Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Hi
Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Quotes from Osho meditation series..
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Seven spiritual laws of success by Deepak Chopra
Monday, September 7, 2009
Osho - Just go on watching your Breathing
Osho - People go on doing things almost in a sleep. Just become a little more alert. Do whatsoever you are doing, but bring the quality of consciousness to your actions -- there is no other method. And you can bring that quality to small things and that is helpful. Sitting, just watch your breathing. The breath goes in, watch; the breath goes out, watch. Just go on watching your breathing. And it is of great help because if you watch your breathing, thinking stops.
This is something to be understood. Either you can think or you can watch your breathing. You can't do both together. Breathing and thinking are such processes that only one can exist in you -- in awareness. In unawareness, both can continue: you can go on breathing and you can go on thinking.
But if you become aware, either you can think or you can breathe; and when you breathe with awareness, thinking disappears. Your whole consciousness becomes focused on breathing. And breathing is such a simple process: you need not do it, it is already happening. You can just bring your consciousness to it.
Buddha became enlightened through this simple method. He calls it vipassana, insight. Breathing brings great insight and when you are aware of breathing, the whole thought process simply comes to a stop -- and great stillness arises. After watching your breathing, it will be easy to watch your thinking directly, because breathing is a little gross.
Thinking is more subtle. Thoughts have no weight, they are weightless; they can't be measured, they are immeasurable. That's why the materialists cannot accept them. Matter means measure -- that which can be measured is matter. So thought is not matter because it cannot be measured. It is, and yet it cannot be measured; hence it is an epiphenomenon.
The materialist says, "It is only a by-product, a side effect, a shadow phenomenon" -- just as you walk in the sun, a shadow follows you. But the shadow is nothing. You walk in life and thinking arises, but it is only a shadow. If you watch this shadow, this epiphenomenon, these thoughts and the processes of thought... it is going to be a more subtle phenomenon because it is not as gross as breathing.
But first, learn the process of awareness through breathing and then move to thinking. And you will be surprised: the more you watch your thinking... again, either you can watch or you can think. Both cannot be done simultaneously. If you watch, thinking disappears.
If thinking appears, watching disappears. When you have become alert enough to watch your thoughts and let them disappear through watching, then move to feeling -- which is even more subtle. And these are the three steps of vipassana. First breathing, second thinking, third feeling. And when all these three have disappeared, what is left is your being. To know it is to know all. To conquer it is to conquer all.
Source: from Osho Book "Dhammapada Vol 6"
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Who is Ajahn Brahm?
Early life
Ajahn Brahm came from a working-class background and won a scholarship to study Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University in the late 1960s. After graduating from Cambridge he taught in high school for one year before traveling to Thailand to become a monk and train with the Venerable Ajahn Chah Bodhinyana Mahathera.
Study and ordination
Ajahn Brahm was ordained in Bangkok at the age of twenty-three by the Abbot of Wat Saket. He subsequently spent nine years studying and training in the forest meditation tradition under Venerable Ajahn Chah.
Coming to Australia
The then Venerable Brahm was invited to Perth, Australia by the Buddhist Society of Western Australia to assist Ajahn Jagaro in teaching duties. Initially they both lived in an old house in the suburb of North Perth, but in late 1983 purchased 97 acres (393,000 m²) of rural and forested land in the hills of Serpentine south of Perth. The land was to become Bodhinyana Monastery (named after their teacher, Ajahn Chah Bodhinyana). Bodhinyana was to become the first dedicated Buddhist monastery in the Southern Hemisphere and is today the largest community of Buddhist monks in Australia.
Initially there were no buildings on the land, and as there were only a few Buddhists in Perth at this time, and little funding, the monks themselves began building to save money. Ajahn Brahm learnt plumbing and brick-laying and built many of the current buildings himself.
Becoming a leader
In 1994, Ajahn Jagaro took a sabbatical leave from Western Australia and disrobed a year later. Left in charge, Ajahn Brahm took on the role and was soon being invited to provide his teachings in other parts of Australia and South-East Asia. He has been a speaker at the International Buddhist Summit in Phnom Penh in 2002, and at three Global Conferences on Buddhism. He also dedicates time and attention to the sick and dying, those in prison or ill with cancer, people wanting to learn to meditate, and also to his Sangha of monks at Bodhinyana.
Ajahn Brahm has also been influential in establishing Dhammasara Nuns' Monastery at Gidgegannup in the hills north-east of Perth to be a wholly independent monastery, where the Sri Lankan trained, Australian nun Ajahn Sr. Vayama is currently abbess.
Achievements
Whilst still a junior monk, Ajahn Brahm was asked to undertake the compilation of an English-language guide to the Buddhist monastic code - the vinaya - which later became the basis for monastic discipline in many Theravadan monasteries in Western countries.
Currently Ajahn Brahm is the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery, in Serpentine, Western Australia, the Spiritual Director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, Spiritual Adviser to the Buddhist Society of Victoria, Spiritual Adviser to the Buddhist Society of South Australia, Spiritual Patron of the Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore, Spiritual Patron of the Bodhikusuma Centre in Sydney.
In October 2004, Ajahn Brahm was awarded the John Curtin Medal for his vision, leadership and service to the Australian community by Curtin University. He is currently working with monks and nuns of all Buddhist traditions to establish the Australian Sangha Association.
Ajahn Brahm is the author of Opening the Door of Your Heart: And Other Buddhist Tales of Happiness (later published as Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties) and Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook.
Source:Wikipedia
Posts
