Gaia Community: Tom Yeshe's Blog

Amma's message

http://t4om.gaia.com — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:08:21 GMT

"Love is a universal religion, and this is what society really needs. Love should be expressed through our every word and action."

"We already have this love within us in all its fullness. Life cannot exist without love. Life and love are inseparable; they are one and the same."

"Children, we shouldn't allow the beauty and grace of selfless love and service to be wiped off the face of the earth. The world should know that a life dedicated to selfless love and service to humanity is possible."

"Lending a helping hand to a neglected soul, feeding the hungry, giving the sad and dejected a compassionate smile — this is the language of love. Let us focus on what we can give to others, for only then will we experience deep joy and fulfillment in life."

"No matter how rich we are, as long as we have no compassion, we, ourselves, are truly living in utter poverty. If we are compassionate towards our fellow beings, it is like gold with a fragrance, something utterly unique. Its value is beyond all words."

"There is one Truth that shines through all of Creation. Rivers and mountains, plants and animals, the sun, the moon and the stars, you and I — all are expressions of this one Reality."

"By establishing a loving relationship between humankind and Nature, we ensure both the balance of Nature and the progress of the human race."

—from http://www.amma.fi/kielet/eng_amma.php?page=quot

Tags: Amma, love, life, universal, Reality, One

Love and Death: Are We Having Fun Yet?

http://t4om.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:53:31 GMT

Death is part of life, which is funny: Life's a joke; death is the punchline. Love is how you get it! Love. Funny Thing!

Tags: love, life, death, fun, joke, Thing, Everything

Torus IV

http://t4om.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:29:13 GMT

http://www.ericjhellergallery.com/images/art/TorusIV.jpg

Tags:

Orange Blues

http://t4om.gaia.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:12:45 GMT

Orange Blues

Tags: Orange, Blues, Yeshe, improvisation, piano, joy, color, Spirit

Twilight Piano

http://t4om.gaia.com — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:08:27 GMT

Twilight Piano

Tags: piano, neoclassical, improvisation, healing, light, universal love, universal, love

How to Know God Exists: "You yourself are the proof ..."

http://t4om.gaia.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:44:28 GMT

Amma

12 April 2008 — Gold Coast, Australia

During the Gold Coast Retreat, Amma held a question-and-answer session with all of the devotees. Towards the end of the session, many people were still raising their hands. For the last question, Amma pointed to a man standing way in the back of the crowd. When he took the microphone, he humbly asked, “Amma, I have seen so many spiritual masters. Can you please answer the question I have sought from all of them: How can I know—not believe—but know that God exists?”

Hearing his question, Amma laughed and said, “You yourself are the proof, because you are God.” Amma then explained that to deny God’s existence is like using one’s tongue to deny the existence of the tongue. Amma then called the man to her. When he approached, she said, “Open your heart and love like a child. Then you will know God.” Hearing this, he leaned forward and laid his head on her lap.

—Sakshi

http://www.amritapuri.org/968/how/

Tags: Amma, God, theism, atheism, spirit, laughter

Messages from the Other Side

http://t4om.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:55:18 GMT

Messages from the Other Side

Tags: Messages, Other, Side, Spirit, spirituality

What's the most memorable Halloween costume you can think of?

http://t4om.gaia.com — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:01:20 GMT

"Bull Rider"!

Tags: QaR, halloween, holidays, celebration, costumes, creativity, memories

Wilber on Devotion: The "I" Bows and Surrenders to the Great Thou

http://t4om.gaia.com — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:01:24 GMT

To wash away the feeling of "I," we need the soap of "You."

— Amma

I love this, from pages 160–161 of Integral Spirituality:
_________________________________________________

In today's America, the repression of the Great Thou often goes hand in hand with boomeritis. By emphasizing either a 3rd-person conception of Spirit as a great Web of Life, or a 1st-person conception of Spirit as Big Mind or Big Self, there is nothing before which the "I" must bow and surrender. The ego can actually hide out in 1st- and 3rd-person approaches. I simply go from
I to I-I, never having to surrender to You.

Spirit in 2nd-person is the great devotional leveler, the great ego killer, that before which the ego is humbled into Emptiness. Vipassana, Zen, shikan-taza, Vedanta, TM, and so on, simply do not confront my interior with something greater than me, only higher levels of me. But without higher levels of Thou as well -- the quadrants go all the way up! -- then one remains subtly or not-so-subtly fixated to variations on I-ness and 1st-person.* That is why the merely 1st-person approaches often retain a deep-seated arrogance.

It's understandable why so many individuals abandoned the mythic-amber God, usually when they reached college and switched to orange and green world views. Abandon the mythic God they should -- but not abandon Spirit in 2nd-person! Find, instead, the turquoise God, the indigo God, all the way up to the ultraviolet God, which is the Great Thou that is the 2nd-person face of Spirit alongside the ultraviolet I-I and the Great It of the Dharmadhatu (or realm of Reality). These are the 3 dimensions of your own formless primordial Spirit as it manifests in the world of Form, and repressing any of them is repressing your own deepest realities.

The connection of this repression with boomeritis is borne out by many commentaries, such as the following from Tulku Thondup. He points out that Tibetan Buddhism actually has a central place for devotion. And yet Western Buddhists balk. They accept the aspects of Buddhism that point to Spirit as Big Mind (1st) and Spirit as Dharma Gaia (3rd), but not devotional Spirit. "So when some Westerners become interested in Buddhism, they could be disappointed to learn about the practice of devotion. They say something like: ‘This is what we wanted to leave behind, praying to a higher authority outside ourselves.' What a funny situation, to run away from devotion, only to find belief and prayer waiting around the next corner!"

It's very simple: the point about the 3 faces of Spirit is that all 3 of them are vitally important, as dimensions of this very moment, or Spirit in 4 quadrants, all the way up, all the way down.

(At Integral Institute, we have developed a series of guided meditations -- called The 1-2-3 of God -- designed to help people move through all 3 dimensions of their own deepest Spirit. If you are interested, please check out http://www.integraltraining.com/, ILP Starter Kit. You can also see The One Two Three of God CD set from Sounds True.)

* Let me point out that this categorically is not referring to Genpo Roshi (and his Big Mind Process), a valued member of I-I who is working with us to help overcome this problem in American Buddhism.

_________________________________________________

Cheers!
~ Tom

crossposted at the Integral Institute pod

Tags: Great Thou, Thou, devotion, love, bhakti, Integral Spirituality, Wilber, Ken Wilber, surrender, bow, Emptiness

The Thing of Everything "Isness" Card

http://t4om.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:11:23 GMT

The Thing of Eveything "Isness" Card (2" x 3.5")

The business/isness is including everything.

Cheers!
~ Tom

P.S. "The Thing of Everything" is a fifty-word integral microtheory (or micrometatheory), as described by Gary P. Hampson in "Integral Re-views Postmodernism: The Way Out Is Through":

And if, like Blake (1803/1960), one is able “to see a world in a grain of sand,” then one might be able to see an entire integral theory in just one word. Perhaps an integral micropsychology, an integral micropolitics; a linguistic recursion of integrality.

— Integral Review, Issue 4, 2007, p.140

Tags: The Thing of Everything, Thing, Everything, Cheers!, isness, business, recursion, nanotextology, integral, microtheory

The Thing of Everything

http://t4om.gaia.com — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:01:25 GMT

For greater clarity, I've slightly expanded my "Thing Theory." (It's now fifty words!) :)
I've also given it a new title:

The Thing of Everything

Anything is many things*.

Each and every thing — everything — is something else, so nothing is anything exclusively.

Including everything is the Thing of Everything.

* The scope of “things” is all-inclusive, including all words and all meanings, all thoughts and all theories, from philosophy to physics, from politics to spirituality.

Cheers!
~ Tom

Tags: Thing of Everything, Thing Theory, Ralphs Club La Jolla, theory of everything, Kosmos, Yeshe, theory, philosophy, physics, politics, spirituality

Thing Theory

http://t4om.gaia.com — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:36:44 GMT

Here's my ...

Thing Theory

Anything is many things*.

Everything is something else, so nothing is anything exclusively.

Including everything is the Thing of Everything.

* The scope of "things" is all-inclusive, including all words and all meanings, all thoughts and all theories, from semiotics to physics, from politics to spirituality.

~ Tom

http://pods.zaadz.com/ralphsclublajolla/discussions/view/155960

Tags: Thing of Everything, Thing Theory, Ralphs Club La Jolla, theory of everything, Yeshe, string theory, semiotics, physics, politics, spirituality

What do you appreciate most about your mother?

http://t4om.gaia.com — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:03:07 GMT

My Guru-Mother Amma loves everyone and will give you a great hug!

amma.org

amritapuri.org

Joy

Amma

Amma's interview with Alan Steinfeld

Love,
Tom

Tags: QaR, mother, motherhood, mother's day, mom, Amma, Guru, joy, love, video, interview

The Inner Life Of A Cell

http://t4om.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 03:57:12 GMT

The Inner Life Of A Cell (HQ)

Tags:

Seeking Enlightenment and the Role of the Guru: Love

http://t4om.gaia.com — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:44:35 GMT

Via Sarlo

Wayne Liquorman Interview Snippet

Questioner: Blayne Bardo

Blayne: What do you have to say to the seeker seeking something, whether it be peace, or freedom, or enlightenment?
Wayne: The seeking happens. There is no denying that the seeking arises in certain body-mind organisms. The process through which it arises is that a normal, everyday, average person gets the notion that there must be something more to life than the pursuit of money, sex, relationships, success. She or he begins to wonder who or what she or he truly is. This is the point at which Ramana Maharshi says that your head goes into the tiger's mouth, the jaws close, and there is no escape. That is the point at which the seeking starts. You are a seeker, and as long as there is a sense of personal doership associated with the body-mind mechanism of the seeker, he or she will believe that it is he or she who is seeking. With the final or ultimate understanding what is revealed is the seeker is that which is sought.

Blayne: What role, if any, does the guru play in the seeking process?
Wayne: The common question is, "Is the guru necessary?" My answer is that there are no requirements set forth by Consciousness. Consciousness can do anything It wants within the manifestation. Seeking is a phenomenal process, and that's what's crucial to understand-seeking is a phenomenal process. It happens within phenomenality; the various progressions that occur are in phenomenality; the impulse is in phenomenality; and the final event which is the dissolution of the seeking, actually the dissolution of personal doership, is in phenomenality. All that happens is in phenomenality. The result of the process of seeking is only notionally a result, because what it reveals is what is there all the time anyway. So there is really no progress in the absolute sense. Yet within the phenomenal structure of seeking and the seeker, the guru may play a role. In fact, in the lives of many seekers the guru is a figure central to the seeking. For those who have found a guru, who have found their true guru, there is no greater phenomenal experience.
When I first met Ramesh I fell more in love than I have ever been in my life. To that point I had been fortunate enough to have experienced deep and profound love with several people-my children and wife and parents-but this kind of love pales in comparison to the love between the disciple and the guru. That is because the guru-disciple relationship has an additional quality that is of an entirely different dimension. When there is what I call resonance between the body-mind mechanism of the disciple and the body-mind mechanism of the guru, when that resonance is there, there is for the disciple an experience of the Oneness, which is the abiding non-phenomenal state of the guru. And that Oneness is one of inexpressible Love.

Read the rest on Wayne's website

Navigation: Site Map Home

Om Namah Shivaya!

Tags: Guru, seeking, enlightenment, Love

Hoopiness!

http://t4om.gaia.com — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 00:51:01 GMT

Cirque Du Soleil (Alegria) - Hula Hoops

Tags: Cirque Du Soleil, Hula Hoops, Elena Lev

Welcome to The Mystery!

http://t4om.gaia.com — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:22:23 GMT

Psychedelic - "The Zuvuya Sequence"

"Welcome to The Mystery!" is the title of Julian's post where I first saw this kaleidoscopic, psychedelic video. He offers this advice for meditative viewing:

Meditation: let your focus be soft and open as you gaze at the above video. Breathe. Be amazed. Color, form, sound, technology, the brain, wonder - wow! Nothing to believe in, no answer to any of the enduring conflicts of human existence - just wonder, mystery, consciousness….

Om Namah Shivaya!

Tom

Tags: Zuvuya, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic, video, mystery, consciousness, Julian, brain, wonder, meditation

"Elephant Ocean"

http://t4om.gaia.com — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:27:25 GMT

The ocean was wrinkled
like an elephant's skin wrinkles
when its trunk reaches for the poem
about the ocean and the elephant
that just stayed stinky, slimy
and hard to grasp
with the long sensitive snout
of the elephant by the ocean
she didn't think looked like her
at all but laughed to hear
the poet did but couldn't turn it
into a poem, just ink on a napkin,
paper wrinkled like time.

Now we can hear the stink ticking
like a bomb, creating suspense
and sudden light before the sound
wrinkling ear drums roaring ocean.

— Tom
December 28, 2006

That was composed while sitting in Ralphs La Jolla with dear friends, musing on Portico's elephant/ocean metaphor and her attempts to write a poem around it. There's a Golden Spoon yogurt outlet right there in the supermarket; the napkin happened to be sitting there at the table when the rest of us non-napkins sat down.

Om Namah Shivaya!

Tags: Elephant Ocean, Ralphs, La Jolla, Ralphs Club La Jolla, napkin, napkins, yogurt

Khechari Mudra

http://t4om.gaia.com — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 03:06:22 GMT

Perhaps emboldened by the kind remarks of Portico regarding my "Om Namah Shivaya Freeform" video experiment, I'm going to risk further embarrassment by posting a video demonstrating khechari (often spelled kechari) mudra. Yogani, who uses the latter spelling, provides explanations of the practice in his Advanced Yoga Practices lessons, and there are discussions about it in the APY forums.

Here's the text I included at YouTube:

Khechari, or kechari, mudra Stage 1 (also called nabho mudra), followed by Stage 2: that succession is shown twice.

Enjoy!

Khechari Mudra

It's worth learning about and trying out ...!

Om Namah Shivaya!

Tags: Khechari, Kechari, Mudra, Advanced Yoga Practices, Yogani, spirituality, documentary, yoga

If You Wish to Go to Heaven

http://t4om.gaia.com — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:03:05 GMT

Love releases fear! A wonderful song about the grace of Sufism, from the film The Clay Bird

Matir Moyna Music Video

JODI BHESTE JAITE CHAO
If You Wish to Go to Heaven

SHISHWA (Disciple)
If you wish to go to heaven
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
If you want to be close to Allah
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
I'm just your daughter's age
I'll assume the side of shariah
And take an anti-Sufi stance
Don't take what I say to heart

You ignore the Holy Scriptures -
What kind of Muslims are you?

Why are the mullahs
always angry with you?
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
You need a measure of wisdom
to grasp the Koran and Hadith
How can half-read mullahs
interpret the intricate Scriptures?

They preach to others
without knowing the texts
The dogmatic mullahs
make their living from deception
Well fed and fattened, they use
their strength to abuse us
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
You Sufis chant Allah's name
Ignoring creed and prayer

You smoke pot during Ramadan
With the excuse of meditation
What kind of Islamic creed
Sanctions this immorality?
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
Just showing off your rituals
Is that true namaz?
Namaz is meditation,
To attain tranquility

Fasting is self control
How many really follow that?
They skip their meals by day
And eat double by night

We don't lust for heaven
And have no fear of hell
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
You don't go on pilgrimage
You don't give charity
What do you have against
Ritual sacrifice?
Why should Muslims
Quaver at the sight of blood?

GURU (Teacher)
You're asked to sacrifice
Your dearest ones
Are these cows and goats
Your most beloved?

Nothing is dearer than yourself
The supreme sacrifice is self sacrifice
If you can, restrain your senses
Control your passions
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
You roam around with women
Without wedding them
You sing and dance together
Without shame

The outside world is for men
The woman's place is at home
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
Woman is the seed of life
The source of creation
Those who believe in inequality
Lock women into marriage

Woman is the vessel of love
Woman is the Mother
Without Woman we would not
Come into being

(Together)
You need both man and woman
For procreation and creation
Keep love inside your heart

If you want to be close to Allah
Keep love inside your heart

Tags: Sufi, Sufism, Clay Bird, love, heart, Allah, Bangladesh, Heaven, If You Wish to Go to Heaven, Baul

Gaia Community: Tom Yeshe's Blog

Amma's message

Love and Death: Are We Having Fun Yet?

Torus IV

Orange Blues

Twilight Piano

How to Know God Exists: "You yourself are the proof ..."

Messages from the Other Side

What's the most memorable Halloween costume you can think of?

Wilber on Devotion: The "I" Bows and Surrenders to the Great Thou

The Thing of Everything "Isness" Card

The Thing of Everything

Thing Theory

What do you appreciate most about your mother?

The Inner Life Of A Cell

Seeking Enlightenment and the Role of the Guru: Love

Wayne Liquorman Interview SnippetQuestioner: Blayne Bardo

Hoopiness!

Welcome to The Mystery!

"Elephant Ocean"

Khechari Mudra

If You Wish to Go to Heaven

Wayne Liquorman Interview Snippet

Questioner: Blayne Bardo