His Holiness the Karmapa talks about how he was discovered to be the reincarnation of a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism. In telling his story, he urges us to work on not just technology and design, but the technology and design of the heart. He is translated onstage by Tyler Dewar.
About His Holiness the Karmapa
Ogyen Trinley Dorje is the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism devoted to preserving and propagating Buddhist teachings.
Why you should listen to him:
The name “Karmapa” means “the one who carries out Buddha-activity,” and for seventeen lifetimes, a karmapa has embodied the teachings of Buddha in tibet. The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, was born a nomad in Tibet in 1985 and recognized by the Dalai Lama in 1992 as the 17th Karmapa. The young boy was brought to the Tsurphu monastery to live and study for his life as a spiritual teacher and activist.
At age 14, he made a daring flight from Tibet, and now works from a temporary camp in Dharamsala, near his friend the Dalai Lama. (After the Dalai Lama, he’s seen as Tibetan Buddhism’s second-highest-ranking spiritual leader, though the two men lead different schools within the faith.) In 2008, he made a long visit to the United States, where he spoke and taught at Buddhist centers around the country. And in 2009 he toured Europe, speaking about faith — but also about protecting the environment.
“The young Kamarpa is the most powerful Buddhist meditation teacher. His scholarship is excellent, and his youth and his presence makes a profound impact.”
Dzochen Ponlop Rinpoche, quoted in Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, PBS.org
The spiritual awakening begins with some kind of uneasiness, a generalized and widespread premonition that we are in the final times of a cycle.
The search for truth leads to spirituality, to a door in our heart that allows us to reach another type of knowledge: the inner one. Through that knowledge we can achieve mystical experiences; those are experiences from our soul or spirit that allow us to know the mysteries of life and nature.
In order to reach that knowledge, many people resort to certain practices: Yoga, Tai Chi, relaxation, meditation, techniques to activate chakras, astral projection, etc. All those are helping tools, but the true awakening is that of the consciousness. It is achieved with will, in a rigorous work upon ourselves that enables us to grow spiritually until we reach inner enlightenment.
Our planet is about to undergo a process of change. The time for a new era is coming close: a period when spirituality, love and peace will prevail. But before, great sufferings will come to this humanity.
This Sacred Earth: The 2012 Phenomenon is a documentary that uses the 2012 prophecies as a way to ask how we can fall back in love with Mother Earth to save both ourselves and the planet. Imbued with our trademark lightness of spirit, love of beauty and reverence for the natural world, this film takes you beyond fear and into hope and feel-good!
From our belief that a disconnection from nature is at the root cause of our planetary crisis, the film asks 17 wisdomkeepers from around the globe what each one of us can do to ensure the 2012 indigenous prophecy of a millennium of peace becomes a reality. Enjoy and learn, be empowered, uplifted and inspired, tap your feet to the music of Tribe World Ensemble and throw away your uncertainty about tomorrow.
“This Sacred Earth: The 2012 Phenomenon is a must-see film for anyone who needs a good dollop of hope about the planet, 2012 or themselves. There’s a lot of soul food and wisdom here to launch us into a new era of peace.
This film won a standing ovation at the Perth 2009 Conscious Living 2012 New Earth Festival because it is a heart – and hope – filled delight and changes people from the first frames.”
For many, times are hard. Wealth is something you might have known in the past. But there is less evidence of it now.
What about the innate wealth of an ordinary person? Not their possessions, lifestyle or money in the bank. The wealth of who they are, deep down. The wealth of their spirit. Your spirit, My spirit. The spirit that unites and makes up our common humanity. Our human community.
For those of us who feel unsure of our financial futures, how can we put money in its place and yet ensure a higher quality of life with greater health, well-being and happiness?
How? Wait, there is a little more yet before the how. Maybe for you, just getting through the week is challenging enough.
Have you grown accustomed to the idea that wealth is associated with money — alone? I have. I am in the process of changing my mind. The change is one that is happening from the inside out. Get wealthy first, and then go for for money second.
What on Earth do I mean by that? In so many ways, we are told that to be happy we need this that or the other “thing”. You know, a holiday in Bali, a sleek Porsche, Jimmy Choo handbag, the iPhone series 5 — maybe not yet available, but soon will be. All of these are wonderful in their way. Are they necessary for happiness? You can answer that.
I am all for a rich life, to enjoy the best that is on offer, materially and otherwise. The issue is that money and possessions can get “sticky.” That is to say we can become over-dependent upon them. Attached and fearing their loss, we become driven to protect and increase the supply, in case we lose the comfort and pleasure they give us. Very few of us in the so-called developed world suffer the deprivations of many in countries such as Kenya, where millions lack the most fundamental needs as we see them.
Fear of loss does not enrich well-being, peace of mind or prosperity. Prolonged fear depletes and, eventually, makes you sick.
The change of mind I refer to above is taking place from the inside out — from what I call the soul level, or inspiration. What if we were each born with all we ever needed to sustain and fulfill our lives? That within us we have extraordinary reserves of as yet untapped wealth in the forms of personal assets, talents, gifts, creativity — do you get the idea? These assets have of course to be played out in some way in the world to become useful, of value to others and fulfilled.
And when they are, life becomes very rich and rewarding, so much so that in their expression, you are fulfilled and have the experience of wealth. In this way, your wealthiness is very much in your own hands. What is more, the beauty of this is that in the fullness, you are not seeking “out there” for things to make you happy. You are happy. Period. And as your purchasing power grows, even by small amounts, so you may wish to participate in some of the wonderful things that money can buy.
A friend in her 70s, with a very limited budget discovered that she could go to her local flower market at the end of the sales day and pick up beautiful flowers at bargain prices to decorate her small apartment. Cut flowers speak to her of luxury. It is amazing how much you can get for a little when you put your mind to it. It pays us all to be savvy shoppers.
Of course you need money to cover life’s basic essentials. Maybe less than you think. It is amazing how you can develop a prosperous frame of mind, such that your euro, dollar, pound, yen goes further. It takes focus and discipline to buy simply what you need, no excess. It becomes a game. The game is fun.
5 Keys to Restoring Your Spirit of Wealth
1. Be a giver. Find something to give, if not money, your time, your love, your kindness, a smile. Giving affirms your natural wealth.
2. Be grateful. First thing in the morning and last thing at night, stop to count your blessings, some of those things you might take for granted — your friends, family, ability to talk and to listen, your education, nature around you. Write them down in a journal. Gratitude makes you feel full and raises your energy.
3. Be creative. Find new ways of managing the money you have, develop your sense of resourcefulness, use your imagination. Cultivate wealthy attitudes. Join with others to share innovations and ideas.
4. Look for joy. Find the fun in life around you, the smile on the face of a baby, the antics of animals, greet yourself with a smile in the mirror.
5. Simplify your life. Wealth could be less a matter of what you have, but what you are able to live without. Let go of the excess, give away, sell or throw out what no longer really serves or nourishes you.
If you are in a boring job that pays the rent, keep at it. But take some time to explore your dream of what your life can become. How would you really like to be living? What does wealth “mean” for you? What might a wealthy life mean for you?
Please join in the conversation. If there were a “wealth school” at which you could discover how to make the most of your life, and your money, what would you like to learn?
A growing understanding of our universe reveals two remarkable dynamics at work that together intensify and expand our feeling for the spiritual nature of existence. The first dynamic is the universe story: A grand narrative that portrays humanity as descendants of a vast, creative lineage of life that stretches over nearly 14 billion years. The second dynamic is the universe emerging as a fresh creation at every moment.
While the universe story provides a stunning narrative of the “horizontal” unfolding across time, the insight of an emerging universe adds the “vertical” dimension of the universe continuously arising in time. The vertical dynamic of continuous creation slices through all that exists and reveals everything as a single orchestration happening all at once. At every moment, we are a part of this grand unity of creation.
The unfolding of the universe through time demonstrates an amazingly powerful and patient process at work. The continuous creation of the cosmos in time reveals another, stunningly powerful dynamic. When we put these two extraordinary processes together at an intersection called “now,” it reveals how we simultaneously exist in a place of both creative freedom and profound communion. Being and becoming converge into an experience beyond words — and we recognize that we already live in the realm of the sacred.
Our awakening to a new understanding of the universe in both its horizontal and its vertical aspects represents a stunning re-imagining of where we are as a species. Realizing that we live at the intersection of both the horizontal unfolding of the universe and the vertical arising of the universe presents a view of existence that reaches beyond any particular nation, region, or ethnic group. We are bio-cosmic beings who are waking up to the fact that we live in an ever-emergent universe and our evolutionary task is to grow into the bigness of who we are, both personally and collectively. This vision of the human journey is big enough to honor the diversity of our past and to act as a beacon for our collective future.
Although the idea of an ever-emergent universe has ancient roots in human experience, it is also radically new as the frontiers of modern science offer a growing recognition of how dynamic the universe truly is. The universe is not static, sitting quietly in empty space; instead, the totality of the universe is everywhere in motion and being regenerated moment by moment — a process requiring the flow-through of a stupendous amount of energy. In the words of cosmologist Brian Swimme, “The universe emerges out of an all-nourishing abyss not only fourteen billion years ago but in every moment.” Moment by moment, the universe emerges as a single orchestration — a uni-verse or single verse of manifestation. Because nothing is left out of the regeneration of the universe, we are participants in a cosmic scale process whether we are conscious of it or not.
This insight is not restricted to science. Based upon decades of research described in my book “The Living Universe,” harvesting the wisdom of human experience is like watching a picture gradually come into focus and seeing an extraordinary image of the universe emerging before our eyes. Within each major tradition — Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Indigenous, and more — we can find remarkably similar descriptions of the universe and the life force that sustains it: Christians affirm that God is not separate from this world but continuously creates it anew, so that we live, move, and have our being in God. Muslims declare that the entire universe is continually coming into being, and that each moment is a new “occasion” for Allah to create the universe. Hindus proclaim that the entire universe is a single body that is being continually danced into creation by a divine Life force or Brahman. Buddhists state that the entire universe arises freshly at every moment in an unceasing flow of interdependent, co-arising where everything depends upon everything else. Taoists state that the Tao is the “Mother of the Universe,” the inexhaustible source from which all things rise and fall without ceasing. Confucians view our universe as a unified and interpenetrating whole that is sustained and nourished by the vitality of the life force or ch’i. Indigenous peoples declare that an animating wind or life force blows through all things in the world and there is aliveness and sacred power everywhere. And many Western thinkers portray the universe as a single, living creature continually regenerating itself as it evolves toward higher levels of complexity and consciousness. Beneath the differences in language, a common reality is being described — our life is part of a larger life that is being continuously renewed. The universe inhabits us as much as we inhabit the universe.
The unity of existence is not an experience to be created; rather, it is an always-manifesting condition waiting to be appreciated and welcomed into awareness. The “power of now” derives from the entire universe arising at every moment as an extremely precise flow. When we are in the now, we are “reality surfing” — riding the wave of continuous creation. Each moment is a fresh formation of the universe, emerging seamlessly and flawlessly. It is the doubly powerful nature of life at the intersection of emergence and evolution that gives such intensity and span of meaning to existence, and awakens naturally a spiritual appreciation for all of life.
A Living Universe?
Duane Elgin takes us on a journey to explore what kind of universe we live in? Who are we? Where are we?
We recently went into escrow on our house, but don’t yet have a new house to move into. As excited as we are about our move (just across the San Francisco Bay from Concord to Marin County), it feels pretty scary to not yet know exactly where we’ll be living next month.
With this big change and a few others coming soon, I’ve been noticing how I deal with and relate to change. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship to change. I love the excitement, growth opportunity and newness of change. But, at the same time, I can easily fall into states of worry, fear and become overwhelmed when facing change, especially big ones.
How do you feel about change? While it may depend on the specific change (i.e. one we want versus one we don’t want, or one that seems exciting versus one that seems hard or even “bad”), most of us seek and fear change simultaneously. Even positive changes can be unsettling or downright upsetting. And, while each of us has a unique personality and perspective, many of us tend to be creatures of habit.
Change is one of the main “constants” in life, ironically. However, we don’t usually spend all that much time thinking about our relationship to change or specifically expanding on our ability to adapt to change — we usually deal with it from a place of survival, reaction or necessity.
What if we embraced change more consciously and learned how to not only “manage” it, but thrive through it? Whether you’re someone who enjoys change and handles it quite well, or you hate it and get totally stressed out by it, all of us can benefit from embracing change more deliberately and supporting those around us as we all go through the big and small changes of life — especially these days.
Here are some things you can do and think about as you deal with change in your own life — so as to more effectively and peacefully deal with it when it shows up.
1) Become consciously aware of your relationship to change. Knowing how you deal with change, what stresses you out about it, what allows you to navigate it most effectively and what kind of support you need as you move through the change process are all important elements of embracing change. It’s rarely the circumstances themselves that cause us stress or difficulty; it’s our relationship to them. By altering our relationship to change, we can become much more peaceful and successful in dealing with it.
2) Acknowledge and express your true feelings (especially your fear). When change occurs, there are usually a number of different emotions we experience. We tend to focus most of our attention on the details, specifics and circumstances, not so much on our emotions. However, it is our emotional experience and reaction that dictates much of our effectiveness (or lack thereof) in dealing with change. Whether it’s something we consider “good” or “bad,” fear is almost always associated with change, because we’re moving into something unknown and often uncomfortable. By acknowledging and expressing our fear (and other emotions) in an authentic way, we can take back our power from the situation, get real about how we’re feeling, and move through it with more ease and grace. There’s nothing wrong with any of the emotions we experience during change, the problems begin to arise when we don’t express our emotions authentically.
3) Get support. As with most things in life, change is much easier to deal with when we get help. We don’t have to go through it all alone and there are probably many people in our lives who have gone through similar changes before and can support us in the process. Asking for and receiving help from other people can be challenging for many of us and can feel quite vulnerable. However, one of my favorite sayings is, “The answer is always ‘no’ if you don’t ask.” Getting support not only makes dealing with change easier for us, it allows other people to be of service, which is something most people love to have the opportunity to do.
4) Look for the gold. There is “gold’ in the midst of every change — even the most painful and difficult ones. When change is more “positive,” it can seem easier to find the gold in it. However, positive change can also be tricky because we don’t understand why we still may experience fear or discontent and sometimes won’t acknowledge these and other feelings due to our own embarrassment. With change that is more “negative,” it can often be hard to find or see the gold. When dealing with difficult changes in our lives, being able to authentically get in touch with the gifts, blessings and growth opportunities available to us can help as we navigate our way through the experience and also allow us to evolve in the process.
Have empathy and compassion for yourself and others in going through change. It’s not easy for most of us. By embracing change we become not only more effective in dealing with it, but more peaceful, present, and powerful in our lives.
Mike Robbins is a sought-after motivational keynote speaker, coach, and the author of the bestselling books Focus on the Good Stuff (Hardcover, Wiley) and Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken (Hardcover, Wiley).
He’s the former President of the Board of the Peace Alliance, a non-profit organization committed to creating a culure of peace and campaigning to create a cabinet level U.S. Department of Peace.
Mike and his work have been featured on ABC News and the Oprah radio network, as well as in Forbes, Ladies Home Journal, Fast Company, Self, the Washington Post, many others. He’s also a regular contributor to Oprah.com and the Huffington Post. He has worked with clients such as Google, Wells Fargo, AT&T, Apple, Genentech, and more. Mike’s books have been translated into ten languages. For more information about his work, books, media appearances, and speaking – feel free to visit http://www.mike-robbins.com.
Change Makers – Mike Robbins
Mike Robbins, Author and motivational speaker in conversation with Gopi Kallayil on the Public Access TV show Change Makers. Mike is a former Stanford baseball player and the author of two books – Focus On The Good Stuff, and Be Yourself: Everyone Else Is Already Taken
Since 9/11 there has been a pervasive sense of anxiety in the world, and at the same time a search for spiritual answers. Is violence an aspect of human nature that can be cured, or are we caught in an endless cycle of violence that will never end? One of the most optimistic answers to that dilemma came from Buddha more than two thousand years ago. In the light of what he taught, I wanted to post my thoughts about the Buddhist solution and what it means for you and me as we seek to live in a troubling world.
Anyone coming to spirituality from the outside asks the same question: “What can it do for me?” There’s no universal key that unlocks the truth. However great the teaching, unless it can be made personal, it is sleeping. There’s no cut-and-dried case, especially today. You and I seek spirituality one by one, on our own terms. We have our own specific suffering that we want to heal. As old traditions no longer bind us together, isolation, ironically enough, has become the new tradition for millions of modern people. Feeling alone, unwanted, unloved, weak, lost, and empty is how the human disease feels today.
At no time in history have there been more stateless persons, refugees, overpopulation, and restless migration. Globalism makes the individual feel lost in the world, overwhelmed by its chaos, which always seems to be teetering between madness and catastrophe. Yet when people came to Buddha, they brought the same complaints. They felt helpless in the face of natural disasters, war, and poverty. They couldn’t comprehend a world on the edge of madness.
This dilemma has brought me closer to Buddha in recent years. I carry with me a few seminal ideas that have guided my life so far. One of them was expressed by Mahatma Gandhi when he said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Because the world is so huge, it came as a revelation to me–and also a mystery–that by changing myself I can affect the world. This idea was not original to Gandhi. It’s an offshoot of a much older idea, traceable to ancient India, which says, “As you are, so is the world.”
That, too, is a revelation and a mystery.
Most of us survive by pretending that the world is “out there,” at arm’s length, which gives us breathing space. We can pursue our comfortable lives without merging into the poverty, injustice, and violence that surrounds us. However, our comfort zone disappears if the world is as we are. The individual is suddenly thrust center stage, holding responsibility for troubles that begin “in here” before they appear “out there.”
This is the same as saying that the world begins in consciousness. Buddha was famously practical. He told people to stop analyzing the world and its troubles. He also told them to stop relying on religious rituals and sacrifices, which are external. Buddha was the avatar of the situation we find ourselves in today, because he refused to rely on the traditional gods or God. He didn’t use the social safety net of the priestly caste with its automatic connection to spiritual privilege. Above all, he accepted the inescapable fact that each person is ultimately alone in the world. This aloneness is the very disease Buddha set out to cure.
His cure was a waking-up process, in which suffering came to be seen as rooted in false consciousness, and specifically in the dulled awareness that causes us to accept illusion for reality. The reason that people resort to violence, for example, is not that violence is inherent in human nature. Rather, violence is the result of a wrong diagnosis. That diagnosis puts the limited ego-self first in the world, and regards the demands of “I, me, mine” as the most important things to attain. The reason that people react with fear in the face of violence is that the ego goes into a panic trying to defend itself and its attachment to the physical body. The answer to violence for both the aggressor and the victim is to see through the false claims of the ego and thus to come to a true understanding of who we are and why we are here. Buddha’s answer remains radical, but its truth offers a way out that may be our best hope for the future. Let’s examine his solution in detail.
Adyashanti asks us to let go of our struggles with life and open to the full promise of spiritual awakening: the end of delusion and the discovery of our essential being. In his fifteen years as a spiritual teacher, he has found that the simpler the teaching, the greater its power to change our lives. In Falling into Grace, Adyashanti shares what he considers fundamental insights that will “spark a revolution in the way we perceive life,” through a progressive inquiry exploring:
*The human dilemma — the concept of a separate self and the choice to stop believing the thoughts that perpetuate suffering
*”Taking the backward step” into the pure potential of the present moment
* Why spiritual awakening can be a disturbing process
* Intimacy and availability — feeling absolute union with every part of our experience
*True autonomy — the unique expression of our own sense of freedom
In the same way that we fall into the arms of a loved one or drop our heads on the pillow at night, we can surrender into the beauty and truth of who and what we really are. Falling into Grace is a book that gets to the core of why we suffer. It is Adyashanti’s invitation “to be taken by a moment of grace and fall into a sense of life when it is not separate from you, when life is actually an expression of something indefinable, mysterious, and immense.”
About the Author
Adyashanti began teaching in 1996 after a series of transformative spiritual awakenings at the request of his Zen teacher of 14 years. Today, his retreats are so popular that would-be attendees must win a lottery held only twice a year. Adya’s teachings have been compared to some of the early Ch’an (Zen) masters of China as well as teachers of Advaita Vedanta in India. A resident of California, his books include The End of Your World (Sounds True, 2009) and True Meditation (Sounds True, 2006).
In this essential satsang, Adyashanti explores two fundamentally different motivations that human beings bring to spirituality. He first shows how the psychological desire to feel better and be constantly happy only leads to persistent suffering. He then reveals how the existential drive to see what’s really true regardless of our emotional state can free us to discover the simplicity and happiness of what we already are.
What is this thing called “self”? Does it actually exist? In this deeply penetrating satsang on the central teaching of the Buddha, Adyashanti invites a direct investigation and experience of who we are. By recognizing our impersonal nature, we can discover the one reality that is beyond the imaginary self.
