by victims, and the fundamentalism and cult behaviour at the heart of Rigpa. They learned about destructive cults, trauma and recovery, narcissistic abuse, co-dependency, institutional betrayal, and the methods of mind control used by Rigpa, who had covered up and enabled the abuse for decades.
Readers feedbak on this book was: The most serious omission in this book is the lack of depth in discussing the Dalai Lama’s motivations providing Sogyal validation and the Dalai Lama’s motivations for not specifically condemning Sogyal until after after the scandal blew wide open. The same could be asked of many other gurus. It is an important discussion, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: Is it acceptable in Tibetan Buddhism for lamas to behave like Sogyal? If not, what are the barriers to critically discussing and identifying specific instances of abuse by gurus in TB?
The book includes an almost forensic – yet very readable – dissection of how a sexually voracious and ultimately abusive, untrained and unqualified opportunist, Sogyal Lakar, seized the opportunity offered by a constellation of factors: Westerners’ spiritual hunger and the gullibility that thrives in the needy; an unwillingness to probe; a simple inability to ask the right questions, because of our ignorance; a willingness to indulge the sexual and culinary gluttony of someone believed to be extraordinary; the patriarchal, even misogynistic culture of old Tibet, along with its class-ridden unwillingness to be seen to criticise; the only-too-understandable urge of the Tibetan community – a community that has been slaughtered and tortured out of its own land – to pull together and look after its own, trying to sweep the appalling behaviour of one of its best-known representatives under the sofa. These are some of the ingredients of this ghastly cocktail.
After having heard about and researched into the abuse of Sogyal Rinpoche, one question was left open. How could anyone who was part of this group and witnessed the abuse, just have let this happen? Why was this allowed to grow to these extents and all involved seemingly just swooning about the abuser? The book Fallout: Recovering from Abuse in Tibetan Buddhism Paperback – July 20, 2019 gives exactly the answer to this question. It’s an honest and personal account about the process involved for people to wake up from the delusion that supporting hellish behavior would bring them to enlightenment or would set them apart and above others as exceptional beings with special insight, wisdom or realization.
Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism Paperback – June 17, 2017 The author Chandler spent nearly three decades in the center of the hierarchy of Tibetan Lamas’ inner circles by taking care of the son of notorious Lama, Chogyam Trungpa, whose Crazy Wisdom has destroyed a significant mass of three generations’ reasoning minds.
Trungpa paved the way for the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Lamas to ‘colonize’ the United States and the West to spread out their Guru Occult Tantra to slowly undermine foundations of a liberal education and its Judea-Christian Western Civilization roots. Tantra is about chaos; i.e. creating chaos to turn social mores upside down. It changed a critical mass of three generation’s views about ‘right and wrong’; good and bad; and an ability to tell lies from the truth. Chandler has both and intimate and a bird’s eye view of how these Lamas work their western groups, together, and in collusion with the Progressive Left, the Green New Deal, and China. Once Chandler realized she had been made a pawn on a geopolitical chessboard to perpetuate a deeply misogynistic, totalitarian worldview for the future, she broke free, determined to warn others about what lies beneath the smile of the Dalai Lama and a guru-worshipping cult that goes by the name of Buddhism.
Buddha once said, “Develop a mind so filled with love that it resembles space, which cannot be painted, cannot be marred, cannot be ruined.” When we relax the divisions that we usually make, the mind becomes like space. This is not something that a fortunate few have the capacity to experience; it is the nature of the mind, which every one of us has the ability to know. In talking about practice, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher, said we practice in order to learn to trust ourselves more, to get confidence in what we know, to have faith rather than doubt. Loving kindness and compassion are innate capacities that we all have. This capacity to care, to be at one with, to connect, is something that isn’t destroyed, no matter what we may go through. No matter what our life experience may have been, no matter how many scars we bear, that ability remains intact. And so we practice meditation in order to return to that spaciousness and to learn to trust our ability to love.
As the Buddha said, “All beings everywhere want to be happy.” It is only due to ignorance that we do the things that create suffering or sorrow for ourselves and for others. If we take the time to slow down and see all the different forces coming together in any action, we will see this desire for happiness even in the midst of some terrible harmful action. That is why we use our mindfulness practice to notice our feelings and to understand them. Through that we can see very clearly that if we are immersed in tremendous anger, it is great suffering, it is a state of burning, of contraction and isolation, of separation and fear. We don’t have to reject the anger or reject or condemn ourselves for it, but rather we can feel compassion for the pain of it. This quality of empathy is also the basis of modern psychological thought on the development of morality. We learn not to hurt others because we understand how it feels to be hurt.
Howard Washington Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil right leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Joseph John Campbell(March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer and professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience.
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One of the social psychology is the desire to fit in, one of the most powerful, least understood forces in society. Author Todd Rose dwell into examples psychological distortions from toilet paper shortages to kidneys that get thrown away rather than used for transplants; from racial segregation to the perceived “electability” of women in politics; from bottled water to “cancel culture,” , we routinely copy others, lie about what we believe, cling to tribes, and silence people, author bring to light some new perspective about the root cause of collective wounds in Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions Hardcover – February 1, 2022 . Draw on cutting-edge neuroscience and social psychology research, this acclaimed author demonstrates how so much of our thinking is informed by false assumptions—making us dangerously mistrustful as a society and needlessly unhappy as individuals.
Path of Parenting, Path of Education, Path of Awakening
Our country’s postindustrial culture has left us to raise our children apart from a community of neighbors and elders. There aren’t many grandparents around – they all live someplace else or they’re off, like most fathers and many mothers, at the office or the factory. There aren’t many uncles or aunts around to take care of the kids when parents become overwhelmed, or to initiate the teenagers (so that they don’t have to seek initiation on the streets), to help them discover what it is to be a man or a woman and a productive member of the community. there isn’t a community of elders from whom we can hear stories and learn practices that will keep us connected with our human heritage, with our instincts and our hearts.
Instead of village elders, American parents have turned to various “experts” and whatever fad or theory they have come up with. In the 1920s an influential school of child psychology actually taught parents that it was bad to touch their children. Several decades later, parents all across America read books that insisted we bottle-feed (not breast-feed) an infant every four hours and that we should not pick up a crying baby but just let it “cry itself out.”
Every wise culture in the world knows that when babies cry, they cry for a reason, and that you pick them up and feed them, or hold them and comfort them. You have to really fight against yourself not to pick up a sobbing infant. Among the less technologically developed cultures of Asia or Africa or Latin America, children are always being held, always in someone’s lap. Children are valued, are included in all family activities – in work, in ceremonies, in celebrations, there is always a place for them.
When children are valued in this way, the whole society benefits. In this spirit, there is a tribe in Africa that counts the birthday of a child from the day the child is a thought in its mother’s mind…. What a beautiful way for human beings to listen to and to comfort other human beings. This is the spirit of conscious parenting, to listen to the song of the child in front of you and to sing that child’s song to him or her. When a child is crying, we need to ask why this child is singing the crying song, what pain or frustration this child is feeling.
Yet the western culture seems to be telling people ignore their instincts, to distrust our intuition. The result is that many children growing up in our society are not bonded to an adult. One of the more painful statements about what we are collectively doing to our children came one year form a teacher named John Gattowho was voted New York City Teacher of the year. At the awards ceremony 1990 January 31, in front of the mayor and the school board and thousands of parents, he castigated his listeners for the “soul murder” of a million black and Latino children- Why School Don’t Education. He challenged the audience to consider the effects of American culture on our children: “Think of the things that are killing us as a nation: drugs and alcohol, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling – and the worst pornography of all: lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy, all addictions of dependent personalities, and that is what our brand of schooling will inevitably produce in the next generation.”
John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018): Remembering America’s Most Courageous Teacher. In a collection of essays and articles A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling Paperback – January 1, 2002 John Gatto exposes a system designed to promote economic and business interests and advocates a greater emphasis on teaching critical thinking skills. Gatto leaves behind a legacy that inspired thousands of people to challenge the premise on which our education system was built. Gatto’s writing, teaching, and approach to not just education but human flourishing in general inspired us to think critically about our own life and education. He’s one of the most important thinkers in American history—that’s becoming more obvious every day. He’ll be missed dearly.
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Paperback – July 17, 2018 Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important―and successful―history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times. Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.
The author of Teaching with the HEART in Mind: A Complete Educator’s Guide to Social Emotional Learning , Dr. Lorea Martínez Pérez is the award-winning Founder of HEART in Mind Consulting, a company dedicated to helping schools and organizations integrate social emotional learning in their practices, products, and learning communities. An educator who has worked with children and adults internationally, Dr. Martínez is a faculty member at Columbia University Teachers College, educating aspiring principals in Emotional Intelligence. Previously, she was a special education teacher and administrator. Learn more at loreamartinez.com Dr. Perez argues that creating better outcomes for your students sometimes means you have to challenge the odds. Academics and standardized assessments aren’t the solution. You need to educate both their hearts and minds. Strengthen your students’ resilience, spark their curiosity for learning, and encourage future success in college, career, and life. Be the best teacher you can be and infuse social-emotional skills into your teaching of any subject.
The average American child watches eighteen thousand murders and violent acts and half a million advertisements. Violence and materialism. We are feeding the next generation of children the very suffering we’re trying to undo in our spiritual practice. with the highest rate of infant mortality of any industrialized nation and millions of “latch key kids,” we have given up caring for our children. An increasing number are raised by day care and TV and smart phones. We end up with a new generation of Americans more connected to TV or video games (often violent ones) than to other people. We will have more Gulf-style wars and violent crimes than successful marriages. Because these children were not held enough when they were young, were not valued enough and respect enough, were not listened to or sung to, they grow up with a hole inside, with no real sense of what it means to love, with no rel capacity for intimacy.
When the Dalai Lama spoke with a group of Western psychologists, he couldn’t understand why there was so much talk about self-hatred and unworthiness. he didn’t understand, because in Tibetan culture children are loved and held. he was so astonished that he went around the room and asked everyone, “Do you feel unworthiness and self-hatred sometimes?’ “Yes.” “Do you feel it?” “Yes.” Everyone in the room nodded yes. He couldn’t believe that this was a culture where people primarily talk about their difficulty with their parents instead of honoring them. Contrast this with the healthy childhoods of the Buddha’s time. The Buddha himself was raised by his mother’s sister (after his mother died) and given all the nurturance, natural respect, care, and attention that every child needs. later, when he left home to practice as a yogi, he had the inner strength and integrity to undertake six years of intensely ascetic practice. The Buddha had this vision of well-being from his childhood to draw upon in his practice.
Parenting is a labor of love. it is a path of service and surrender, and link the practice of a Buddha or a bodhisattva, it demands patience and understanding and tremendous sacrifice. it is also a way to reconnect with the mystery of life and to reconnect with ourselves. Along withe practice of mindfulness there are four other principles of conscious parenting; attentive listening, respect, integrity, and lovingkindness.
The principle of attentive listening means listening to the Tao of the seasons, to our human intuition and our instincts, to our children. do we hear what our children are trying to tell us? it’s like listening to the Tao. How long should we nurse our babies? how late should we allow our teenagers to stay out on dates? To answer those questions, we have to listen and pay attention to the rhythms of life. Just as we learn to be aware of breathing in and breathing out, we can learn to sense how deeply children want to grow.
A measure of respect comes in the setting of boundaries and limits appropriate to our child. As parents, we can set limits in a respectful way, with a compassionate “no” and an explanation of why something is out of bounds. Children learn by example, by who we are and what we do. They watch us what we communicate y the way we drive, the way we talk about others, and how we treat people on the street.v We teach them by our being.
Just as we learn in meditation to let go and trust, we can learn to develop a trust in our children so they can trust themselves. And we shall respect our children’s need for both dependency and independence. Most often instead of listening to them, we impatiently hurry them along. Dependency, insecurity and weakness are natural states for a child. They’re the natural states of all of us at times, but for children, especially young ones, they are predominant conditions and they are outgrown. In an article on dependency in Mothering magazine, Peggy O’Mara wrote:
We have a cultural bias against dependency, against any emotion of behavior that indicates weakness. This is nowhere more tragically evident than in the way we push our children beyond their limits an d timetables. We establish outside standards as more important than inner experience when we wean our children rather than trusting that they will wean themselves, when we insist that our children sit at the table and finish their meals rather than trusting that they will eat well if healthful food is provided on a regular basis, and when we toilet-train them at an early age rather than trusting that they will learn to use the toilet when they are ready to do so.
In the similar vein, Dorothy Law Nolte has written a poem, “Children learn What They Live”:
If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice.
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship.
He learns to find love in the world.
Service – Expressing Our Practice
Many people tend to think practicing spirituality is about going to a house of worship, a meditation hall, or a quiet spot in nature, and engaging in prayer, meditation, solitude and self-reflection. These spiritual pursuits seem to foster a simpler, more peaceful life in which we might experience greater intimacy and self-worth. But with the many responsibilities of life in the world, we often have precious little time to devote to such practice. When time does permit them, our spiritual yearning is momentarily satisfied and we feel aligned with the needs of our hearts; but generally our spiritual practice remains secondary to our more pressing daily activities.
Is it possible that we are defining our spiritual practice in too narrow a way? Perhaps we have become too attached to a particular form of spirituality – to a specific practice or set of circumstances. If we return to the intention behind our practices rather than adhering strictly to a form that supports the intention, we may discover a new approach to spirituality, one that truly feeds our hearts. Service work is a form that seems to be common to all the sacred traditions of the world. It cuts through all artificial divisions between “spirituality” and “life”.
Elisabeth Kubeler-Ross once said that she never meditated and never wanted to – she found it too dry. but when working with the dying, being intimately present with that person, listening fully and learning constantly, she was as focused as any mediator sitting on the floor and attending to the breath. She was in fact meditating, but her meditation arose naturally from her concern for the dying, not through formal sitting practice. For her, meditation was an expression of her service to the dying.
Spiritual teach Rodney Smith spent eight years in Buddhist monastic settings, both at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and several years as a Buddhist monk in Asia. He ordained with Mahasi Sayadaw in Burma then practiced for three years with Ajahn Buddhadassa in Thailand. He disrobed as a monk in 1983 and, after returning to the West, started working in hospice care and teaching vipassana meditation throughout the U.S. Smith’s many years as a monk in Asia, hospice worker, partnered householder and longtime vipassana teacher inform what he considers pivotal: that without Wise View, our pursuit of awakening will go nowhere. He openhandedly shares his own struggle in Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha’s Liberating Teaching of No-Self.
After spending several years on retreat, including a few years in Asia as a forest monk, Rodney Smith began feeling that his practice was becoming dry. Then he discovered that service has a way of transforming our daily life into a spiritual practice. And that discovery has led to serving others as a practice of the heart. Often the shift from helping to serving is only an attitude deep. Service can actually be an expression of prayer, an ongoing engaged meditation. If service work is defined as breaking through the artificial barriers that seem to isolate us form the rest of life, then washing the dishes, dressing, cooking, eating, and showering are not separate from our prayer or meditation. When our daily activities teach us about our relationship to all things, our life becomes an unceasing prayer of the heart.We become less dependent upon specific practices because we are more aware of the interrelationship between who we are and the activity we are involved in. We may participate in prayer or meditation, but we no longer find that these are the only ways to access a spiritual dimension. Your heart becomes as available through a variety of contacts and relationships as it does through sitting meditation. We start being fed from life itself.
Rodney Smith further talked about service in light of waking up and becoming alive. Aliveness is our birthright. To come alive, we must align ourselves with our heart’s desire. We just have to rediscover how to do that. This observation solves the problem of how to practice and fully participate in our lives at the same time. It says that service is not a burden; rather, it defines service asthat which feeds our aliveness. The word aliveness implies wakefulness, awareness, and a connected passion for life. We may notice that the essence of aliveness is a pure quality distinct from the actions that spring from it, such as following our desire or avoiding our fears. No matter where we start with our understanding of aliveness, however, through investigation we penetrate to new and deeper meanings of this word. We need to keep redefining the idea, allowing it to evolve beyond what we think it means. in this way, it will always be fresh and new, as our aliveness itself.
When we help someone, subliminally we pass on a message of inequality. In doing so, we diminish that person as a human being. We hold those we help in a fixed perspective and often refuse to allow them to grow. This is because if they grew out of their role, we would lose the contact we need to help. So the difference between serving and “helping” is the difference between being alive and being depleted. Helping is based on sacrifice, not strength. It is giving something to someone for a particular reason. Its intention is self-enhancement at the expense of someone whom we regard as underprivileged. The helper is rewarded by knowing that he or she is better off than the person being helped. We become as dependent upon them as they are on us. Our minds can force another into an unequal relationship, but not our hearts. Genuine warmth cannot exist unless there is equality. Within this profound connection, there is mutual appreciation. Our hearts naturally open in service work. A long time meditation teacher, Rodney Smith teaches program on “uprooting our false identity within our encased narrative and aligned ego structures.” His approach is built on the The Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness:
First Foundation: Contemplation of the Body. …
Second Foundation: Contemplation of Feeling. …
Third Foundation: Contemplation of Mind. …
Fourth Foundation: Contemplation of Dhammas.
Sometimes at crucial moments in our lives we are presented with new paths, opportunities to grow in ways we never expected. If we have courage to take these new directions, we expand, becoming more than we ever dreamed we might become, discovering ways to live and to die with dignity, with grace. That is the story of Rodney Smith’s life journey. In an interview, Rodney spoke of how Buddhist working with the dying.
Urgency, Contentment, and the Edges of Love
Drawing from many spiritual paths including the Muslim-Sufi and Christian mystical traditions as well as Buddhism, Veteran Meditation teacher Gavein Harrison about transformation through suffering. In a detail personal account of his uphill battle with HIV virus and searching for truth: “What truly is the meaning of death?” “Is there an end to suffering?” He described his commitment to facing and standing up for truth—even when confronting abuse, AIDs and death, in Beyond the Grip of Fear.
In learning Buddhism, people have been especially drawn to the various technique meditation. But at the core are two of these practices: Vipassana (insight meditation) – the observation of the mind/body process with clear and focused awareness, leading to a deepening of wisdom and equanimity; and Metta (loving kindness) – the systematic exploration of the ability to love, leading to a deepening of concentration and connection. These practices are to ground in the foundation of Buddhism tradition which is to expand an ever-deepening awareness of the triple refuges ( or Triple Gem). The tradition is kept alive through the commitment to insight, moral integrity and compassion of all who practice it. By honestly making that commitment and sincerely practice the path of insight, we can all free our minds of habitual clinging, anger, and confusion. This is a journey of continuously mindful cultivation and practices.
The Triple Gem of Buddhism is The Buddha, The Dharma & The Sangha. If we look closely, the Triple Gems are actually one. The other two gems always exist in each gem. The Buddha is vision, the Dharma is embodying that vision, and the Sangha is sharing or expressing that vision. The Buddha is wise view, the Dharma is meditation and Sangha is wise action. The Buddha is faith or motivation, the Dharma is practice, and the Sangha is intimacy. The Buddha is enlightenment, the Dharma is actualizing of enlightenment, and the Sangha is manifesting enlightenment. The Buddha is wisdom, the Dharma is the truth, and the Sangha is harmonious action. The Buddha is the vision of awakening out of the conditioning of the mind, the Dharma is refuge in the truth of things, and the Sangha is refuge in the recognition that we have company. Each refuge is powerful and essential in and of itself; at the same time they are all connected in a full and integrated path. The Triple Gems are common to any spiritual search, and are ultimately found within our own heart when we are open to looking.
When the Buddha’s first group of disciples reached enlightenment, he said to them, “Go forth, go out, for the good of the many, for the welfare of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit, for the welfare, for the happiness of beings.” By saying this, the Buddha made it clear that freedom should be expressed and shared in the world – through the Sangha, the third of the Triple Gem. Taking refuge in the Sangha means embracing a seamless view of practice that integrates how we are meditating with how we are in the world and then expressing our understanding through wise action and speech. It is living our meditation, and allowing our lives to express the truth. Sangha reveals the gap between ideas and actuality.
In the Buddhist community one way to take refuge in the Sangha is to remember that we come out of an ancient tradition of awakening. The fact that for over two thousand five hundred years people just like us have been walking this path, can help to give us a sense of direction, protection, and confidence in our own capacity to awaken. It can be comforting to remember that everything that we think is so unique and personal to our own experience has been very well documented in the discourses (suttas) of the Buddha. when we read what was written down so very long ago and see that it is our own experience that is being written about, we may gain a sense of strength and unity.
There are many different ways to look at what Sangha as community means, however. Communities have many shapes and forms. Some communities may even seem formless and fluid. Taking refuge in community does not necessarily mean that we are taking refuge in a specific group of practitioners. One meaning of Sangha is the ordained community of monks and nuns. One meaning is the community of those who from beginningless time, have realized the truth. One meaning is the community of all who are dedicated to lives of truth and good-heartedness, who live with the benefit of all beings in their hearts and minds.
The Buddha’s teaching, as expressed in the lives of the Sangha, is never removed from a sense of humanity. The Buddha was a human being who talked abut what it ultimately means to be a human being and to be happy. When we explore Sangha, we explore what supports us, clears our vision, and inspires us, and what protects us in a life committed to wisdom and good-heartedness. To explore the meaning of community and the exhortation to go forth “for the good of the many,” is to explore a quality of compassion that isn’t lofty or abstract or removed from the concerns of people, but is very present and available.
When the Buddha was asked about he different experiences of life – about being a parent, a renunciate, a friend, being sick, being the one who gives, being the one who receives – he said, “Any life at all may be lived well or may be lived wrongly. If it is lived well, it will bring great results, but if it is lived wrongly, it will bring very poor results.” What ever the particular circumstance of our lives, our potential is great when we honor our own sense of purpose, when we bring wakefulness into the different aspects of our day, and when we remember a heartfelt commitment to the welfare of all beings.
In the time of the Buddha, practitioners had to work with the very same difficulties, hindrances, and obstacles that we meet in our minds today. There are descriptions in the suttas of yearning and longing and anger and agitation and restlessness and doubt and sleepiness and dullness and boredom. To remember this can be a place where we can nourish ourselves when we hit dry or difficult spots. Zen master Dogen said that if there is just one log on a fire, the fire will be weak, whereas many logs make a fire strong and powerful. People can help each other by combing their strengths as they practice. This is one reason why we get together in retreat centers. In terms of a lifetime of practice, most of us can benefits from the support of one another. We are dependent on ourselves to practice; no one can do it for us. But at the same time, most of us need support.
The practice of Vipassana (insight meditation) goes against the grain of the culture, we in the West especially need the strength that practicing together brings. The values of the culture in the world at large differ greatly from the values that we uncover and strengthen in our meditation practice. One examples is that in the culture we are generally encouraged to have strong opinions. having strong views is seen as making one more stable and productive, whereas if we don’t have firmly held dogmatic views, we are seen as wishy-washy. When we look deeply, however, we see that attachment to views and opinions narrows our world and limits creative possibilities. Opinions and views are very subjective and are not something to cling to too tightly.
In spiritual practice we begin to question what is defined as success. The dominant culture encourages us to be as busy and frantic as possible, telling us that if we are doing something, we are on the way to becoming someone. The more crowded one’s life is the more successful. The culture urges us to live for the future and values greed and accumulation. But our practice invites us to be aware and present, while letting go of our attachment to fantasy and preoccupation with external things. It is a radical act to do nothing and to sit in stillness. Doing nothing in a meditative sense means keeping the heart still and being completely present with whatever activity we are engaged in: it is an extremely vibrant creative activity. The art of doing nothing, however easy it may sound, requires a great deal of practice and training.
Although wholesome qualities of heart are developed through our own effort, we can get a clear sense of what they look like and how wonderful they are by seeing them embodies in others. Being contact with wise friends points to and strengthens our own latent wisdom, generosity, and compassion. When we are in contact with those who are wise or free, it touches that which we already know within ourselves but have forgotten. Some part of the heart remembers a little bit more through this contact. Our own Buddha-nature gets revealed. When we see that others have changed and have grown into deepening levels of freedom through practice, we see that this path of liberation is also available to us. When we begin to recognize and let go of our competitive conditioning, others can inspire us when they share themselves and the fruits of their practice.
The Buddha clearly valued the presence of wise friends on the path. In the suttras he taught that when a particular quality of hear such as generosity, patience, or concentration needs to be developed, one should try to have contact with others who have already developed that same wholesome quality. The Buddha emphasized the importance of “noble friendship and suitable conversation.” It makes sense. If we want to realize truth and freedom, it’s helpful to be in the presence of those who are manifesting and expressing truth and freedom. It is more than inspiration. On some level it is transmission: we are very much influenced by one another. Although wholesome qualities of heart are developed through our own effort, we can get a clear sense of what they look like and how wonderful they are by seeing them embodied in others.
The people that we choose to be with in intimate ways and as friends have strong influence on our lives. It is important to notice what we base our relationship choices on. Are we being drawn by blind desire or by wisdom? It is a true treasure in this life of attempting to awaken to find friends who will tell us the truth when we ask. It is very easy to find people who will talk behind our backs, but to receive the truth from friends in a kind way is a wonderful gift. We can take refuge in their discernment. We can check our our assumptions and conclusions. Discerning friend can help us examine ways that we habitually cause suffering from ourselves and others. The path of freedom is a difficult one, a path that requires great effort and earnestness. To be in the company of spiritual friends who can help us recognize and transform the inevitable obstacles that we encounter along the way is invaluable. It is hard to walk on this path of awareness without friend gently pointing out our blind spots.
Though wise friendship is an essential aspect of the spiritual path, this doesn’t mean to avoid or insulate ourselves from people who we think do not have the qualities that we aspire to. There is a great deal to be learned form interacting in situations that are not so protected or consciously supportive of our inner development. When we are being challenged in ways that are not necessarily of our own choosing or within our control, life can continue to teach us. We can develop patience and compassion in situations that provoke impatience and aversion, if we are willing to be mindful of our own reactivity and learn to take responsibility for our response. If we can bring these situations into our practice, then we do not have to relate to ourselves as victims, subjugated to the whims of others.
While being part of the Buddhist tradition that began with the enlightenment of the Buddha, we are also part of a much larger Sangha that includes not only Buddhists but also the greater community of those who are seeking freedom and truth. We are part of this greater community simply through our commitment to being awake and choosing not to engage in harmful actions toward ourselves and others.
We are immediately brought into this larger Sangha with our willingness to be openhearted and with our intention to grow in discernment. Taking refuge in the Sangha is not a matter of adhering to a particular belief system or of identifying oneself as a Buddhist. The Buddha didn’t want people to follow him blindly or to identify with what he taught; his teaching is an invitation to know freedom for ourselves.
When we come in contract with others, as we do everyday, we are bound to be hurt form time to time, and at certain times quite a bit. Our first reaction is to cling to our hurt feelings, to our sense of being separate from one another. instead we can bring mindfulness into our relationships with others rather than taking refuge in withdrawal or blame. Perhaps we can take refuge in risking something different from the old familiar unworkable and unsatisfying ways that we all know so well. We can be mindful in relationship and ask: Am I acting in a habitual or mechanical way?When we are up against that which seems unworkable,what does it mean to remain openhearted? To stay open may go against every bone in the body! So taking refuge in eh Sangha also means making a commitment to bringing mindfulness to this rich area of relationship in all its diverse forms.
Taking refuge in our interconnection means that when we hurt another person, we recognize that we hurt ourselves as well. Similarly, when we hurt ourselves, we also hurt others. We may think that we can hurt ourselves and that no one else will be hared. But because we are interconnected, this is never true. Unless we learn to take care of ourselves,we won’t really know how to care for others. If we haven’t learned how to be kind with ourselves, being kind to others is often merely an ideal to strive for. Taking care of oneself also means being willing to acknowledge one’s suffering and then investigate its source. this means to silently observe our suffering without judging or reacting. This process takes a great deal of patience and courage, and we gradually discover an inner refuge through cultivating these qualities. buy training the heart to be steady and equanimous, our confidence grows as well as our capacity to help others. when we remember to bring our mindfulness practice to the complex world of relationship, the gap between spiritual ideals and actuality dissolves.
While we try to be openhearted to everyone around us, we can practice being openhearted to all the emotions, inner voices, and thoughts in our inner environment. Taking refuge in the Sangha means being openhearted with this inner Sangha as well. If we can embrace and accept negative emotions and unpleasant states of mind when they arise, without identifying with them or acting on them, we can begin to trust ourselves and live with greater ease. The practice of meditation teaches us to face whatever is occurring, and this strength of heart and mind becomes a lasting refuge. In the words of the Buddha, “By wise effort and earnestness, find for yourself an island that no flood can overwhelm.” As we find an inner refuge that no flood can overwhelm, we quite naturally become a refuge for others.
After attaining the great enlightenment, the Buddha expressed this verse in his heart (Dhammapada, verses 153-54):
"I wondered through the rounds of countless births,
Seeking but not finding the builder of this house.
Sorrowful indeed is birth again and again.
O house builder! you have now been seen.
You shall build the house no longer.
All Your rafters have been broken,
Your ridgepole shattered.
My mind has attained to unconditioned freedom.
Achieved is the end of craving."
All beings need a refuge, a place where they can find ease or peace. In our day-to-day existence, we are constantly trying to find relief form the torments of the heart – refuge from fear, loneliness, anger, boredom, etc. However, we tend to seek this refuge in outer things which ultimately prove unreliable. This yearning for relief takes many different forms. At times, we try to find refuge in accumulating possessions or through success in our career. Or we try to find refuge in memories or fantasies. Some of us try in alcohol, drugs, entertainment or in sleeping and eating. Without awareness, we blindly seek solace where it cannot be found. And over and over again, we find ourselves disappointed because we are trying to find happiness in that which is impermanent. Through the power of awareness, we begin to realize that a lasting source of ease and comfort can only be found within.
Dr. Gabor Maté, Canadian physician and author with background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development, trauma and potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health, argues in Modern Culture Is Traumatizing and NOT Normal!, that trying to draw conclusion of human nature from how we live in this society is like to understand a wild animal inside a cage. What we consider to be normal culture that we have here, there is nothing normal in terms of human needs and human potential. In fact, it’s that gap between human needs and human potential and the conditions under which we live now that create so much illness of mind and body, not to mention so much tension, strain, hostility and division in society in general.
Historically, the Buddha’s teachings have been preserved by the monastic tradition, and the term sangha has referred to the community of monks and nuns. Sangha can, as well, be seen in a much more inclusive way to mean all like-minded spiritual seekers. The Buddha, when asked whether anyone who had not ordained as a monk had become fully awakened, replied, “there has not been just one persons. There have been many people who have awakened, who have lived a householder life.” In the original discourses of the Buddha, we see that there all kids of people who practiced and realized the deepest freedom – people with different levels of education, diverse socioeconomic classes, practitioners with big families, both men and women, and even some seven-year-olds. There is a whole group of children who were said to have been enlightened at the age of seven in the Buddha’s time!
The support and encouragement that we receive from the Sangha are invaluable, given the nature and depth of our inquiry. Cultural conditioning, with its obsession with the external, keeps us searching for happiness outside of ourselves. Thespiritual path has nothing to do with achievement or attainment or becoming someone special. Because we live in such a competitive culture, we need to be especially mindful of feelings of competition when we practice together. When we compete with one another, we reinforce the discontent that comes form feelings of separateness and in-completion.
Another more expansive way of looking at taking refuge in the Sangha is taking refuge in or interconnection with all beings – whether they are engaged in a spiritual practice or not. We can be aware of our deep sense of a common bond to one another, and can take refuge in being intimate with all beings, if we see through the apparent separation of self and other. The Indian sage Neem Karoli Baba said, “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.” This means not only seeing our interconnection but living it. Not to throw anyone out means to continue to practice opening our hearts to all beings, even those beings that engage in harmful actions. This doesn’t mean that we approve or condone unskillful actions, or that we can’t say no and set protective boundaries. Boundaries are important if we want to be able to keep everyone in our hearts. There are times when we need to protect ourselves, Situations of oppression or abuse may require throwing someone our of your house to avoid throwing them out of your heart.
Relationship is essential on our path because it strips away our ideas about ourselves. We can be very loving while sitting alone and then become totally angry when we come into contact with someone else. We can have great ideas about being more generous, for example, but then, when we find ourselves in a position to give, we don’t. Thinking about giving can be a lot easier than the actuality, if it means that we have to extend ourselves beyond the range of what we have determined as comfortable. Practice in relationship requires us to examine ourselves with a commitment to honesty, recognizing our limitations and then gently stretching beyond them. it is important to remember that some conflict is a natural part of being in relationship with anyone. Trying to avoid conflict with others out of fear, ironically, prevents intimacy and ultimately leads to greater discontent. We need to learn how to take conflict that arises and work with it skillfully, using the conflict to be more aware of our reactivity and attachment to views and opinions. if our hearts and minds can regain balance in the midst of reactivity and conflict, faith in our practice grow is and we discover a more reliable refuge than avoidance or withdrawal.
In the Book Voices of Insight edited by Sharon Salzberg, cofounder and guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society and a cofounder of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, introduces to us many great resources to cope with the turbulence and anxiety of our time. The Insight Meditation Society (IMS) is a non-profit organization for study of Buddhism founded in Barre, MA in 1975, by Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein and is rooted in the Theravada tradition.
In the transition of the Buddhist teachings from Asia to the West, there is an understanding that doesn’t come easily into our culture – the importance of confidence on oneself. Traditional Asian teachings emphasize Right Effort, one of the elements of the Eight-fold Path as reflected in the very last thing the Buddha said to his disciples: “Strive on with diligence.” Meant to be empowering and personally liberating, that message is somehow not understood in the same way in the West. Effort seems burdensome, or even terrifying. We might disdain or dismiss the whole idea that the path demands effort. At the heart of many of these reactions is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness. We might subtly think, “I can’t do it. I don’t have what it takes to ‘strive with diligence; or to bring about a change in my actions.” Sharon Salzbert spoke of her transformation from self-deprecation to self-confidence. Sharon wrote extensively about her teacher Dipa Ma, a Vipassana Buddhist Master Teacher, whose amazing influence to her students on the Right Effort, was always coupled with mirroring to each of her students a powerful sense of their own ability.
Meditation is nothing new. But for many years in the West only monastics, mystics, poets, and Asian Americans practiced it. Now this path of observing life simply and directly has made its way into the mainstream. Partly because of the technological advance of internet make it possible to have wise and direct words of teachers heard, an American meditation tradition has taken root. Buddhism has brought its jewel, the practice of learning by looking within, to a society in need of wisdom to navigate the turmoil of modern world with globalization as background.
In the Buddhist literature, the word kalyannamitta is usually translated as a good, honest or spiritual friend. But is means more than just that. The words “sacred friendship” come closest to describing the depth of connection and commitment, the pure and unconditional relationship, that can exist between a student and a spiritual teacher, as well as between friends. within the wide embrace of sacred friendship, acceptance and forgiveness are what make real intimacy possible. Intimacy rests in the simplicity of being fully present, responsive to what is there in the moment, with no agenda or anticipation. By fully being in the moment we are there in just the right way. We rediscover the mystery of who we are through this interchange of opening and surrender. Such friendships create heaven on earth.
Anchored in the Theravadan Buddhist Burmese lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw since 1974, Steven Smith’s Dharma Talksanswer people’s question about how they can integrate the path of self-liberation with the path of paying attention to the welfare of others. His focus is guiding practitioners to do both. The dharmic brilliance is that liberation, the core teaching, creates a deep, transformative experience of who we are, which, in turn, transforms our care for the state of all beings everywhere. Steven Smith also had album MeditationOfTheHearton Spotify to share for free.
One the great spiritual teacher of our time, Jack Kornfield, spoke of tradition of Ajahn Chah – one of Theravada school of Buddhism. The teachings of Ajahn Chan described two levels of spiritual practice. On the first level, you use Dharma to become comfortable. You become virtuous and a little kinder. you sit and quiet your mind, and you help make a harmonious community. Then the second kind of Dharma, is to discover real freedom of mind, heart, and spirit. This level of practice has nothing whatsoever to do with comfort. here you take every circumstance of life and work with it to learn to be free. Ajahn Chan’s way of teaching combines the ultimate level of Dharma with the practical level. To help us find freedom, Ajahn Chan taught about selflessness, the essential realization of the Buddha’s liberation, in simple and remarkable ways.
Mirabai Bush, Cofounder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society in Massachusetts, discussed with contemporary thought leaders in Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying Paperback – June 21, 2022, on social justice, radical self-love, devotional ecology, public and spiritual health and more — framed within the context of the work with Ram Dass. Another book coauthored by Mirabai Bush Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning presents background information and ideas for the practical application of contemplative practices across the academic curriculum from the physical sciences to the humanities and arts. It is an inspiring report from the frontlines of academe by two quiet revolutionaries. A must-read for anyone who cares about the future of college teaching and who seeks a vision of what it could be. The other author Daniel p. Barbezat, is professor of economics at Amherst College and a former director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
In Bryn Mawr College classroom, students meditate before studying the Holocaust, slavery, and apartheid, according to their professor, it helps them “keep the encounter with shared human horror from becoming a kind of vicarious intellectual voyeurism.” Its Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research offers program to Learn mindful self-care strategies and discerning when meditative practices can be used as prevention vs intervention. Contemplative Arts at the White Lotus Center in Bryn Mawr PA, also teaches meditation and mindfulness-based stress management to individuals and groups, and support people living with cancer or other serious illnesses to integrate a variety of mind body methods into their healing journey.
These are deep and nurturing wellspring of Dharma teachings on sacred journey, sacred friendship, right effort, suffering and the end of suffering, unconditional acceptance, the power of silence and stillness. May they inspire many to deepens their wisdom and compassion and work to relieve the suffering of all being. These resources may very well be taken into consideration in governmental, institutional and school’ reform for detoxification.
Below is an excerpt from 2001 published The Art and Science of Raja Yoga by Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters） with small edit for the purpose of clarity to audience.
Yoga is quite possibly the most ancient science known to man. Seals depicting human figures in various yoga postures have been unearthed in the Indus Valley, where the findings date back more than 5000 years. A tendency in our age is for people to esteem a thing in proportion to its newness. Unless a proposition can be represented as a “new scientific break-through,” it is unlikely to be considered worthy of adult attention. Thus it is that while ancient traditions are sometimes viewed with a certain condescending amazement, no effort is spared to “update” them. What point is served by looking back to the origins of this science in what was, we have been told, the merest dawn of civilization? Until the student understand this point, he may feel tempered to “adjust” the yoga teachings at every turn to suit his own fancy.
Yoga is a firm tradition, expounded in many ancient documents, and defended in all seriousness right to the present day by every one of India’s great teachers, that high civilizations have existed at various times in the past, and that mankind has repeatedly attained, and fallen from, far greater heights of knowledge than we have reached so far in our civilization. The science of yoga is believed to have been handed down from such a high age. Fascinating evidence keeps appearing in support of the hypothesis that man has possessed advanced knowledge in times past. Stonehenge in England, huge, round boulders arranged in geometrical patterns that can be discerned only from high-flying airplanes on the west coast of north and South America; evidence of expert planning, including a sophisticated sewage system and radiant heating in the homes, in cities in the Punjab that abandoned 5000 years ago; huge steps, apparently carved by man into solid rock, and leading down to great depths in the Atlantic ocean off the norther coast of puerto Rico; domesticated grains, developed in ancient times, evidence of an agricultural skill quite possibly more advanced than our own; there are ancient , supposedly mythological accounts of flying vehicles, even of interplanetary travel.
It is only the more perceptive people even in our sophisticated age who recognize that all things, no matter how diverse, reflect an underlying unity. A loaf of bread is not essentially different from a stone, both being manifestations of energy. it is this thought that forms the very basis of yoga, the actual meaning of which is “union.” It is the stated aim of this science to take the practitioner (or yogi) to an awareness, not only of the underlying unity of all things, but also of his own essential identity with this deeper reality. …. Unlike the usual primitive observance of totems and taboos – unlike even the devotion to unproved, if beautiful, abstractions on the part of Western philosophers – yoga has always insisted on positive proof of its premises. Like modern science, its approach has always been pragmatic, even if in its pragmatism it has penetrated to regions far subtler than any yet contemplated by the physical sciences.
Yoga specifically emphasize on energy (prana) as the fundamental reality of physical matter. Simple person might, conceivably, imagine a sort of poetic kinship between himself and the rocks and trees. But that all the forms of nature are merely energy in different illusory manifestations would be, for hims, unthinkable. Science itself has only recently attained this understanding. The ancient traditions of yoga are every bit as specific. It would be well for the beginning yoga student to bear these facts in mind, not to venture out to do any “update” based on his unperfected understanding of yoga tradition.
There is an ancient manuscript in india that has survived to this day, in which the lives of many thousand, perhaps millions, of people were recorded in detail – a fact that assumes astounding proportions when one learns that most of these people had not yet been born. Many of them, in fact, would live on earth only after thousands of years. I (Swami Kriyananda) found my own life accurately described – even to my correct name and birthplace – in this work, including predictions of future events that have since come to pass…… I (Kriyananda) have described this discovery in a booklet of mine, India’s Ancient Book of Prophecy, which includes a detailed discussion of further points that I (Kriyananda) have only touched on here. What knowledge did those ancient possess that made possible such amazing prophecies?
The great yogis of India long ago claimed that human enlightenment depends only partly on the mechanical make-up of the brain and the quality of information that is introduced into it. Most important, they said, is the energy itself flowing through the complex circuit of cerebral nerves. if this energy-flow is weak, no amount of crammed information can result in great and original ideas. this energy-flow can be strengthened by self-effort in two ways: blockages in the nevers can be eliminated, and the flow of energy itself can be increased. Both of these ends may be accomplished by the diligent practice of yoga. …the strength of this energy-flow depends also on certain external factors. Our environment, the company we keep – these aids will be readily recognizable; it is for these reasons that great saints have always stressed the importance of satsanga (good company) and of living in spiritual environments.
Swami Sri Yukteswar, my (Kriyananda) own guru’s guru, and a profound astrologer as well as one of the great masters of yoga of modern India, explained that our sun completes one complete revolution around its dual every 24000 years. He said we reached the farthest point from our galactic center in the year 499 A.D. We are now once again on an upward cycle, and have entered the second of four ages – Dwapara Yuga, the age of anomic discovery, lasting a total of 2400 years – which he said began in 1699 A.D. (Astrologically speaking, then, 2000 ought to be called the year 300, Dwapara).
The science of yoga was born in an age when mankind as a whole was more enlightened, and could easily grasp truth for which our most advanced thinkers are still only groping. (Kriyananda refer here to ordinary, worldly, men, whose sole means of achieving understanding are the clumsy tools of logic, and not to those great saints and yogis who in any age are fully enlightened from within.) The perception of truth is not something to be built up from generation to generation, like money in a bank. it is not dependent on an acquisition of ourward knowledge. Truth is eternal. man can perceive it; he can not create it. Once his perception is keen enough to behold Absolute Truth, he will partake of a reality that all share who attain the same vision.
The great religions have come to man from those regions. The greatest spiritual teachers in all times have spoken from that vision. it is worldly people who, because they see the world through a filter of their own ideas and emotions, distort everything, including religion, with their personal prejudices. The endeavor of great teachers always is to bring man back to central, eternal realities. If man strays too far south, they tell him to go north. of then he makes a dogma of moving northward, straying too far in that direction, they tell him he must go south. Those who were told to go south will quarrel with the others who were told to go north, but only because both groups are blind to the fact that all their teachers wanted them to do was find the spiritual “equator”, the center of their own being. It is this teaching which constitutes the true tradition for religions; it is for this reason alone that great teachers uphold the old traditions. …. Perfected yogis have shown a deeper concern than anyone else to preserve yoga’s central traditions.
The history of yoga, then must begin with its origins in the vision of great masters in ancient times. later masters of this science are important to us now, not for what they did to improve on the ancient teachings, but for what they did to preserve them. As divine truths, the teachings of every true master are eternal, and as worthy to be considered scripture as the writings of the most ancient sage. As history, however, their special interest lies in how they clarified what now have become archaic distortions of tradition, or in how they emphasized aspects of tradition which the people of their times were prepared to understand.
The most important thing for man to remember is that he must receive enlightenment; he can not manufacture it…… the purpose of yoga, is to open the windows of the mind, and to awaken every cell of the body and brain to reflect and magnify the energy that comes to it from the surrounding universe. ( a comparison might be drawn to modern transistor radios which, because of their efficiency, can pick up programs where, a few years ago, nothing, so small would have been able to get a sound.)
As you pursue your yoga practices, remember that your aim must be to become spiritually completely open, to receive. Never hurry. Never strain. Feel that what you do is, in a sense, being done through your body, by your willing cooperation with divine forces. The practice of each individual must be directed, not toward outward appearances and display, but inward to the center of his own being. Every posture must be an affirmation of, and must be followed by a return to, the divine Self within.
….The main purpose of yoga postures, …… is to prepare the body and mind for meditation. In the truest possible sense, meditation is yoga’ laboratory and the primary means by which we test the truth of its teachings. The book Art and Science of Raja Yoga, gives us direct access to the inner world of Spirit…. To prepare for the practice of meditation, the course offers numerous preliminary exercises that help us make the transition from the outer world of activity to the inner world of stillness. We learn how to let go of worries, physical and mental tension, and to focus the mind – skills that are helpful not only for meditation but equally in our daily lives.
Meditation requires also what Kriyananda calls a “complete revolution” in “what are commonly looked upon as normal human attitudes.” That is, “The competitive drive, for instance, implies an assumption that success must always be exclusive, even to the extent of being determined by other people’s failure …. Such an attitude will thwart the most earnest of efforts to progress in meditation, for it will pit one against the universe instead of harmonizing him with it. Right attitude is essential to right meditation. The “right attitudes” referred to by Kriyananda are the universal moral principles of yoga, the yamas (the don’ts) and niyamas (the do’s). “The first step in the development of right attitude is to learn to see others not as rivals, but as friends … the goals of yoga is to realize the oneness of all life. If I am willing to hurt the life in me as it is expressed in another human being, then I am affirming an error that is diametrically opposed to the realization I am seeking to attain. It is necessary if I would truly realize the oneness of all things, for me to live also in a way as constantly to affirm this oneness – by my kindness toward all beings, by compassion, by universal love.”
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