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The Price of Immortality
“There is one thing in life that is haunting us. This is the fact of our certain death. And yet, Hconsidering that we all know that we are going to die, most people don’t actually worry that much about it. How come that people who believe that they are solely their body can stay so cool when waiting for a certain death? They should be terrified. …”
An exploration of the nature and meaning of death… (READ MORE…)
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Shankara the Great
“The early spiritual works produced in India were anonymous, probably stated by some ancient sages whose identities got lost. There is one name though that rose and was brought to fame and excellence, a teacher whose life has been narrated in many hagiographies and legends. His name: Adi Shankara, or Shankaracharya. His work as a philosopher and religious reformer …”
A discovery of the ancient teachings of Adi Shankara… (READ MORE…)
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A Story of Lack
“Don’t run in the other direction. Don’t take a sense of lack for a need. For this is what we do, when we sense in ourself an insufficiency, we want to fill it up, by all means necessary. We think it important to grant its wanting, its craving. But a lack is never a need. A lack is a fact that needs no repairing and no repairman. By bowing or giving allegiance to it, we submit ourself. We give up all power of understanding. We place ourself at the level of that lack. …”
A story on how the sense of lack can be our teacher… (READ MORE…)
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Love Remains
“O my self, why do you stand in the way? For the living of these many experiences, you are not necessary. The pure consciousness that is present in all of us here and now is perfectly equipped. So don’t worry and please move away. This pure being has held effortlessly the millions of billions of beings and experiences generated so far, and has allowed for ever more choices and decisions to be made …”
A humorous divagation where the self is being confronted… (READ MORE…)
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The Poetic Genius
“Artists, through their sensitivity to perception, their pointed quest towards beauty and harmony, are natural candidates for delving into the depth of reality and understanding their true nature. Many poets, painters, musicians, have been able to explore their being in ways that are traditionally the privilege of mystics. Indeed, they wrestle with eternity, and strive to find a way to convey it. William Blake was one such wrestler. He was a poet, painter and printer born in London in 1757. Although not recognised during his life, …”
An exploration of William Blake’s non-dual poetry… (READ MORE…)
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At Heaven’s Gate
“There is a guard posted at the entrance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Mind you it’s a gentle guard, open, benevolent, understanding, but she has her ways. Not everybody can enter. You need to fulfil some precise requirements. She has seen it all — people wanting to enter with all their heavy luggage. Trunks after trunks of thoughts, beliefs, hopes, memories, loaded with cumbersome feelings. People have such unreasonable faith! That’s when she smiles gently: …”
A playful interaction and dialogue recorded at Heaven’s Gate… (READ MORE…)
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Wei Wu Wei
“You may have sometime come across the name ‘Wei Wu Wei’ while reading or researching, and you have thought that it referred to an exotic and remote Zen master of ancient China. Well, you couldn’t have been more wrong. For this is the pen name of a British aristocrat and writer of the last century. His name: Terence James Stannus Gray, who was born in 1895 and died in 1986, the very same years as …”
Discover the rich and insightful nondual writing of Wei Wu Wei… (READ MORE…)
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The Poetic Genius
“Artists, through their sensitivity to perception, their pointed quest towards beauty and harmony, are natural candidates for delving into the depth of reality and understanding their true nature. Many poets, painters, musicians, have been able to explore their being in ways that are traditionally the privilege of mystics. Indeed, they wrestle with eternity, and strive to find a way to convey it. William Blake was one …”
An exploration of poet William Blake’s non-dual writings… (READ MORE…)
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The Ultimate Absolution
“Isn’t it wonderful to discover that you cannot be destroyed? No matter the magnitude of your heartbreaks. No matter the betrayals and the dishonesties — all that is unforgivable in others or in yourself. No matter the untold suffering inflicted to your body or to your self. Isn’t it a blessing to notice that you cannot be broken no matter what? You can believe to be broken, sullied, doomed and punished for your …”
An exploration into the true nature of forgiveness… (READ MORE…)
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The Glory of ‘I Am’
“First, you have to dig. You have to dig beneath every thing that qualifies you. You have to find that pure ‘I am’ hidden under all that this ‘I am’ is or can be. You have to find the raw substance of that which you are referring to when you say simply ‘I am’. What is this pure, unqualified ‘I am’? Over the years, piles over piles of experiences, beliefs, conditioning, have acquired substance and have overwhelmed this simple …”
A celebration of the purity of being, before it becomes qualified… (READ MORE…)
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At Heaven’s Gate
“There is a guard posted at the entrance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Mind you it’s a gentle guard, open, benevolent, understanding, but she has her ways. Not everybody can enter. You need to fulfil some precise requirements. She has seen it all — people wanting to enter with all their heavy luggage. Trunks after trunks of thoughts, beliefs, hopes, memories, loaded with cumbersome feelings. People have such unreasonable faith! That’s when she smiles gently: …”
A playful interaction and dialogue recorded at Heaven’s Gate… (READ MORE…)
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Masters of Knowing
“It seems to me that, at some point, we have to cease worrying about our lives. There will always be something to worry about, to be concerned with, to hope, regret, project, expect, envy. This is an endless, futile road with no visible finish line. And it also seems to me that, at some point, we have to question our constant spiritual reading, listening, this position of being forever a stranger, one who needs to …”
Continue reading this praise to being’s intrinsic, evident nature… (READ MORE…)
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The Golden Speaker
“In spiritual matters, it is always a pleasure and a thrill to find a new gem, to mingle with a different formulation, to venture for a while with an old, unexpected description of the perennial understanding; in more simple terms, to stumble on a new exponent of the eternal truth. John of Damascus is one such talented teller …”
Discover the life and insightful writings of John of Damascus… (READ MORE…)
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The Impossibility of Knowing
“Habit is a driving force in our lives, yet it doesn’t have good reviews: it is an object of critics. It is making us dull and repetitive. It is non-creative, indolent, designed for our self-protective needs. It is born out of fear, uncertainty. It is a shield for what we feel bullies and thwarts us, and is thereby blocking our sensitivity and vulnerability. Habit debases love. But habit is not the real culprit in this affair: it is a victim of the …”
An essay on the articulation between knowing and not knowing… (READ MORE…)
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The Heart Sutra
“There is a text that came from the dawn of ages, whose author is unknown, but has been widely accepted, practised, and chanted in Mahāyāna Buddhism as a condensed exposé of the teaching of Buddha. Although known and praised as the ‘Heart Sutra’, its original Sanskrit name translates as ‘The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom’. …”
Discover this milestone of Buddhist literature: the ‘Heart Sutra’… (READ MORE…)
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The Gospel According to St. Matthew
“The famous Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini made this beautiful statement about his art: “When I make a film, I shift into a state of fascination with an object, a thing, a fact, a look, a landscape, as though it were an engine where the holy is about to explode.” This can be immediately felt as we stroll amongst the first scenes of his …”
Discover the magnificent film by Pasolini on the Gospel of Matthew… (READ MORE…)
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On Parmenides
“The Oxford Dictionary wrote this very concise description of Parmenides: “Greek philosopher. Born in Elea in south-western Italy, he founded the Eleatic school of philosophers. In his work ‘On Nature’, written in hexameter verse, he maintained that the apparent motion and changing forms of the universe are in fact manifestations of an unchanging and indivisible reality.” This statement is a quintessential definition of …”
A study of Parmenides’ statement of truth in his poem ‘On Nature’… (READ MORE…)
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Imagine a Life
“Krishnamurti said it in very clear, unmistakable terms nearly a century ago. So did the ancient sages of India, the early Sufis, the original Zen masters of China, and the great Meister Eckhart, all in their own way. So there is no room for confusion anymore. Cease being entangled in your own, unfounded beliefs. Stop breeding and comforting them by thinking them out, perceiving them away, and feeling them in, …”
A meditation invoking a famous statement by J. Krishnamurti… (READ MORE…)
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The Mystic Heart of Sport
“Brendan McNamee is my newly invited guest on ‘The Dawn Within’. Brendan is an independent scholar and lecturer with a PhD at the University of Ulster in Ireland. He is the author of numerous books and essays on a wide range of writers, including John Banville, W B Yeats, and others. I’d like to present here one of his essays called…”
Discover Brendan McNamee’s essay on the mystic of sport… (READ MORE…)
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Awareness is All
“If you observe yourself carefully, awareness can be felt as a truly overwhelming presence. It is actually all there is, and that can be easily proved. Let’s take an experience like our current experience, since no other than this one present, living experience, has ever existed and will ever do. We cannot divide experience, make it into bits and pieces to be compared or analysed. Experience is not limited to its …”
An essay exploring the hidden nature of experience… (READ MORE…)
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The State of Things
“It is crucial in life to have a clear view of the state of things. Not to be left behind with an erroneous understanding or interpretation. For there are wolves out there, that want you to go astray. They will lure you to adopt their own inherited beliefs. They will push you in the direction of your fall. So be watchful of everything you don’t fully understand. They will want you to believe that you are surrounded by…”
A meditative reflexion on the true nature of our experience… (READ MORE…)
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The Mystical Doctor
“During the night of 2 December 1577, in the city of Toledo in central Spain, a priest was imprisoned by a group of Carmelites who were refusing Teresa of Ávila’s reformation projects for their Order. He was jailed for 9 months in a monastery under brutal conditions. He was publicly beaten at least weekly, confined in a cell of barely 10 by 6 feet, with only a little light passing through a hole during the day, with …”
Discover the rich poetry and commentaries of John of the Cross… (READ MORE…)
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The Hypochondria of Being
“There may have been a time in your life when you had a glimpse or experience that you had considered to be a major event or happening, some breaking news coming from god’s mouth. And yet you were left after it with only scattered shreds of truth. You had failed to inhabit your experience and make it yours. You had stayed on its threshold and didn’t dare to visit its interior and be blessed by it. You remained …”
A playful interpretation of the nature of spiritual experience… (READ MORE…)
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The Highest Language
“In our language, the word ‘silence’ is defined as the complete absence of sound, or the abstinence of speech. Yet silence has fascinated us beyond these elementary descriptions to evoke the unknown and the mysterious. Something in silence speaks to us, and is a presence beyond its apparent nature as absence. Spiritual teachers from all traditions have abundantly used the word for its richness of meaning …”
Read these many quotes about ‘silence’ by various teachers… (READ MORE…)
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The Angel of Death
“There is an astounding profundity in popular culture. It is just for us to see when it pops up, when it arises above the sea of confusion that our life is for the most part. What is designed to be just light entertainment, what appears to have no depth or consistence other than being an easy escape out of ourself, can hide the brightest of gems if we can elevate ourself to its hidden meaning. I stumbled across one …”
See how popular culture is infused with non-dual reminiscences… (READ MORE…)
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An Invitation from Silence
“Silence is always called upon us. Once we have stopped engaging with our endless thoughts, once we have released the rage of our permanent search towards happiness, once the dance of our daily relentless activities has died down, then silence is here always present. Silence is here to re-collect us into itself. It is …”
A text that shows how silence is revealed as our very own being… (READ MORE…)
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Evangelium
“So many of my thoughts, feelings, and even sensations are here solely because they are sustained by, or dependent on, or conditioned by the representation I have of myself. In more bluntly put words, my belief in being a discrete, separate entity creates the bigger part of them. This is because I think that I am solely this me-person that I indulge in these endless thoughts about myself. This is because …”
A meditation on the ‘Good News’ advocated by Christianity… (READ MORE…)
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Humanity’s Healers
“Why has humanity left this whole field of knowing oneself — all the spiritual endeavour, the extraordinary adventure that it is — outside the conventional and widely accepted way of living? It is a difficult thing to understand, since the door to it is so wide open and evident. Of course, religions are there, and have taken …”
An essay exploring the place of humanity in our being… (READ MORE…)
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Go Within
“All the religious and spiritual traditions of the world, with their complexity and variety, and all the names attached to them, are in fact only pointers to one simple, living reality that can be experienced here and now in every human being. Every Purana, Surah, Gospel, Sutra, Psalm, Hadith, Sermon, Teaching, are one global attempt at pointing or describing the most common experience of our humanity: the nature…”
On how all spiritual traditions only point to ‘being’… (READ MORE…)
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Hide-and-Seek
“The spiritual search is really only a process of hide-and-seek. When we are lost and unhappy, we seek some relief. Our sense of a peaceful self, which is our true nature, eludes us, is not felt — so we embark into the search for a happy life. The process is clear and evident: when our true nature is hidden, we are naturally engaged in seeking. We try to uncover it, to dispel the confusion. When it is revealed, we bask …”
An exploration of the ‘hide-and-seek’ nature of self-inquiry… (READ MORE…)
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Defining Enlightenment
“The words for the discovery of our true nature — like enlightenment, realisation, awakening, liberation, etc — are all very significant. They all point to truth and have numerous things to say. Take ‘enlightenment’ for instance. Its original signification is ‘to shine’ or ‘to make luminous’. So to enlighten means to put the light on. It means to cease being distracted by all that is objective in our experience and doesn’t define …”
An essay exploring the signification of enlightenment… (READ MORE…)
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Wei Wu Wei
“You may have sometime come across the name ‘Wei Wu Wei’ while reading or researching, and you have thought that it referred to an exotic and remote Zen master of ancient China. Well, you couldn’t have been more wrong. For this is the pen name of a British aristocrat and writer of the last century. His name: Terence James Stannus Gray, who was born in 1895 and died in 1986, the very same years as …”
Discover the rich and insightful nondual writing of Wei Wu Wei… (READ MORE…)
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The Dark Night
“There is a poem that fed the imagination of many prestigious writers and philosophers like T. S. Eliot, Simone Weil, or Thomas Merton. Many a spiritual seeker has found in it a guiding lamp for the harsh ascent towards divine union. Its name: the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, a short poem written by the 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross. It refers to the unknowable nature of both the goal …”
The famous poem by John of the Cross and a few more words… (READ MORE…)
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The Riddle of Ignorance
“There is a truer, hidden reality lying just under the veneer of life. Don’t think that what you have is the real thing. It is not. This hidden reality is being covered by the thick blanket of our deceptive representation of reality, made of a whole array of thoughts, feelings, memories, worries, beliefs, conditionings, that have numbed …”
Some reflections about how reality is being ignored by man… (READ MORE…)
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A Song of Two Humans
“Life is relationship. No matter what. We are always engaged in a relationship with an apparent ‘other’. Should we be left alone in the world, with no other humans, life would remain an encounter with the other — any other being — be it the sun, the wind, the rugged stones on our path, or our very own self. Our life is always a song of apparent duality. And the success of any relationship, which is the coming of …”
Discover the lessons contained in the silent movie ’Sunrise’… (READ MORE…)
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A Story of Lack
“Don’t run in the other direction. Don’t take a sense of lack for a need. For this is what we do, when we sense in ourself an insufficiency, we want to fill it up, by all means necessary. We think it important to grant its wanting, its craving. But a lack is never a need. A lack is a fact that needs no repairing and no repairman. By bowing or giving allegiance to it, we submit ourself. We give up all power of understanding. …”
A story that tells how a sense of lack can be our teacher… (READ MORE…)
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Diary of a Country Priest
“Robert Bresson is a unique film maker in the history of cinema. He has developed a very personal way of filming that wholly tends towards one thing only: conveying the truth. This is achieved by means of the right use of cinema language. As the French master said in the newspaper ‘Libération’: “The true language of cinema is that which translates the invisible. I am trying to convey feelings rather than facts or actions. …”
Learn more about this movie by French director Robert Bresson… (READ MORE…)
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The Substance of God
“How can we account for the beauty of the world? Because in spite of everything that is happening within and without, and afflicts us, leaves us distressed, the world bears at its core an intrinsic perfection. It’s not difficult to see. You only have to stand back, to release the grip, be less involved. To look afresh at the blue sky above your head. To see that a blue sky is an extraordinary thing. As is a tree, and the song of …”
A meditation on the beauty and substance of the world… (READ MORE…)
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The Names of God
“There is something that is very hard to understand about God. A survey of the names that have been given to god makes it unequivocally clear, but we keep missing the target: ‘Being’, ‘Mighty Being’, ‘I Am’, and so many others, refer to the fundamental equation of god with ‘being’, with our very everyday experience of plain, simple, …”
See how the many names of god relate to the sense of ‘being’… (READ MORE…)
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Sayings of the Church Fathers
“The birth of a religion is always a time of effervescence. This was the case with Christianity, when appeared many monks, hermits, writers and theologians who contributed to build what would become the foundations of this religion. They were later called the Church Fathers, for they were the first Christians, who cleared …”
An excursion amongst the lives and writings of the early Christians… (READ MORE…)
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A Ballet of Life
“Tonight I’m out to see a ballet for the first time. Not any ballet, but one of the prestigious classical ones, namely ‘Romeo and Juliet’, which the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev created in 1935, based on the play by William Shakespeare. As I entered the shell like old royal theatre of Copenhagen, my eyes scanned the prestigious room, with the four golden balconies circling over our heads, …”
A reflection on seeing the ballet ’Romeo and Juliet’… (READ MORE…)
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The Wisdom of Humility
“To look into and understand the meaning and implications of being truly humble, of that state of humility which we often hear about — but rarely fully understand — is a precious thing. The word ‘humble’ finds its roots in the Latin ‘humilis’ which means ‘lowly’, literally ‘on the ground’ (from ‘humus’ meaning ‘earth’). Its etymology covers both the more active aspect contained in being ‘humiliated’, or being ‘humbled’, …”
Discover many more quotes on this question of humility… (READ MORE…)
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The Fountain of Dark Silence
“Dorothy Walters is my newly invited guest on ‘The Dawn Within’. The ‘fountain’ refers here to this deep source at the core of our being, this “fountain of dark silence”, as Dorothy wrote in one of her poems. Dorothy experienced a profound Kundalini awakening in 1981, at the age of 53, which she described as “God moving through your body”, “the Beloved within“, “the goddess above all other goddesses”, …”
Discover some beautiful poems by Dorothy Walter… (READ MORE…)
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Into the Night
“They left into the night, like thieves, far from the crowd and the taxis. The old Delhi airport was still human-sized for them to be able to get away from it so easily. Peter had no idea what was going on. Where was he going, riding on the determined, almost fiery steps of his two guides? What madness had he gotten himself into? …”
A short story narrating Peter’s entry to sacred India… (READ MORE…)
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The Guard and the Prison Breaker
“Few sensations are as boisterously exhilarating as freedom is. Freedom is something that we all love to feel. To be freed! Freed from all weights and limitations. Freed from everything that bullies us and pins us down. But most of the time, this feeling is experienced from the vantage point of the little thought in our head that thinks it runs the show. This entity thinks that its freedom comes from being separate, …”
An inquiry into the question of freedom… (READ MORE…)
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A Thing of Beauty
“Isn’t the world the most extraordinary place? I’ll explain. Take a tree. A single tree, with its roots spreading and fiddling deep into the soil. And its erected trunk that divides itself into branches, and a thousand twigs, and a whole foliage of leaves. The shadow it gives. The home that it is for birds and little animals. And the shelter. …”
A reflection and meditation on the beautiful world that we are… (READ MORE…)
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The Song of God
“There is an old and long Sanskrit story that arose in India around the fourth century BC. So long that it has been described as “the longest poem ever written“. So encompassing that the poem mentions about itself: “That which occurs here occurs elsewhere. That which does not occur here occurs nowhere else.”(XVIII.5.38). A story that is as big and epic as life and which took centuries to write, up until the …”
A summary of the Bhagavad Gita, a monument of spiritual literature… (READ MORE…)
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A Room with a View
“A crystalline voice broke amidst the many murmurs of tourists, between the walls of Roskilde cathedral. A young woman had come to practice her singing here, accompanied by a pianist. I recognised the song immediately. It was Puccini‘s aria ‘O mio babbino caro’, and it sent a wave of delight through me. I recognised it because …”
A playful journey into James Ivory’s movie ‘A Room with a View’… (READ MORE…)
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An Unnoticed Pathology
“In our relationship to truth, we often find ourselves in the position of somebody who, on waking up, tries to remember his dream. Any searching, any effort to remember, the slightest doing towards that goal, is pushing the dream away, dislocating it irremediably. The problem is that we want something. This is our state. Our unnoticed pathology. One that we have inherited from society, and that we have …”
Some thoughts on our unfortunate propensity for seeking… (READ MORE…)
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The Practice of the Presence of God
“From the remote time of the seventeenth century in Paris has come a voice whose freshness and intimacy struck a chord in many a spiritual seeker throughout the generations. The man behind it was a lay brother working in the kitchen of a Carmelite monastery in the French capital. He was born Nicolas Herman in 1614 in the region of Lorraine, but took the religious name of Lawrence …”
Rejoice in the illuminating life and practice of Brother Lawrence… (READ MORE…)
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The Wrath of the Lamb
“The film ‘Stalker’, made in 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky, is an absolute wonder. As usual with Tarkovsky, every shot in it is unique and intrinsically harmonious. As usual with Tarkovsky, you will have your breath taken away. And you will be bored too. And puzzled. Searching for a meaning that will elude you. For his cinema is not about entertainment, plot, revelation, or resolution. His cinema is about poetry, beauty, …”
A reflection on the qualities of Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie ‘Stalker’… (READ MORE…)
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Ten Bulls
“Back in the 12th century, in China’s Zen tradition, appeared a series of ten drawings and their accompanying poems. They were meant to describe the ten stages on the path to enlightenment, or to the recognition of our true nature. This series is traditionally named the ‘Ten Ox Herding Pictures’ or more simply ‘Ten Bulls’, …”
A series of poems and paintings coming from the Zen tradition… (READ MORE…)
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Churning the Ocean
“We cannot be fully established in our true nature as peace and happiness without integrating all our latent tendencies, all these reflexive and self-protective habits born out of our belief in separation. These would prevent the advent of bliss. This is the meaning behind this ancient myth of India called the ‘churning of the ocean …”
A playful text exposing the meaning behind a famous Indian myth… (READ MORE…)
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The Flowers of St. Francis
“The deepest realisations and expressions of truth in Christianity have sometimes come from words and understanding, as was the case with Meister Eckhart, but it is, by far, not the most common path. Many a man or a woman have come to embrace God’s being through the expression of profound love and surrender. Such a path was trodden by Francis of Assisi, and has been splendidly shown in Roberto Rossellini’s …”
A homage to Francis of Assisi through Roberto Rossellini’s movie… (READ MORE…)
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The Great Mystery
“Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch philosopher and computer scientist who is reflecting on the questions related to mind and matter. His field of study is the nature of empirical reality — of the world we see — which our culture has defined to be fundamentally outside consciousness and made out of matter, with consciousness or mind being a product of that matter. Bernardo Kastrup is tirelessly challenging that idea …”
Explore Bernardo Kastrup’s work on the nature of reality… (READ MORE…)
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Being Alone
“The meaning of the word ‘alone’ in the Oxford Dictionary is stated as such: “having no one else present”. This sounds like a perfect definition of the Advaitic understanding, and an essential feature of the nature of consciousness, of our deepest sense of being. God is alone because he is all encompassing, and doesn’t have another reality by its side. He is alone in the sense that he is all one. …”
A meditation on the sense of being alone… (READ MORE…)
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The Surreptitious Thief
“What better way is there to realise the illusory nature of something than to study its existence? So a study of the ego is really the most interesting and valuable thing to engage in. For two reasons. One, because you are attempting to describe, evaluate, and understand something that simply doesn’t exist in the form you had imagined. …”
An exploration into the nature of the ego or separate self… (READ MORE…)
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I have Called You by My Name
“In some of the religious texts of the world, the subtlest expressions of truth are so deeply buried in the text that they have become unintelligible. The limitations of translation, the analogies and metaphors borrowed, the time in which these texts appeared, the audience for which they were written, the veneer of poetry or story-telling, all these concur to add multiple layers of confusing elements to the original idea. And these texts have also served …”
Some beautiful expressions of truth from the Bible… (READ MORE…)
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The Word
“There is a beautiful line in the film ‘Ordet’. This is when Inger answers her husband who is complaining about his lack of faith. “It will come. Just you see how warm you will feel then. And how happy. It’s nice to be happy, isn’t it?” How revealing that she equates here faith with happiness. For faith in God is usually meant to be a deeply ingrained certainty or belief, something artificial, made up, sustained. …”
A reflection on faith with Carl Dreyer’s masterpiece ‘Ordet’… (READ MORE…)
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A Vehicle for God
“Regarding all things spiritual, I have always trusted the vision of India’s perennial understanding. And there is one thought that bothered me recently, which is simply: why do Hindu gods need a vehicle, a mount? Why do they all have an animal by their side, or to ride on? For god is God. All powerful and reaching far and wide. Self-sufficient and contained in Itself. So why would Shiva need a bull as his vehicle, …”
A playful text asking why god needs a vehicle… (READ MORE…)
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A Furnace of Love
“Birgitta was sitting by the window, considering once again the recent chain of events that led to her present day situation. Twenty years ago, she came on this small Danish island for the first time, to never leave again. Lolland! What a beautifully telling name! She loved the place immediately. It is called by some the ‘pancake island’ …”
A short story that narrates Birgitta’s journey of love… (READ MORE…)
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The Song of the Little Road
“You never know how and when a piece of art, a film here, is going to touch the soft grounds of delight and beauty. And how it will come to be loved by people for opening that hidden, special place in their heart. ‘Pather Panchali’, or ‘The Song of the Little Road’ is one such heart opener. It was the first film made by the Indian director Satyajit Ray. It describes the life of a poor family in a village of rural Bengal, …”
Discover the qualities of Satyajit Ray’s film ‘Pather Panchali’… (READ MORE…)
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The Householder Sage
“It really is a remarkable thing that some of the clearest expressions of modern day non-duality have come from simple Indian men who lived simple lives in society. Atmananda Krishna Menon, married and a father of three children, a police inspector, was one such man. He became, along with Ramana Maharshi and …”
Discover the teaching of Atmananda Krishna Menon… (READ MORE…)
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The Sacrifice
“The screen and cinema room turned to a pitch black. Only the faint crackling murmur of an old empty sound track could be heard. And then… Then slowly rose the most exquisite music. ‘Erbarme Dich’ of the St Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach. Only hear this piece once in a movie by Andrei Tarkovsky, and its hearing will be forever associated with the great Russian film maker. Tarkovsky once wrote: …”
Discover the beauty of Andrei Tarkovsky’s last movie… (READ MORE…)
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Love Remains
“O my self, why do you stand in the way? For the living of these many experiences, you are not necessary. The pure consciousness that is present in all of us here and now is perfectly equipped. So don’t worry and please move away. This pure being has held effortlessly the millions of billions of beings and experiences generated so far, and has allowed for ever more choices and decisions to be made …”
A humorous divagation where the self is being confronted… (READ MORE…)
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A Frame for Life
“There seems to be an inescapable canvas that allows our life to take place and unfold in the world. This is the concept of time and space. It is the frame in which our seeming existence can spread its tentacles in every directions of our four dimensional reality. At least this is what thought tells us. This is …”
An inquiry into the concepts of time and space… (READ MORE…)
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A Frame for Life
“There seems to be an inescapable canvas that allows our life to take place and unfold in the world. This is the concept of time and space. It is the frame in which our seeming existence can spread its tentacles in every directions of our four dimensional reality. At least this is what thought tells us. This is our representation of reality. But is that truly so? Time seems to work vertically, allowing experiences and events to unfold one after the other, in sequences …”
An inquiry into the concepts of time and space… (READ MORE…)
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Tao Te Ching
“The Tao Te Ching is an ancient treatise and one of the most widely translated work in world literature. Its philosophical influence was major in the civilisation of China, colouring other religious currents like Buddhism, and becoming a guiding light for millions of people, including countless thinkers, artists, and poets — even political movements. It was allegedly composed between the 6th and 4th centuries BC …”
Discover Lao Tzu’s ancient Book on Tao and Virtue… (READ MORE…)
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Shankara the Great
“The early spiritual works produced in India were anonymous, probably stated by some ancient sages whose identities got lost. There is one name though that rose and was brought to fame and excellence, a teacher whose life has been narrated in many hagiographies and legends. His name: Adi Shankara, or Shankaracharya. His work as a philosopher and religious reformer is considered …”
A discovery of the ancient teachings of Adi Shankara… (READ MORE…)
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The Price of Immortality
“There is one thing in life that is haunting us. This is the fact of our certain death. And yet, considering that we all know that we are going to die, most people don’t actually worry that much about it. How come that people who believe that they are solely their body can stay so cool when waiting for a certain death? They should be terrified. This should come as …”
An exploration of the nature and meaning of death… (READ MORE…)
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Chalices of Wonder
“Alfred K. LaMotte wrote: “Poems are maps for getting lost in your heart where everyone can find you. Poems are momentary Sabbaths when eternity breaks in. These moments can heal the world.” Fred lives with his wife Anna near Seattle WA, where he “loves to walk barefoot in wet grass at midnight, un-naming the stars.” You will find, in between his poems, some of Fred’s writings on Beauty and Creation. …”
Discover these five poems by Alfred K. LaMotte… (READ MORE…)
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The Song of Ashtavakra
“I’m sharing here the Ashtavakra Gita, in the translation of John Richards. This is a famous song and landmark of non-duality in India. It has been composed in Sanskrit as a dialogue between the eminent sage Ashtavakra and his brilliant disciple Janaka, also king of Mithila. It was allegedly written around the third Century BC although some scholars dated it …”
Discover the beautiful teaching of Ashtavakra… (READ MORE…)
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Les bras éternels
“Vraiment, s‘abandonner semble être la chose la plus difficile à faire. Même dans nos moments les plus détendus, nous gardons inconsciemment le contrôle par le biais d’un effort subtil. Et cet effort se maintient tout au long de notre vie, et plus encore dans les moments de difficulté et de désespoir. Les conséquences de …”
Un texte qui explore la nature de l’abandon… (LIRE LA SUITE…)
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The Waiting Room
“There is a subtle waiting lingering inside us. Do you feel it? I do. Let’s have a look at it. It’s an expectation, a yearning, a feeling that says that the now, what is happening for me right now, is not quite enough. In whatever way I may look at it, that’s very clear. This is definitely not enough. Period. And off I go, keeping on living as if one day, maybe, if I’m lucky enough, if all the good stars align …”
A playful exploration into the feeling of waiting… (READ MORE…)
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A History of Veiling
“Why was I never told? To all appearances, there is no world out there. The world is empty. With no real substance. Well a substance is hat work. One with the most beautiful, exquisite shine. That explains the beauty. But look for solidity around you and you won’t find it. Look for something that exists on its own accord and you will grasp nothing but thin ether. …”
A short divagation on the question of veiling… (READ MORE…)
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The Navel of the World
“How come if we feel to be a little body amongst billions of other bodies, how come if we are a little thing lost, moving in a vast world, that we feel to be so important, like the centre of the world. My thoughts may tell me that I am a small, separate being. But in reality I feel that I am bigger than that. I feel that my little person happens to be most of the time…”
A short reverie on being the centre of the world… (READ MORE…)
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The Dawn Within 