Final Word for Heightened Awareness
The true aim of spiritual practice is to ultimately culture mind, breaking the associative thinking pattern that results in the creation of innumerable attachments and the making of new karmas. This is what Patanjali, sometimes called the Father of Yoga, meant when he said, “Yoga [...]
Monkeys and Holy Men
Often, while staying on the second floor of a two-family house in Baroda, India, I noticed numerous monkeys watching me intently outside the window of my room. I asked my host Kaushik why this was so. “They are waiting for you to leave your window [...]
Spiritual Stories of the East: Forgetting Self, Self Clinging
Volume 1, Track 12 We live in a dualistic world where something is not big, it is small, and where a statement is either true or false. It is a world of either or. Buddhism is more apt to speak of neither nor, which [...]
Moving Meditation
Of all the meditations, it seems the ones most fitting for busy, modern people are the moving meditations. It is easier to move joyously than it is to sit quietly and attempt to control the mind. The latter effort demands a quiet place and considerable [...]
Justin Stone Speaks: Track 6
T’ai Chi Chih is inner-oriented. It is not a performance or a dance. Indeed, the beauty of T’ai Chi Chih is far different from the graceful actions of the dance or the threatening movements of such disciplines as Karate, Judo, and Aikido. One of [...]
Abandon Hope
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” This would appear to be the opposite of everything we believe in, the death blow to our expectation of living a full and fulfilled life. But it isn't. Quite the contrary, it is the way to wake up [...]
Spiritual Stories of the East: Mantras, Chants, Sadus & Hakuin
Volume 1, Track 3 In India, many people have a mantra given to them in an initiation by the family guru. A mantra is not a magic talisman, a sound with magic properties. Rather, it is a sound or group of sounds, originally heard [...]
The Personal, Part 2
One time, in Baroda, India, some graduate students at the local University asked me if I'd like to meet a great Yogi. Naturally, I said, "Yes." Accordingly, we came together in late afternoon and went in a great, old-fashioned, open touring car down a [...]
The Best Reason To Practice
Karma is an important and frequently-used word, so it is important to understand what it means. In the Sanskrit language, karma means “action,” that and no more. So, when we glibly speak of “our karma,” we really mean the fruit of our action, not the [...]