Tweet I like checking the Skills for Awakening against a variety of other wisdom traditions. What I find, time and again, is that this thoroughly contemporary approach is really the pure practical essence of what the wisdom traditions teach. It represents the practice of the liberation from suffering without all the trappings of foreign cultures […]
Tweet Dear friends, I want to share with you this interview I was invited to attend couple of days ago. I’m very grateful to ‘Wisdom’s Soft Whisper’ radio show team, for your kindness and love. Please click on: RamGiri09272010.mp3 If the above link does not work, you can paste the following address into your browser: […]
Tweet People harm others only when they are unhappy. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “I feel so great today! I think I’ll go out and harm someone!” When we can allow ourselves to know the depth of the pain and confusion felt by those who have harmed us, compassion–the wish that […]
Tweet Life is full of pain sometimes, where do we turn to find some relief? Look at your fear, depression, anxiety, worry. They are all about the past and the future, are they not? Now bring your attention to the present moment. Not ‘sort of,’ but really come into the now. Get focused on the […]
Tweet Three aspects of spiritual life are precious to guard and develop: devotion, enthusiasm and the focus on enlightenment. Devotion to our teacher and our highest goal is the source of all blessings. We may think that this is because when we have devotion we are good and we deserve to receive blessings, but that […]
Tweet Maggy doesn’t like her arms. They’re just too hairy. She shaves them, she waxes them and still they are always a thorn in her side. The hair on her arms is the focal point of her self-rejection. Perhaps it’s your boss, or your first boyfriend who mistreated you, or life itself. Somewhere your unhappiness […]
Tweet The day is past and some of us came together in a wonderful workshop, stepping out of the imprisonment of our stressful thoughts and emotions. This is how we are creating peace in this world, one mind and heart at a time. Let me offer you a quote by Byron Katie today: “I am […]
Tweet Now it has come again, this sad day. We hear great waves of disturbance around us, as though a stone was thrown into a pond and the ripples are spreading. Intolerance, fear, prejudice and confusion, one follows the other. We see the disturbance in the world and what can we do? How can we […]
Tweet We think of it as inevitable, but that is not true. Suffering arises in the unquestioned mind and spreads from there. It is an ingrained habit, no more. And we can change habits. Our thoughts run into the past and the future, imagining what was and could go wrong. Observe it. These regrets and […]
Tweet We don’t want to suffer. So what do we need to do when it comes, small or big? Grin and bear it? Hope for a better world after we die? All that has been tried. I prefer to end suffering. Many voices that will tell you it’s impossible, that suffering is part of life. […]
Tweet “Suffering is voluntary and unnecessary. It is created by the mind” In days of old these insights would have been regarded as a secret teaching, accessible only to a select few. To even approach this knowledge you would first have to go through much training and many tests, and only if you were found […]
Tweet The Israelites showed us how it’s done. 40 years in the desert with nothing but their faith to support them – my God that was no picnic! Picture them, the whole tribe walking along. Up ahead the courageous ones, the explorers, ready to conquer the scary unknown. Then the whole mass of the people, […]
Tweet Another morning. But before I open my eyes, I lie still and deeply feel inside. And a recognition arises. There is in us a presence of which we are often unaware. You have your own name for it, the presence of God, or reality, of the soul. For me it has the feeling of […]
Tweet I have a big day ahead of me today, a list of to do’s longer than my arm (and I have long arms) and lots of big decisions to make. So what did I do to get ready for it? I rolled out of bed early and went for a bike ride and walk, […]
Tweet While reading an amazing teaching by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (the main guru of the Dalai Lama, whose new incarnation is just touring the States for the 1st time) I thought of you. In a few short words: It is the teaching of clearly seeing that all the misery in our lives comes from ego-clinging, […]
