Showing results for "foundation" in Consciousness & Thought

In simple and straightforward language, Bhante Gunaratana shares the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness and how we can use these principles to improve our daily lives, deepen our mindfulness, and move closer to our spiritual goals. Based on the classic Satipatthana Sutta, one of the most succinct yet rich explanations of meditation, Bhante's presentation is nonetheless thoroughly modern.

Revised and updated, Teaching Yoga by yoga expert Mark Stephens is one of the most popular resources for new and experienced teachers, and has been a trusted guide since its publication in 2010. This classic resource covers fundamental topics of yoga history and philosophy, as well as each of the 11 major styles of contemporary yoga. There is also practical advice for every stage of the teaching process, including tools for teaching 108 yoga poses (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation.

No matter where we are in our spiritual development, we all have questions about our practice and what we are experiencing - both the challenges and opportunities. How can I overcome my struggles to meditate more deeply? Is there a need for a guru, or can I rely on myself? Can I trust my intuition? Is it possible to hear the “Inner Word”, the voice of the soul, and how can I be sure that’s what I’m hearing? Is the Higher Self in the heart?

Though we have plenty of energy, apparently we lack the drive, enthusiasm, vitality to bring about a change in ourselves. As long as there is fear, there must be violence, aggression, anger, hatred. Thought is the source of fear. Is it possible to live everyday life without thought interfering? Thought is always old. When you worship thought, you are worshipping some thing that is dead.

Fear. All the escaping and the strengthening of fear comes because we are inattentive. What is sleep? Find out....

So memory, experience, knowledge is the background of thought. But thought which is always old can never be free, it may express itself freely but it is always old; and therefore thought can never see anything new. So when I understand that, very clearly, the mind becomes quiet.

Can a mind be free of authority so that there is no impingement of the past, so that the mind is always alert, learning in the present? Can the mind experience, go through a challenge so completely that it leaves no mark? The mind must purge itself of the social morality in order to be moral. Has experience any value at all? Attention is the highest form of the good. What is the relationship between two human beings when there are no images? What is wisdom?

Is there a totally different way of approaching the whole turmoil of life? As long as the centre is creating darkness, and thought is operating in that darkness, there must be disorder, there must be everything as society now is. To move away from that, you must have insight. Insight can only come about when there is a flash which abolishes not only the darkness but the creator of darkness. Human beings have been acting according to one pattern, responding to hatred by hatred and so on. There are those few, perhaps many, who did not.

Why do we divide the world, the human being and the divine? Do good and evil really exist or are they simply conditioned points of view? Is there a permanent ‘me’. Is there in me a place where there is no corruption, where there is real, absolute peace, order? Are the various scriptures of India and the Middle East similar to or in contradiction to your teaching? Is there any connection between the supernatural and religion?

We shall explore together into this life, existence, in which is included relationship, love and death, not merely as a phenomenon but as something tremendously significant, to be cherished, deeply lived. Meditation is the approach to this problem of living.

What is truth and what is reality? Anything that thought thinks about or reflects upon or projects, that is reality. And that reality has nothing to do with truth. The art of seeing is to place reality where it is, and not move that in order to get truth. You can’t get truth. How am I to empty that consciousness and yet retain knowledge – otherwise I couldn’t function – and reach a state which will comprehend reality?

Seven public talks, including 'Does self-knowledge come through searching? - 16th July 1949' and 'Relationship has significance only when it is a process of self-revelation. - 17th July 1949' and more.

Every human being is living a life, but how much humanity does he have? Birth, education, job, marriage, kids, family and at the end... death! Is this the standard cycle of life that has to be followed? What is the ultimate goal of such a life? Why do we take birth? What do we want? The human body that we have received... should do the duty of being humane. There should be humanity in life. But what is humanity? According to Param Pujya Dadashri, the Gnani Purush (the enlightened One). The definition of humanity is that when someone hurts you, troubles you, you don’t like it.

Farmer, ecologist, and writer Berry provides some rich and fertile ground for recreating life and culture. He speaks of enduring values, the wholeness of life and the interdependence of all creatures, especially humankind. Berry's self-discipline, ethical sense and human compassion come through as he leads us from the microcosm of his Kentucky hill farm to the macrocosm of a sane and reasoned planetary vision based on personal integrity, faithfulness, and love.

What is the function of education? Some people say that we must live now and others say that we must be concerned further, beyond the present. Can man really be human without any effort? What is the difference between affection and love? How am I to know that I am bad? How am I to improve? Why does nature attract us?

Living together amicably, creatively, in complete relationship with one another – if that is what is essential then we need not only a different kind of mind but also a different quality of affection, love. What is the function of a religious mind? Our struggle in life is dualistic: good and bad, right and wrong, holy and unholy, the ideal and the fact. There is only the fact, not the ideal. Is it possible to look at life as though you are looking for the first time? What is the content of the unconscious?

How does it happen that the deep layers hidden in consciousness can be exposed? Comparison between what is with what has been, and what will be, is the process of fear....

Living your dream and following your heart are possible for anyone willing to engage life with passion, according to Sinetar, an organizational psychologist, who has studied many people who have become successful doing what they love. Self-esteem, overcoming resistance, accepting and forgiving oneself, taking risks, and more are addressed in this visionary yet practical view of merging life and work.

Where there is authority there can be no discovery of something new. Relationship based on an idea cannot be a self-revealing process. Self-knowledge is understood, uncovered and its process revealed through relationship. Is it possible to love without the interference of the mind? When the mind becomes supreme, all-important, then there can be no affection. Q: what is that thinking that must come to an end? What do you mean by thinking and thought?

Violence. Why do you control? Security means to be in a state in which there is no choice at all. The mind has become sensitive because it has observed, not because it has experienced. Either you see the fact with the past or you see the fact as it is now. The word is of the past.