Uradiance

During these painful times, root your attention in the truth: you are in the world, but not of the world. The irony is, the more deeply rooted we are in transcendent Being, the more powerful and free we are to act creatively from the present moment. So here are some practical reminders of mindfulness. Repose for a moment as simple awareness, the imageless transparency of Being, before a thought arises. Do this often throughout the day. Know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Creator flows through your body as the gift of breath. Each breath is the milk of divine love. Don't ascribe motive to the actions of another. This saves you from becoming the motive you ascribe. Drop blame. When we blame someone, we take on their karma. This is why we become more and more like our enemies, and why we often choose enemies who remind us of a secret shadow in ourselves. There are a thousand more useful ways you can serve the world besides blaming others. Please, do...

Cradle every breath as a mother holds her only child. This is a more fruitful way to hug God. You won’t embrace anyone else, not really, until you taste the kiss of these two sparkling love streams in your own body - one spilling down from the soft white mountaintop, the other springing from groundless loam where the blossoms on your backbone root and drink the mother's darkness. Ancient seers whispered about this marriage   deep inside, but only to those who knew how to listen - "So'ham, So'ham.” I am You, I am You, Lord of Merging Rivers.

Om is not a chant. Om is the vibration of absolute silence, rising and falling in waves of itself. You cannot chant Om, but you can hear it. Just be quiet and listen. Om is the womb of paradox, the resonance of the void, the fullest harmony of emptiness, giving birth to the earth, the galaxies, the space beyond the rim of time. When you are listening, your mind is not making the noise of thought. Then you can hear the thunder of quarks and neutrinos, the chorus of a trillion suns in a single proton. Is it a proton in your body, or in the body of a fiery rainbow she-dragon on a distant star? Both. Now enough talk. It is dawn. Time to dissolve... Hear the annihilation of subject and object. Drown in the ocean of quietness, where there is no more listener, only Listening. Let this Listening give birth to a sparrow's song.

And yet, some people spend lifetime after lifetime arguing for their limitations, preferring disaster to hope. It is a choice that comes from such a deep place in the soul, we hardly notice: a kind of rebellion against the gift of joy.

The cosmos is nothing but the dance of pure awareness becoming aware of its Self (Shiva) through the energy of its own inherent bliss (Shakti). Though empty of form, the diamond wonder of self-awareness vibrates with ananda , and these waves of bliss shape themselves into sub-nuclear particles. Therefor the world is made out of your own consciousness. Become hollow and witness awareness overflow through your senses, spilling from your eyes, your nostrils, your ears, your tongue, into meadows and trees, mountains, rivers, and clouds. Rooted in the emptiness of naked attention, each sensation is the the first moment of creation, w hen God says, "Let there be light!" But who is "God"? The symmetry of stillness breaks into fluctuations, oscillating mathematical equations in the vacuum, discharging gravitons and quarks out of no-thing. The formless void - in Hebrew, "tohu w'bohu" - is not a trope from Buddhism, but from the opening verses...

If the people's minds are clear, settled in sparkling silence, free from anxious and extraneous thought, while their bodies are infused with the healing breath of divine prana, then it won't matter whether their economic system is socialist or capitalist, or a mixture of the two: they will serve one another with civility, compassion, patience, and trust. But if the people's minds are dull and anxious, their bodies stress ed and depleted, then even if they live under the most egalitarian system of justice, with carefully regulated income equality, they will interact with conflict, envy, impatience and distrust, leading to violence. That is why, no matter which political party you belong to, it is essential to practice daily sadhana. Cleanse the mind with meditation. Energize the body's cells with healing breath. Because, regardless of your political ideals, you are only capable of acting from your present energy level and state of mind. Refresh your co...

One gentle sensation of breath, caressing the alveoli and the heart,  can liberate this anxious mind. One inhalation may bring boundless peace. All that is required is this body, and a little awareness. This is why I have received the gift of breathing. And in an instant, one electric stroke of fur or flesh can silence my haughty intellect, puffed up with argument and ideology. This is why I receive the gift of sensation. I welcome the sacraments of light, sound, smell, taste. Imagine being trapped in this mind, stuck in concepts and beliefs for thousands of years without a body! That is just what happens to the hell-bound, the hungry ghosts, and demigods. That is all they are: beings like me trapped in a mind without a body. Myriad disincarnate souls yearn for this human form, in order to attain liberation through the kiss of awareness and sensation . Out of billions, I get the opportunity to be born on earth. What an honor! Here is a chalice of the finest w...

You might look at ordinary objects and say, "There are no miracles." But in fact, these objects are miraculous - the dandelion, the cloud, the dewdrop, the eyes of a child - for they exist. And that they exist is a miracle, because Being itself is transcendent, breath-taking, eternal. Just before he died, Buddha's followers asked him for his final teaching. So Buddha merely pointed to a flower . We see the thing-ness of the flower, but the Awakened One was pointing to the Being of the flower. There is a difference between the thing-ness and the Being of a flower. To the mind that is half-asleep, Being seems abstract. But to the awakened, Being is more solid, more actual, than any thing. The difference between  ignorance and enlightenment is simply this: the ignorant see a world of things, but the enlightened see the Being of things. This divine Being imparts to creatures a fleeting and apparent existence, so that we behold them and know qu...

Non-violence is to be yourself. Non-violence begins by honoring one's self as a singular soul-body, refusing to identify with labels of race, gender, religion, or nationality. When we honor ourselves, as selves, we can honor others: not as groups, but as Persons. But just as right-wing movements divide us, so today's 'progressive' movements promote conflict by labeling Persons by their group identities. Some of us who talk most about 'diversity' actually stifle it, because real diversity is not to promote the tribalism of 'blacks' and 'whites,' Muslims and Christians, straight and LGBT, liberal and conservative - but to recognize the incomparable Personhood of each human being. Violence begins by making generalizations about people. It is easier to hate a category than a Person. But the general type melts away when we meet the individual, and dare to listen. I am not a type. I am not a category. I am not a liberal or conservative,...

We live in a self-correcting, self-balancing, self-aware feedback system of organic wholeness. Her name is Gaia. We don't participate in her intelligence by projecting fear, anger, and visions of tomorrow's doom. We participate in her intelligence by radiating love, today.

Pain is the husk. Love is the fruit. Bliss is the seed. There is no escape from wholeness.

  When I truly listen I have no opinion about anything. Yet in that moment my emptiness, my capacity for hearing draws me nearer to Truth than any opinion I could possibly hold. A sparrow taught me this. Better to listen than be right.

As the ear is drawn effortlessly to the song of the thrush, so the mind is drawn by the grace of the mantra to the silence at creation's source. True meditation is completely effortless, completely graceful. There is no concentration, no repetition, only a pathless spontaneous expansion of joy. Why would the mind need to concentrate on what it naturally enjoys? The mantra is the seed of the bliss of God-Consciousness in the form of sound, enlivened with divine Shakti at the moment of initiation, through the breath of the Master. No science is more precious than the science of mantra. No art is more beautiful than the art of meditation. That is why we say, 'Jai Guru Dev,' gratitude to the masters of the Shankaracharya tradition, whose lineage we pass down from the dawn of human history.

'I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.' ~Bob Dylan When I say, 'this world,' why do I assume that this world of mine is the same world as yours? To each mind, a world.... Who can say that the world we each construct out of the primordial energy around us is the same world? And what if that energy, after all, is consciousness itself, shaping itself into a world? I am perfectly willing to say that we share the same field of consciousness. But I am not willing to say that we construct the same worlds out of it.

Polish the diamond of Self-recognition with your breath. It was given to you for that purpose. Then you will shine like the sun, requiring no thought or external object to taste the ever-expanding bliss of your heart. In that overwhelming simplicity, your own awareness becomes the supreme authority. Bow down to That. Take refuge in That. Sing about That. Tat tvam asi. Photo by dear friend, Aile Shebar

Haven't you noticed? This is a world of opposites. After awhile, what's good for you is bad for you, what's bad for you is good for you. Get unstuck.

'Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.' ~Proverbs 18:21 'Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.' ~Ephesians 4:29 In the depths of a drought, the Prophet Elijah said, 'Go eat and drink, because I hear the sound of abundant rain.' He heard the sound before the event. Vibration underlies matter. A world of mantras presages the physical world. A thing is preceded by its true Name. Our language used to have the power to create, to bless and to heal. We sometimes feel nostalgia for this science of mantra, for the Godspell our voices once commanded. We encounter it again in great mythic stories, or fantasy n ovels like Lord of the Rings and Wizard of Earthsea. Something in them rings true, because we hear the ringing. Indigenous tribal people still revere the sacred force of name...