For most of us, spiritual evolution does not occur simply as a result of one flash of insight or revelation. On the contrary, it usually requires inspired intention and consistent, diligent effort. And the way this is achieved is through the greatest gift that evolution has given us: the power of choice.

The power of conscious choice, or free agency, is unique to human beings as far as we know. You and I are highly evolved individuated selves who have been blessed with the extraordinary capacity for self-reflective awareness and the freedom to choose. In fact, these are the very faculties that make it possible for us to consciously evolve. Think about it: You, whoever you are, at least to some degree have the power to choose. How much do you really appreciate the significance of this extraordinary birthright? It is surprising how few people consider the deeper implications of possessing the freedom to choose. Just imagine -- without free agency, who would you be? Little more than a robot, unconsciously responding and reacting to conditioned egoic fears and desires, cultural triggers, biological impulses, and external stimuli, with no control over your own destiny. But while it is true that we are all profoundly influenced by many of these forces, both inner and outer, at the same time, it is equally true that we always have at least some measure of freedom to choose how we respond.

If you aspire to become an evolutionarily enlightened human being, your ability to do so depends upon accepting the simple fact that independent of external circumstances, you always have a measure of freedom to choose. That sounds like a simple statement, but it's amazing how many intelligent people will deny it. When you look honestly for yourself, however, you will see that it is true: you are always choosing. Sometimes your choices are conscious; sometimes they are unconscious. Sometimes they are inspired by the best parts of yourself; other times they are motivated by lower impulses and instincts. But the bottom line is that every time you act or react, at some level a choice is being made. And you, whoever you are, are the one who is making that choice. After all, who else could it be?

Conscious evolution is a simple concept to grasp, but not quite as simple to put into in practice. Our freedom to choose is not unlimited. We each have some measure of freedom. Not complete freedom, but a measure, and that measure is greater for some people than it is for others. But as long as there is some it's enough to begin. If there is a measure of freedom then there is freedom to choose.

What that means is that in relationship to the important choices you make, you are never completely unconscious. There is always some degree of awareness, however small, which gives you the freedom to choose. And the path of conscious evolution is about increasing that degree of awareness, increasing that measure of freedom, until you are living as the enlightened self that you consciously choose to be, rather than the unenlightened self you have unconsciously and habitually identified with your entire life.

I believe that it is possible to take responsibility for the entirety of who you are in such a profound way that you can consciously choose who you want to be. But that doesn't mean it will be easy. The human self is by nature a complex multidimensional process, and within that process are many factors that limit our freedom and obscure our awareness. There are powerful biological instincts that still drive us on a deep level to act in ways that challenge our higher rational inclinations. There are all the karmic consequences of our personal history, the emotional and psychological tendencies that have formed in response to our particular life experience. There are layers of cultural conditioning, values and assumptions about how things should be that color our perspectives without us even knowing it. And many people believe that within our psyches we also carry the unresolved stories of previous lifetimes. All these factors play a part in the complex web of motives and impulses that makes up your sense of self. All of this is you. And yet it is possible to take responsibility for all of these dimensions of who you are, through the transformative recognition that you are always the one who is choosing.

If you aspire to evolve, if you intend to become a conscious vehicle for the evolutionary impulse, you have to use the God-given powers of awareness and conscious choice to navigate between your new and higher spiritual aspirations, and all of the conditioned impulses and habits that are embedded in your self-system. You need to become so conscious that you can make choices that move you, consistently, in an evolutionary direction. And it is only through the wholehearted embrace of your power of choice that it becomes possible for you to do this. This is what I often call "enlightening the choosing faculty" -- bringing the light of consciousness, conscience and higher purpose to bear on the unique and extraordinary capacity within that can define your destiny.

Eventually, if you go far enough in your spiritual development, the self-generated momentum of your own evolutionary choices will become the driving force of your life, rather than the unconscious habits of the past. And that's when something very profound occurs. Your capacity to choose will become more and more aligned with the creative freedom of the evolutionary impulse, the energy and intelligence behind the initial choice to become. When free agency, the greatest gift of the evolved human, is liberated from unconscious and habitual patterns and becomes identified with a higher or cosmic will, the individual becomes a conscious agent of evolution.

When your power of choice aligns itself with the evolutionary impulse in this way, your own deepest, heart-felt, spiritual aspiration becomes one with the original cosmic intention to create the universe. That's what Evolutionary Enlightenment is pointing to. To the degree to which you make conscious and transcend those outdated biological, psychological, and cultural habits within yourself that are inhibiting your higher development, you become an ever-more-powerful agent for conscious evolution.

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What Is Conscious Evolution? | HuffPost

Community empowerment

Supporting individuals and organisations to work in ways which are empowering and achieve empowerment

There are many assumptions connected with the term and practice of community empowerment which make both concept and application problematic, confusing and potentially meaningless. These include assumptions that:

Research indicates that a lack of empowering approaches in the past may have left a legacy of people, and communities, feeling: disillusioned, cynical, apathetic, disinterested, angry, confrontational and over-consulted.

Staff working in both public and voluntary sectors often face this reality and, whilst focusing on priorities around community empowerment, it can be helpful to remember how easy it is for people to feel disempowered and how engagement can take place in ways which are more empowering than others

Four key points:

Community empowerment is about working in ways which empower people ways which mean that people feel confident, that they and the groups they are involved in are inclusive and organised, that networks are formed, are cooperative and support each other and ultimately they are influential. These are the 5 Community Empowerment Dimensions which inform all our work at changes, and which are drawn from the DiCE planning and evaluation framework.

By confident, we mean, working in a way which increases peoples skills, knowledge and confidence and instils a belief that they can make a differenceBy inclusive, we mean working in a way which recognises that discrimination exists, promotes equality of opportunity and good relations between groups and challenges inequality and exclusionBy organised, we mean working in a way which brings people together around common issues and concerns in organisations and groups that are open, democratic and accountableBy cooperative, we mean working a way which builds positive relationships across groups, identifies common messages, develops and maintains links to national bodies and promotes partnership workingBy influential, we mean working in a way which encourages and equips communities to take part and influence decisions, services and activities

Community empowerment is the product of putting the values of community development into action.

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Community empowerment | Changes

The study and practice of meditation is on the rise, where the physical and psychological benefits are applicable to just about anybody.

Meditation and mindfulness go hand in hand to resolve mind body complications and symptoms during your sleeping life and your waking life. But first off, it is important to know the distinction between mindfulness and meditation, and how the two overlap in improving overall mind and body wellbeing within an individual.

What is mindfulness versus meditation?

Mindfulness is an active, daily process of focusing on the present moment and existing within it. You are present by being fully aware of your physical body as well as any thoughts and feelings that happen inside your mind and body.

Mindfulness is the ability to identify each thought as it passes through your mind, where you objectively identify them without judging or criticizing each thought. Mindfulness can be achieved through both mental and physical exercises and routines that strive to improve your mind-body relationship.

Mindfulness and meditation have a mirror-like relationship with each other: mindfulness supports and enhances meditation, and meditation supports and broadens mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice you can use continually through the day, whereas meditation is practiced in specific time intervals.

With mindfulness, the focus is on awareness, whereas with meditation, the goal is to clear your mind of everything. The two go hand in hand however, especially when it comes to helping you sleep. Sleep is a vital function of your body that should not be ignored, where sleep deprivation can lead to a number of problems.

Mindfulness and meditation together help in three major ways with regard to sleep problems:

• Mindfulness and meditation work together to combat stress through retraining your body to elicit the relaxation response instead of fight or flight, which can be brought on by chronic stress.  The high cortisol levels associated with fight or flight makes it impossible to sleep, where mindfulness and meditation practices help reduce these high cortisol levels so your body is able to sleep.
• Mindfulness and meditation strengthen different regions of the brain. Studies show that both disciplines have a direct impact on neural structure and functioning. This impact also reaches the part of the brain associated with REM sleep.
• They together increase melatonin levels as well. Research shows that meditating before bed leads to increased amounts of melatonin, the neurochemical called the ‘sleep hormone,’ which makes sleep possible.

Physical and Psychological Benefits of Meditation

The benefits of mindfulness and meditation are many, besides your sleep quality, where the same physical and psychological benefits that help you sleep also help your waking life.

• Physical benefits include: growing your brain; increasing blood flow to your brain; reducing blood pressure and heart rate; increasing production of serotonin and dopamine; boosting immune system, relaxing your muscles, and slowing the aging process.
• Psychological benefits include: reducing stress induced anxiety and depression; increasing stress resilience; increasing positive emotions; stimulating the prefrontal cortex that helps with present moment awareness; increasing emotional stability and intelligence; increasing learning capacity; increasing empathy and compassion; increasing sense of connection to yourself and others in your life; increasing sense of meaning and purpose; and increasing sociability.

The practice of meditation must be ongoing as part of a daily routine, where the benefits will start to show even immediately but especially over a period of time. You have nothing to lose - give it a shot!

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Friedrich Nietzsche, who was born in 1844, fell silent in 1889, and died eleven years later, was the first great philosopher of the twentieth century. What made, and makes, him so important, is that he recognized with great clarity and impressive foresight the most troubling and persistent problem of modernity, the problem of values. His attempts to resolve this problem were not successful, but they did uncover depths of issues that still defeat our best efforts today.

Portrait of Nietzsche Athamos Stradis 2012

Lets begin with his notorious declaration that God is dead (first in The Gay Science, 1872). Secular thinking is a commonplace today, but in Nietzsches time this declaration was strikingly prophetic. The point of the claim is not so much to assert atheism: although Nietzsche was certainly an atheist, he was far from being a pioneer of European atheism. Rather, his observation is sociological, in a way: he means that Western culture no longer places God at the center of things. In another way, the term sociological is quite misleading, for there is nothing value-neutral in Nietzsches assertion. The death of God has knocked the pins out from under Western value systems, and revealed an abyss below. The values we still continue to live by have lost their meaning, and we are cast adrift, whether we realize it or not. The question is, what do we do now?

One might at first think that the death of God is an all-too-familiar issue, conservative Christians arguing that if God does not exist then objective moral values dont exist either, and secular humanists replying indignantly that Gods existence is entirely irrelevant to the validity of the moral judgments we make. Nietzsche agrees with those theists that the death of God signaled the end of objectivity as a feature of moral value, but differs from them by not taking this as a reason to believe in God. Yet he did not think that values were subjective in the crude popular sense, that anyones convictions are as valid as anyone elses. Rather, to Nietzsche, values have power, and spring from power: like works of art, their greatness is in their power to move us. But the media manipulation of popular sentiment is no indicator of the power that creates value, since almost everybody is merely a member of the herd to Nietzsche. Any relating of value to popular preferences (even the preferences of an aristocracy) is an attempt to hold on to the objectivity of values. But if moral objectivity is at an end, an entirely new and radically individualistic source of value must be sought. Nietzsches conception of the power of values is deeply elitist: only the great can create values.

Nietzsche argued that in ancient times, values belonged to peoples who created them:

A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power You shall always be the first and excel all others: your jealous soul shall love no one, unless it be the friend that made the soul of the Greek quiver: thus he walked the path of his greatness To practice loyalty and, for the sake of loyalty, to risk honor and blood even for evil and dangerous things with this teaching another people conquered themselves, and through this self-conquest they became pregnant and heavy with great hopesThus Spake Zarathustra, I, 1883

Thus in antiquity it was the power through which a people defined itself that created the values of that people. Then came what Nietzsche thinks of as the degenerate complexity of Christianity, in which weakness rather than power was used to define value: The meek shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5) In fact, the Christian priestly class does exercise its own will to power, in its triumph over pagan peoples, but in the process mans instinctual animal pride has been abased through the disciplines of poverty, mortification of the flesh, guilt for sin; a morality echoing the message of a God who suffers on the cross. The explicit message is that value is not embodied in earthly holy men, but beyond, yet the truth is the opposite: the priests power has been realized in their victory over competing allegiances. But this victory has been won through Christianitys plague of self-denial what Nietzsche calls a nay-saying to life.

But with the death of God, Christianitys mode of anti-strength value-creation has collapsed, and modern man has no firm unitary belief to replace it. Our value is an incoherent pastiche of bits and pieces from a hundred sources. Nietzsche called it the multi-colored cow. The smorgasbord of faiths on offer in the West today wonderfully illustrates what Nietzsche foresaw: values as mix-and-match consumer goods. This is absurd, and the results are pitifully anemic; but how and where can the human will to power burst forth with a new set of values? That was Nietzsches dilemma, and it has become the explicit dilemma of modern humanity, just as he predicted.

Like all the best philosophers, Nietzsche made a heroic attempt to give a solution to his problem. He gave his solution the name bermensch, literally translated overman, although its more often translated (somewhat painfully to us) as superman. Mere man is not a creator of value; his individuality proves to be insufficient to achieve that. His only dignity is that he may be a bridge to something higher: The ape is an embarrassment to man; just so will man be an embarrassment to the overman. The overman is that higher type of individual who has an absolute self-confidence in his power, and through the powerful assertion of his individuality, values may once again be created: not by peoples, not clothed in the spurious authority of a beyond, but for the first time in a specifically individual assertion of values through individually-justified action. And these values must be created, not appropriated as something already existent.

Nietzsche did not claim to know in detail what the overman would be like. He did think that the overman will have fellows, metaphorical brothers, but he must be an individual though and through: the future genius is a non-genus. Thats one reason why the Nazi appropriation of the bermensch concept for the master race is outrageous to all Nietzsche scholars. Nietzsche expressed contempt for anti-Semites and for propagandists of Germanic racial superiority. Modern man, mass man, whatever racial affiliation he may boast, is anathema to Nietzsche. It is an absurd dream of contemporary culture that we anyone at all just by being ourselves can surpass the ancient creativity of entire peoples. Most individuals are too small for the task (the crowd chants Were all individuals! Monty Python, Life of Brian). Any person can try to live according to what he calls my own values, but they are usually not his own values: they are bits and pieces picked up in the bazaar of modernity, and he has no idea where they came from. Nothing is more obvious to Nietzsche than the fact that people dont generally know how to create values.

I think Nietzsche provides a powerful indictment of modernity. Of course, Nietzsche may simply be wrong that the only values with any value (so to speak) are those a powerful individual creates. Personally, I believe that he is wrong. That is, I accept his claim that values must be created by individuals, but I deny that a value-creating individual must be a Nietzschean overman. Furthermore, I think that there are values associated with being human whose validity extends beyond the human self-creating context, to apply to rational beings in general. In that way, I am a Kantian. Sure, the individual as modern multi-culturally sensitive individual cannot create value; but I think it is possible to retain a sense of individuals legislating values while shedding the overmans sense of absolute separateness from other rational individuals.

Why is modern man so agonized still? I dont know. But I wont be totally surprised if Nietzsche turns out to be the first great philosopher of the twenty-first century too.

Dr Eric Walther 2012

Eric Walther taught philosophy from 1967 and computer science from 1983 at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University; he retired in 2003. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University, and an MS in Computer Science from Polytechnic University.

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Nietzsche, Our Contemporary | Issue 93 | Philosophy Now

Trying to explain or define Zen Buddhism, by reducing it to a book, to a few definitions, or to a website is impossible. Instead, it freezes Zen in time and space, thereby weakening its meaning.

Defining Zen () is like trying to describe the taste of honey to someone who has never tasted it before. You can try to explain the texture and scent of honey, or you can try to compare and correlate it with similar foods. However, honey is honey! As long as you have not tasted it, you are in the illusion of what honey is.

The same goes with Zen because Zen Buddhism is a practice that needs to be experienced, not a concept that you can intellectualize or understand with your brain. The information that we'll give here won't cover all of what of Zen is, but is a starting point to the Zen experience.

At the heart of the Japanese culture lies Zen, a school of Mahayana Buddhism. Zen is, first and foremost, a practice that was uninterruptedly transmitted from master to disciple, and that goes back to the spiritual Enlightenment of a man named Siddhrtha Gautama (Shakyamuni Gotama in Japanese) - The Buddha - 2500 years ago in India.

The practice of Zen meditation or Zazen ( - za meaning sitting, and Zen meaning meditation in Japanese), is the core of Zen Buddhism: without it, there is no Zen. Zen meditation, is a way of vigilance and self-discovery which is practiced while sitting on a meditation cushion. It is the experience of living from moment to moment, in the here and now. It is through the practice of Zazen that Gautama got enlightened and became the Buddha.

Zazen is an attitude of spiritual awakening, which when practiced, can become the source from which all the actions of daily life flow - eating, sleeping, breathing, walking, working, talking, thinking, and so on.

Zen is not a theory, an idea, or a piece of knowledge. It is not a belief, dogma, or religion; but rather, it is a practical experience (read our Buddhism FAQ for more details). We cannot intellectually grasp Zen because human intelligence and wisdom are too limited - the dojo (the hall where Zazen is practiced) is different from the university.

Based on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, Zen is not a moral teaching, and as it is without dogma, it does not require one to believe in anything. A true spiritual path does not tell people what to believe in; rather it shows them how to think; or, in the case of Zen - what not to think.

Zen is not interested in metaphysical theories and rituals and focuses entirely on the mindful practice of Zazen. Zen is very simple. It is so simple, in fact, that it's very difficult to grasp.

In the silence of the dojo or temple, quietly sit down, stop moving, and let go your thoughts. Focus just on your Zazen posture and your breathing. Keep your back straight. Let your ego and your unconscious mind melt away, merge with the universe.

This is Zen.

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What is Zen? | ZEN BUDDHISM

Since the beginning of time, man is searching for the truth. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors, sat under the stars, and around the campfire discussed and asked themselves the same questions we ask ourselves today. Who am I? Why am I here? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Are we alone in the Universe?

Zen is very pragmatic and down to earth. It is essentially a practice, an experience, not a theory or dogma. Zen adheres to no specific philosophy or faith, and has no dogma that its followers must accept or believe in, but it traditionnally accept the concepts of karma and samsara. For us westerners, this is very different from our Christian religion and its filled with dogmas.

Zen does not seek to answer subjective questions because these are not important issues for Zen. What really matters is the here and now: not God, not the afterlife, but the present moment and the practice of meditation (zazen).

Moreover, Zen firmly believes that nobody knows the answers to those questions and that they are impossible to answer because of our limited condition. Life is a dream, a grand illusion that we perceive through the filter of our personality, our experiences, our ego. This is a great piece of theater in which we do not see all the actors and in which we barely understand the role of those that we see.

Zen gladly accepts the idea that men are only men and nothing more. Man, being what he is, cannot answer life's impossible questions without falling into the trap of illusion. No one knows the answers to the deep questions about life and death.

These questions are impossible to answer, given the limited sphere of knowledge that comes with the condition of being a human being. As Master Taisen Deshimaru said, "It is impossible to give a definite answer to those questions, unless you suffer from a major mental disorder."

Does this mean that Zen closes the door to metaphysical phenomena? Absolutely not! Zen cannot confirm nor deny them, therefore, it is better to remain silent and to live simply in the moment.

What does Zen think of religions beliefs then? As a great Zen Master once said, "Faith is like painting the walls of your room with mud, then trying to convince yourself that it is beautiful, and it smells good". Faith is an illusion, a dream that we strongly consider real, but that in reality only impoverishes the true spirituality of man. The strength of our faith and conviction has nothing to do with the fact that a belief is true or not. The veracity of our faith is in us only, nowhere else.

Religions feel compelled to give answers to everything as a sign of their "great wisdom", but for Zen, not giving any answer at all is actually the great wisdom.

A true religion shows man how to think and not what to think, therefore, we must learn to ask great questions rather than looking for great answers.

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Buddhist beliefs | ZEN BUDDHISM

November 2015

Humanity is facing a radically new situation. We are threatening life on this Earth by our own actions and simultaneously, we are gaining capacities to evolve life, personally, socially, spiritually and scientifically to a new threshold of existence itself.

At this tipping point between devolution and conscious evolution Marc Gafni serves as an evolutionary pioneer, writer, scholar, author, teacher, friend. He has tapped into the impulse of evolution. Into the direction of the life force itself.

This Impulse, as he sees it, is a divine impulse of Eros. As Marc puts it: The Universe is a Love Story. It has expressed itself for 13.8 billion years as allurement or Eros, forming ever more complex whole systems by attraction: quark with quark, electron with electron, cell with cell, human with human all the way up and all the way down, to the threshold of connecting us in greater cooperation and synergyor breaking down into further destruction.

Marc comes forth and continues the lineage of evolutionary geniuses such as Teilhard de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo, Buckminster Fuller and Jonas Salk, the first teachers that inspired me in the 1960s and guided me to respond to my fundamental life questions.

In 1945 when the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, I was fifteen years old. Shocked by the horror of this destruction I had asked a series of questions which have dominated my life: What is the meaning of all this new power that is good? Where is modern civilization going that we want to go? What are images of the future equal to our potential? I realized we were gaining powers we used to attribute to our gods. If we continued to use these powers in self-centered consciousness we would destroy the world but if we changed in consciousness we could evolve the world. I found that no one knew the meaning of our new scientific, technological, industrial power that was good. The powers were so new.

Gradually I found responses. First for me came Teilhard de Chardin, in his seminal work The Phenomenon of Man. He discovered the evolutionary Impulse of Creation, or God, as the direction of evolution to higher consciousness, freedom and order. That Impulse evolved through more complexity and consciousness, through greater loveaiming he predicted (written before the Internet) toward the noosphere, the thinking layer of Earth, becoming the planetary media and nervous system, about to get its collective eyes, awakening a planetary experience of love.

Then I found Sri Aurobindo, the great Eastern evolutionary sage in his masterwork The Life Divine. He traced the evolutionary impulse through all of existence, identifying the evolving human as the Gnostic human, capable of incarnating the supramental genius of evolution itself as a new being, a new humanity.

Then Buckminster Fuller, the great cosmic architect and engineer taught us that we now have the resources technology and know-how to make the world work for all without taking it away for anyone.

Then I discovered the work of Jonas Salk: the advocate of meta-biology seeking to discover the design of nature to guide us forward as conscious evolutionaries.

These great teachers as well as others in the 1960s opened the way toward the new worldview of conscious evolution, leading toward a new human we might call Homo universalis, one who embodies the spiritual, social and scientific and technological genius of humanity on this Earth and eventually in the cosmos beyond our planet.

This intense period of evolution from the 1960s through the present has brought us to the threshold of devolution or evolutionwithout evolutionary leadership and vision coming forth from any existing system.

Into this precarious field of uncertainty Marc Gafni is serving as one of our very best guides, teachers and participants in conscious evolution. He has a unique and vital key to the next stage of evolution.

Marc is a continuation of the lineage of Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and Buckminster Fuller. He holds that lineage in the impulse of his being and his thinking. He began as the Hebrew wisdom expression of this impulse but has now moved beyond to the place of Homo universalis, a universal human.

It is the incarnation of Eros and evolutionary impulse in what Marc calls Unique Self, leading toward Evolutionary Unique Self in his teaching and master work: Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, foreword by Ken Wilber, Integral Publishers, 2012.

The Unique Self is an expression of the irreducibly beautiful impulse of creation incarnated uniquely in each one of us as we learn to express our full potential and purpose toward more life, more love, more creativity.

He sees this Unique Self expressing outrageous love. As he puts it, The only response to outrageous pain, is outrageous love, That is evolutionary love. Because evolution is awesomely outrageousthat is, from no thing at all has come everything that was, is, and is now becoming!

I first met Marc during an interview several years ago. I did not know him or his work. However, as we began our conversation, point after point came forth until I realized he embodies evolution. Its not just a good idea. It is who he is in person. It is who he calls us all to become. We are in potential, the evolutionary impulse becoming conscious as what Marc calls, Unique Selves in each of us. Even more we are what Marc calls Evolutionary Unique Selves, potentially fully accessing, expressing, incarnating the impulse of creation itself as our own vocations of destiny.

This meeting served as a deep affirmation of my own life quest for the meaning of our power that is good, and has been a blessing, since at 85, I seem to becoming newer every day! My meeting with him energized me. It enlivened me, reversing, in my experience, certain physical symptoms of decline. It renewed my experience of life with full vitality and renewed purpose. I know that Marc has had similar effect on scores and scores of people over the years. That is a gift and a cross to bear.

Marc has made the powerful decision, which I applaud, to teach as a friend, a holder of wisdom and not as a classic spiritual teacher. Marc utterly rejects the mantle of authority and neither wants or claims any sort of authority over anyone. Marc is about empowering people. He tried for a time to teach within some version of spiritual teacher model because he thought it might be a beautiful form to hold people. But in the end his sense of peoples need to be empowered brought him to reject any notion of the old model and to seek a new empowered model of teacher and student which is rooted in a combination of friendship, respect, transmission and the ability to move between different relationships with full autonomy and power. Anyone who has the opportunity to study him will receive great gifts. He is one of the best teachers alive today.

As an evolutionary reader of Talmudic texts Marc describes in his masterful scholarly work, Radical Kabbalah, the world view in Hasidism which he termed nondual humanism or alternatively acosmic humanism. There is no existence independent of divinityIt is an incarnation theology that affirms the identity of the human and the divine, the dignity of desire, the affirmation of the supra-rational and the explicit democratization of enlightenment.

This describes for us brilliantly the basis of evolutionary spirituality. It is our intention to work together with others under the context of Evolutionary Spirituality to offer our contribution to vision and direction into social, political, spiritual life through books, teachings, collaboration, and by helping to connect co-creators world-wide to help make the shift from devolution toward evolution in time.

But all of this is really the tip of the iceberg. What is no less important is who Marc Gafni the person is. Here I think is his greatest gift and revelation. I have spoken and worked with literally dozens of people who work with him every day for the last years. These are people without agendas or baggage or ulterior motives. What they all share is what I have experienced myself. There is a sense of impeccability in Marcs ethics and caring. In every encounter with him he is right there with you and you feel just how much he cares. You can feel his heart and the goodness that comes from him. It would be easy for an undiscerning person to write Marc off as charming or charismatic. But this is to miss the essence of his Eros. He is truly a lover in his core. For all of us who know him well, we know that he holds within himself outrageous pain together with outrageous love.

The word radical integrity comes to mind in describing Marc. I have seen him both at moment of intense triumph and intense challenge and pain. In all of them he remains the same person. His heart is open in laughter and tears and the depth of his love. He does not fit into ordinary categories. His love is so large that people either recognize it or misunderstand it. Marc has learned over the years to become aware of his own potency and to hold it with care.

He does not love any one person exclusively. He loves, in alive and caring ways, literally dozens of people. He loves as a great friend, pouring time and energy and caring into the details of peoples lives. He gets deeply excited in meeting a cab driver and might talk to him for and hour even as he wants to honor every waiter and waitress. Perhaps his most poignant daily practice that he shares with his circle of colleagues and friends is do not accept service from someone whose name you do not know. For Marc it is more than knowing their name; it is about an intense personal I-thou recognition of what he called the irreducible dignity of every individual. Marc has lived through outrageous pain. He has responded with outrageous love. He has responded by giving us a vision of what he calls, The Universe: A Love Story. Marcs most important work is in front of him.

I am joining with many of his colleagues in demanding with love that Marc turn his gifts to writing. I and many others will write with him. There is, in his words, a new source code changing our culture which needs to be written. It will not be written by one person but rather, as Marc and our colleague Daniel Schmachtenberger likes to say, much like quantum physics, it will be written by a group of collaborators who all contribute their Unique Self. Marc is committed to the Integral framework which Ken Wilber has developed as the core framework for the source code conversation core. He seeks together with so many of us to take the next step to participate in the evolution of love.

With his books Your Unique Self, Self and Soul Prints Marc has changed the conversation around personal identity, soul work and enlightenment. With his book Mystery of Love he has changed the conversation around Eros. With his two volumes on Radical Kabbalah he has given us a vision of Nondual Humanism. With his forthcoming book on Integral Religion and Tears he is changing the conversation around ritual, prayer, the second person of God, and sacred text. With his most important work I believe yet before him, forthcoming books on Recovery, Eros, Pleasure, Meta Theory, Outrageous Love, Universe: A Love story, and more, we can look for some important and precious gifts in the future. He is a force of nature with a very kind heart. I am convinced that he is one of the key philosophers, visionaries of our generation.

Originally posted here:
Barbara Marx Hubbard about Marc Gafni | Marc Gafni

About 2500 years ago, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama began to question his sheltered, luxurious life in the palace. He left the palace and saw four sights: a sick man, an old man, a dead man and a monk. These sights are said to have shown him that even a prince cannot escape illness, suffering and death. The sight of the monk told Siddhartha to leave his life as a prince and become a wandering holy man, seeking the answers to questions like "Why must people suffer?" "What is the cause of suffering?" Siddartha spent many years doing many religious practices such as praying, meditating, and fasting until he finally understood the basic truths of life. This realization occurred after sitting under a Poplar-figtree in Bodh Gaya, India for many days, in deep meditation. He gained enlightenment, or nirvana, and was given the title of Buddha, which means Enlightened One.

Buddha discovered Three Universal Truths and Four Noble Truths, which he then taught to the people for the next 45 years.

Buddha then taught people not to worship him as a god. He said they should take responsibility for their own lives and actions. He taught that the Middle Way was the way to nirvana. The Middle Way meant not leading a life of luxury and indulgence but also not one of too much fasting and hardship. There are eight guides for following the Middle path.

Meditation is an essential practice to most Buddhists. Buddhists look within themselves for the truth and understanding of Buddha's teachings. They seek enlightenment, or nirvana, this way. Nirvana is freedom from needless suffering and being fully alive and present in one's life. It is not a state that can really be described in words -- it goes beyond words.

Meditation means focusing the mind to achieve an inner stillness that leads to a state of enlightenment. Meditation takes many forms:

After Buddha died, his teachings were gradually written down from what people remembered. The ripitaka, or The Three Baskets, is a collection of Buddha's sayings, his thoughts about them, and rules for Buddhists monks. The Ripitaka was first written on palm leaves which were collected together in baskets.

There are over 500 million Buddhists today. After Buddha's death, some of his followers had some differences of opinion which eventually led to their breaking away and forming separate kinds of Buddhism. There are two main types, Theravada, which spread to Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, and Mahayana which spread to Nepal, Vietnam, China, Korea and Japan. Mahayana took on aspects of the cultures where it was practiced and became three distinct branches: Vajrayana Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism and Zen Buddhism.

Even though each form of Buddhism took on its own identity, all Buddhists follow a set of guidelines for daily life called the Five Precepts. These are:

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Buddhism: Basic Beliefs | URI

Buddha wasnt chubby

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Despite the stature of the laughing statue that you see at your favorite Chinese food takeout place, the first Buddha was known to survive on one grain of rice per day. and ancient texts refer to him as being so skinny that his bones showed. So how did the commonplace depiction of a rotund, laughing Buddha become so associated with this historical figure? When Buddhism spread to China, the image of the Buddha was conflated with a Chinese God, Budai, who is fat, bald, and travels with a large sack, says Jim Wasserman, a retired comparative religion professor and co-owner (with his wife) of Your Third Life. Chinese immigrants were the first to bring the notion of Buddhism to America, so people thought that this version of a fat Buddha was the only one. If one looks at the older, Theravadan branch of Buddhism (common to Thailand or India), one sees the older, slimmer Buddha. Buddha is just one of 10 historical figures youve been picturing all wrong.

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Many, if not most Buddhists are vegetarian and believe that animals are nonhuman people who cannot be killed for food. That said, according to the Humane Societys Buddhist Teachings on Animals, there are exceptions to this ideology. In ancient times, eating meat was strictly forbidden by Buddha, except in the case of monks, who traditionally begged for the one meal they ate each day. The monks were allowed to eat meat if it was placed in their bowls, provided that they had no reason to believe that an animal was specifically killed in order to provide them with food. Some modern-day Buddhists interpret this practice so as to believe that they can eat meat from supermarkets and restaurants, for this same reason.

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Believe it or not, many Buddhists own cars, homes, jewelry, and more. Because so many vocal Buddhists in America are practicing monks, or wealthy people rejecting materialism to go meditate, we assume all Buddhists are like that, says Wasserman. Travel to a Buddhist country, and you will not see people rejecting the material world, but rather, praying to win the lottery or be successful, just like other religions, he adds.

Link:
Facts About Buddhism You Probably Don't Know - rd.com

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Life Coaching | Serenity Health & Wellness Center