Uradiance

To me, a beautiful woman usually wears glasses. But not always. She looks like a studious librarian on the verge of turning into a wild panther.  Modesty and contentment veil, yet magnify, the motion of her hips, cooling the earth with the sinuous breeze of her walking.   She does not hunt or hurry. She is too busy generating energy from darkness, light from the Unmanifest. Men become gentle with power around her. They become better men. Blessings to Lakshmi, Goddess of Beauty, in this sacred festival of Divali. And blessings to all the Lakshmis who carry the divine power of creation in their human bodies. Lakshmi is the secret abundance in every breast. Through her grace, giving is overflowing. Sweet daughter, beauty is not your perfume or the color you paint your lips, or the shape of your body, or the gemstone you wear on your finger. Beauty is the splash your soul makes when you dive into the ocean of her Presence.  Lakshmi is the fo...

I am heartened to observe that the greatest artists and philosophers emerge, not during periods of social stability, but precisely when cultures fragment and decline. It is not equilibrium but the broken symmetry of the unbalanced equation that engenders creativity. Inspiration never comes through the entropy of even redistribution , or the imposition of equality. Wisdom does not emerge from a flat-line of social conformity, but from the purifying flame of chaos. Lao T'zu wrote the Tao Te Ching as he abandoned a rotting empire. The Renaissance was an age of political mayhem and petty violence between city states. The "Golden Age of Athens" was not a respite of social harmony, but a series of plagues, wars, and dictatorships, when the best men were hastily imprisoned or exiled. Beauty is born when wise souls embrace the clash of opposites. Great leaders speak in paradox, not platitude. There is no need to flee from conflict: conflict invokes the Witness, and awaken...

Green economics begins with a new definition of abundance: the freedom gained by needing and using less. Wealth is a simpler material life, making room for the infinite resource of the spirit. A Green vision celebrates the small, not the big; the local, not the federal; conservation, not waste; cooperation, not competition; enough, not more. What riches do we gain by investing in clean energy, sustainable economy, local community, and gentler livi ng? The wealth of an ancient forest, a fallow meadow. Abundance of beauty, with leisure to walk more slowly on the Earth. The profit of evening silence, a thrush's song. At midnight, ten million stars. At dawn, time to breathe.

  Your mind is the oppressor. Your mind is the healer. Your mind creates your role, leaps in and calls it fate. Why spend ten thousand lifetimes playing the victim, complaining about the darkness of the past, when you can dissolve into the light of Presence now? Your spine is a wick, your body a flame that has no edges. Just radiate. No need to make even a hair's breadth distinction between 'spirit' and 'flesh.' Why not choose to contain the stars you see above you? We could meet here. But you're so stunned with astonishment, you've forgotten that you dwell in the heart of a miracle - this perpetual flowering of the Self into the Other.

Don't imagine that breathing is something you do just to stay alive. Breath has a secret purpose. Each inh alation whispers the most beautiful name of God to every cell in your body, while the crystal ladle of exhalation pours your mind into the bowl of longing. When your intellect is parched by too many words, your lips disconnect from the offering cup, and you whine for more of what you don't need. You're choking on your own pollen. Let the breath of the Master turn your dust into a steady pulse of pouring honey. Don't silence your thoughts; let them sing to the music in your chest. A ladybug bending her grass blade, or a dove that keens in the mist at dawn, are fleeting deaths in the vast bewilderment of love. That cloud, the opal gift that veiled the face of the shy half moon, now passes into emptiness. Thank the Beloved. Wouldn't you rather be overwhelmed with beauty than know what it means? O do not staunch the brilliant flow of darknes...

At some point it becomes so obvious. Conflict and violence in the world 'out there' are projections of conflict and violence in the mind. It is good that we have political activists, but we also need meditation guides to heal humanity from the root up. No matter how hard the farmer works to prune and doctor the tree, sickness in the root produces sick flowers, sick fruit. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali said: "Heyam dukkham ana-ghatam: Avoid the suffering before it arises." Heal from below. Grow perfect flowers while they’re still in the seed.

Rather than criticize the role another plays in this world, play your own with more serene intensity. This is the Theater of Dancing Opposites, who frolic in pairs so that we may see beyond them. Cling neither to this nor that, despise neither this nor that. Each situation arises just for our benefit, that we might embrace the moment, letting go of another fear, craving, or illusory limitation. When we learn to dance with the world instead of resisting it, we see how perfect it is. If hearing this makes you mad, it's OK: that is your role this moment. Now hug your anger. ________ Photo: 'All the world's a stage,' Shakespeare, from 'As You Like It'

I don't trust people who say they love everybody. Love isn't that bland. Love is not pablum, but wine. And why should I love everybody? Where does the 'should' come from? I don't want my love to lose its juiciness, its intimate anointing touch. I don't want to love All, but Thou. When love becomes a moral law, it dies. Constrained by duty, the heart cannot melt. Therefor, I have no duty to love you. Love is a sacred gift, not a commandment. No one commands a gift. Love is stronger stuff than law, flowing from a dark mystery, aged in the wine cellar of my body.

Humans are beautiful native animals. But somehow, this body made of earth and stars was invaded and occupied by the Empire of the Mind. Mind is foreign to the earth. Mind is not consciousness. Mind is the cloud that obscures the clear sky of consciousness. Mind generates religions of violence, technologies of contro l, and economies that rape our planet. Our governments are ruled by greed, which is of the mind, not the body. Our governments thrive on war, because mind establishes a sense of identity through conflict. The "I" knows that it exists because it differentiates itself from "you." Mind feeds on polarization, separateness, duality. Hating an "enemy" and scapegoating an "other" makes the mind feel concrete and alive. Mind cannot know love, for love is the field of unity, deeper inside and more intimate than thought. Love is prior to polarization. Love is whole and beyond conflict. Love does not take sides. Love is t...

No need to renounce what was never mine. But if I must renounce, I renounce this breath. Renouncing my breath, all else in my life must be surrendered. I confess that this breath is not mine. I did not create this breath. It is a gift. * I renounce wine by tasting it with deeper devotion. I become aware of every flavor, touch, fragrance, color. I am born on earth for this sacrament of sensation, this marriage of perception and awareness.                                                             * When I am awake, sensuality is renunciation, renunciation is sensuality. I can become so fully aware of a sensation that in its deepest center is silence, where I can taste aw...

Your unfolding heart, so fragrant with compassion, cups this teardrop world... In the Bhakti Sutras, Sage Narada says, "The path of divine love is very easy." In the Gospel, Jesus says, "My yoke is easy, my burden is light." Yet few of us find love easy. The spiritual path seems hard. Why do such great Masters tell us it is easy? "Easy" does not mean always luminous and joyful. The dark of the New Moon is as powerful as the splendor of the Full. Our path of love includes sorrow, shadow, and pain. But sorrow, shadow, and pain are not suffering. They only feel like suffering when we resist them, clinging to a preference for joy, light, and pleasure. It is clinging and resistance that are difficult, not the fleeting content of experience... We do not cling to a breath, or resist the next inhalation. So we may breathe through any moment on earth, even the moment of death. Be easy with your sorrow, gentle with your shadow, light wit...

'Depth calleth unto depth...' ~Psalm 42 Relationship with the Guru is relationship with the silence inside you, the boundless depth surrounding the tiny thought of 'I.' This is why, when you are in the presence of a true Master, no question arises, no mind, only stillness. The 'I'-thought, 'ahamkara,' disappears. You dissolve. The role of the Master is simply to remind you of who you really are. The Guru's depth awakens the depth in you. You are not this little bundle of worries and regrets. You are peace. You are vast clarity, like the sky. You are a priceless sparkling diamond of pure compassion. Jai Guru Dev.