Facets of a Diamond – Blog

The Australian psychiatrist Ainslie Meares wrote of visiting a 134-year-old yogi who meditated sixteen hours a day on a mountain top. He asked him if he felt pain. “Yes of course I do”—but then he added “but it doesn’t hurt.” Pain is a concomitant, an essential concomitant, of life. I like to think of all

What is the best posture for meditation? I have over a long time examined many meditators in all the usual positions recommended for meditation. Very often I find that they have put themselves into a state of unconscious negativity by the position. Of course, this defeats the very purpose of the meditation. They are rarely

I believe that All is Determined—by some Master Determiner or Planner—or whatever word you choose to use. Einstein similarly believed that we have no free will, although he impishly added that we should act as if we did. And Nietzsche believed so as well. Adding that the concept of free will was invented by those

The core teaching of the Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta, as espoused by Shankara, is that All is One, there is no not-One.

It is only what he called illusion that prevents us Knowing this Basic Truth, and living accordingly.

This illusion, and all the countless ones superimposed on it, arising out of it, are

It was the example of Dr. Leadley, my invalid grandmother’s general practioner, that determined me to be a doctor, to be like him.

She was a cardiac cripple living in a constant state of borderline heart failure. What could he do in terms of modern medicine? Merely adjust her digitalis dosage. But

I believe that if there is a reason for me to meditate, it is to become Aware, hopefully one day Ever Aware, of the linkage to the Spirit World and beyond to the Force Divine, The Great Spirit, the Determiner of All.

One particular morning I was meditating in our bedroom,

When I ask for an example of a good marriage, I’ve yet to have someone propose his or her parents’. (In fact, few can give any good example!

Apart from the obvious problem of the lack of a positive marriage model – or rather, the presence of the very opposite – to emulate, there is another problem.

For

Empathy: to feel the suffering.
Sympathy: to take it on.

A healer must always be empathetic, but never sympathetic, for then he is as disempowered as the sufferer.

To empathize is to become one with the sufferer.
To sympathize is to become the sufferer.

A sympathetic surgeon who cries as he cuts the patient’s skin would be useless. On the

It’s said that the basic intention behind all spiritual endeavors is reconciliation with God.

I can’t directly reconcile you with God – but I can with your mother.

And to us all, our mother is God – as God on earth.  For she was, and still is, our holiest intimation of the Divine.

The way to God is

I love the SP root. It gave rise to so many words, most of them with a common, central meaning. Consider a few: spurt, sprinkle, spark, sperm, sputum, spit. All with the idea of something vital being projected from a live source to a destination which it may vitalize: the spark igniting the kindling.