Online Articles

Gautama Buddha (560-480 B.C.E.)was born a prince in the Sakya or warrior caste, the second highest in the Hindu faith of India. His mother died when he was young and the boy was brought in luxury with servants in a palace.

When Gautama was 29 and just after the birth of his son he felt the need to leave and felt great sorrow at leaving his family. He wandered across the fertile Ganges plains to the tree covered hills of Vindhya hills where he lived for six years.

Here Buddha practiced the usual ways of the ascetic then common among holy men in India. He shaved his head and beard, put on the yellow robes and tortured his body with long fasts and every known form of physical mortification.

He became known as a pure man yet the truth seemed to escape him until he awoke from a fainting fit from hunger he awoke as light came like a flash to his mind.

All the fasting, the suppression and control of the breath, the fasting were leading him to enfeeblement of mind and body. To reach unclouded reason, flawless thinking, surveying the processes of thought, acquire clarity of vision and unadulterated experience, a person must have proper food and lead a healthy life.

Buddha was thrilled by his discovery but his disciples were so shocked that their master would turn away from constant suffering and all left him. The day that followed has been said to be one of those defining moments in history.

Left to himself Gautama walked the forests in now Bihar and sat by the banks of the River Neranjara where he sat under a wild fig tree. Here a lady presented him with a dish of milk which invigorated him.

And it is said there, after his ranging through every emotion known to humanity from blackest despair to sublime hope. Gautama found at last the peace and certainty he sought. Truth was revealed to him and he became the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

Followers became drawn to him from the great and ancient Hindu religion, which caused consternation among the ruling courts. The caste system which Buddha rejected held that all were born into one of five levels of caste, with the ruling court on top.

Next were the warrior caste to protect the court, then down to merchants who were needed for trade and wealth, the higher skilled laborer, and at the bottom the Untouchables. They were all stuck in their positions for life, an Untouchable could never work his way up into court. This is changing now in modern India finally.

Buddhism exported better in other nearby lands, where the gentle teachings allowed all to reach heaven, or Nirvana by living pure lives and forgoing excess. Buddha has long since taken on more oriental eyes and the fat belly in south east Asia, Japan and again now in China.

It seems the feeling of empty lives is driving young affluent coastal Chinese to be meditating in city parks and the authorities are so far able to realize this is not threat.

People are reporting happier lives and feeling more calm. What came to the West in a faddish wave in the 1960 era and has shown evidence of reducing high blood pressure and many calming effects. Good news circles the world in way and waves that can be very good news.

We will carry these thoughts into further articles that had Gautama be the first to break through the Hindu anger about his greater freedom to a rather court style Nirvana that was not sure Untouchables were ever going to more than the septic brigade.

Buddha overlapped their eight steps which might have you become a cow or monkey on your steps through reincarnation. He added a fast track that anyone could choose to make it to Nirvana or Eternal Bliss or Heaven in this life if one lived a pure life and learned the four basic truths.

Derek Dashwood enjoys antique religion books that can show how small acts can lead to great or small changes we later take for granted. Now antique religion has prove to show which ways were helpful, and which were most vital, and we talk about it further at
http://www.antiquereligionbooks.com
Rare Religious Books

The key to understanding Zen Buddhism is to understand the phrase “I don’t know.” In this phrase is hidden the secrets of Zen and Zen Meditation. At first glance this may seem counter intuitive or just a play on words, but I assure you that is not the case. This is really the essence of Zen and once you grasp what is being implied here, all the Zen teachings will start to make sense.

The problem, according to Zen is not “not-knowing”, it is in fact knowing too much. What needs to be qualified here is the type of knowledge that is being referred to. There is knowledge that is factual, such as the distance to the moon or the elemental makeup of water, but the knowledge that is being indicated here, is the knowledge having to do with our security and happiness. In other words, all that we know about what we ought to be doing to get out of life maximum happiness, is the knowledge that we need to purge ourselves of.

For ease of communication I will call this knowledge “Emotional Knowledge”, as it relates to how we need to go about increasing pleasure/happiness and decreasing pain/sorrow. This Emotional Knowledge, Zen is saying, is what drives us to endlessly seek and endlessly be restless. In other words, having accepted innumerable theories on how we need our life to be in order to be happy, we are caught in a cycle of endless desire chasing these goals. Zen says, drop Emotional Knowledge or at least don’t emphasize it and instead just be open to the moment and meet the challenge of life which is right under your nose.

It is very hard to really say “I Don’t Know.” All kinds of theories, beliefs, ideologies, philosophies have been forced into us since we were impressionable children, which now dominate our mind and lives. We feel we need to do this or that in order to get this or that, which at the end will make us happy. Unfortunately, this approach has failed. Human beings always get used to what they have and then inevitably start to demand more. It just does not matter what it is or how much you have. You will eventually get used to having it and then will want more. The only way out of this endless cycle of desire is to surrender to the sate of “I Don’t Know.”

When you can really say “I Don’t Know”, then there is little for the mind to chase and pursue. Then you just look at life and do what is necessary and as you continue on in this way of living in the moment, desire starts to lose its grip on you. In Zen this is called mindful living. Real freedom then makes its welcome appearance as awareness, free now from outward seeking, moves inward and reveals the secrets hidden deep within us.

To work towards this state of “I Don’t Know”, you need to question all your desires. Too often, in this atmosphere of commercialism, we have been seduced by clever advertisement and social propaganda. Corporations and those in power need you to buy into the happy, pleasurable future they are promising, else they will either lose their sale or your vote. So you need to see if you can remain untouched by this atmosphere of endless consumption. Once you buy in, then you are in the rat race, because now you think you know what you need to get to be happy and so you are off and running, if you don’t buy in you stand apart and are free.

So next time someone asks you, What is it that you want in life? Look at them and just smile. Welcome to the wonderful world of Zen.

Anmol Mehta is a Yoga Teacher & Zen Expert. His extensive site, Free Guided Chakra Meditation Practice & Kundalini Yoga Exercises, offers Free Online Guided Meditation Techniques. You will also find articles & lively discussions on the Free Guided Meditation Practice, Kundalini Yoga Poses & Zen Meditation Blog.

This is not about religion, this is not about cultism, and this is something entirely different. While you have heard of the Dalai Lama, you might not know that he has a “spiritual advisor” known as the Oracle.

The Oracle is touring the US and it’s the first time the Oracle has come down from the Himalayas — at the behest of the Dalai Lama (something that Richard Gere has been wishing to happen for eons) to bring the words of wisdom, peace and love to the people of the world and specifically the US.

Who Is the Oracle?

The Venerable Thupten Ngodup , or “kutenla” as he is called, is a Buddhist monk/healer and a medium. He is known as the medium of the State Oracle of Tibet. During special events he is called upon by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to go into a trance. At this time he becomes an Oracle and answers questions about pressing matters that affect Tibet.

Born in 1958, in Tibet, his family escaped in 1966 and settled in Dharamsala , India , where he became a monk at age 12. He was recognized as a medium at age 29, and is highly respected and honored for this role.

This is the first public tour by Kutenla, who has the blessings of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to come and offer his wisdom on a wide range of topics, from global warming and challenges to the earth’s environment, to matters of the heart. He speaks sincerely from a deep level of compassion and love for all, and his generosity of spirit is well-known and revered. There are reasons he is making this visit: Offer the indigenous spiritual wisdom of Tibet on many pressing challenges to the earth, its peoples, and our collective well-being, including global warming.

Fund the building of Deyang Monastery, which is closely associated with the lineage of the Nechung Oracle and Nechung Monastery. The Tibetan culture and religion are severely threatened in Tibet and must be maintained outside that region for its survival. Nechung Kuten is seeking financial support to build a Monastery in Southern India that will enrich and increase the potential of the invaluable lineage of Tibet’s Chief State Oracle. The Monastery will be consecrated in January, 2008, with the blessing of H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama.

Offer “Long Life” Initiations and Blessings as well as celebrate and provide support for the Tibetan culture, the Tibetan language and other aspects of the culture, including the promotion of compassion and peace.

While I personally am not a Buddhist — there is something to be gained by listening to this man who has devoted his life to meditation and the wisdom of the ages. There are challenges to living today and we need to learn to cope with them and how to change not only our world but ourselves to find the answers to solve the problems that we encounter in our world.

The author writes about Hydrofoil Water Scooter and blogs at http://www.coolpicking.com/.

The world is an illusion. This is a view held by Vedanta, Sikhism, Buddhism, Plato, Arthur Schopenhauer, Christian Science, and A Course In Miracles.

Contradicting this view is your own sense experience of realness, the constancy of stimulus, the enduring nature of time and events.

Which view is correct? The idea of the illusion or your experience of the realness?

This answer proposes an objective observer, one who is not part of the system that is being observed. Newton held that time is absolute. Einstein held that it is relative to the observer. Perhaps that same paradigm shift can be applied to answering the question of what is real and what is not.

Those who propose that the world is an illusion are correct.

Those who propose that the world is real are also correct.

The idea that the world is an illusion can be argued in the following way.

1. You do not see the world as it is.

You see the world as you are.

This happens in two ways:

One, you can never escape your subjectivity. You may claim that the world is objective, but this is a claim made from the subjective state. Hence, if you were to lose your mind, you would also lose the world. Without an observer, there is no world. With your disappearance, the universe disappears. Does it exist despite you? If you are not there to ask or hear the answer to the question, it has no meaning.

Two, the world that you see is a direct result of your experiences in it. A rock is not just a rock; it is also your memory of all rocks seen by you. When what you see is more complex and engaging, you experience more emotions, sensations, and ideas about it. Thus, you never really see anything as it is. You only see it through the lens of your own thoughts about it.

2. All forms will pass away.

Entropy is built into the system. Nothing can escape this iron law of nature. Neither beauty nor truth, wealth nor power, genius nor intent ever last. Death and decay is the lot of everything, from atoms to stars, from our own sun to the universe itself. However, this collapse is a dissipation of energy, not an absence of it. According to the law of conservation of energy, which has never been refuted, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. What dies, then, is the form of things, the structure the energy was supporting.

3. The microscopic.

On the level of atoms, a vast space exists between the electrons and the nucleus, and even the subatomic particles are not solid bits of matter but transient energy forms that appear and disappear and reappear again. It is mainly empty space.

4. The macroscopic.

On the level of the cosmos, a vast space exists between stars and moons and planets, gas clouds and nebulas and galaxies. The universe, too, is mainly empty space.

5. The field of all possibilities.

On the level of the consciousness that organizes all things, this world is only another possibility out of an infinite choice. How many worlds with sentient beings exist? Is our universe only an electron in a cosmic atom? Given a field of infinite choices, how much weight does one choice hold?

The idea that the world is real can be argued in the following way.

1. What you are experiencing is real to you.

When you think of the world as an illusion, a sense of despair arises because it slights the beauty of your realness. It is pleasurable to touch and hold, to see and hear, to act and change things. It is ennobling to see the vast sky above your head and feel the wind in your hair and hear the squawk of a passing bird. It means much for us to be here and to be alive in this moment.

Neither science nor philosophy can deny the realness of your experience.

And in this context, even your dreams are real enough, because while you are in them, your entire experience is authentic enough for you. If you are being chased by a lion in your dream, it will feel as real to you as if you were being chased by one in the waking state.

2. Who you are is important to you.

Your life is important. You desire to be more than you currently are because you can feel the vast throb of life within you expanding ever forward to know more, experience more, and touch a fullness not yet known.

Your past is not just useless memory but a scrapbook of struggle and change, triumph and adversity, risk and new learning. Your present is the vividness of your current experience. Your future is your promise, to yourself and to the world.

Reality, then, is not fixed. It is an interpretation of consciousness and how it is interpreted depends on the inner and outer experiences of the observer. The world you live in is real enough to you as you live it. If this world is an illusion, does it mean that there is a really real world, as Plato conjectured. Probably not. If this world is an illusion, then so, too, are all worlds. And if this world is real, so, too, are all worlds.

Appreciating the miracle of having a consciousness to live in a world may be all we need to know to live happy, fulfilling lives, whether in this world or in other worlds which we will transition into after this one.

Consciousness, like the law of conservation of energy, can neither be created nor destroyed. Where you find consciousness, you will also find energy structured into the form of a world. And since consciousness never dies but appears to only grow increasingly more refined and sophisticated, worlds, too, probably evolve along similar lines. Are these worlds illusory or real? They are real enough to those who live in them.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

The only way to live a happy, prosperous, successful and fulfilling life is to learn to express the love that is within you. When you meet yourself, others, and the life that you express with love, then you will change everything for the better.

Who you are is an incarnation of love because what you seek, above all else, is to be well, safe, and happy; and that is what love provides, an assurance and promise of well-being.

The absence of love, the varying degrees of hatred, create conditions of distress that destroy the cells of the body and ruin the structure of a life, causing only illness, aging, stress, and destruction.

The human condition as we know it, in all its distressing dilemmas, is made possible only because of this denial of love.

Apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, and pride which lead to poverty, illness, and loneliness all arise out of a denial of the love that is your very nature.

Love does not have to be invented. It is fully manifested in a new born. However, with social conditioning, it gets covered up quickly, as the little person is consistently denied assurances of well-being. Criticism, punishment, expressions of coercion, cause love to hide, become distorted, and retreat from full expression.

Even when avatars come to teach love, pointing out that your real nature is only love, they are met with various levels of resistance. Those who oppose them have a lust for power because they mistakenly believe that only force creates favorable conditions.

Yet if you look at the history of this world, you will always see that force only destroys, both the enforcer and the enforced. It does not replace what love does; it does not assure well-being.

All the disasters in our own lives and the world as a whole is a result of this substitution of force for love. We force ourselves, we force others, and we create institutions that assure the expression of force.

Yet force does not create safety, and enforced compliance does not create a better world.

Ironically, it is very simple to change everything to start working for you. In all cases where you want to apply force, apply love.

Within a week, your life will be much better. Within a year, you will not even be able to recognize your life.

As you learn to be more loving, you will not only affect your own life, but the lives of all those whom you touch. They will, then, pass on your blessing to others.
You will literally be changing the world; not by doing anything special, but just by being more yourself, the self that is naturally kind, loving, and nurturing.

A return to love is the answer to discover the life that you really want to live.

Love, like sunshine, can light up all the dark places in your life and heal the wounds of the world.

We are all in this life together, all hoping for some miracle that will right wrongs and make the crooked places straight; but the power that we seek to do good is our own lovingness. All we have to do to change everything for the better is gradually build up our courage to express it.

The great wisdom of life will not be discovered by your mind but by your heart. You, in your own divine splendor, are the light of the world, the promise of hope, and the assurance of better things for all beings everywhere.

If you ask for the happiness, prosperity, success, and fulfillment of the world, this is what will come back to visit you in your quiet hours. At every moment you have the choice to turn the mundane into the magical.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

Revenge, the desire to hurt others who have hurt us, only bears bitter fruit. It hurts those whom we have inflicted our wrath upon. And it hurts us, because no single act in the universe goes unrewarded. From that singular act, our own consciousness is wounded by the expression of our animalism.

Nations pride themselves on the swiftness of their retribution but inevitably collapse in on themselves because the seeds of discontent that they sow, hurts all of life. Rome, the greatest civilization that the world had ever known, built on the finest arts and sciences known to the ancient world, the epitome of legal and architectural order, collapsed from within, destroyed by its own impulse to use its mighty force to strike out and subdue.

Today our world is dying because of this impulse to strike out.

We are destroying each other at an alarming rate, both individually and collectively.

And even the earth itself, is collapsing at a faster rate than we can repair. Scientists now estimate that by the year 2050, we will have exhausted the earth of all its natural resources.

The science that we celebrate, the genius of our efforts, are wasted on destructive uses. Instead of using the power of the nucleus to build great civilizations we are busy using it to stockade bombs.

Billions of dollars that could be used to heal the broken places on our planet are used to send people to horrific deaths.

When we seek to hurt life, we hurt ourselves, for we are life.

Revenge it is said is a dish best served cold; but whether it is served with cold deliberation or hot reaction, it is a dish in whose very preparation we imbue a poison that will return to destroy us.

The greatest illusion is this: that we can hurt and not be hurt, that we can wound another and remain unscathed. When we inflict harm upon another, we inflict harm upon ourselves. What goes around comes around. A rudimentary study of history will prove this.

When we love, we reach out to align with life, to nurture and make others better, and in that act, we redeem ourselves from our own past follies.

This love is a precious act. It is our extension of spiritual power in the world. It is a moment of sympathy and support that we have for life. When you bend down and help a child tie its shoelaces, you are tying up all the knots of the world. When you listen in silence and understand another’s intention, you are spreading the meme of empathy through all of time and space, for thoughts are cosmic waves that do not know any barriers.

As we extend love to others, it comes back to us.

Yet we cannot love others unless we love ourselves as well.

We cannot live without making mistakes of judgment and do things that we will later regret, because we are na

You are awesome. You are the light of the world. And in this brief essay, I will prove it to you.

Your body is a superb machine whose functional details keep scientists in a state of awe and wonder. They estimate that your body has enough power to run a whole city for a week.

Your mind is a computer that has billions of interconnected neurons. You may have enough raw brain power to run a galaxy.

Yet there is something even more amazing about you. You are self-aware, the creator of yourself, and your own creation. You are more than a person, much more. You are a consciousness whose only limit is your own self-belief and imagination.

And, whether you admit it or not, you are here on this planet to do something great with all this raw power and potentiality. You are a creator and you are in a place where creation is necessary. In fact, your internal guidance system, your emotions, will tell you whether you are on track or off track. If you are happy, you are doing something creative and feel fulfilled. If you are unhappy, you are conforming to a reality that does not bring out the best in you.

On the surface of things, it may seem that you have little free-will and are limited in both creativity and imagination. It may also seem that you are pressed in and coerced to do things by stronger forces. And it may also seem that you are different from others, living in a separate objective world of your own.

Yet the study of quantum mechanics shows that at a fundamental level everything is only energy and that this idea of separation is really some kind of hallucination we all share in common because our senses are not subtle enough to observe the fluid interconnection between all things.

Furthermore, a radical subjectivity informs your entire experience of life. That is, you can never not be yourself, and even when you name something as objective, it is a statement that arises from your own subjectivity.

Finally, you are nothing but your own expression of choices, which you bring into existence through creativity and imagination.

This life that you live is the clay that you shape. You are the geometer, organizer, and designer of your life.

As Dr. Joe Vitale said in the movie, The Secret, “You are the Michelangelo of your own life. The David you are sculpting is YOU.”

What you think and feel on a moment by moment basis influences all of life because everything about you has some kind of influence.

This is a big concept.

Here is how to understand it.

Think of a row of dominoes leaning up against other dominoes, when there is a change in movement in one, it affects all the other dominoes.

Here is another way to understand it.

Scientists estimate that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can affect the air currents in a way that gradually magnifies over a distance until it causes weather changes

Of course, all this is very, very subtle. You will never know whether your bad mood affects an international crisis in a war-prone area or whether your good mood creates an act of kindness in a city far away from you.

It has been said that the vibrations of someone with deep wisdom can affect all of humanity. This is easier to understand. After all the history of ideas shows that all that is necessary to influence billions of people throughout time is the ideas of a few people.

What all this means is that beneath the apparent separation between human beings, we are all one; and beneath the apparent lack of power we display, we hide a mighty power.

What you say, think, and do matters. Not only to you, but to everyone. Sometimes it is obvious how your influence spreads. But most often it is subtle, very subtle, hardly noticeable to you, like the flapping of the wings of a butterfly.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

It was a quiet night by the Ganges as the young man sat on the steps and watched the sun set over the holy waters.

Despite the beauty of the scene, he did not appreciate it.

The lilting cadence of the bathers chatting loudly seemed far away, and even their playful splashing of each other did not amuse him.

Someone started chanting a bhajan about Krishna and the gopis and others soon joined him until their happy voices slapped on the shores of the river and made the mosquitoes pause in midair.

This only irritated the young man more. He was worried about his job how little it paid and how he was going to pay for the rent for his 250 rupee room.

He was also lonely and wanted to get married, but what good family would accept someone who spent most of his time serving in a tea stall.

A holy man came and sat by him. He was only wearing sacred ash from head to toe.

“You seem troubled, young man,” said the man, almost jovially.

Soon they began talking and the young man poured out his heart. He learned that the holy man, who spoke very well, had once been a college professor at the University of Allahabad. Then, one day, after he had given a lecture on the philosophy of renunciation he had decided to pursue what he most desired, the quest for enlightenment.

After many years, one night, as he was stroking a stray cat and the two had been sitting for hours under a banyan tree, he understood his true nature and an immense peace filled his life and miracles happened to him spontaneously from then on.

The young man listened impatiently, feeling increasingly irritated.

Finally, in exasperation, the young man said, “I don’t understand how you can be either enlightened or happy. You have even less than I. You don’t even have any clothes and you don’t even know where your next meal is going to come from.”

Suddenly serious, the sadhu said:

“It’s tempting to believe that your problems are real and that your life is hard and that things are simply not going your way.

“After all, isn’t that what everybody else thinks, too?

“It’s a great temptation to believe in yourself as a limited being.

“And everyone will back you up. The newspapers will. The TV will. Your neighbors will.

“How long are you going to let this painful delusion continue?

“You’ve read the great books. You’ve heard the avatars. You’ve walked on the path yourself. You know.

“You know that you’re pure energy.

“You also know that your reach is infinite. You can be, have, and do anything that you choose. You have the power. Right now its turned back on itself and being used to create limitations for yourself.

“Your imaging power is how you express your infinite power.

“All ideas of limitations are an illusion fostered by the mind.

“And you can’t fall back on science either to confirm your limitation.

“Because what physicists say is that there is nothing but energy everywhere and that matter only seems solid but isn’t really. It’s just that the atoms clump together and the electrons spin so fast that even I look like a real thing.

“Of course, it’s fine to keep seeing yourself as “just human” but it’s not going to last for very long. Sooner or later, you’ll drop your body and be faced with your energy form. I just think it’s easier to admit it now and see how you can go around expressing your spiritual power while you’re still in this dimension.”

“Yes,” said the young man, “I think I understand.”

“What do you understand?” challenged the sadhu.

“I understand that I can be, have, and do anything that I choose because I have the power. The only reason that I don’t recognize it is because I misuse it to limit myself to the extreme.”

“Yes,” said the holy man, pleased. “The world for you is only the images you hold in your mind; change your images and you change the world for you.”

“One thing I don’t understand, though,” said the young man. “Why did you give up everything a fine education, an excellent job, and a devoted family? Why? Was it worth such a heavy price for enlightenment?”

“Yes, because it led up to that moment under the banyan tree with the cat that I mentioned earlier.”

“What is this enlightenment? What happened?”

“I caught a glimpse of the infinite.”

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

Give yourself the gift of laughter, song, and love. Touch your life with your own magnificence. You are the ocean. Life itself. You are everything that you were meant to be. Touch your own soul; become whole once more.

Everything is the way it is. Let yourself see it as it is. Free yourself from the delusions of despair.

You cannot save the world from it’s nightmares, but you can save yourself; and in doing this, you will salvage the world; for it will see your clear light and hear your clear call.

What if you don’t have everything you need right now? Who you are is pure gold. You are the incarnation of abundance. It is right here where you are. Each part of your body is sacred, a miracle of life. And your mind is the greatest thing ever known among all living forms in the history of creation.

When you walk, you grace the earth itself with your presence. Who are you is the gift of life itself. How many more sunrises will it take before you allow yourself to celebrate the miracle of you?

You have lots to give and lots to share.

All lack, limitation, negativity, scarcity are the delusions you entertain to hide your own glory from yourself. And as you suffer through these things, you bring them into physical actuality. Free your energy, your mind, your life from these parasites of thought.

Instead, use your power and get everything you want when you want it. How? By learning how to love, by learning how to sing, by learning how to be yourself fully and completely, without inhibition.

Release yourself from the burden of what might have been. Allow the future to be as it will. Everything you want is here right now. What can be a greater blessing than life itself. To be, just to be, is glory itself. Take this moment to contemplate your own unique expression. Take the next one to celebrate it forever.

Yes, just be. Just be whoever you are. Just be yourself. And celebrate! For the rest of your days.

Not a moment can be grasped and held; not a step can be retraced. As you dance through your dramas of life, remember only this singular truth: you are the magnificence of all life.

Everything that exists filters itself through your senses. Can you celebrate the delicious moment? Or will it pass away as you evoke the hell of your sorrows and damn the cheerful lightness of the air all around you?

Give yourself the gift, before another moment has slipped away.

What is the gift?

The gift is you, my friend; just YOU. For never ever again in all of time and space will there ever be another even remotely like you.

May you be well and happy.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

The thesis of this discourse is this: love is the answer to happiness.

Love, the most powerful force in creation, is also the most misunderstood.

It is misunderstood because of the context with which it arises: that of relationship. All relationships imply love, either an offering of it or a withdrawal of it. Thus, our understanding of love is conditioned by varying degrees of attachment and aversion. And because of this, there is an element of self-protection that is projected outwardly and becomes control.

Thus, our understanding of love is completely contaminated by all the associations that arise from it.

So what we have then is conditional love; love that is allowed if certain conditions are met.

In truth, none of this is really love, just as a delicious meal, sprinkled with some mud cannot be said to be appetizing any longer.

Love, real love, is acceptance. That is all it is. Simply accepting what is. From that acceptance flows giving and caring, nurturing and compassion.

When you see a beautiful flower wet with dew, you feel an out-flowing force from your heart. This emotion is love. It is a complete acceptance of the flower. You may call it beauty or appreciation, but it is really love.

A mother, seeing her child sleeping peacefully, feels love. This is a pure acceptance of the being of the other. Of course, when the child is awake, shouting, crying, and arguing, expressing it’s being in a radical way, breaking some social convention of one sort or another, the mother’s love is still there, but now it is mixed up with other emotions, anger, confusion, embarrassment. Thus, control is now exerted. A tension visits the relationship and the love that is implied in it is clouded over, at the heart of which are various degrees of non-acceptance.

When the love is uninterrupted, as in the still flower or the sleeping child, it is pure. It is spontaneous. When conditions are imposed, the love becomes something else, not quite definable, but definitely not as spontaneous, pure, and free.

What made Mother Teresa a lover of life? She accepted what was before her. Poverty, disease, and distressing situations. Her love then moved her to give, and the giving was to provide relief to the other.

Love that has conditions, that exerts control to bring the other into alignment with one’s belief systems is not real love. There may be elements of love in it, but it is tarnished with some desire for egoic gain. The other must love back. The other must be appreciative. The other must return something to us.

Philosophers, poets, and spiritual people have long believed that love is the central force that holds the universe together. The physical union of love creates children. The emotional union of love creates families and nations. The intellectual union of love creates ideas, discoveries, and inventions. Philosophically, one can even say that the union of subatomic elements in relationship to each other or of planetary bodies in relationship to each other is part of that harmonious, blending, accepting energy that we call love.

Love does not necessarily mean approval. One cannot truly love something despicable. But love does mean acceptance. And once there is acceptance, there is understanding and insight, and if change is necessary for well-being, it is done with wisdom, not reactive emotion.

If human beings were committed to studying love and applying it, the entire planet would change rapidly, and instead of our continued creation of chaos, harmony and cooperation would occur. All sorts of wonderful prospering circumstances for the well-being of all life would emerge.

But as a species, we associate contention with intelligence and survival, and as long as we prefer exclusion to inclusion, we will continue to wreck our own lives and the world in general with our confused thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

When we begin an inquiry into love, then the journey to right living can be said to begin. What is right living? That which provides well-being for self and other. When well-being is high, there is a feeling of safety and acceptance, which creates happiness, a sense that all is well, good, and true and that we need not guard against sorrow.

The summum bonum of all life is happiness. It is the ultimate motive, the end of all striving. Yet this happiness does not come uninvited. It feels invited when love is present.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul