From the breath of the saints grows a green garden in the heart. RUMI

May each of your pores become an ear to receive the Guide’s words. RUMI

MY NEW BOOK, SHARED SACRED LANDSCAPES, ON AMAZON.COM

Well, guys, I've had two books published at the same time: Rumi: Tales to Live By, and Shared Sacred Landscapes, co-authored by Prawin Adhikari.

do check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/Shared-Sacred-Landscapes-Stories-Rinpoche/dp/9937623820/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505991433&sr=1-6

Lay the whole of your ‘we’ and ‘I’ before the Beloved. Then all will be yours. RUMI

Who breathes us? Did we make our bodies? Our minds? As Kabir says, ‘In me, there is nothing of me. Everything is yours. When I surrender to you what is already yours, what remains of me?’

Easier said than done. “I, me, me, mine” rules the world. It is important to meditate on this thought and practice it if we want peace and happiness.

MOST OF US ARE ABSENT IN/TO/THROUGH OUR LIVES

What nonsense the brain thinks. It really is like the girl who collects all the eggs in her chicken coup, and walks into town to sell them, full of fantasies with what she will do with the money, this that and the other, endlessly. I could, if I had more energy than I have, give you more details about the happy scenarios in her head, but the devil’s in the details, they say. This means many things, but right now what I mean by it is that details take up so much damn energy. But to get back to the girl on the bridge: she is so much in her head that she isn’t looking where she is going, trips on something on the road, and all the eggs go smash or into the river.

I observe myself carefully and know I do this. My fantasies are not only happy ones but also terrifying: scenarios of sickness, accidents, maiming, death. I live them out in all their detail. The brain doesn’t conserve or stint with energy when it comes to these details. 

With age I have learnt to snap out of them as soon as I become aware of them. Earlier, I don’t think I was even aware of this tendency in me, and in mankind in general.

We may not be carrying eggs, but our casualty is life itself.  Failure of presence is failure indeed. How few of us even realize that we move absently through our lives; that we create more suffering than we must inevitably get, multiplying it, as it were, like blind, dark math magicians conjuring up ghostly images made of smoke. This life is dreamlike as it is -- how much more unreal are the unending fantasies in our head?

Like Mark Twain said: I have known a lot of trouble in my life that never happened.

Like the Vedas say: don't mistake a rope for a snake, or a snake for a rope. 

 Like Rumi says, Abstain from distracting thoughts, abstain! RUMI

Abstain from distracting thought, abstain! RUMI

Here it is again! We have to first become aware that we have an endless stream, perhaps river of thoughts flowing through our minds. We are rivers. But when we forget to keep clean the rivers that we are, we get polluted. Thoughts drag us this way and that, and we become their victims and slaves. Thought is a wonderful thing when it is channeled, like a irrigation canal, to feed our farms, orchards, gardens. And these have to be weeded, my friends, to make them more productive and beautiful.

Don’t hurt your body: the water in this jug is joined with the Ocean. RUMI

What does this quote mean? It is self evident, but also very deep. We hurt our bodies in many ways: by not eating and drinking healthy, wholesome things, by not exercising it, by not listening to its silent voice. We hurt our bodies most by thinking thoughts that are hurtful to us. Yes, the brain and the mind are also housed in our bodies. Most of the time we are deaf to our body's reasoning. How often do we even think about them? They comprise a very large part of what we think of as 'I.' They are our greatest gifts, for they allow our consciousness to experience the multi facets of existence. How often are we grateful for it? Have you thanked your body today for all the wonderful things it does, sees, hears, touches, tastes, feels?  We are not accustomed to thinking about them, or if we do, it is only to deck it out in clothes, jewelry, make-up. We do not think at all about that water which our bodies contain, the water that Rumi is reminding us of. There is an invisible conduit between our bodies and that Ocean from which we come and to which we return. The Guides never tire of remind us that we contain this Ocean. Yes.