Yoga Wisdom with Acharya das

This is one of the talks from my recent visit to the Philippines (so there are a few Filipino words and phrases in the talk). The guided meditation audio track I used during the talk can be accessed or downloaded here - https://soundcloud.com/acharyadas/breath-and-gauranga-mantra It is part of a guided meditation audio playlist which is available here - https://soundcloud.com/acharyadas/sets/medit...

The growing epidemic of loneliness, particularly amongst the young, is driving people towards harmful and even destructive behaviors. Why do we experience loneliness? What can we do about it? We will examine this topic from a spiritual perspective. A link to a previous talk (The Need for a Friend) I mentioned here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/rdbJEVbWStb

MindGeek, the secretive owner of Pornhub, RedTube YouPorn, and Brazzers, employs around sixteen hundred people, and received approximately 4.5 trillion visits each month in 2020, according to a company spokesperson—almost double Google and Facebook combined. Research by the British Board of Film Classification in 2019 suggested 51% of children aged 11 to 13 had seen pornography, rising to 66% of 1...

The subject of atheism was recently raised in a public talk I gave at Mantra Night. In the Western world there is the idea of two opposing camps and one camp (under the influence of some variety of Christianity or other) holds that atheism is condemnable and the atheist will be “condemned to hell” for all eternity. This idea while common the “Christian world” was not embraced by the rest of the an...

“Selling the Lie” means to deceive or cheat or to create the ‘illusion of truth’. The advertising industry has perfected this rather dark art, using it for the past 100 years, and then “spin doctors” (public relations professionals) of the 70s taught Politicians how to use this form of deception and it was quickly embraced. Now it has become so pervasive in common that people speak of “your truth”...

The 20thcentury saw the transformation of the population and societal values, in the developed world, that would have been considered unthinkable for thousands of years prior to this. The importance of the individual over society (increased self-centeredness), consumerism, instant gratification, and the notion that everything is disposable, have completely changed society and its institutions. Whi...

In recent years the term “safe space” has been utilized by young people at tertiary level educational institutions to demand they be free from hearing political and social debate that they disagree with. Some find this view exceedingly immature and unrealistic because we live as part of a society with differing world-views and to force upon everyone a monolithic view would be oppressive and totali...

Many people think that freedom means my absolute and unobstructed freedom to choose to do anything I may wish. That my wishes and desires must ideally reign supreme over everything else. And society must bend to my wishes/desires, which are treated as sacred. But this is immature and even dangerous thinking. The ancient sages in yogis taught that this was a false idea. I can be freely making choic...

We have probably all heard the saying “You are what you eat”. This meant that the food one eats has a bearing on one's state of mind and health. In tonight’s talk “You are what you Tweet”, I’m suggesting that our mental health (at least to some degree) but more importantly our spiritual health can be diagnosed by our social media habits – what we Tweet. Yogic teachings state that we will be deeply...

The need for a friend runs deep. We desire companionship, someone to share life’s experiences with, some level of support, someone you can trust.  But many of us are unaware that this need is driven by something deeply spiritual. This need has become vulnerable to exploitation with the rise of so-called “AI Companions.” In this talk, we explore these issues. Two of the verses I quote in this...

In this talk, we delve into a famous African billionaire's quest for happiness and where he found it. We also examine how acts that reflect or are connected to our inner spiritual nature, allow us to receive a glimpse into our true spiritual self, the eternal spiritual being residing within the material body. Some of the texts I quoted: As soon as irrevocable loving service is established in the h...

There is a general lack of clarity as to what enlightenment is. Some people think it happens in the mind, but it is not an activity of the mind, it means transcending the mind and experiencing that which is beyond the mind. The very word “Enlightenment” speaks to moving “From darkness to light”. And what is that great darkness? 1) seeing the body as the self; 2) seeing this world as my home; 3) th...

Last week in the 1st talk on this topic I didn’t have enough time to present some historical examples of how some societies embraced this principle of Simple Living and High Thinking. Drawing on examples from the ancient Vedic society and also early Christian Orthodox practices from Eastern Europe, there are clear illustrations we can get inspiration from to find areas in our lives to apply some o...

We are living in a fast-paced technological world where we are being served “information” at an extraordinary rate, at which we cannot possibly keep up with. Things have become so complex (complicated living) and there is a massive reduction in people’s attention spans and an over-emphasis on trivial and unimportant things like your hair and wardrobe for example (try living like the billions of po...

These were still some unanswered questions which I was asked at the recently concluded retreat, so I will attempt to answer them here. The list of questions were: 02:27 Could you please give us a definition of the word “spiritual”, as you have mentioned trees/nature is not spiritual, but they do contain life force and for many people that is the same life force or “spirit” that we experience as hu...

This talk has its origins in the last talk I posted where we discussed the three categories of things that “happen” to us – LINK   It resulted in a number of questions about how much control we have over our life. This is the subject of this talk.

I have had some requests to upload a talk from last Sunday's Mantra Night. I was reflecting on my life and some of the lessons I've learned.

I was asked to speak about the recent school shooting at Uvalde, Texas, where 17 children and two teachers died. It is extremely difficult to comprehend how someone could do this, and so the question I was asked is why? People generally want to look for easy answers, but it is a difficult subject. While sensible gun controls may help, this may not be the “solution”. Research shows that K-12 studen...

Yuval Noah Harari - Israeli intellectual and author - at the World Economic Forum stated: “The most important thing to know about the future is that humans will soon be hackable animals, animals that can be hacked. There is a lot of talk these days about hacking computers and email accounts and smartphones and bank accounts, but we're actually entering the era in which it will be possible to hack...

The Sanskrit word Sādhana has a number of meanings but is most often used as “the means by which we can achieve the goal of life.” It speaks to the spiritual process of cultivating a “spiritual life” and the importance of developing a regular practice. After looking at the more ancient practice of Sādhana outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga-sutra I summarized what a personal practice could look like...

Bruce Springsteen famously sang – “Everybody has a Hungry Heart”. It explores the search to fill that inner emptiness most people experience at different times and to different degrees. A few of the lines in the song go: “Everybody needs a place to rest, Everybody wants to have a home, Don't make no difference what nobody says, Ain't nobody like to be alone” In this talk we examine how this inner...

I was asked the question that if we as spiritual beings (residing within the body) are truly eternal, meaning without a beginning nor an end, does that make us God-like? Are we then not different from God? And does this mean that we are somehow Gods? The Vedic/Yogic teachings are that the individual soul (ātma/self) is a part and parcel of God and therefore “Inconceivably, simultaneously one yet d...

Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed consumerism, how it is driven by state-actors through economic policy (economic growth); how it is largely driven by greed and envy; that it is the underlying catalyst for a general sense of emptiness (leveraged through manipulative advertising which plays on it); it becomes a vicious cycle of the perpetual hunger for more – “what’s next”. Consumerism gives...

This is the conclusion to the series “Who Controls Your Mind” – about living a more conscious and purposeful life, and the need to be in control of your own mind to do that. The consumption and use of information & technology do not bestow wisdom. They can in fact do the opposite. This is called dumbing-down the population. What is needed is a spiritual paradigm which combats materialism - the...

Social Media and Big-Tech try to convince you that their product(s) are about making your life better or “connecting with people” etc. But the companies themselves have the goal of getting your attention, and then keeping you on their platforms for as much of your day as possible. They collect your data and usage habits and then sell your data or use the information to make money off you. To do th...