Please open your heart and join me in sending loving thoughts and prayers to our brothers and sisters in Belgium as they try to navigate a path thru this hideous day.
We stand with you, we embrace you, we pray for peace in our troubled world.
Let peace begin with Lama Surya Das.
Watch Ram Dass and his longtime brother Lama Surya Das playfully explore the meaning of Sadhana (daily spiritual practice) in their lives. Join them from May 4-9th on the healing island of Maui for a transformational retreat, accompanied by daily yoga, chant, meditation and spiritual talks at an exotic beachfront paradise.
These are not easy times. Nor should they be, necessarily. Yet, is this to be merely the winter of our discontent, or shall we gather our wits and best selves and strive together to do something meaningful and effective about it –with local (US) election cycles impending while environmental degradation threatens and fear of violence hounds us at home and abroad.
When people write me of their struggles to lead a more fulfilled life, I often see that many are very hard on themselves, prompting me to remind them to lighten up, enlighten up a little and give themselves a break. Self-compassion is an important part of cultivating lovingkindness and warm empathic compassion which feels what others are feeling and resonates with them.
When you learn to better love and accept yourself, the world follows suit; this is ancient, timeless wisdom. So much is subjective. But don’t take my word for it–check it out.
Most of us strive to do the best we can amidst life’s inevitable challenges, obstacles, and surprises. If you are in this seat, remember to pay homage to the Buddha sitting in your seat: please don’t overlook her!
Learn why the Dali Lama stresses this Buddhist teaching and these meditations above all other. Lama Surya Das shares the art of “inter-meditating” and two powerful Tonglen meditations from his book “Make Me One with Everything” and shows how we can we transcend the mundane into the sacred. Learn how to inter-meditate and see the world through someone else’s eyes. For more details visit here – http://www.fireitupwithcj.com/bodhichitta-tonglen-meditations-with-lama-surya-das/
Surya Das (born Jeffrey Miller in 1950) is an American-born lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is a poet, chantmaster, spiritual activist and author of many popular works on Buddhism; a teacher and spokesperson for Buddhism in the West. He has long been involved in charitable relief projects in the Third World and in interfaith dialogue. Surya Das is a Dharma heir of Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, a Nyingma master of the non-sectarian Rime movement. His name, which means “Servant of the Sun” in a combination of Sanskrit (surya) and Hindi (das, from the Sanskrit dasa), was given to him by the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba. For more details visit here – http://www.allspirit.co.uk/suryadas.html
This Precious Life – Lama Surya Das
“The thing is that this life is so precious and mysterious, I don’t know what to say about it most of the time. Words are like birds, passing through the trackless sky. The dog barking, the sound of the purling stream, the wind among the weeping willow trees: how are these not right off the tongue of the Buddha?”
Lama Surya Das 