Weekend Events

Special events including Half DayWorkshops, Retreats, and Workshops are in EVENTS tab on top navigation.

Sundays are Family Days at Dipamkara Meditation Center in Huntington. Morning meditations begin at 10am with Clarity of Mind followed by Taking and Giving. Our Sunday Main Program:Practical Wisdom & Meditation with Resident Teacher Kadam Holly McGregor is 11:30am 1pm; we also have meditation for Children and Young Teens in the mid size meditation space and Meditation for Teens and Young Adults in the small meditation room. All meet afterwards to enjoy our popular brunch together. A wonderful way to pave the way for a peaceful week at school and work!

Sunday classes are held in Huntington (10:00am 1pm) Massapequa (11:30am 1pm); Port Jefferson (10:30am 12pm); and Sayville (class will resume in September)

Huntington has daily meditation classes every day during the week including Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday (Soup & Serenity) and Thursday.

Susan and Joel Brenner in Huntington on Wednesday 12-1:30pm, Maggie Cooper in Port Jefferson, and Ann and Dennis Kane in Massapequa, nourish both mind and body with this popular lunch time class. Guided meditation followed by lively conversation, good friends, and delicious homemade soup!

Monday evening Meditation & Mindfulness 7pm-7:45pm with Stephany Taylor and Wednesday evening Clarity of Mind 7-8pm with Kevin Potente. In addition, meditation is part of all our general programs including Tuesday evening 7-8:30pm with Bob Rice, Sunday Main Program 11:30 with Kadam Holly McGregor and Friday night Freedom from Addiction at 7:30pm on the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month.

Drop In Classes, open to all, take place during all daytime and evening meditation classes. Our Main Center in Huntington has classes throughout the day on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and bi-weekly on Fridays; evening classes are held on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Massapequa has evening classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; Port Jefferson on Tuesday evenings (Thursday evenings will resume in September). For our complete calendar schedule click here.

Dipamkara Meditation Center believes meditation should be accessible to everyone. Daily classes are open to all and are held in f0ur convenient locations: Huntington, Massapequa, Port Jefferson, and Sayville. (Click here for directions)

The purpose of meditation is to cultivate those states of mind that are conducive to peace and well-being, and to eradicate those that arent.

When we take a close look at our life, we discover that essentially, most of our time and energy is devoted to mundane activities, such as seeking material and emotional security, enjoying sensory pleasures, establishing a good reputation and so forth.

Although these things might make us happy for a short time, we need to ask if they are providing the deep lasting contentment that we long for. Is this as good as it gets? Sooner or later, we find that these moments of temporary happiness turn right back into dissatisfactions and once more we find ourselves engaged in the pursuit of more worldly pleasures.

And so goes the cycle.

This is where a meditation practice can be so extraordinarily helpful.

If true fulfillment cannot be found in the externals, then where can it be found? The answer: within. In our own mind. With meditation we come to understand that happiness is a state of mind. Therefore, the real source of happiness lies there, and not in external circumstances. If our mind is pure and peaceful, the world we experience will be pure and peaceful. Thats the goal.

This is what we do at Dipamkara Meditation Center.

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Meditation for Everyone - Meditation On Long Island

As a result of my frustrations I took a break from life coaching for about 18 months and dabbled in another business, which thankfully didnt quite work out. However, over this period of time I had a chance to reflect on my coaching business and the mistakes I had made.

What I realized was that I needed more structure and maybe even a framework for coaching that would help guide me during each one of my coaching sessions more effectively.

At the time I also began incorporating mind mapping into my work. As a result I decided to start piecing together a coaching framework that I could begin to work with during each coaching session.

At first I found it extremely difficult to piece everything together. I had good knowledge, however everything was just jumbled up and completely disorganized in my head. However, over time as I coached more clients and picked the brains of other life coaches who had been in the industry for many years, all the pieces started to fall into place. Then eventuallythe time and effort I put into the framework started paying off as I began to incorporate this coaching framework into my coaching practice.

Today I use this coaching framework as the basis for about 80 percent of my coaching work. Furthermore, roughly 9 out of 10 clients invest in additional sessions after receiving their initial complimentary session.

This framework like many others is of course not all-encompassing, but what it does do is it gives you enough of a structure and possible pathways that will help you guide your client in the most optimal way. I would literally feel lost without it.

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Life Coaching IQ Matrix Members

Causes

On the surface, the most apparent cause of the Enlightenmentwas the Thirty Years War. This horribly destructivewar, which lasted from 1618 to 1648,compelled German writers to pen harsh criticisms regarding the ideasof nationalism and warfare. These authors, such as HugoGrotius and John Comenius, were some of thefirst Enlightenment minds to go against tradition and propose bettersolutions.

At the same time, European thinkers interest in the tangible worlddeveloped into scientific study, while greater exploration of theworld exposed Europe to other cultures and philosophies. Finally,centuries of mistreatment at the hands of monarchies and the churchbrought average citizens in Europe to a breaking point, and themost intelligent and vocal finally decided to speak out.

The Enlightenment developed through a snowball effect:small advances triggered larger ones, and before Europe and theworld knew it, almost two centuries of philosophizing and innovationhad ensued. These studies generally began in the fields of earthscience and astronomy, as notables such as Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei tookthe old, beloved truths of Aristotle and disproved them. Thinkerssuch as Ren Descartes and Francis Bacon revisedthe scientific method, setting the stage for Isaac Newton andhis landmark discoveries in physics.

From these discoveries emerged a system for observingthe world and making testable hypotheses based on thoseobservations. At the same time, however, scientists faced ever-increasingscorn and skepticism from people in the religious community, whofelt threatened by science and its attempts to explain matters offaith. Nevertheless, the progressive, rebellious spirit of thesescientists would inspire a centurys worth of thinkers.

The first major Enlightenment figure in Englandwas Thomas Hobbes, who caused great controversywith the release of his provocative treatise Leviathan (1651).Taking a sociological perspective, Hobbes felt that by nature, peoplewere self-serving and preoccupied with the gathering of a limitednumber of resources. To keep balance, Hobbes continued, it was essentialto have a single intimidating ruler. A half century later, JohnLocke came into the picture, promoting the opposite typeof governmenta representative governmentin his Two Treatisesof Government (1690).

Although Hobbes would be more influential among his contemporaries,it was clear that Lockes message was closer to the English peopleshearts and minds. Just before the turn of the century, in 1688,English Protestants helped overthrow the Catholic king JamesII and installed the Protestant monarchs William andMary. In the aftermath of this Glorious Revolution,the English government ratified a new Bill of Rights that grantedmore personal freedoms.

Many of the major French Enlightenment thinkers, or philosophes, wereborn in the years after the Glorious Revolution, so Frances Enlightenmentcame a bit later, in the mid-1700s.The philosophes, though varying in style and area of particularconcern, generally emphasized the power of reason and sought todiscover the natural laws governing human society. The Baronde Montesquieu tackled politics by elaborating upon Locke'swork, solidifying concepts such as the separation of power bymeans of divisions in government. Voltaire took a morecaustic approach, choosing to incite social and political changeby means of satire and criticism. Although Voltaires satires arguablysparked little in the way of concrete change, Voltaire neverthelesswas adept at exposing injustices and appealed to a wide range ofreaders. His short novel Candide is regarded as oneof the seminal works in history.

Denis Diderot, unlike Montesquieu and Voltaire,had no revolutionary aspirations; he was interested merely in collectingas much knowledge as possible for his mammoth Encyclopdie.The Encyclopdie, which ultimately weighed in atthirty-five volumes, would go on to spread Enlightenment knowledgeto other countries around the world.

In reaction to the rather empirical philosophiesof Voltaire and others, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote TheSocial Contract (1762),a work championing a form of government based on small, direct democracy thatdirectly reflects the will of the population. Later, at the endof his career, he would write Confessions, a deeplypersonal reflection on his life. The unprecedented intimate perspectivethat Rousseau provided contributed to a burgeoning Romantic erathat would be defined by an emphasis on emotion and instinct insteadof reason.

Another undercurrent that threatened the prevailing principlesof the Enlightenment was skepticism. Skeptics questionedwhether human society could really be perfected through the useof reason and denied the ability of rational thought to reveal universaltruths. Their philosophies revolved around the idea that the perceived worldis relative to the beholder and, as such, no one can be sure whetherany truths actually exist.

Immanuel Kant, working in Germany duringthe late eighteenth century, took skepticism to its greatest lengths,arguing that man could truly know neither observed objects nor metaphysicalconcepts; rather, the experience of such things depends upon thepsyche of the observer, thus rendering universal truths impossible. Thetheories of Kant, along with those of other skeptics such as DavidHume, were influential enough to change the nature of European thoughtand effectively end the Enlightenment.

Ultimately, the Enlightenment fell victim to competingideas from several sources. Romanticism was more appealing to less-educated commonfolk and pulled them away from the empirical, scientific ideas ofearlier Enlightenment philosophers. Similarly, the theories of skepticismcame into direct conflict with the reason-based assertions of theEnlightenment and gained a following of their own.

What ultimately and abruptly killed the Enlightenment,however, was the French Revolution. Begun with thebest intentions by French citizens inspired by Enlightenment thought,the revolution attempted to implement orderly representative assembliesbut quickly degraded into chaos and violence. Many people citedthe Enlightenment-induced breakdown of norms as the root cause of theinstability and saw the violence as proof that the masses could notbe trusted to govern themselves. Nonetheless, the discoveries andtheories of the Enlightenment philosophers continued to influenceWestern society for centuries.

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SparkNotes: The Enlightenment (16501800): Summary of Events

Definition:

The period known as the Enlightenment runs from somewhere around 1660, with the Restoration, or the crowning of the exiled Charles II, until the beginning of the 19th century and the reign of Victoria.

This chunk of time, which takes up some of the 17th century and all of the 18th century, is sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason because of its emphasis on a rational, secular worldview. Bringing light to the so-called dark corners of the mind, Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume wrote on subjects ranging from political philosophy to the nature of humankind. Many scholars argue that, given all this revolutionary thinking, the Enlightenment is the beginning of modern society.

The period saw lots of revolutionary activity, such as the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Interested in how Enlightenment thinking played a role in the American Revolution? Check out our learning guide on just that.

So what was happening in literature in during this era? Well, neoclassicism was all the rage in the early part of the period. Neoclassicism is a style of art that appropriates classical models from the ancients. Alexander Pope was the grandmaster of all that. This period also marked the rise of the novel, with novelists like Daniel Defoe churning out the fiction like nobody's business. His famous work Robinson Crusoeis an early example of the genre. There was also a fair amount of Enlightenment thinking going on in American letters, too, with folks like Benjamin Franklin espousing Enlightenment ideas in his The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Later literary periods were definitely influenced by the Enlightenment. Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romanticism, for example, was a reaction to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. And the Romantic poets like William Wordsworth, of course, wrote to pooh-pooh the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason.

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Literature Glossary - Enlightenment

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sri aurobindo | eBay

Sri Aurobindo was a great political reformer and a spiritual master. This biography profiles his childhood, career, achievements and timeline.

Quick Facts

Famous as:

Political and Spiritual Leader

Nationality:

political ideology:

Indian National Congress

Birth Date:

Died At Age:

78

Sun Sign:

Leo

Born in:

Kolkata

father:

Krishna Dhan Ghosh

mother:

Swarnalata Devi

Spouse/Partner:

Mrinalini Devi

Died on:

place of death:

Puducherry

Founder/Co-Founder:

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

More Facts

education:

King's College, Cambridge, University of Cambridge, St Paul's School, London

Pictures Of Sri Aurobindo

Image Credithttp://www.aurovilleradio.org/collective-bonfire-at-mm/

Aurobindo Ghose, better known as Sri Aurobindo is known to the entire world as a great scholar, a national leader and a spiritual guru. He attained his basic as well as higher education from the United Kingdom. His literary excellence had been exemplary and brought him innumerable acclaims. He returned to India as a civil servant to the Maharaja of State of Baroda. Sri Aurobindos participation in the Indian national movement was short but impactful. His writings promoted the idea of complete independence for India thereby landing him in jail for political unrest. He came to limelight with his active participation in the freedom struggle against the British in India but he gradually evolved to become a spiritual and yogic guru. Some powerful visions backed by spiritualism encouraged him to move to Pondicherry where he worked on human evolution through spiritual activities such as Integral Yoga. Having chosen the mystical path for the rest of his life, he collaborated with people with similar pursuits.

Sri Aurobindo

Childhood & Early Life

Return to India

Role in the Indian freedom Struggle

Politics to Spiritualism

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Personal Life & Legacy

See the events in life of Sri Aurobindo in Chronological Order

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Article Title

- Sri Aurobindo Biography

Author

- Editors, TheFamousPeople.com

Website

- TheFamousPeople.com

URL

-https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/sri-aurobindo-76.php

Last Updated

- October 06, 2015

Pictures of Sri Aurobindo

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Image Credit

http://www.collectedworksofsriaurobindo.com/index.php/photogallery/sri-aurobindo

Image Credit

http://www.sriaurobindoinstitute.org/saioc/spiritual/darshan/Sri_Aurobindo_birthday/15_aug_2014

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Sri Aurobindo Biography - Famous People

Gurdjieff said, You are nothing but the body, and when the body dies you will die. Only once in a while does a person survive one who has created soul in his life survives death not all. A Buddha survives; a Jesus survives, but not you! You will simply die, not even a trace will be left.

What was Gurdjieff trying to do? He was shocking you to the very roots; he was trying to take away all your consolations and foolish theories which go on helping you to postpone work upon yourself. Now, to tell people, You dont have any souls, you are just vegetables, just a cabbage or maybe a cauliflower a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education but nothing more than that. He was really a master par excellence. He was taking the very earth away from underneath your feet. He was giving you such a shock that you had to think over the whole situation: are you going to remain a cabbage? He was creating a situation around you in which you would have to seek and search for the soul, because who wants to die?

And the idea that the soul is immortal has helped people to console themselves that they are not going to die, that death is just an appearance, just a long sleep, a restful sleep, and you will be born again. Gurdjieff says, All nonsense. This is all nonsense! Dead, you are dead forever unless you have created the soul.

Now see the difference: you have been told you are already a soul, and Gurdjieff changes it totally. He says, You are not already a soul, but only an opportunity. You can use it, you can miss it.

And I would like to tell you that Gurdjieff was just using a device. It is not true. Everybody is born with a soul. But what to do with people who have been using truths as consolations? A great master sometimes has to lie and only a great master has the right to lie just to pull you out of your sleep.

Osho,The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 2, Talk #2To continue reading,click here

Gurdjieff has been much criticized because he was a liar and the lying came from the Sufis; he was a Sufi. He was disciplined in Sufi monasteries and schools. And in the West, in fact, he introduced Sufism in this age in a totally new version. But then it was impossible for the ordinary Christian mind to understand him because truth is a value, and nobody can think that a master, an enlightened master, can lie.

Can you think of Jesus lying? And I know he lied but Christians cannot think about it: Jesus lying? No, he is the truest man. But then you dont know the question of knowledge is very, very dangerous. He lied about many things a master has to, if he wants to help. Otherwise, he can be a saint, but no help is possible from him. And without helping, a saint is already dead. If a saint cannot help, what is the use of his being here? There is no point in it. All that he can attain through life, he has attained. He is here to help.

Gurdjieff was very much criticized because the West couldnt understand, the ordinary Christian mind could not understand. So there are two versions about Gurdjieff in the West. One thinks that he was a very mischievous man not a sage at all, just a devil incarnate. Another is that he was the greatest saint the West has come to know in these past few centuries. Both are true, because he was just in the middle. He was a po personality. You cannot say yes, you cannot say no about him. You can say that he was a holy sinner, or a sinning saint. But you cannot divide, you cannot be so simple about him. The knowledge that he had was very complex.

Osho,Journey to the Heart, Talk #7To continue reading,click here

Gurdjieff says: Go on remembering the observer self-remembering. Buddha says: Forget the observer just watch the observed. If you have to choose between Buddha and Gurdjieff, I suggest choosing Buddha. There is a danger with Gurdjieff that you may become too self-conscious rather than becoming self-aware, you may become self-conscious, you may become an egoist. I have felt that in many Gurdjieff disciples, they have become very, very great egoists. Not that Gurdjieff was an egoist he was one of the rarest enlightened men of this age; but the method has a danger in it, it is very difficult to make a distinction between self-consciousness and self-remembering. It is so subtle it is almost impossible to make the distinction; for the ignorant masses it is almost always self-consciousness that will take possession of them; it will not be self-remembering.

The very word self is dangerous you become more and more settled in the idea of the self. And the idea of the self isolates you from existence.

Buddha says forget the self, because there is no self; the self is just in the grammar, in the language it is not anything existential. You just observe the content. By observing the content, the content starts disappearing. Once the content disappears, watch your anger and watching it, you will see it is disappearing once the anger has disappeared there is silence. There is no self, no observer, and nothing to be observed; there is silence. This silence is brought by Vipassana, Buddhas method of awareness.

Osho,This Very Body the Buddha, Talk #4To continue reading,click here

One old woman became very much impressed by Ouspensky, and then she went to see Gurdjieff. Within just a week she was back, and she told Ouspensky, I can feel that Gurdjieff is great, but I am not certain whether he is good or bad, whether he is evil, devilish, or a saint. I am not certain about that. He is great that much is certain. But he may be a great devil, or a great saint that is not certain. And Gurdjieff behaved in such a way that he would create this impression.

Alan Watts has written about Gurdjieff and has called him a rascal saint because sometimes he would behave like a rascal, but it was all acting and was done knowingly to avoid all those who would take unnecessary time and energy. It was done to send back those who could only work when they were certain. Only those would be allowed who could work even when they were not certain about the master, but who were certain about themselves.

And to surrender to a Gurdjieff will transform you more than surrendering to Ramana Maharshi, because Ramana Maharshi is so saintly, so simple, that surrender doesnt mean anything. You cannot do otherwise. He is so open just like a small child so pure, that surrender will happen. But that surrender is happening because of Ramana Maharshi, not because of you. It is nothing as far as you are concerned. If surrender happens with Gurdjieff, then it has happened because of you, because Gurdjieff is in no way going to support it. Rather, he will create all types of hindrances. If still you surrender, that transforms you. So there is no need to be absolutely sure about him and that is impossible but you have to be sure about yourself.

Osho,Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Talk #5To continue reading,click here

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George Gurdjieff | OSHO | Meditation - Mindfulness and the ...

Gurdjieff was born in Armenia around 1870. His first tutor was a priest and he also received a scientific education in surroundings and a way of life that had changed little for centuries. To his questions: Who am I? Why am I here? he found no answer either in religion or in science, but suspected that the truth lay hidden behind what had come down from the past in religious traditions and those strange myths and legends which he learned from his father, a traditional bard or 'ashokh'. With inspired like-minded companions, he set out to find in Asia and Africa the truth he sought, learning many languages, and acquiring many practical skills to earn the money for his journeys.

In 1912 he brought to Moscow an unknown teaching, a teaching that was neither a religion, nor a philosophy, but a practical teaching to be lived. He called this teaching 'The Fourth Way'. To follow the way he proposed, nothing is to be believed until verified by direct experience and life in the world is not to be renounced. It is a way in life, on which - gradually, for it cannot be done all at once - everything has to be questioned - one's beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, one's whole outlook on the life of man on this Earth.

Man is asleep, said Gurdjieff, he has no real consciousness or will. He is not free; to him, everything 'happens'. He can become conscious and find his true place as a human being in the creation, but this requires a profound transformation.

Gurdjieff calls us to awaken, telling us: "Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot even conceive a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness of a sleeping man his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world and he can never escape from it. And this is the reason why he can never make use of all the powers he possesses and why he lives in only a small part of himself."

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The Gurdjieff Society - About Gurdjieff

G.I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) was considered by some to be the greatest mystical teacher of all time, and by others to be a fraud. His liberation philosophy, commonly called "the Work," paved the way for now-conventional techniques of group and encounter therapy. He was born in Alexandropol, in the Russo-Turkish frontier, to Greek and Armenian parents. Although familiar with Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, Gurdjieff preferred to devise his own occult teaching. He postulated that people are no more than machines run by forces outside their control. Human beings in such a state are essentially asleep. In order to wake up, they must work hard to penetrate their normal state of unconsciousness to reach the true consciousness inside.Gurdjieff's ultimate symbol for his worldview was the enneagram: a circle whose circumference is divided by nine points, yielding an uneven six-sided figure and a triangle. The enneagram shows the whole universe, and how people cross the intervals of development via shocks administered by a teacher. Gurdjieff claimed the enneagram was his alone, but it probably dates to a very similar figure drawn by Athanasius Kircher in 1665. Gurdjieff called his system the Fourth Way, or the Way of the Sly or Cunning Man. There were traditionally three paths to immortality: those of the fakir, the monk and the yogi. In the Fourth Way, however, people do not need to suffer physical, emotional, or intellectual tortures, but merely start from their own life experiences. They work on themselves as they are, trying to harmonise all paths and using every cunning trick they know to keep themselves "awake."

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Gurdjieff & Fourth Way - Watkins Books

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Rcken in what is now Germany and grew up there and inNaumburg, Germany. He died of stroke, pneumonia and insanity in Weimar, Germany in 1900.

Nietzsche was originally quite religious. His father was a Lutheran minister and Friedrich studied theology at the University of Bonn. During his studies, however, he learned of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and became a staunch atheist.

That is the Nietzsche we are now familiar with, the creator of the now-famous quote:

God is dead We have killed him.

Nietzsche was quite critical of religionand Christianity in particular. According to Nietzsche, religion was a shield with which mankind protects itself from fear and anxiety over his mortality, insignificance and confusion. Influenced by Darwin, Nietzsche posited that a new kind of human will eventually emerge, far greater than any current manifestation. He called this new human the Overman or Superman, or in German, the bermensch. He wrote:

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the Overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment

In place of Christian ethics, Nietzsche simply felt that people should do whatever makes them happy. However, as evolution and nature dictates, those stronger people (such as the Overman) can do what they want and the weaker folks have to deal with it. It was his Master and Slave philosophy.

There is not truth to Nietzsche, only subjectivity. There is no justice or equality, only power and weakness.

Nietzsche is often associated with the Nazi ideology. And, it is true that Hitler and his cronies were quite fond of Nietzsches philosophy. Think about it: A philosophical justification for the idea that one person (or race of people) is stronger, better, smarter and more powerful than others. And action, violent or otherwise, is completely sanctioned by the ethics of said philosophy. Nietzsches book, Will to Power, reads:

The possibility has been established for the production of international racial unions whose task will be to rear a master race, the future masters of the earth a higher kind of man who, thanks to their superiority in will, knowledge, riches, and influence, employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth, so as to work as artists upon man himself.

Sounds like the Nazi Aryans, doesnt it? Needless to say, Nietzsche was not an advocate of Democracy. The good politicians, he said, divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.

However, Nietzsche wasnt an anti-semite and by the end of his life, in his madness, he was calling upon all of Europe to attack Germany.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most interesting, controversial and possibly clearest thinkers in western history. His philosophy still attracts adherents and the curious to this day. He is considered one of the fathers of a still-popular philosophical movement called existentialismthat, at the end of the day, is an optimistic philosophy centered around the idea that people are free and in control of their own destiny. It is up to them to have the good lifeand they are perfectly capable of doing it.

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Friedrich Nietzsche's Religion and Political Views ...