Happy Mind: Meditations from the Ancient World to Modernity

From the earliest wisdom teachers to the great living masters of today, we consistently hear the message that ‘you are free’, ‘you do without doing,’ and ‘you are not the self.’ It doesn't matter whether it is Lao Tzu or Krishna, Jesus or Mohammed, Buddha or Hermes Trismegestus, they all share this same insight. But what can they possibly mean? Unfortunately, we have to experience it to understand...

Can you experience enlightenment right now? The great masters have told that you already have this enlightened state as your essential nature. You've just forgotten. You're just asleep. But then, who are you, really? Unfortunately, it is impossible to answer this question using words or concepts. So today, instead of giving a lecture on who you really are, I am going to guide you in a way that you...

In one sense, all our problems in life stem from a confusion about who we really are. Buddha is among the most explicit on this point. He speaks repeatedly about how we are not an ego entity, a personality, a being or and individual. He tells us, for example, in The Diamond Sutra, that we “should leave behind all phenomenal distinctions [such as the idea that we are a self] and awaken the thought...

This is a longer session for those ready to extend their letting go practice. Letting go, remembering who you really are, learning to act in accordance with the truths about free will--these things don't just start happening automatically. You have had a lifetime or learning a different method. All those years and decades of learning have to be overwritten. The brain rewiring just takes time. But...

It may feel like you are in command of your world and your body but that isn't true. And it isn't just people like Lao Tzu and Krishna that you hear this message from anymore. It is the scientific community. The ancient masters understood that free will is not what we think it is and modern science is finally beginning to catch up. To quote from Sam Harris' book, Free Will, "The physiologist Benja...

The ancient masters understood that free will is not what we think it is and modern science is finally beginning to catch up. To quote from Sam Harris' book, Free Will, "The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab extended this work using func...

'Less talk, more meditation' version of the 'Be the witness' practice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Modern neurological research suggests that our concept of free will is unfounded. The ancient masters understood this long ago. And they developed a series of brain-training exercises to settle in to a state of so-called 'non-doing' or Wu Wei. But non-doing, or just being the witness to the unfolding of your existence, isn't what you think it is. You aren't sitting around doing nothing. Quite the...

'Letting go' can seem very scary. After all, if we let go, if we stop doing, then what will happen to us? Won't we starve or rot away on our couch? Or won't bad things happen to us? It turns out that letting go and stopping "doing" aren't what we might at first think. It is true that free will as we normally think about it is an illusion. Even though it feels like we are the authors of our existen...

Free will as we normally think about it is an illusion. Even though it feels like we are the authors of our existence, the reality is something quite different. Even though we think we perceive reality through our senses and make judgements about how to behave and what to do with our bodies and our lives, the great masters of old as well as the neuroscientists of our day tell us this is not true....

It feels like we are the authors of our existence. We perceive reality through our senses and make judgements about how to behave and what to do with our bodies and our lives. But the great masters of old as well as the neuroscientists of our day tell us this is not true. Free will as we normally think about it is an illusion. For some, this is quite a scary thought. But the wisdom teachers of anc...

One of the more confusing and seemingly wrong teachings from the ancient masters is this idea that the secret to a happy healthy life is 'non-doing' (Wu Wei). But what in the world can they possibly mean?! How is doing nothing (if that is what they mean) the key to happiness and health? The answer isn’t what you think. You first need to learn what the old sages mean by expressions like “The wise p...

The great masters have explained in no uncertain terms that we are not the doer. But what in the world can they possibly mean?! How is doing nothing (if that is what they mean) the key to happiness and health? The answer isn’t what you think. You first need to learn what the old sages mean by expressions like “The wise person does nothing, yet nothing is left undone” (Lao Tzu) or “Self, confused b...

The great masters of old were all consistent with at least one piece of advice: the key to happiness and health is to stop doing. Wu Wei ('not doing'), the ancient Chinese masters might have said. Old sages like Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching tell us that “The wise person does nothing, yet nothing is left undone” or we can look to Krishna who tells us “Self, confused by the idea of an ‘I’, thus think...

Wu Wei. Non-doing. What in the world can the great masters possibly mean?! How is doing nothing (if that is what they mean) the key to happiness and health? The answer isn’t what you think. You first need to learn what the old sages mean by expressions like “The wise person does nothing, yet nothing is left undone” (Lao Tzu) or “Self, confused by the idea of an ‘I’, thus thinks, ‘I am the doer’" (...

We all seek happiness and health for ourselves and the ones we love. But somehow it seems to elude us most of the time. The great masters tell us that one of the reasons we suffer so much is that we hold on to things without being aware of it. We hold our breath and we don't realize it. We hold our muscles tight and we are unaware of it. We hold onto patterns of thinking and judging and blaming an...

Letting go sounds like such an easy thing to do. But trying to let go is like saying try not to try. The act of trying reinforces the holding. Holding is something most of us do unconsciously. We hold our breath and we don't realize it. We hold our muscles tight and we are unaware of it. We hold onto patterns of thinking and judging and blaming and criticizing and we aren't conscious of this. And...

Holding is something most of us do unconsciously. We hold our breath and we don't realize it. We hold our muscles tight and we are unaware of it. We hold onto patterns of thinking and judging and blaming and criticizing and we aren't conscious of this. And then we are surprised when we get angry or sad, when we feel anxious or aimless, when our muscles spasm or we get sick. So, what to do? It is t...

Letting go is one of the most powerful techniques we have to experiencing a life of peace and happiness. But how do you do that, and why does it work? There are many ways to let go but the reason it works is that your underlying nature, your true self is inherently beautiful and joyful and loving. You’ve just forgotten. You’ve moved your attention to other things. You’ve done that for so long that...

No one likes to think about it but each of us has experienced the feelings of shame or humiliation or done something we deeply rgret. At one time or another, more frequently or less, everyone has had the fear that people will see you as a fraud, they will judge you as a failure, or that they will reject you because you are unreliable. That toxic cocktail of deep embarrassment combined with fear an...

Have you ever noticed that, even though meditation makes you feel better, you seem to be the same person with the same negative feelings and sometimes inappropriate reactions to situations? You meditate, you feel great, or at least settled, afterwards. Your mood improves. But then your baseline emotion springs back and your fears or disproportionate reactions shows their ugly head again. So, what...

It’s time to learn to let your emotions just be. It is time to honor the space in which these feelings live. But how to do that? The secret is 1) to allow whatever the negative feeling or reaction is to  be  the content of your awareness but 2) to focus on the fact that it is  the content  and  you  are the one who is placing and keeping your attention on these feelin...

You probably have tried other meditations, and they might have worked for you. You feel great, or at least settled, afterwards. Your mood improves. But then your baseline emotion springs back and your fears or disproportionate reactions shows their ugly head again. So, what to do? It’s time to learn to let it be. It is time to honor the space in which these feelings live. The secret is to allow wh...

Meditation has the ability to make you feel great. And it has all sorts of health benefits. But the question is whether it can really fundamentally change your inherent baseline emotional state; whether it can address the sorts of reactions that seem to unconsciously creep in to your day to day life. The secret to extending the benefits of meditation is to learn to let your feelings just be; to le...

Regardless of the particular negative feeling, we all experience them. Fortunately, there are many methods we can employ to let them go. But it does require facing them. Repressing them, resisting them or pretending they don’t exist will only strengthen them. So, we have to take a different tack. For you the negative feeling could be anger, sadness, loneliness, fear, anxiety, shame, or even b...