Quotes Tagged "yoga"

The true miracle lies in our eagerness to allow, appreciate, and honor the uniqueness, and freedom of each sentient being to sing the song of their heart.

You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement. Do not look at others' bodies with envy or with superiority. All people are born with different constitutions. Never compare with others. Each one's capacities are a function of his or her internal strength. Know your capacities and continually improve upon them.

Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.

Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divinity within you.

Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.

Yoga is not just repetation of few postures - it is more about the exploration and discovery of the subtle energies of life.

The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. (127)

No art takes places without inspiration. Every artist also needs effective knowledge of his or her tools (e.g., does a certain brush function well with a particular kind of paint?). What’s more, artists need effective techniques for using those tools. Likewise, to express ourselves skillfully with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, we need to investigate the most effective ways of using the mind and body since, in the end, they are the only “tools” we truly possess in life.

Humankind has accumulated generation upon generation of knowledge, the culmination of which is the vast and useful technological array we see everywhere in modern society. Despite this great accumulation of knowledge and technology, we still suffer from starvation and war. The difference between the past and the present is the difference between throwing rocks and shooting missiles. We are still in conflict. Suffering on a fundamental level hasn’t ceased. But we nevertheless persist in the notion that if we just amass a bit more knowledge, we’ll all be o.k. Maybe a new philosophy will do the trick, or a new system of government. But all of this has been tried many times. Knowledge builds on the past and has its place. Wisdom is beyond time. It’s the direct perception of reality as it is. And in this direct seeing of what is lies the potential of transformation—a transformation that is not merely a redecoration of the past but a transformation of humanity that embodies the eternally new.

Religions are like a ladder. If you cling to them, you cannot progress further. Religious organizations have their hidden agenda. They heavily rely on the past. They want to drag you towards the past. But you have to stand on your own. You have to work for your own liberation. Liberation is a state of mind and that is achievable right in this moment. It all depends on your choice. The moment you take the decision, you are free from the past; you are free from the thoughts.

If we become aware that someone is sending thoughts of ill will in our direction, we do not argue with the apparent reality of malice. To do so would give it more substance. We remove the personal sense of ourself and the other person.

The yogi can relate to his Beloved in the form of a personal relationship-as a friend, a child, a spouse. He can cherish God in traditional religious performances–honoring saints, holy sites, and scriptures. He can hold God dear in the form of union—as his own Self, or in samadhi. All forms of God are equally suitable for love. (165)

The Bible, however, says there are no other gods besides the one true God, who created heaven and earth and everything in it, and it is for this very reason that the pantheistic worldview that everything is divine, which is held by most yoga propagators, cannot be justified on biblical grounds.

He is a personal God who wants to relate with human beings, not just a force or an underlying principle or reality. Therefore the concept of the divine as it is often found within yoga is very unlike the God of the Bible.

As we remember the Personal God, chant his name, clean his temples, or read tales of his play on earth...we start liking God. The expressive mind experiences the feeling of affection towards our preferred form of God. When this bond of love is purified by the addition of selflessness (nishkama mode) to it, love becomes true love or bhakti.

As we love God, wish to see him, develop a sense of belonging, and work for him, faith blossoms to produce refuge in him. Refuge is about leaving everything to God.

Life is not only the dance and the dancer but also the song.

God is in every particle in the Universe. No religion, no prophet can make division on it.

A healer's power stems not from any special ability, but from maintaining the courage and awareness to embody and express the universal healing power that every human being naturally possesses.

Memorizing someone else’s explanation of the truth isn’t the same as seeing the truth for yourself. It is what it is—the memorization of second-hand knowledge. It is not your experience. It is not your knowledge. And no matter how much material is learned by rote, and no matter how eloquently we can speak about the memorized information, we’re clinging to a description of something that’s not ours. What’s more, the description is never the item itself. By holding onto our impression of certain descriptions, we frequently are unable to see the real thing when it’s right before our eyes. We are conditioned by memorizing and believing concepts—the truth of which we’ve never genuinely seen for ourselves.