Climb the Joyous Mountain

Provincialism seems to be the most universal characteristic among human beings; it even seems to supplant greed for the number one spot. It isn’t that we each think ours is the best way of life; [...]

Saints are not poets because Poets are caught in the web of passion. They write about human suffering, Which the Buddha said is common to all beings. The sage is not bound by that rope; [...]

Haiku, the Japanese 17-syllable poems, have become exceedingly popular in the West. Many translations (some in rhyme and some not) of Basho, Buson, Issa, and other poets have appeared. Frequently, Westerners have attempted to write [...]

Events continually happen to me as though some grand plan is being carried out. No matter how I try, I cannot seem to go against the shape of this plan. If one can flow easily [...]

The Buddha, 2500 years ago, pointed out that three conditions are common to all beings: impermanence, lack of any lasting ego-self, and suffering. Dukkha (suffering) means more than pain as the opposite of pleasure, and [...]

There is, in this writer, a sense of unworthiness in writing a book called Climb the Joyous Mountain. Once, when I mentioned the many errors in my life to the Bengali teacher, Rammurti Mishra, he [...]

The number 108 holds within it a great mystery, but I have never found anyone who could explain this mystery. There are 108 beads in both the Hindu and Buddhist rosaries. There are 108 movements [...]

We create needs and then struggle to fulfill them, which is like voluntarily placing our ball in the sand trap. ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ Time has always seemed to me [...]

To understand Japanese culture, one must know something of the wabi-sabi concept. The Japanese sense of beauty, unlike some of the elaborately embellished Chinese manifestations, usually relies on delicate understatement. What is left out is [...]

It had been a cool morning. Expectedly, there had been a number of phone calls – one from a student who asked if he could make up the meditation class he had missed, one from [...]

The world is a reflection of ourselves. What we see without is an accurate measure of what we are within. If there is serenity inside, the outside world seems friendly. When we go to a [...]

The lengthening twilight seemed almost interminable as the old car plowed along the dismal roads east of Baroda. Indian sunsets are particularly spectacular where there is flat country and few trees or buildings to break [...]