Just reflect for a while when you have failed in an attempt. Try to be more careful in the next attempt. Try to remove those factors that led you to fail previously. - Swami Sivananda
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Centuries ago a man in the East took up gardening on his small estate. Eventually, he became a proficient gardener producing some of the most beautiful plants and flowers in his community. However, one aspect of gardening frustrated him: the constant presence of growing weeds. No matter what he did, no matter how much weeding he engaged in, they came back stronger than ever.
Unable to bear the presence of weeds in his garden he visited with a member of a King’s royal garden staff. He listened patiently and took careful notes as the royal gardener offered him a variety of methods for dealing with weeds. Pleased with his new knowledge, the man returned to his estate and applied the principles. Yet, the weeds persisted returning as they always had. Once again, he visited the royal gardener and explained asking “what else can I do about those weeds?” The royal gardener paused before speaking and then said: “There is only one other thing for you to do: you must learn to love the weeds and treat them well.” That story is a metaphor for our living. While we may have many admirable qualities, no one of us is free from “weeds” in our lives. As we become aware them it’s easy to become frustrated with ourselves and turn to self-loathing and even self-abuse. The lesson from the gardener applies to life in this way: we must learn to love our ‘weeds’, those flaws, imperfections which make us the unique individuals we are. Exercise your spiritual awareness. Try to greet the day with joy, with a heart that is full of compassion, gratitude and love. - Bhante Wimala
You have to work to gradually develop your mind from day to day and year to year. It might even take eons. Ultimately this kind of mind training is a practice of patience. - Lama Zopa
As people try for unique yoga poses, the risks are getting higher and higher for serious injury, if not death. This week, a Mexican college student survived an 80-foot fall after practicing an extreme yoga pose on her building's sixth-floor balcony, according to the New York Post.
Twenty-three-year-old Alexa Terrazas, who studies health and nutrition at Tecnológico de Monterrey, slipped from the balcony railing last Saturday and landed on the pavement outside her apartment in the northeastern state of Nuevo León, the Post reported while quoting local media outlets. The college student had reportedly performed similar death-defying poses on the the guardrail before but nearly died after falling and suffering fractures to her legs, arms, hip and head. She was taken to the hospital, where she underwent an 11-hour procedure that required doctors to "reconstruct" her legs. As of Monday, Terrazas remained in critical condition. Doctors said they believe it could take up to three years for the 23-year-old to walk again. Tread lightly on this Earth. Be kind to all creatures.
Live simply. Consume less. Avoid air travel. Find alternatives to car travel. Delight in a vegetarian diet. Grow your own food if possible. Use water sparingly. Lobby for a saner, healthier world. —Georg and Brenda Feuerstein With
passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God? - Rumi Author Minal Hajratwala's first meditation teacher was her father. They had a close bond. She was eighteen the first time her father needed open heart surgery; twenty-nine the second time; and forty-nine when doctors admitted nothing more could be done for her father.
As she watched his decline she recalled "what arose in me at last was gratitude, not as a practice but as a fruit of practice. Gratitude for the years we’d had together and the karma that allowed us to be together at the end. Gratitude for the medications and comforts afforded us by the great privilege of our place (a palace, by the standards of much of human history). And gratitude for these powerful practices, great lineages of teachers, our robust and diverse sanghas persisting through the flames of war and roars of beasts: a triple jewel which never tires of offering us refuge." You cannot make your body flexible just by thinking about making it flexible. You can only do that by training it. The body has to make the body flexible. - Lama Zopa
As long as we believe that happiness has to come from outside, from other people or from the external environment, we will always blame something outside whenever we have a problem. - Lama Zopa
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Victor M. Parachin ...is aVedic educator, yoga instructor, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of a dozen books. Buy his books at amazon or your local bookstore. Archives
December 2023
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