The first of the mahabhutas is prithvi or earth. When I think of the earth element, I think of stability, grounding, earthiness, nurture. My experience is that I can more deeply connect to this element in ourselves by emphasizing what… (READ MORE)
As I write, big fat flakes of snow are falling against a pale gray sky that is struggling to turn to daylight. It is too early to know how much of the storm will be snow or freezing rain or… (READ MORE)
I spent a few hours this weekend reading Joseph Campbell’s Baksheesh and Brahman, which is Campbell’s journals from a year in India from 1954-55 (I’m now about a third of the way through). Campbell writes that he went to India… (READ MORE)
The mahabhutas are the grossest, most physical of the 36 tattvas described in Kashmir Shaivism. They are: prithivi — earth or solidity; ap (or jala) — water or liquidity, agni (or tejas) — fire or formativity; vayu — air; akasha… (READ MORE)
My earliest exposure to eastern mysticism was through Salinger and the Beats, which I read avidly in high school and even junior high. The Beats were hipper and smarter than I could ever hope to be (and they weren’t so… (READ MORE)
My dear friend from college, Dan Harper, just posted the following on his website. I feel fortunate to have a friend who inspires me to me more learned and more concerned. Martin Luther King would have been 80 today. On… (READ MORE)
One of my father’s joke bits of wisdom is “everything in moderation, including moderation.” When I first studied philosophy academically, I was very much taken with Aristotle’s concept of the “golden mean,” which (this is a gross oversimplification) advocates living… (READ MORE)
When we can connect to the essence of the element of akasha, space, within ourselves, we feel less crowded by things pressing in on the outside, whether it be actual confinement or overcrowdedness or the sense of crowding from having… (READ MORE)
My favorite sutra in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s is, II.16, “heyam dukham anagatam.” This translates roughly as “the pain that is yet to come can be avoided.” What does this have to do with a forecast of a hard freeze? My… (READ MORE)
I am returning to a contemplation of teachings about the tattvas (the 36 elements in Kashir Shaivism; in Vedanta only 25). Each time I go back to study, practice, and contemplate the tattvas, a new understanding arises about how I… (READ MORE)