Spiritual Practice

“If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing romance or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years!”     ---RAMAKRISHNA

Our Actions

Although the results of our actions may not have matured yet, they will inevitably ripen, given the right conditions. Usually we forget what we do, and it is only long afterward that the results catch up with us. By then we are unable to connect them with their causes. “Imagine an eagle,” says Jikmé Lingpa.” It is flying, high in the sky. It casts no shadow. Nothing shows that it is there. Then suddenly it spies its prey, dives, and swoops to the ground. And as it drops, its menacing shadow appears.”

The Mind-Body Link

"The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's a part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can't be forever violated with impunity." -Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (read it!)

Thankful

There isn't anything like it. The wonders of the north. Isolated lakes and forrest surroundings marked with outcrops of rock and sand. The skiffs (flat bottom boats of wood with a rising nose) meet speed and skim across the water. Cool breeze causing even the well dressed to shiver. It was on such a day in the far north of Saskatchewan that two friends took the psychologist fishing. It is a place where human quiet meets nature; the call of a baby eagle, the splash of nearby fish, and the rush of the rapids. It was the most sacred of moments. The ones we often take for granted. But today I am thankful. Thankful for laughter, warm drink, gentle breeze, fresh fish caught and ate, and the miracle of nature that reminds us that we are finite beings in a marvelous world.