When his body died the moon was just left of the summit as intended. The equinox was an auspicious day to take last breaths. He was only a broken branch that had fallen from the tree.
“There is no coming back,” the yogi said. “This seed has sprouted and will continue to grow in you. It is already done. You are already gone. The first petal unfolded the night you learned happiness was only a game.”
"There is a world out there inside each of us." That was the last thing the yogi ever said to Sarup and the last lesson Sarup would ever need to learn.
Yogic ideas have a particular vastness to them and because of that have become temples with tall jutting towers in the landscape of my thoughts.
Then their voices rose up in unison to sing their ancient slogans of life and truth through their closed eyes and their single throbbing voice.
Why do we think and why do we love to think? Perhaps because that’s how it’s supposed to be, or maybe thinking the same thoughts over and over again until we go mentally deaf is easier than interacting with the content of our inner monologues, or what we really love is knowledge and thinking is the burden of learning, knowing, and creating.
So, you want to meditate but you don’t know how and the idea of just sitting on the floor with your eyes closed seems strange.
Our commitment to technology and the Internet is about more than just its functionality and entertainment value. We’re willing to supplement a quarter of our lives to the Internet because it was designed to expand our reality.
I like to imagine long-dead gurus smiling from their Hindu heaven as their practice, that was once secret and shunned, reaches out into a future world that is embracing it as they see fit.
The first lesson is Buddha. Escape your pain. The second is No Buddha. Forget what you've learned. The third lesson is the Tao. Enjoy what is.
Most of my closest friends and family don't meditate at all, zero, yet they are as happy as most of my friends and students that do. They manage their stress in their own ways.
The mastered breath, the living temple, builds physical and psychological peace within the anxious body and mind so that they both may fold into their own aliveness more easily.
The simplest reason for the breath's valued position in yoga and life, in general, is the obvious truth that without breath there is no life.
I don't know if you've ever sat and appreciated the fact that you are conscious.
The second mode of consciousness is dreaming. We all know what it is to dream.
When we think of dreamless sleep we think there is no consciousness, something like turning off the lights.
Life seems to be outside us but the most moving elements of life actually exist inside.
The human condition is defined by the back and forth between internalizing and externalizing awareness.
Yoga is a set of exercises designed to teach us how to stop our thought process.
How do we further still the mind, now knowing judgment is a detriment and subtle sensation is the focal point?