What are you accepting into your mind?
Is blindly accepting other’s words, the root cause of all upsets in life? What do we do when someone expresses their anger towards us or speaks to us in a belittling way? The answer to this question can be found in this incident from the life of the Buddha. Once Buddha went to beg with his disciple Ananda. When they approached a...
A wise gift to oneself
A student once asked his master, “Please give me a wise practice…a kind of spiritual discipline that I can follow every day.” The master suggested he sweep the floor, wash the dishes, and dust the house. The student wondered loudly how such an unusual advice could be a wise practice. The master replied, “When you sweep the floor, your body might be sweeping,...
Emptying your Inner Cup
‘A student learns one-quarter from his master, the second quarter from fellow students, and the third when he teaches. Time and experience confer the last quarter.’ -A Sanskrit saying. Someone once asked me why I was learning martial-art. How was it useful for a spiritual teacher to know martial art? While I gave the person a response at that time, I wanted...
LOOKING AT LIFE DIFFERENTLY
The sacred text of Yoga tells us that there are two ways to look at life, from the lower-self called Jeevathma or from the higher-self called Paramathma. This shift of perception from the lower to the higher self is what leads us from Samsara to Nirvana, or to understand it simply from a sense of deficiency to a sense of...