When you practice, say you find yourself in a deep state of stillness; often it does not last very long as a thought or a movement always arises, like a wave in the ocean. Don’t reject the movement or particularly embrace the stillness, but continue the flow of your pure presence. The pervasive, peaceful state of your meditation is the Rigpa itself, and all risings are none other than this Rigpa’s self-radiance. This is the heart and the basis of Dzogchen practice.

One way to imagine this is as if you were riding on the sun’s rays back to the sun: You trace the risings back, at once, to their very root, the ground of Rigpa. As you embody the steadfast stability of the View, you are no longer deceived and distracted by whatever rises, and so cannot fall prey to delusion.

~SOYGAL RINPOCHE

If you were to draw one essential message from the fact of reincarnation, it would be: Develop a good heart that longs for other beings to find lasting happiness, and acts to secure that happiness. Nourish and practice kindness.

The Dalai Lama has said: “There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness.”

The Saints tell us that within each of us is a shining diamond of great beauty. But to uncover that beauty, the diamond cutter has to take away a lot of the rock covering up the diamond. Chip, chip, chip -- all these problems and crisis' that we face are the Master Jeweler, God, cutting away at our deficiencies, working to uncover the pure consciousness within.

Life continually evolves. We’re always moving into new experiences, new possibilities. This constant change unsettles the personality, which finds security in stability. But with life always in flux, that security is an illusion. We experience pain by trying to hold on to things that are not solid.

Life becomes joyful when we can open to the constant flow and ride freely with it. This requires us to let go of the need to control. We need to learn to trust.

People pursue spirituality with their brain: that is where they are mistaken. Spirituality is attained through the heart. What do I mean by the heart? Is it the nervous center in the midst of the breast, the small piece of flesh that doctors call the heart? No, the definition of the heart is that it is the depth of the mind, the mind being the surface of the heart. That in us which feels is the heart, that which thinks is the mind. It is the same thing which thinks and feels, but the direction is different: feeling comes from the depth, thought from the surface. When thought is not linked with feeling it is just like a plant rising up from the earth, the root of which has not gone deep. A thought without feeling is a powerless thought; it is just like a plant without a deep root. A tree the root of which has gone deep into the earth is stronger, more reliable, and so the thought deeply rooted in the heart has greater power.

The Non-Meditation That is Happiness Itself

Now is the moment we abide in primordial essence
luminous nature of mind
empty awake awareness itself
Whatever experience arises
pleasant neutral unpleasant
no need to change it

Whatever arises let it be
without judgement positive or negative
without past or future
without attachment or aversion
without affirmation or denial
without closeness or distance

Whatever arises does so
in the pure clear light of awareness
that opens into the very ground of being
Thus whatever arises is liberated

Now let it be exactly as it is
Perfect openness
Perfect space
As it is already accomplished
Simply relax into it

~ David Paul Boaz

The narcissistic ego always wants to know who we are when we look in the mirror. But when we die into our own True Self and recognize ourselves to be that which is impersonal and absolute, we stumble upon the miracle of enlightenment. We find that the Self that we have discovered is a mystery that cannot be seen with the eye and cannot be recognized by the mind. And that is why, if we want to truly know that Self, we have to be willing to not see it with our eyes and not know it with our mind. If we want to be free, we actually have to let go of the very thing that we want to know in order to truly know it. We have to be willing to forget ourselves utterly and die into that ungraspable mystery. And from then on, we have to always be willing to live in a state of unknowing, a state in which we don't know who we are."

~ Andrew Cohen, Living Enlightenment

We may ask "Why God is sending us me many problems?" The Saints reply that God is not sending problems. God only sends blessings.

The big source of problems is our own desires. When we want something and don't get it, we are unhappy and suffer. To reduce problems, reduce desires. This is sometimes a very hard realization for people to make, but it is essntial for spiritual progress: IT IS NOT SOMETHING EXTERNAL TO MYSELF CAUSING ME TO SUFFER - IT IS MY OWN MIND.

What we get in life is the result of our own past and present karmas (actions). Do not blame others for troubles. If in our past or present life, we were rude to our parents, then our children are rude to us. This is the law of karma, and is true in all things.

The Vedas state that anything can be achieved through sacrifice, through austerity. Austerity is like putting money in the bank. If we do not put money in the bank, who will tide us over when hard times hit? Do not rely on your past good karmas continuing forever. Do spiritual practices and good deeds and continue to enjoy health, happiness and prosperity.

All the good fortune coming our way today is the result of past good actions. If we don't have money in the good karma bank, and we want something, it is out of reach.

Standing before Baba and saying "Please give me this, please give me this" is like superstition. It may or may not work.

To get Baba's grace, we must make deposits in the Baba bank. Put a few dollars of love into the bank every day, and before long, you'll have a small fortune.

Start doing spiritual practices every day. Live a moral life, help others. This will provide the protection needed to live a happy, secure life.

“All things summon us to death;
Nature, almost envious of the good she has given us,
Tells us often and gives us notice that she cannot
For long allow us that scrap of matter she has lent…
She has need of it for other forms,
She claims it back for other works.”

—Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), “On Death, a Sermon”

"Everything in creation consists of the five elements. {The pancha bhutas - space, air, fire, water, and earth} The Vedas say that the pancha bhutas have the power to confer grace or inflict punishment on human beings when they are displeased with them. This is why the Vedas praise and worship the elements of nature. If we show them disrespect, these elements can get angry and shake the world around us through natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Scientists have learned only recently that the five elements of nature have life. The rishis of ancient times knew this. That is why it is very clearly said in the Vedas that we should protect nature as we would our own beloved mother."

-Saint Karunamayi in SRI VIDYA, Divine Radiance Within

Ego plays brilliantly on our fundamental fear of losing control, and of the unknown. We might say to ourselves: “I should really let go of ego, I’m in such pain; but if I do, what’s going to happen to me?”

Ego will chime in sweetly: “I know I’m sometimes a nuisance, and believe me, I quite understand if you want me to leave. But is that really what you want? Think: If I do go, what’s going to happen to you? Who’ll look after you? Who will protect and care for you like I’ve done all these years?”

Even if we see through the lies of the ego, we are just too scared to abandon it; for without any true knowledge of the nature of our mind, or true identity, we simply have no other alternative. Again and again we cave in to ego’s demands with the same sad self-hatred as the alcoholic feels reaching for the drink that he knows is destroying him, or the drug addict feels groping for the drug that she knows after a brief high will only leave her flat and desperate.

A Tibetan yogi was meditating in a cave, when the demons came.

They howled and screeched at him, menacing.

And the yogi simply offered them tea.

The demons said, "Aren't you scared of us?"

He said, "Yes I'm scared. Have some tea."

Above all else, we need to nourish our true self—what we can call our buddha nature—for so often we make the fatal mistake of identifying with our confusion, and then using it to judge and condemn ourselves, which feeds the lack of self-love that so many of us suffer from today.

How vital it is to refrain from the temptation to judge ourselves or the teachings, and to be humorously aware of our condition, and to realize that we are, at the moment, as if many people all living in one person.

And how encouraging it can be to accept that from one perspective we all have huge problems, which we bring to the spiritual path and which indeed may have led us to the teachings, and yet to know from another point of view that ultimately our problems are not so real or so solid, or so insurmountable as we have told ourselves.

The wave realizes "I am the sea", and by falling into the sea prostrates itself before its God.

To contemplate impermanence on its own is not enough: You have to work with it in your life. Let’s try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging to. That’s why you hold on.

But there’s another possibility: You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it.

So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.

In the ordinary mind, we perceive the stream of thoughts as continuous, but in reality this is not the case. You will discover for yourself that there is a gap between each thought. When the past thought is past, and the future thought has not yet arisen, you will always find a gap in which the Rigpa, the nature of mind, is revealed. So the work of meditation is to allow thoughts to slow down, to make that gap become more and more apparent.

Visualize someone to whom you feel very close, particularly someone who is suffering and in pain. As you breathe in, imagine you take in all their suffering and pain with compassion, and as you breathe out, send your warmth, healing, love, joy, and happiness streaming out to them.

Now, gradually widen the circle of your compassion to embrace first other people to whom you also feel very close, then to those about whom you feel indifferent, then to those whom you dislike or have difficulty with, then even to those whom you feel are actively monstrous and cruel. Allow your compassion to become universal, and to enfold in its embrace all sentient beings, and all beings, in fact, without any exception.

Even Buddha died. His death was a teaching to shock the naive, the indolent, and the complacent, to wake us up to the truth that everything is impermanent and death an inescapable fact of life. As he was approaching death, Buddha said:

Of all footprints
That of the elephant is supreme.
Of all mindfulness meditations
That on death is supreme.

Paramahansa Yogananda wrote Autobiography of a Yogi, the story of his miraculous life. It has been translated into 25 languages and inspired millions of spiritual seekers. Yogananda established the Self Realization Fellowship in 1920, and the organization still thrives today, long after his passing at a fairly early age. He spent much of his life introducing Kriya Yoga to westerners in the United States.

When he was a young man, he started a school in India. At the school, there was a pet deer which the children took care of. Everyone loved the deer immensely. At one time, the deer became very ill. All the children became very alarmed that they might lose their favorite pet. They went to Yoganandaji and begged him to intervene on the pet's behalf. They knew he had great yogic powers and hoped that he could save the deer from death.

Yogananda did have great yogic powers. Often he found that things would happen just because he willed them to happen, or because he asked the Divine Mother for them to happen. So he set about in his meditation and prayers to save the deer's life. He struggled with keeping the deer alive. It was a difficult effort to keep the deer's soul from leaving its body. After several days, the deer appeared to him in a dream. "Please do not try and keep me here on the Earth plane any longer" the deer pleaded. "Thanks to all your love, it is now time for me to move onto another plane and another life. You are now holding me back." Yogananda learned a great lesson from this, and he let the spirit of the deer pass from this life.

When praying for others, always add at the end of the prayer "Let Thy will be done." God alone is omniscient and knows the right and wrong of what happens or doesn't happen. We may think our prayer is for everyone's best, but we do not know. So it is best to surrender to God and let Him guide us.

The body is an energy field. It is more than just flesh and blood. The sages developed many different "mudras" or hand postures, to direct energy to different centers in the body.

The "namaste" mudra, is best used in worship as follows. Place the tips of the fingers in the direction of the deity. Place the bottom of the hands on top of or above the center of the chest. The center of the chest is where the "heart chakra" is. Mystics call it the "anahata" chakra. When it is activated, unconditional love starts to flow and many miracles happen.

Not only is our body an energy field, but this whole universe is an energy field. (E=Mc2). When the hands are held in the namaste position as described above, cosmic energy from the idol flows into and energizes the heart chakra.

Developing unconditional love is one of the great purposes of human birth. Therefore, practice the namaste mudra while performing worship and get spiritual awakening

The first aspect of prayer is giving thanks to God for all the numberless blessings that are bestowed upon us at every moment of the day and night, and of which we are mostly unconscious. The second aspect of prayer is laying our shortcomings before the unlimited perfection of the divine Being, and asking His forgiveness. This makes man conscious of his smallness, of his limitation, and therefore makes him humble before his God. And, by humbling himself before God man does not lose any virtue. God alone has the right to demand complete humility.

I trust so much in the power of the heart and the soul; I know that the answer to what we need to do next is in our own hearts. All we have to do is listen, then take that one step further and trust what we hear. We will be taught what we need to learn."

~ Melody Beattie

Enlightenment for Gautama [the Buddha] felt as though a prison which had confined him for thousands of lifetimes had broken open. Ignorance had been the jailkeeper. Because of ignorance, his mind had been obscured, just like the moon and stars hidden by the storm clouds. Clouded by endless waves of deluded thoughts, the mind had falsely divided reality into subject and object, self and others, existence and non-existence, birth and death, and from these discriminations arose wrong views—the prisons of feelings, craving, grasping, and becoming. The suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death only made the prison walls thicker. The only thing to do was to seize the jailkeeper and see his true face. The jailkeeper was ignorance. . . . Once the jailkeeper was gone, the jail would disappear and never be rebuilt again.

THICH NHAT HANH

Just as you choose your friends on the physical, conscious plane, so do you attract kindred beings to you in the astral world. By keeping our homes clean and peaceful, by keeping our bodies and clothing fresh and clean, the odic force becomes quite pure and enables us to be more actinically alive. This condition also keeps lower astral people away from us, so long as we do not ourselves enter into an instinctive, astrally odic vibration. The spiritual, actinic vibration keeps all lower astral influences away, just as doors, locks, windows and walls discourage unwanted entrance into buildings. PIt is not advisable to admit lower astral entities if you are sensitive to this possibility, for doing so creates a double influx of odic force, whereas the striving of a yoga student is to become actinically superconscious and not to intensify the odic subconscious. Astral entities live in their own world on the astral plane. Possibly you enter this plane at night, too, but during the day we must attend to our conscious-mind activities and take care of our immediate programs, keeping the two worlds apart as distinctly as our sleeping state is separated from the state of being awake.

Kauai Hindu Monastery news

The most essential point of the meditation posture is to keep the back straight, like “an arrow” or “a pile of golden coins.” The “inner energy,” or prana , will then flow easily through the subtle channels of the body, and your mind will find its true state of rest. Don’t force anything. The lower part of the spine has a natural curve; it should be relaxed but upright. Your head should be balanced comfortably on your neck. It is your shoulders and the upper part of your torso that carry the strength and grace of the posture, and they should be held in strong poise, but without any tension.

Sit with your legs crossed. You do not have to sit in the “full-lotus” posture, which is emphasized more in advanced yoga practice. The crossed legs express the unity of life and death, good and bad, skillful means and wisdom, masculine and feminine principles, samsara and nirvana, and the humor of nonduality. Rest your hands comfortably covering your knees. This is called the “mind in comfort and ease” posture. If you prefer to sit on a chair, keep your legs relaxed, and be sure always to keep your back straight.

"I never know what the next lesson is going to be, because we’re not supposed to know; we’re supposed to trust ourselves to discover it.

How deeply do you trust your own guidance?

Always trust that you know what's best for you. To move forward in your life, gather information from the 'experts,' consider how their advice relates to your situation and then act only on what feels right for you. What does your whole being (mind, body and soul) say ‘Yes!’ to?

You are the only expert for your own life.

For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future.

This is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death. This life is the only time and place we can prepare in, and we can only truly prepare through spiritual practice: This is the inescapable message of the natural bardo of this life.

-Soygal Rinpoche