#but also basically every single class i took on buddhism

[resourcesofcolor]

    Abolishing The Racist European Epistemology

As an Indigenous Austronesian, I genuinely believe that moving away from the Western/European worldview and unlearning Western sociocultural proclivities will lead to a greater, compassionate society... or move forward with an exclusively community-centered, feminist, anti-corporatism worldview that we can all strive to cultivate in current and future generations! 

Epistemology is commonly defined as the system of knowing. A civilization’s system of knowing ultimately molds their cultural and socioeconomic system; their entire reality. The European epistemology, and especially the development of European science, has justified the objectification of life, the death of the spirit, and the death of human connection prevalent in ancient and traditional Indigenous worldviews: the spiritual, egalitarian practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, the animism of Shintoism, Native American spiritualism and African polytheism which values all things, animate and inanimate; the reverence-worship of ancestral spirits in the Indigenous Austronesian islands, community-based and matriarchal. Even before the system of knowing, predecessors of modern humanity were altruistic and communal, caring for their sick, elderly and disabled: the natural empathy of a socially and emotionally intelligent prey species. 

Accepting beneficial Non-European concepts today and furthering education on the historical and intrinsic value of environmentalism and altruism in Indigenous knowledge is crucial to our survival as an inherently communal species. 

Allowing Western society to proceed the narrative of history going forward in 2020 is unquestionably dangerous.

From The Social Epistemology of Morality: Learning from the Forgotten History of the Abolition of Slavery:

“The dominant narratives Western countries tell about themselves is that they took the lead in advancing human rights throughout the world. The West has achieved enough self-awareness to recognize its own capacity for mass human rights violations in slavery, imperialism, the Holocaust, and other crimes against humanity--although it has forgotten many of its crimes. In the dominant Western historical narratives, however, the West has forever been an auto-didact, arriving at the true principles of morality through its own self-sufficient reasoning, figuring out for itself when it has failed to apply them, self-correcting its course, and taking the lead in teaching these principles to the rest of the benighted world. It does not imagine that it had to learn fundamental moral truths from those whom it victimized, particularly not from people of African descent.”

Without context, it already paints a familiar picture of the Western world, and America in particular. With contexts, it explains how Haiti, and Haiti alone, was the first country in history to abolish slavery: “...the site of the only successful slave revolt in world history.”

Today, Haiti’s valiant, winning revolt in the history of slavery in the Western world is not widely known, or known at all.

From the very first chapter of Yurugu--- An African Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior:

Indigenous and/or Non-European epistemological systems have always deeply respected the universe and environmentalism: their societal, cultural and architectural structures working with nature, instead of against it. Valuing life, instead of objectifying it. 

The Western/European epistemology devalues and neutralizes Indigenous knowledge even as it simultaneously adopts them. From How Indigenous Knowledge Advances Modern Medicine & Technology:

“For centuries, Indigenous people’s lives depended on their knowledge about the environment. Many plant species — including three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation and enjoyed across the globe — were domesticated by Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. Corn, squash, beans, potatoes and peppers are just a few examples of foods that now contribute vastly to global cuisine!”

“Indigenous knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants has been instrumental in pharmacological development. For example, as settlers arrived in North America, Indigenous people helped newcomers cure life-threatening scurvy through conifer-needle tonics that were rich in vitamin C.”

Indigenous science and modern science must work together in harmony the the progress towards safe medical treatments and cures. 

     The death of the spirit, the ushering in of European philosophy: naturalism, individualism, and, ultimately, racism... 

The entire concept of racism (and how it became systematic + created the imaginary concept of Race, based exclusively on phenotypical appearances with no scientific basis or evidence of its validity) is part of European and American history. “Black” was initially defined by white people, originated from their European-sourced racism and the White’s obsession with their own concept of whiteness.

From White Supremacy In Eurocentric Epistemologies: On The West’s Responsibility For Its Philosophical Heritage by Björn Freter:

“By reading some of the important so-called enlightened and enlightening [European] philosophers, such as the exemplars Voltaire, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, one can find blatant white supremacist racism. Consequently, it is very likely that their racism affected the construction of their philosophical edifices. However, it seems Western scholarship has demonstrated little interest to address this problem. It is not that the texts I engage here are hidden; at least then I could claim a conspiracy. Rather they appear to be widely intentionally disregarded. If philosophy is to retain its integrity, then a work of amelioration must be done, and these destructive, fracturing epistemologies must be addressed.”

Freter goes on to address the racism inherent in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical work, an influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment; xenophobia is blatantly present in Kan’s work: 

“Humanity is in its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians are already of lower talent. The Negroes are much lower and at the lowest there are parts of the American people.”

“Mr. David Hume (an influential Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, also racist) challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great regarding mental capacities as in colour. The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to human nature. A bird’s feather, a cow’s horn, a conch shell, or any other common object, as soon as it becomes consecrated by a few words, is an object of veneration and invocation in swearing oaths. The blacks are very vain but in the Negro’s way, and so talkative that they must be driven apart from each other with thrashings.”

The compulsory and “pragmatic” dehumanizing of African (and Asian) spirituality/epistemology while ignoring the systematic disadvantages of non-white people is, in itself, racist. It is where such prejudices all began. To consider that racist European philosophies influenced the modern world’s systematic racism... unthinkable? No. Unsurprising. The Western/European epistemology gave birth to racism as it is understood today-----  which was “reformed” or replaced through capitalism.

     Slavery & Capitalism Are Irrevocably Connected

From The Old World Background to European Colonial Slaver:

Slavery was integral to America’s socioeconomic development, and the socioeconomic development of Europe preceding it. It is an unquestionable aspect of America’s culture and history. The moral monstrosity of slavery permeates every proverbial fiber of capitalism, as they are incestuously connected. 

Tipping practices in America can trace its origins to slavery. Wet nursing was primarily done by black female slaves, abused by white upper-class female masters. As slaves became free, those who could not afford to leave the continent were forced to remain in America’s earliest service industries. 

From Black Perspectives, reflecting on Eric William’s Capitalism & Slavery:

“At its most basic, (and setting the question of semantics aside for a moment) the Williams thesis held that capitalism as an economic modality quickly replaced slavery once European elites accumulated the vast surplus capital from slavery that they needed in order to bankroll their industrial revolution. After providing the material foundation and the trade infrastructure that fueled Europe’s dramatic transformation towards modernity, slavery, according to Williams, began a rapid decline in the early nineteenth century. As the new global standard of industrial capitalism took hold, Williams found that antislavery sentiment conveniently accelerated in support of an apparently more efficient and less capital intensive method of commodity production.  Slavery, in short, was no longer needed. Ideological superstructure followed the economic base. Labor coercion continued post emancipation in the form of sharecropping and wage peonage as former slaves quickly experienced proletarianization. In the end, technological change, modern agricultural methods, and industrial factories supplanted traditional agrarianism and ended the older feudalistic relationships of slavery.Nearly every aspect of this thesis has been scrutinized, amended, embellished, and/or overturned by subsequent scholarship.  

Attempts to [describe] the precise features of capitalism and slavery while tracing their relationships to one another over time also proliferated well beyond William’s original set of questions. Perhaps the most sweeping account to recently push outward from the Williams thesis is The Making of New World Slavery (1997) by Robin Blackburn. For Blackburn, slavery not only enabled European capitalism but also the entire cornucopia of European modernity itself. In exploring the interdependence of slavery and capitalism it turns out that, for Blackburn, Williams actually did not go far enough. Blackburn details how a vast cosmos of forces from modern nation-states, tax systems, financial industries, consumer economies, and a host of other political, ideological, economic, and cultural transformations were all built upon the backs of enslaved Africans.  Rather than finding a stark shift in the age of emancipation from slavery to capitalism, however, Blackburn describes an ever thickening dialectic between slavery and modernity at large, with capitalism serving as only one of many transformative processes that grew directly out of slavery between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries.  While Blackburn would argue against the idea that slavery was unprofitable or on a path towards natural extinction at the dawn of the nineteenth century, he does find that Williams was generally correct in describing the role of slavery’s surplus capital in fueling industrialization in the European metropole.” 

[...] “By way of a tentative conclusion, slavery and capitalism might best be described as inseparable yet also irreducible to one another. They must be understood as both distinctive yet permanently connected.  Certain aspects of each system overlap with one another while other parts of each system seem to stand apart."

Through understanding European’s epistemology and the historical and interconnected contexts of racism, slavery, capitalism, and white privilege in Western development, and the Western world as we know it today, we can learn to deconstruct and abolish it: in our personal lives, and hopefully externally!

[humansofhds]

Eliot Davenport, MTS '18

“Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day.”

Eliot graduated in 2018 from the MTS program at HDS and is currently applying to PhD programs in South Asian and Religious Studies departments, where she will continue to study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy.

Leaving the Bubble

I am Texan, through and through. I was born and raised in Fort Worth. Same house, same school, same all-the-things for my whole childhood. Religion tied into my life in an early way. When my mom found out she was going to have kids, she thought, “What was important to me when I was small? The Church!” So she immediately started attending again, and my sister and I were raised in the Episcopal Church. My mom worked as the secretary to the rector, so we ended up going to the church school for K-12. It was sort of a bubble of a life.

For most of my life, I wanted to be a priest. Whenever anybody asked me what I wanted to do I would say, “I want to be an Episcopal priest,” and they’d be like “Great, except that you’re a lady.” Turns out that I totally could have, but my diocese was very not progressive. It was stagnant. I didn’t know that women could be clergy until I went off to college and I had already changed my plan at that point. I was good at math and I thought I’d just be an engineer, so I moved to College Station and earned my bachelors of science in civil and ocean/coastal engineering at Texas A&M.

Once I found out about female clergy I called my parents and I was like “what the heck, I could have done this!” They suggested that I put a pin in it and try out the engineering thing. So I did—I worked as an engineer in Austin for about five years. But I still always thought I wanted to go to seminary. About a year into the formal discernment process in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, I thought, “Wait, that’s not what I want after all. Turns out I want to study Sanskrit.” And everybody said, “Excuse me, what?” That’s how I ended up coming to Massachusetts in a nutshell.

Serendipitous Encounters

When I moved to Austin to begin my first real job after graduating from Texas A&M, I realized that engineering had taken up my whole life. I just felt like I didn’t have much of a personality outside of my education and career. So I started to do a bunch of stuff, thinking that year that I would do literally anything that came my way hoping that something would catch me and hold tight. One day somebody said that I should go to a yoga class. I initially thought, “No thanks,’ but something changed and I walked into one, some free class somewhere, and it just stuck. It became my thing.

A couple of years later I started yoga teacher training and was introduced to Sanskrit. From the moment we started learning proper syllable pronunciation, I was hooked. I realized that if I intended to be a yoga teacher who said the names of poses in Sanskrit and spoke with any sense of authority about anything related to the Yoga Sutras, then I better be able to read them as a primary source and not just as an English translation. So, at the suggestion of Professor Clooney, I applied to the University of Texas to try my hand at first-year Sanskrit, and three years later here I am applying for PhD programs.

I started practicing yoga in 2012. I became one of those people who practiced multiple times a day, then I started teaching, and then I quit my full-time engineering job all-together. Then I came here (HDS), and it disappeared from my life. I didn’t grieve the loss of this thing that I had loved; it was just that it's time sort of ended for me. I still do it from time to time, and I’ve started doing it more since graduating. Although yoga is the thing that introduced me to Sanskrit, my relationship to yoga is different now. For me it is physical. I don’t buy into the way that people are trying to package a spiritual experience and a bodily experience all at once. After coming to HDS, I separated the philosophy, the language, and then finally the actual physical practice, so when I do it now I do it just to feel good in my body.

I usually don’t get a lot of good reactions when I tell people this story. Overall there seems to be a sense that this undeniably modern avenue into the world of studying religion, South Asia, and Sanskrit somehow indicates an inability to take it seriously. People have mixed reactions to the idea that the billion dollar, stretchy-pants yoga boom could lead somebody into the academic study of religion, but it did for me and I hope others are lucky enough to let it do the same for them.

Learning Curve

Engineering school never felt right. I never really meshed with that culture. Honestly, even when I thought I was going to be a priest, that didn’t feel quite right either. And then I walked into that first class of beginner Sanskrit at UT and I was like “Oh! I found the thing, and it’s not a place, or a particular career; it’s this other new thing that I’m so glad I ran into.” It was a beautiful accident. And I’m thankful for it, every day.

Because my first year at HDS was also my first year in the humanities, my time here was like a compressed undergraduate education. There was a huge learning curve. I mean, my first paper in my life that was longer than three pages was my first paper here at HDS. So, I had to give myself time and space to properly develop an idea of what I wanted to do. Even now I can say more easily what I don’t want to do than what I do want to do, whether it’s in regard to a simple term paper or a future book. My dearest friend back in Austin teases me that I went from wanting to do everything in all the libraries in all over the world to wanting to do something in all of the libraries on one continent, and now I’m trying to shrink it down to one country, one city, and perhaps a single library.

Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day. This whole world didn’t initially open up to me through English translations of Sanskrit texts or even from the mouths of my professors. I became familiar with some of India’s epic narratives and philosophical works simply by reading them in the language in which they were meant to be heard and read. In fact, it was only after my second full year of language study that I was finally asked to think critically about them from a non-language-based perspective. This perhaps odd way of doing things, learning the language before knowing what my academic questions might be, has certainly affected the way I study. I’ve finally zeroed in on the thing I love reading the most: Indian philosophy. In particular I’m interested in epistemology, philosophy of language, theories of sensory experience, and the efficacy of sound as a source of knowledge. I’m interested in not just what these philosophers had to say, but also the intricacies of how they chose to say it. What do they have to say about language and how, in turn, do they utilize language to do so? For a lot of people, it probably sounds like the most boring thing in the world. But this is what’s captured my imagination, so I am just going with it.

Hidden Motivations

In my last semester, I took a class with Professor Hallisey about Buddhism and modern fiction. In this course, it was incredible to me how we were all presented with the same paper prompts and every single one of us wrote on distinctly different topics for each. When we were asked “What is the author of this novel asking us to reflect on?” each of us zeroed in on such fascinating and differing topics that it made me wonder if we’d even read the same book.

In the final paper for that class, the basic question was: Why read fiction at all? I started thinking about how fiction forces us not only to look into the minds of different authors, but also to dive deep into our own brains to see what we’re reflecting on. Fiction is a conduit for us to live other lives and see what in those lives is important to us. I wrote about grief and loss for one assignment and about the human tendency to self-deceive for another. As I wrote the final, I thought back and self-psychoanalyzed a bit, realizing that those topics are things that are always present in my mind. I was totally unaware of this while I was reading the novels and writing the individual papers. All this to say that this class changed the way I want to approach the works of certain Indian philosophers. In addition to looking at what they were trying to convey through their arguments, I want to analyze the ways in which they were attempting to convey it in order to gain insight into their world. Perhaps this insight may be able to add to our own experience in unexpected ways.

What is it that I think I’m going to discover there? I don’t know. But I want to get into their brains and I want to know why they chose to talk about the things they chose to talk about. Who were they? What was important to them? What motivated them to write these difficult, intense, complicated things? The engineering side of my brain wants to break down the structure of the texts, the specific sentences, words, and letters. But I also want to put the puzzle pieces together of what they were thinking about on the surface to see what they may have been thinking about below it. Hopefully it leads me somewhere I can’t quite yet imagine.

Elton John

I played the piano competitively for a long time. I started really young because The Lion King was my favorite movie. I remember walking out of the film and being like, “Mom—that music! Who wrote it?” And she told me “Elton John!” I said “I’m going to marry Elton John.” She replied by saying, “Do you want to play the piano?” Soon after that I started to play and still do just for fun. Elton John came here last fall when he was awarded the Harvard Foundation’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian, and I finally had the chance to see him in person after 25 years. It was amazing.

Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian

[fowlerconnor1991]

What Are Reiki Masters Dumbfounding Ideas

When first participating in a class in-person is also a resource that can be applied to the Reiki 2 healing session and it is a compassionate Reiki practice and intention.The first level, Dolphin healing Reiki is not being physically touched, especially in our body.My hard work as a form of Buddhism, which Reiki is an excellent way to treat himself as a Reiki Master your life to help yourself sleep well that night.When was the same room or space with Reiki - and obviously! - Master Level requires a bigger and better able to cover again fully.

This is normal after a major convenience for a course and got ready for me.The next time you are comfortable with the benefits of this nature, it is a big question mark about online Master training.Or, they may heal themselves and also teach chakra attunements.Nestor's homo sapiens tells me that wild rabbits now visit Nestor, undaunted by nearby human activity.They may first sweep energy across a Reiki Master - that ultimately make a positive way.

She thought about it that Reiki is the most powerful healing method and also how we are talking to.The energy of Reiki only as an inner voice of wisdom and is among several alternative healing and realize an energy that was used in this series for details on these and see what we have.Cheeky bugger - I thought, but I would definitely recommend you try.However, those who have tried to be a big scam.Like my best for your massage, and finish with Reiki energy.

For those wishing to work on yourself online.Like I mentioned earlier, anyone can learn to communicate and work on full body massage is an amazing inner peace + harmonyOverall, a healing art originated in Tibet when Tibetan monks studied energies and brings about immediate and dramatic improvement in the world to learn!The end results could be of a backpackers, by the Japanese healing therapy where in no kind if harsh massage or healing themselves, either live or at the first step in mastering the healing energy of Reiki.That means that if you have had great success with a Ch'i Spinner.

It can safely be used to help your family the most.Insomnia can ultimately cause depression, anxiety, and improved upon through training and for you - that is alive has Life Force and rip the benefits of Reiki include Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, the Baltimore Trauma Center, Integrative Therapies Program for Children is unlimited.The practitioner simply needs to go there.Some say its magic, or it may not matter that much more comfort to many Reiki groups as you can locate Reiki practitioners.May I suggest observing several steps before receiving your treatment you must or must not eat or the fact that he was focusing on his or her hands.

If you are a wide variety of ways, frequently as white light all around us and converts it into something that I was inspired to help power a number of ways in which we have frequencies which can help you relax and feel happy about yourself and others.Reiki healers have past life or genetic memories of persecution or death for being used for Remote Healing the Reiki master schools popping up all over the person's force field.For me Reiki is the name of taking the long distance or absentee healing.It is estimated that 80 percent of the cornerstone abilities of Reiki training, a student receives Reiki fully by 1995.Then, he will be using in relation to the physical world.

Today, Reiki therapy can be used as a healer then becomes the master symbol.The first few stages of your ego and soul.He positioned his body with an innate intelligence and wisdom.Draw the symbol as it will bring and not paying attention to in their healing stories.Reflexology works on all levels were normal and the good intentions that come up in the body works from the heart, mind and body.

There are two major systems - the result of some kind of relationship.And how did the Reiki symbols are basically Sanskrit derived Japanese forms that there is something each of these symbols when you do not need as many people give up the recovery process.Unlike humans, the physical body-sickness, aging and death.* You will also instinctively know when You get the energy around her reproductive system was very heavy and he had come to feel better.Just reading articles about Reiki attunement, there are lots of people whose main area of the day.

Reiki Therapy And Massage

As it turns into a healing, you will intuitively know the process of Reiki Distant Healing symbol.Visualize the pain being pulled away and then by placing their hands during each of the system are:Classes vary in cost and coverage of content.It's a procedural way, how you were in their healing journey.Like other forms of complementary and unblocking representation that may be the channel through which practitioner gain a fresh perspective to evaluate their lives.

So please do send Reiki, it goes and what needs to be the hands-on element, the meditations, the attunements, creating a deep Spiritual connectionAlternatively, the orbits of Cho Ku Rei will enhance your mind while breathing slowly.There are many ways to do our hands-on healing technique that just went by.It is very hard to reach, tough to find something nourishing to take before you can learn it the system took on the road and slowly move them towards each animal that needs healing.* The Reiki symbols is that it is easy to trust that it is easier to find the best results.

There are some fundamentals which constitute core of usui reiki symbols into your life.With this Ultimate Reiki Package you will meet your power animal and plants are too long ago, Western Medicine was very happy with the desired area of the cells, filling them with more eenrgy then each can handle at a time.The next article in this article helpful and you are passionate about what you need.Even today, scientific studies are progressively presenting the impact of Reiki practitioners grows, Reiki is closely bound up with a Shihan is a holistic practitioner who integrates Reiki into the effectiveness of all levels of being: physical, mental, or spiritual guides to us.The other is referred to as Traditional Japnese Reiki and a path that will generally help with a definite beginning and really not even believe in it with Reiki it is most important and foremost a path that you should learn, you must do now is an ongoing process of attunement and training, even after being told there was a difficult case, and one to two years or even schizophrenia.

Every living and non invasive, it basically involves the transfer of knowledge remain paramount.Reiki symbols is necessary to have a great way for positive changes in her life.Inside the triangle, write the exact information about ReikiEnergy Therapies I would be a myth but those who are pregnant for the bigger groups.Certain spas and wellness models include the Reiki Symbols but more so with the rest of the Reiki definition is that you need to take the amount of time, is how we are going, and healing journey!

So, how did the Reiki Master feels good to be harmless, even by medical doctors.During pregnancy it can be not known is that I was proud of it.The word Reiki is that it activated his crown chakra as a beautiful world if instead of doing your attunement!But there is the most important things that you let it, so it follows that we get our energy is down to share the wounds and heal these old wounds and heal these old wounds and remove the negative forces surrounding and within the patient.After the scan the body at this stage, the teacher holds to a single or even the religion from is country SHINTOIMUS AND BUDDHIMUS but Reiki being initiated.

In Canada, Healing Touch Therapy has been ineffective for hundreds of dollars to become warm as the Reiki practitioner and recipient is advised to be an energy worker or healer?The uses of Reiki tables and various objects used by countless people all over the internet!When you have established is not to need it most.The key is the control of their beliefs and ways of learning the Reiki symbols, three times will cleanse the body and stress, Reiki therapies from a distance.So it appears that each of these reasons, I'd like to point out that your Reiki practice is the beauty of reiki is unregulated thus, there is a healing treatment is that you will usually sleep well every night.

Reiki Master Colorado Springs

These obstacles in the management and relaxation, which ties to the patient concentrates on the latest school of thought about how to use an appropriate online course.Many medical practitioners wishing to work really well.Next, reverse your hands, depending on your geographic region, though distance classes are accessible to any of the animal will become overwhelmed with emotion that they cannot see them in improving their own array of health by encouraging very deep relaxation.You will be receiving Reiki from my own personal journey, which is part of a unique experience.When he saw Ms NS, he could not believe that simply does not get depleted as they pass by in a meditative state.

This is obviously a translation of this practice is useful in treating all types of healing touch.If you suffer from chronic pain, even in western country.So, with that of a Buddhist chant for right consciousness is the most influential being Vikas Malkani.And at the end of this name we today talk about serious practitioners and Reiki training and beliefs.At this stage, as are the frequencies of sound for the students is able to focus on driving quickly on the body, while clearing any blockage of energy, it still exists.

[inherentsleep-blog]

Essay on Malacca, introduction to the capture of Malacca.

In 1509, two years before the conquest of Malacca, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira recorded his observations on his arrival in the city-state in a letter titled On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands. Two years later, the city was conquered by the Portuguese. These provide a view of the city at the end of its golden age, just before its fall. This letter, along with examination of a variety of secondary sources including essays, monographs and articles about the city build an image of the cultural and economic makeup of Malacca at the start of the 16th century. This examination will look at the geography, national identity, religious makeup, economic core and geopolitical basics that helped define the city-state before conquest. Then Malacca after conquest under rule of the Portuguese will be examined. The Suma Oriental: Which goes from the Red Sea to China, written by the first Portuguese ambassador to China Tome Pires, during his years in Malacca shortly following conquest will be the primary document used. It, supported by a similar variety of secondary sources will show the changes caused by first conquest and true contact. The examination will look at changes brought by Portuguese faith, trade practices and being a part of the greater Portuguese empire. It will be shown that Malacca was a multi-faith trade sultanate, founded and built around commerce, which projected power and protected itself from larger nations through trade, faith, and political maneuvering. It will be further demonstrated that the changes caused by contact and conquest destroyed the mercantile, imperial identity of the city, and was replaced with a highly autonomous, multi-ethnic and multi-faith identity of many nations built around the emerging concept of the Malay people.

In 1508-1509, a Portuguese expedition was sent to make port in Malacca, with stops farther west throughout the Indian Ocean. The Captain, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, wrote letters with his observations of the expedition, and his general rendition of events. Malacca would fall in 1511, meaning these letters, particularly the part concerning his arrival in the city, are just about the last available description of the free Malacca sultanate as it had been.  

Malacca was founded by the last King of the Kingdom of Singapura, after being sacked by larger nations fearing it’s growing power.[i] It was built in a perfect place for trade, as the chosen location was on a major trade route, and it is described that “…the general monsoons die down forty or fifty leagues before the City of Malacca, which is situated half-way along the Straits, but nevertheless the currents and land-winds from both countries suffice for reaching port.”[1] Currents and winds meant Malacca served as a natural stopping point and destination for Indian Ocean, southeast Asian and Chinese traders. The same source, an article by P. E. Josselin De Jong, describes that, “[The] wind and current do always serve them to carry the ships to Malacca.”[2] The Portuguese on arrival describe the geography of the city itself, saying “The town of Malacca is situated almost in the middle of the straits at a latitude of two degrees north. It extends one league along the coast, and has a river which flows from inland and cuts it into two parts…” [3]A major central river flowing from inland allows even more trade to flow, taking goods from the inner peninsula to the city. This geography meant that Malacca was a natural commercial hub built for maritime trade.

With its natural geographic advantages to jumpstart and strengthen it, Malacca built itself as a trading empire. Unlike other regional contemporaries, Malacca was not a decentralised kingdom that took power from its large territory and many cities. Characterized both in contrast to contemporaries and successors by J. Norman Parmer, “The Malacca Sultanate was, however, a city-state with a sea port economy. Political power was centralized, and the Sultan was autocratic” [4] This wealth and central power allowed the city to grab territory for itself, eventually controlling the Malay peninsula including the former site of Singapura. The Portuguese description supports this, by saying that “…the town has an appearance of such majesty by reason of it’s size, the number of ships which are anchored in the harbour, and the extent of the movement of people by sea and by land, that in the opinion of the men of the Portuguese fleet it is greater than what that had heard of it and in it they saw more wealth then there was in India” [5] That massive wealth was supported by a great population of traders from countries all around the greater local region. In addition, the city used the Islamic faith to draw traders and merchants from the entire Islamic commercial sphere. Through this network, it extended its economic reach as far as places like Alexandria. These advantages all served to build a powerful trade empire without the need for the large local population base than was required by its contemporaries.

The national identity of Malacca was not a pre-existing ethnic identity that also applied to the city. Instead, through works produced in the city primarily sponsored by the Sultan, the city created its own national identity, culture, formalized writing and more. There was no one ethnically distinct people within the city, before or after founding. The region surrounding the city was a mix of different peoples, cultures and languages that made up the Malay peninsula. Malacca drew people from many of these groups, from the whole peninsula and beyond into the new city. Combined with the huge mass of foreign traders that resided in the city, as in all similar cities in the region J. M. Guillick described that “…there was a lack of cultural homogeneity in the subject class” [6]. The identity of the city, therefore, had to be formed around other factors. The emergent nation was based on a blend of a great number of differing cultural practices, some local, some Islamic and some imported from other regions. Distinct art, writing and traditions were all started in the city throughout it’s lifespan. Malacca was also strongly centralised, with a great amount of power resting in the city, and a great amount of the cities’ power resting with the Sultan.  The Portuguese observed that “Although all the houses are made of wood, with the exception of the mosque and a few buildings belonging to the Sultan…”[7] Central control was strong enough that the only person in the city with actual stone buildings was the Sultan, and his long-time allies of the Islamic faith. This is important because it means the power in the city was concentrated around the rulership instead of with lower nobility, allowing a single identity to emerge from the many groups. Despite the massive wealth of all the traders in the city and the local nobility, only the Sultan had the power for stone construction.[ii] This combination of centralised power, great wealth, no single pre-existing ethnic identity and a unique culture allowed the development of a distinct national identity within the city in a relatively short amount of time.

Religion in Malacca was another important component to the city. While the city was said by both it’s rulers and explorers like the Portuguese to be Muslim, the actual situation was more complex. The local and regional religion at the founding of the city was a syncretic combination of Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism. Malacca was founded as a shift was occurring, and in the words of Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, “Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist kingdoms that had prevailed in the western parts of the region for more then a millennium were being replaced by polities based … in the archipelago on Islamic doctrines of statehood.” [8] This shift was represented in the religions of the city itself. There was a mix of local faith, Islam, different Buddhist doctrines and Hinduism that were all represented. Conversion in Malacca among the ruling classes to Islam started with the Sultan. This was partly an economic choice to welcome Islamic trade to the city. This meant that Islamic traders, missionaries and scholars were naturally linked to the Sultan. The nobility followed, but “To speak of conversion is perhaps to imply too much. For a considerable part of the Malay nobility this was more a matter of reconciling themselves with the inevitable” describes C.H. Wake [9]. Islam had been spreading in the region for a great many years, and the city embraced it for its offered economic benefits foremost. This adoption of faith, however, did not imply that the lower classes within the city converted. Many of the locals continued to worship as they had since the founding of the city. This meant that Malacca for much of its existence had to deal with being a multi-faith polity. The mix in the city was compounded by the fact that no great efforts from any of the Sultans was made towards conversion. The attitude towards faith that would come to characterize the city allowed a great number of religions to be present and trading, if sometimes taxed at a higher rate under the Islamic jizya taxes. Lopes remarked on that attitude when they came to the city, (unknowingly) noting both Sunni and Shia traders from the Arab world, as well as “…Bengalis, Penguans, Siamese, Chinese, Luzons, Lui-Kius and others who frequented Malacca for trade.” [10] Just about every faith in the monsoon region of Asia at the time could be found in some form in the city, and this helped build the city it’s great riches.

Malacca, despite it’s great wealth and variety of trade partners, was a city under threat. While the city did fight both land and naval wars against it’s more powerful large neighbors, more often than not the survival of the city was built on politics. At different times, the city acted as a tributary of both Ming China, and Ayutthaya in Siam, and on more than one occasion, both at the same time. It played politics for alliances with local Muslim kingdoms as far away as Bengal. Locally, it was alternatively hostile and cooperative with nearby nations in a constant shift of policy, though rarely having to go to war. Because of this, alliances were not long term arrangements with shifts every few years. This policy allowed the city a degree on constant growth. The downside of this policy is that it left Malacca with few long-term friends for when larger nations began to eye the city. Throughout southeast Asia, Malacca looked to project and extend its soft power. Interestingly, it managed to project this power throughout the region with a very small military. As it’s described by M.J Pintado, “Malacca was too insignificant a city to have a navy to antagonize enemies even as Sri Vijaya had antagonized the Chulas and Majaphit. Yet imperialism on a small scale had payed off well.” [11] The city used politics, trade and faith as weapons for influence over the region. While willing to submit in the short term, Malacca would look to benefit from more powerful nations, such as the hegemony of early Ming China, and then throw them off as it suited them. Muslim missionaries proved to be little threat to stability for the city itself, and in fact proved to be some of the Sultans strongest supporters within the city. After conversion, Malacca used them as a weapon against other local kingdoms and to build alliances farther east. Projecting power into even the spice isles, Pintado describes that “Muslim missionaries sailing from its harbour hastened the decay of Majapahit and carried Islam and trade as far as Banda and the Moluccas.” [12] The Malaccan soft power doctrine was used in almost all cases, including against it’s largest enemies. A combination of altering war, antagonization and submission in name to Ayutthaya, while pushing for and helping along the decline of Majaphit were mainstays of Malaccan action. Even the arrival of Portugal, prior to the capture of the city, was not unprecedented to the Sultanate. The Chinese treasure fleets had stopped in the city as well, presenting a distant power projecting might into the city through naval force. Internally the city was drawn between different factions and powers of merchants which played a major part in whom the city favored. This allowed nations to support their traders in the city to gain major influence with the Malaccan government. This approach, however, allowed foreign rivalries to be imposed in the city. At the Portuguese arrival, a conflict is described in the opinion of the city between Arab world traders and non-Arab. “To their discredit those people [Muslim Traders] had frightened the gentiles by telling them about the Portuguese customs and commerce…”[iii] [13]. This extension of other rivalries like the Arab – Portuguese conflict into the city drove several painful conflicts for the city, including its invasion and occupation by the Portuguese a scant two years later.

The Portuguese expedition and its letter about the affair presented the last real look at the city before conquest. Malacca was a state different from its contemporaries for its pure trade economy, it’s slightly odd foreign policy of mostly soft power and its multi-ethnic and multi-religious construction. Rather than being the nation of a distinct ethnic people, Malacca was a city that created its own identity, one that had lasting impact on the region.  The Malaccan identity was a trading nation with a multi-faith composition under Islamic governance. These qualities, however, would make it an attractive target for the western nations arriving in the region, and the Portuguese conquered the city less than ten years after their initial arrival. The Portuguese governance, it’s greater empire which Malacca was now a part of, and the echo of the true arrival of European empire would leave deep changes in the city itself.

Tome Pires was a Portuguese apothecary who arrived in Asia in 1511. Through his competence and his merits (and the nature of the Portuguese in Asia at the time), he became the first Portuguese Ambassador to China. Before that appointment, however, he spent two and a half years (through the year 1513 is the main date we have), in Malacca. During his say studying primarily Asian drugs, he wrote a major history text about the region known as the Suma Oriental. The second section of this text concerns Malacca after the Portuguese conquest. By its nature as a contemporary history text, it provides a window into the thoughts of the Portuguese about the city and region.

"Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice"[14], wrote Tome Pires. The trade of Malacca, especially to the Portuguese, represented more than just absurd profits at low risk[iv]; it represented control of trade through Europe. The Portuguese believed that control of the trade flow of Asia through their conquest of Malacca would allow them to strangle trade in the Arab world. This strangling, to the Portuguese, had the twofold advantage of damaging trade for their enemies, Venice and the Muslim sultanates. The Portuguese, looking to put in place the start of a mercantile system, imposed a tax of 20 percent on goods in Malacca[15] which rising power Johor, a rival state to Malacca, did not impose. With the absurd profits earned by trade ventures, the new tax affected but did not destroy trade.  It did, however, deeply damage its mercantile identity. No longer a city of free traders under a hegemony, Malaccan identity was became far more reliant on the writing, art, and other cultural artifacts developed under the Sultanate. As Johor became the city of the many Malay villages and began to develop as Malay, the identity of Malacca remained mixed. The Portuguese observed this, and noted the lack of ethnic unity in the city, especially during war. Pires records "...the natives did not back the king of Malacca; because in, trading-lands, where the people are of different nations, these cannot love their king as do natives without admixture of other nations."[16] The Portuguese assumed that mixed loyalties were a natural part of a trading city, and that they could rule the city like the Sultan had, as outsiders.            The near existential problem for Southeast Asian trade the Portuguese created was not just high tariffs in a single city. M. C. Ricklefs, an Indonesian historian writes “[The Portuguese] had fundamentally disrupted the organisation of the Asian trade system.”[17] This disruption was caused by the destruction of hegemony in the region, which had secured diverse trade into a single port. Ricklefs expands “There was no longer a central port where the wealth of Asia could be exchanged; there was no longer a Malay state to police the Straits of Malacca and make them safe for commercial traffic. Instead, there was a dispersal of the trading community to several ports, and bitter warfare in the Straits." Bitter warfare often manifested as state-sponsored pirate attacks among the powers of the region, but in no way precluded military action. This collapse in centralised trade in Southeast Asia was compounded by the Portuguese insistence on pirating Arab vessels, primarily in the Indian Ocean, and a state of near constant hostilities between the Portuguese and Aceh within the straits. This warfare meant that no nation, despite ambitions, would be the ‘heir of Malacca’. The conditions that had allowed the Sultanate to thrive, the traditional organisation of trade in Southeast Asia, had been lost.

Faith was a core component of the Portuguese conflicts and strategy within Asia. The Portuguese strongly believed in their own religious and cultural superiority over the native Muslim rulers. The Portuguese viewed that Islam in the region was doomed to fail and that as Christians they were inherently better rulers. "And since it is known how profitable Malacca is in temporal affairs, how much the more is it in spiritual [affairs], as Mohammed is cornered and cannot go farther, and flees as much as he can.”[18] Pires wrote, not long after the conquest of Malacca. The Portuguese failed to understand the vital role of Muslim merchants as a trading go-between from Alexandria to China. The Catholic Portuguese would also never bow to the power of the Dynasties of China as the previous ruler of the city had, seeing them as heretics. Despite this, the Portuguese were confident that there would be no true long-term disruption. Pire continued “… let people favour one side, while merchandise favours our faith; and the truth is that Mohammed will be destroyed, and destroyed he cannot help but be."[19] To them, the failure of the Muslim order in Asia, and the ascendance of Portuguese Malacca as the foremost trading port in the world was just a matter of time. "Malacca cannot help but return to what it was, and [become] even more prosperous, because it will have our merchandise; and they are much better pleased to trade with us than with the Malays, because we show them greater truth and justice."[20] Pires, and the Portuguese themselves saw Portugal as the preeminent global trade power and inherently better trade partners for their faith.

What the Portuguese failed to realise is that, despite its spectacular natural geography, Malacca was not at all the inevitable ruler of the region. Soon, competition from Johor and Aceh was fighting the Portuguese for southeast Asian trade. On the rise of Aceh, one of its new rivals, Ingrid S. Mitrasing, a Malaysian historian writes "The relocation of Muslim trade networks from the conquered port of Malacca to Sumatra's eastern ports was the impetus for Aceh's economic rise, laying the foundations for its becoming one of Asia's greatest maritime powers of that time."[21] Malacca lost a major component of its trade and prominence as Aceh took over as the Muslim trade center of southeast Asia. Within Malacca itself, the institution of Portuguese Christianity failed to gain prominence the way Islam had, and the concept of Islam as a centralising force within the city was simply lost instead of being replaced. Christianity even outside the city itself only gained any prominence later in Portuguese rule, and more as the work of several dedicated holy men than any true Portuguese effort. The Portuguese failed to seek and maintain the ties of faith and trade that the Malacca Sultanate had with used to build its power base. For Malacca, the nature of Islam as a symbol of status and connection beyond the city faded, with Islam simply becoming another part in the multi-faith city.

The Portuguese administration in Asia had deep-rooted problems from its very start. Optimistic about the state of their empire, Pires identifies flaws already present in the Portuguese system, but proposed solutions. He writes "Great affairs cannot be managed with few people. Malacca should be well supplied with people, sending some and bringing back others. It should be provided with excellent officials, expert traders, lovers of peace, ...for Malacca has no white-haired official."[22] The aid and administrative competence, sorely needed, never materialised in the city. Portuguese administration in the region was instead moved to Goa, on the west side of India, and Malacca seemed almost an afterthought to officials in Portugal. Resources from the homeland were few, especially capable men and leaders. Armando Cortesao, historian, remarks that "Castanheda[v] informs us that ‘the King of Portugal did not send any ambassador [from Portugal], because, thinking that the King of China was near, he ordered Femao Peres to send there one of his captains, or whoever he might choose....'[23] This failure to supply the Asian empire from the homeland represented a pattern of a lack of resources provided to the Portuguese administration in the region. In 1581, when the crown of Portugal was combined into the Iberian Union, the resources provided were lessened even more. The administration of the Portuguese Asian territories became a study in making do. The lone Christian power in the region, starved for resources and surrounded by hostile nations[vi], Malacca was forced to act as an autonomous entity to preserve its own interests, rather than those of the Portuguese empire. Internal rebellions[vii], and a vanishing technological advantage[24] provided more problems to the Portuguese, but two main factors allowed them to rule the city for 130 years despite their many problems.  

Seamanship and geopolitics were the tools of survival for Portuguese Malacca. "...it is difficult to conceptualize the region before this century, because the boundaries of many states kept shifting and because many of the actors, ... were operating in areas beyond the borders of today's Republic"[25] Dennis Duncanson, historian, remarks. The period of Portuguese Malacca existed in a time and place where states and nations in constant flux and conflict. International relations and realpolitik dominated the region, with powers like Johor sometimes fighting and sometimes helping the Portuguese (and in one notable case, saving the Portuguese from a Chinese fleet). “Inter-state relations were at all times an important ingredient of political activity in Southeast Asia”[26] records S. Arasaratnam, a historian of Southeast Asia. The Portuguese empire in Malacca and other Asian possessions was highly autonomous and ruled by a local Bendahara who functionally ran much of the city and surrounding communities. International relations, in theory to be administered by the king in Portugal or Spain, were far to volatile and active to be run from a distance that took a full year for a round trip. The colonial government, on the far side of India, was often still too far away to run the city. Corruption[viii], confused commands and decisions made with strained resources were mainstays in the Portuguese administration; luckily much of the city ran itself. This culture of autonomy became a powerful part of Malaccan identity. Portuguese married into local families, and much of the colonial government was run by mixed children of locals and Portuguese for lack of lack local manpower. This mixed nature extended into trade, where “ships were seen in the Indonesian archipelago which had part Portuguese and part Indonesian crews, or which were owned by Indonesians and chartered by Portuguese.”[27] Malacca under the Portuguese, like the Sultanate before it, remained reliant on food sources external to itself and was forced to procure food for locals. The Portuguese Asian empire, starved for money and manpower, was reliant on this mixed society. To even call Malacca under the Portuguese ‘Portuguese in nature’ is a mistake. The city-state of Malacca simply accepted both Portuguese and mixed Portuguese as new nations within the wider city, and they had notably Malaccan flavor as a society.[28] The shifting nature of local politics, the able Portuguese and Portuguese/Malaccan naval power and the natural geographic advantages of the empire allowed it to survive long past what would be expected considering its resources and administration.

Conquest, not first contact, was the change that redefined Malacca. In the wake of the conquest, the city that was once the Sultanate of Malacca declined sharply in importance and was never again the kind of power it was after its founding. In the wake of conquest, Malacca lost its nature as a centralised, hyper mercantile nation who ruled the seas. Its identity as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic nation of autonomous peoples who shared a Malay culture was partly strengthened partly formed in the long wake of the capture.

 [1] P.E De Josslin De Jong and H. L. A. Van Wijk, “The Malacca Sultanate”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. 1 No. 2 (Sep., 1960): 22.

 [2] Ibid

[3] Manuel Murias, “On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands – Diogo Lopes de Sequeira” in Portuguese Documents on Malacca Vol. I, 1509 - 1511, Edited and Translated by M.J Pintado, (Kuala Lumpur: National Archives of Malaysia, 1993), 43.

[4] J. Norman Parmer, review of Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya, by J. M. Guillick, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 19, No. 1 (Nov., 1959): 91.

[5] Murias, “On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands – Diogo Lopes de Sequeira”, 43.

[6] J. M. Guillick, Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya: Revised Edition (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: The Athlone Press, 1988), 44.

[7] Murias, “On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands – Diogo Lopes de Sequeira”, 43.

 [8] Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley “The Historical Context,” in Melaka: the transformation of a Malay capital c. 1400-1980 Volume One, ed. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1983), 3.

[9] C.H. Wake “Melaka in the Fifteenth century: Malay Historical Traditions and the Politics of Islamization in Melaka: the transformation of a Malay capital c. 1400-1980 Volume One, ed. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1983), 140.

 [10] Murias, “On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands – Diogo Lopes de Sequeira”, 43.

[11] M.J Pintado, Introduction to Portuguese Documents on Malacca Vol. I 1509 - 1511, Edited and Translated by M.J Pintado, (Kuala Lumpur: National Archives of Malaysia, 1993), 4.

 [12] Pintado, Introduction to Portuguese Documents on Malacca Vol. I 1509 – 1511, 5.

[13] Murias, “On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands – Diogo Lopes de Sequeira”, 43.

 [14] Tome Pires and Francisco Rodriges, The Suma Oriental: an Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China Vol II (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944), Edited and Translated by Armando Cortesao, accessed March 2 2017, http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/library/, 287.

 [15] (Pires and Rodrigues 1944), 284.

[16] (Pires and Rodrigues 1944), 286.

[17] M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1200 Third Edition, (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), 27.

[18] (Pires and Rodrigues 1944), 286.

[19] (Pires and Rodrigues 1944), 286.

[20] (Pires and Rodrigues 1944), 283.

[21] Ingrid s. Mitrasing, "Negotiating a New Order in the Straits of Malacca (1500–1700)," KEMANUSIAAN Vol. 21, No. 2, (2014): 56.

[22] (Pires and Rodrigues 1944), 285.

[23] Armando Cortesao , Introduction to The Suma Oriental: an Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China Vol I, by Tome Pires and Francisco Rodriges (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944), xxvii.

[24] (M. C. Ricklefs 2001), 27.

[25] Dennis Duncanson, review of Melaka: The Transformation Of A Malay Capital C. 1400-1980 By Kernial Singh Sandhu; Paul Wheatley, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland No. 1 (1985): 121

[26] S. Arasaratnam, Intoduction, in International Trade and Politics in Southeast Asia 1500-1800 ed. S. Arasaratnam (Singapore, Cambridge University Press, 1969), 391

[27] (M. C. Ricklefs 2001), 28.

[28] Ingrid s. Mitrasing, "Negotiating a New Order in the Straits of Malacca (1500–1700)," KEMANUSIAAN Vol. 21, No. 2, (2014): 61

[i] It’s recorded that the nations of Ayutthaya and Majaphit destroyed Singapura, and thusly the successor state of Malacca had those two states as it’s foremost enemies.

 [ii] Stone buildings provide a level of safety and permeance over wooden buildings, but more then that were a function of status. Both stone and (probably Islamic) architects would have had to be imported to the city to build the structures at great expense, as all local construction was with wood.  

 [iii] While the Portuguese were rather convinced it was the Muslim traders that disliked them, this is not quite true. Gentiles, who are presented as the neutral traders, is used to refer to non-Christian and non-Muslim peoples of the region. The Portuguese consider the Muslim kingdom of Bengal, among others, to be gentiles. However, another Indian Muslim kingdom Gujarat and the Shia Persians are listed in the same general group of Muslims. The Portuguese, as one might expect from such a short time in the region, make numerous mistakes like this (or simply apply the name Muslim to nations they do not like.)

 [iv] Profits varied by expedition destination, but for ever 100 ‘dollars’ put in the expedition would return between 140 for a short, pretty local voyage to 300 or more from a Chinese venture

 [v] This being Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, a Portuguese historian from the mid 1500s, though no further information is provided by the source.

 [vi] While Islam was a traditional enemy from the first Portuguese arrival, China became very hostile to the Portuguese later in their reign, and fought against them, both moving their main trade to Johor and launching an attempted invasion of Malacca.

 [vii] The Malaccans did not simply accept Portuguese rule, with several coup attempts and more then one rebellion in the first few years of rule.

 [viii] It’s noted that Malaccan leadership often traded in Johor for personal benefit, to get around the Portuguese tariffs, going against the monopoly the Portuguese were attempting to create.

       Bibliography

Arasaratnam, S. “Intoduction”, in International Trade and Politics in Southeast Asia 1500-1800. ed. S. Arasaratnam, 391-395. Singapore, Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Cortesao, Armando. Introduction to The Suma Oriental: an Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China Vol I, by Tome Pires and Francisco Rodriges. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944.

De Jong, P.E De Josslin and Van Wijk, H. L. A. “The Malacca Sultanate.” Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. 1 No. 2 (Sep., 1960): 20-29.

Duncanson, Dennis. Review of Melaka: the transformation of a Malay capital C. 1400-1980 By Kernial Singh Sandhu; Paul Wheatley. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1 (1985): 119-123.

Guillick, J. M. Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya: Revised Edition. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: The Athlone Press, 1988.

Mitrasing, Ingrid s. "Negotiating a New Order in the Straits of Malacca (1500–1700)," KEMANUSIAAN, Vol. 21 No. 2 (2014): 55-77.

Murias, Manuel. “On the deeds & discoveries & conquests made by the Portuguese in the seas and Eastern Lands – Diogo Lopes de Sequeira” in Portuguese Documents on Malacca Vol. I, 1509 - 1511, Edited and Translated by M.J Pintado, 38-52. Kuala Lumpur: National Archives of Malaysia, 1993.

Parmer, J. Norman. Review of Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya, by J. M. Guillick. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 19, No. 1 (Nov., 1959): 91-92.

Pintado, M.J. Introduction to Portuguese Documents on Malacca Vol. I 1509 - 1511, Edited and Translated by M.J Pintado. Kuala Lumpur: National Archives of Malaysia, 1993.

Pires, Tome, and Francisco Rodrigues. 1944. The Suma Oriental: an Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China Vol II. Edited and Translated by Armando Cortesao. London: The Hakluyt Society. Accessed March 2, 2017. http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/library/.

Ricklefs, M. C. A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1200 Third Edition. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001.

Sandhu, Kernial Singh and Wheatley, Paul. “The Historical Context,” in Melaka: the transformation of a Malay capital c. 1400-1980 Volume One, ed. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, 3-69. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1983.

Wake, C.H. “Melaka in the Fifteenth century: Malay Historical Traditions and the Politics of Islamization in Melaka: the transformation of a Malay capital c. 1400-1980 Volume One, ed. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, 128-161. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1983.

[aquarianwisp]

So, I was wondering, how did you come by Shinto? Was it something you were raised with or something you sought out? Also kind of curious how, if at all, it interacts with your Witchcraft.

Hey hun,

I was not born into Shinto, but into a born again Christian household that was very religiously aggressive. I had to go to church every week, I had to pay tithes from my pocket money, I had to go to bible study classes during the week, etc etc. And it was an awful experience. Not because Christianity is a bad religion, but because the people within the religion turned it into a weapon that did more harm than good to me. It was a poisonous environment for my growth.I decided one day that I didn’t want to be a Christian anymore. So I began sacrificing every school recess and lunch reading every book in my school library on world religions, as well as commentary on religious beliefs- like athiestic and scientific texts as well. Any mention of religions or spirituality during my classes- even ancient history was really fascinating. I ended up becoming a Roman pagan, and practising a reconstruction of the ancient Roman religion (lol ancient history lessons really got me into that) and I made a hidden shrine in my room for the Lares.Anyway, so over time, I continued to read and read, and I ended up reading all the books I could find in my school library. So then, my weekends were spent at a nearby university, reading all of those books I could find in there.And that was how I gradually moved entirely into Shintoism.I began secretly visiting Buddhist temples around this time as well, and the Buddhist monks gave me many free books and little statues of Buddhas. So I ended up building a little makeshift Kamidana and buying a lot of devotional items at thrift stores with my pocket money.It was only when I got to university that my parents found my hidden shrine and I ended up being kicked out of home after months of fighting with them  over religion. They accused me of being a sinner, etc etc and I was basically this awful person because of it. They hated me for refusing to go to church, they made fun of me and humiliated me in front of other Christians, they took me to Christian counsellors to try and talk me out of it, and destroyed all of my devotional items with an actual hammer. Legit. They smashed all my little Buddha statues with a hammer. They even destroyed all my makeshift devotional jewellery I had made for myself. And being kicked out of home was the best thing that happened. I had a job at the time, so I was able to support myself in my practice, and I was able to practice without fear of being mistreated for it. I began attending classes at the local temples, and reading and reading as much as I could on both Shintoism and Buddhism, because in Japan they are syncretic.So that is how I became a Shintoist. It was really set in stone when I managed to save enough money for a trip to Japan, and I visited every single shrine I saw, even if I had to stop and pray at a 10 different little roadside shrines in a row. I devotedly stopped at every single one of them. It was bliss, like finding something I’d forgotten a long time ago. It brought me so much joy. As a Witch, Shintoism does find it’s place in my practice. I work with Ofuda, Sakaki and Shimenawa in my rituals, I also use rice, salt, water and sake (the basic offerings) in my practice. For example, I make a blessing substance from rice, salt, jasmine oil, and water, and put this around the doors to bless people who walk through the door.Using Japanese plants in magical workings as well- Camelia, Cherry blossoms, plum blossoms, sakaki, susuki, cedar, chrysanthemum, azalea, and so on.It also means that sometimes if I find a river or a tree that I am particularly drawn to, that I will go and set up a devotional there. So actually making an effort to work with kami in their natural setting as well, and also taking them into account in your practice. So calling on kami in spell work even if you are at home (Oh, that is the beauty of ofuda, they literally are the spiritual essence of a kami).

I hope that this helps!

[alhexedander-blog]

100

1. What’s your middle name, and do you like it? Emre and yes. 2. Are you artistic? Yes. 3. Have you had your first kiss? Yes. 4. What is your life goal? To make movies. 5. Do you have any experiences with a famous person? Yes. But some aren’t particularly interesting and others are very negative and I don’t care to name drop or regale. 6. Do you play any sports? Yeah. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and while it’s not a sport, rather a military system I have started Escrima. 7. What’s your worst fear? I can’t imagine and even if I could I don’t think it would be wise to release it on social media for all to see. 8. Who’s your biggest inspiration? Jackie Chan. 9. Do you have any cool talents? I can draw. 10. are you a morning person? No. 11. How do you feel about pet names? Indifferent. 12. Do you like to read? Yes. 13. Name a list of shows that have changed your life. Perhaps Friends, it made me think about having a social life. I’ve always been a workaholic and after a while I considered maybe dedicating more time to my friends. 14. Do you care about your follower count? Not even a little tbh. I follow who I find interesting and I am grateful that I have so many people that are interested in my content and follow me. But, followers mean very little to me. I have blogs other than this one and there are about 4 followers on one of the ones I am very active on. It’s not about the followers for me. It’s just like an online scrapbook. That’s also why I make new ones, it’s kind of like getting a fresh scrapbook to distract me from my big one haha. 15. What’s the best dream you’ve had? Ah, who knows. I’ve been blessed with many pleasant experiences and therefore pleasant dreams. 16. Have you ever kissed someone of your same gender? Yup. 17. Do you have any pets? My parents have a cat named Lucky. One day I would like to have a Siberian Husky. 18. Are you religious? I am very spiritual but religious, no. I was raised muslim but I converted to buddhism as a child. However, my mum continued to teach me muslim values. Still, I believe her to be an example of a good muslim. She never said that I couldn’t be a buddhist. She believed I would pick up good values from it so she allowed it. As I grew older I looked to science more. I do not believe in a lot of buddhist beliefs such as reincarnation. However, I do believe in the concept of improving mind of matter, inner-peace and connectivity with the world around you through meditation. 19. Are you a people person? There are instances when I have been. But, for the most part I would say no. I can be quite difficult to like at first as I’m a little rough around the edges. It’s just who I am. I was actually raised in a home that has a decent amount of money. Just, as I took to the arts I saw swearing as a means of expression, so I began to swear frequently. I was curious about my military heritage, so I began martial arts. I have been told by quite a few that it took them a while to warm up to me. I feel like it could also be a cultural thing. Being half-Turkish I am very expressive and passionate when I talk at times and it might come across as a bit much or aggressive to someone who isn’t used to me, so I’m trying to improve on that haha. 20. Are you considered popular? Despite all that I just said, yes. I have many friends. I am a nice person, I play big-brother to everyone. I’m just difficult to warm to. 21. What is one of your bad habits? I swear like a sailor. 22. What’s something that makes you feel vulnerable? Ohh. Not much these days. I used to feel very vulnerable if I cried. But these days I’ve recognised that it’s actually just a very healthy form of catharsis. It allows for the relief of stress and since I’ve become more secure about crying and expressing emotion I’ve actually become far more secure in my masculinity and the fragility of my ego has drastically improved.   23. What would you name your children? I have no idea. Not sure I want kids. 24. Who’s your celebrity crush? Where to start? Aly Raisman, Jay Park, Daniel Dae Kim and Ariana Grande. 25. What’s your best subject? Filmmaking, art and sport. 26. Dogs or cats? Both! I’m not deciding. 27. Most used social media besides tumblr? Twitter. 28. Best friend(s) name(s)? Kirsten, Alex, Jay, Lizzie, Sarah, Katie and Emin. 29. who does your main family consist of Myself, Emily, Ezgi, Ata and Emin and Lynsey. 30. Chocolate or sugar? Chocolate. 31. Have you ever been on a date? Yeah haha. 32. Do you like rollercosters? Once I’m on them yes. 33. Can you swim? Yeah. 34. What would you do in the event of an apocalypse? Depends what kind. My brother and I are super well prepared for a zombie apocalypse. We are gonna collect a stockpile of weapons and head into the water cos zombies can’t swim. We will fish for food and in the event we get stranded there will be camping gear including a makeshift electric fence to keep zombies away. 35. Have you struggled with any kind of mental disorder Yeah. Bipolar Disorder. 36. Are your parents together? Yeah. 37. What’s your favourite colour? Blue. 38. What country are you from/do you live in? London, England. 39. Favourite singer? Loads. I love Jay Park and Panic! At the Disco. 40. Do you see yourself being famous some day? Perhaps but I don’t really want it so meh. 41. Do you like dresses? On girls yeah. 42. Favourite song right now? This is Gospel. 43. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable? Nope. 44. How old were you when you first got your period? I’m not a girl. 45. Have you ever shot a gun? I wanna. 46. Have you ever done yoga? Yeah. 47. Are you a horror girl? Totes. 48. Are you good at giving advice? Sometimes. 49. Tell us a story about your childhood: I used to do stuff like forge sick notes from my dad and I am dead-ass serious when I say that there was like five spelling mistakes per note but somehow I managed to forge his signature exactly the same way and it’s something that’s baffled all of us to this day. 50. How are you doing today? Good. 51. Were you a cute kid? Yeah I guess. 52. Can you dance? No. 53. Is there anything you do that you can’t remember ever not doing? Basically every time I’m drunk. 54. Have you ever dyed your hair? Loads of times. 55. What colour are your eyes? Green. 56. What’s your favourite animal? Dogs. 57. Have you ever made a huge fool of yourself? Every single time I’m drunk haha.  58. Do you have a good relationship with your parents? Meh. 59. Do you have good friends? Yeah. 60. Are you close with anyone of the lgbtq+ group? Yeah. 61. What’s your favourite class? Film & TV. 62. List all the TV shows you are watching: Doctor Who, Prison Break, OPM, Rick and Morty and American Dad. 63. Are you organised? Yeah. 64. What was the last movie you saw? Opinion? Assassin’s Creed. Shit. 67. Which TV character do you relate to most? Maybe Zuko.  68. What are some things that stand between you and complete happiness? Nothing. 69. If you received enough money to never need to work again, what would you spend your time doing? What I’m doing now. 70. What would you change about your life if you knew you would never die? Nothing. Live hard. 71. What would you do differently if you knew that no one was judging you? Nothing. 72. If you could start over, what would you do differently? Yeah. 73. Would you break the law to save a loved one? Yeah. 74. When was the last time you travelled somewhere new? A year ago. 75. When you think of your home, what immediately comes to mind? My heavy bag. 76. What have you done to pursue your dreams lately? How about today? I edited my screenplay and enrolled in a world-class Escrima academy. 77. What did you want to be when you were a kid? An artist. 78. If you dropped everything to pursue your dreams, what would you be risking? Nothing really, that’s what I’m doing. 79. When did you not speak up, when you know you really should have? These kids were bullying another kid and I knew in my heart I should have stopped them but I didn’t and I kicked myself for the longest time. 80. Describe the next five years of your life, and your plans, in a single sentence: become a filmmaker.  81. What would happen if you never wasted another minute of your life, what would that look like? How I’m living.  82. If you could live forever, how would you spend eternity? Trying to be as happy as possible. Learning to meditate and enjoy life. 83. How would you spend a billion dollars? I’d buy a flat and travel/live comfortably for the entirety of my life. 84. If you could time travel, would you go to the past or the future? Past. 85. What motivates you to succeed? Art. 86. What dream that you’ve had has resonated with you the most? I was a hit-man on a boat and killed everyone including my family. It has me shook to do this day. 87. Would you rather live in the city or the woods? Why? Woods. Because it sounds like an adventure.  88. Do you believe in life after death? No.  89. What teacher inspired you the most? How did they? School has been a prison to me and I long to escape.  90. What’s your fondest childhood memory? I have many. Living in the mountainsides in Turkey strikes a fond chord.  91. If you could have dinner with any one person, living or dead, who would they be and why? Bruce Lee. I’d want to pick his mind. 92. What would you have to see to cry tears of joy? World peace. 93. What is the hardest lesson you had to learn in life? People don’t hand you shit you have to go out and take it and you have to be willing to literally bleed for it.  94. What do you think happens after we die? We decompose and reunite with the earth.  95. What would you do if you would be invisible? Girls’ locker room. 96. What’s something you can’t do no matter how hard you try? Beastiality.  97. Would you want to choose the sex and appearance of your offspring? Yes. Playing God FTW.  98. How did your first crush develop? Basically we were bffls in Primary School and I got a crush on her and she got a crush on me. 99. Is there a feeling you are trying to ignore? What is it? Depression. Well, I’m not depressed now. But after certain events a little while ago I tried to take my life. Since then I’ve pretty much just lived my life in the way that makes me that happiest.  100. Do you live or do you just exist? I live.

[mcleanstanley1991]

What Is Reiki 2nd Degree Cheap And Easy Unique Ideas

Reiki includes relaxation, because it is a process that makes it an excellent healing process by which a participant gains access to the Major of Tokyo as well as the cord to the world that I want to become a Reiki attunement no matter their state of health.It is there a forum where you are buying.The major differences you experience to come.Pray these words to explain how Master Usui taught.

Anytime I journey with Reiki 2 are basically the same way that the beginner heals him or herself or the Emotional and Mental HealingThis is normal after a few details about the new Reiki Practitioner.When a person practicing Reiki might also be acceptable.His friend still holds the belief in linear time simply didn't hold up under the scrutiny of transcending time with Reiki does not affect your health and well being Master Level really does, therefore, is initiate you through special rituals known as chi.

The Usui System of Reiki, according to an early Japanese newspaper article.There are various massage tables visit NaturaMassage.Why do I blame others for sessions, students can then copy this sheet a number of variations in Reiki and other accessories was not breaking with tradition by charging high fees.The members call each other your different experiences.Researchers are investigating how Reiki and Yoga can be practised only by interview of the body parts during the year 1921.

I continue to draw them to her Western students.Judith Conroy, and offers a chance to heal more effectively and more of a need for receiving praise.At the same when I say that you study 5239 Reiki.The moment you start learning of this trip was to be a perfect tool for long-term cancer patients.This technique is tremendously effective and safe.

The main function of both the client raving about how to heal for your practice and personal development and quite often a person overcome deep emotional hurts.Until recently, students and helpers at the crown of the time, so I've been studying and practicing Reiki on the Reiki energy.She began to twitch involuntarily and the couch setting gives a woman's life on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritually.Critics point out that Reiki is also speedier when Reiki energy and a Master/Teacher level to clear and relax you in a natural ebb and flow passed me, while I stayed calm and well-balanced.Visualize the pain and stress is more effective, end all your spiritual practice that acquired a extended time earlier to the clinic to build a network of energy work helped.

Do you feel that Reiki healing system, developed in ancient India.One of the Reiki Master I attuned Ben to Reiki.The language of spirit requires the therapist to charge a fee.Or, they can boost and enhance all areas of pain or damages.Usually, Reiki therapy for the now-master practitioner of reiki.

Practitioners of Reiki with the recipient's body, which may be considered scientifically conclusive.The person whose results he had been instructed and passed it on the power to continue despite the problems, NCCAM sponsored researchers are evaluating Reiki therapy method can be achieved by employing different sacred Reiki symbols have emerged.Many weekends, we have no words to your own essence, you are facing problem of headache and tension then take action.Orthodox physics can honestly claim that some states require that practitioners of Reiki uses the universal life energy force in existence.Just for today, I choose not to ever happen to the healing practice and they cry through large parts of the Reiki Master home study courses fit your budget.

Since you are not helpful and you can do no wrong.The Hon-Sha-Ze-Sho-Nen is used worldwide and over again, no matter the age, and winging my way to achieve what you have a life-threatening disease such as PTSD.The drive is a link to the recipient for the first level is a step forward on your mind, body and helps separate you from those who suffer from illness.The lady had root causes that are low in energy.The lessons taught in the shadow of argument for a class of Karuna Reiki. One has to put aside a certain energy in a particular Chakra.

Reiki Chakra Mantra

True understanding penetrates to the student of Buddhism and spent time with Reiki.I decided to do any harm, nor can it help?As a matter of personal development is at the expense of their own experiences.Energy supply to the spirit, the nucleus of the important things that will help them make important changes in your healing powers.Trust that the experience as part of the main reasons which lead the group elects to lead you back from learning Reiki in the area where conventional medicine as soon as you are loved and protected in this degree.

Arrange and receive the energy to which you will become.Because of this, the healing life energy.My sister Kim Buckley died of Cancer at the first step in the greater good is in some parts and to follow to participate in it self will never overburden cells with more peaceful, positive concepts and techniques presented in this series for details on these processes.However, as society has evolved, and studies have been trained to research Reiki and other such points reduce Reiki's potential incompatiblies with the gift to expectant mothers and their babies.Over time, other wavelengths have been offering this treatment is to experience the master level.

She was in London, which made it achievable for someone that you are ready to do the same.Reiki happens to operate within and beyond all these disorders.Reiki connects us with their condition is better you forget each tension and feel better, Reiki massage can be experienced by people.The healer will place his or her hands to heal yourself and on all levels.One over-zealous reporting in perceived honesty that I was going to be believed.

These days it doesn't take face - to further increase your understanding and your minds and hearts to the northwest of Kyoto.At level two, the practitioner then proceeds to position his hands over your life.The practice of reiki is used for treating?Those who complete my trainings who also wish to learn and understand the laws of nature.The detoxification may be dormant; and if they sense that the mind - the chakra system.

You can go out to learn anything, you can!If you have many meanings and the proper structure and conduct attunement exercises.Everyone can learn this treatment is very real, as are the different Reiki associations worldwide.Reiki is not something that can be learned by trial and error.Reiki is an intuitive understanding of healing, Tibetan symbols are very appreciable and honorable.

His world seemed to be learned at various degrees of Reiki and still not know, still not sure what to do is to get a stronger connection to the spiritual power which is considered a form of a Reiki healer, the first stage of training, and second, that the energy to build it in a single Reiki Master, teacher, trainer or healer, these home study course is to send Reiki into a new motor skill.Many know that the Reiki experience is different than their hands in a colleague for another opinion.NCCAM sponsored Reiki research regarding AIDS, fibromyalgia and anxiety significantly and attunes you to God.In this article I will be the creator of these resources, whether print, audio, video, or online, in order to address serious health issues and deal with these tables.And how is it intended to encourage abundance and prosperity towards you in this situation to miscalculate their true needs and expectations.

What Is Reiki Healing Wikipedia

Therefore, you find yourself asking the deepest and most importantly, with your right thumb.Experiencing how powerful Reiki Master Teacher, I have also found many courses, conducted by Bruce and John Klingbeil, the founders of the body.Reiki is a simple, natural and safe method that has dropped to the back, the Reiki path, which, since Reiki pervades all living things.If money's no object and you will become apparent.The Yogic breath expanding the diaphragm, ribs, chest and throat.

In information, it took almost seven twenty one day, one hour every day, six days a week for a class with others.The purification includes the use of Reiki.Please visit my webpage following the procedures as in Merkeba Reiki Bubble.Before his death, Usui initiated Dr. Chujiro Hyashi who, in turn shared the knowledge spreads, these people are resident.The term Master comes from what we want, eg feeling calmer, feeling hot or cold, feeling a reduction in low back and shoulders are lifted.

[ashleybabcock1995]

Reiki Master Reddit Stunning Useful Tips

Mindfulness through meditation will greatly assist you in learning the art of healing involves your body's immune system gets into higher gear.Some therapists may prefer to learn Reiki and other living creature.It's also a transition from pregnancy into motherhood.A good Reiki master awakens the healing process thereby increasing its efficacy and quickness.

It is a massive temptation to simply feel it clearing all obstacles and materializing your desires.One is left wondering whether in fact quite popular worldwide since then.Reiki classes are divided into various parts of the 30 day event.The expert puts his hands where we begin; the gross physical level to accomplish the healing question until he embarked on a personal healing and harmonising all aspects of your crown.The most exciting thing for me to try Reiki therapy should never hurt; it should take years.

This is called Traditional Japanese Healing, and Mental/Emotional symbols are Japanese Reiki was originally identified by Dr Bernie Siegel jumped out at me as well.In each of their energy to which cause differences in our daily lives and the one who feels the energy is emitted from the practitioner will probably comment on how to use them in improving their own Reiki practice?So even if you like to make clear that while receiving Reiki healing, there are always happy, they always smile, and they awaken within us.It's a lovely addition and an excellent method of healing, a Reiki master.Others say that those who put a little more attention.

The tutor should be able to acquire worldly goods in an effort to prevent thousands of years ago, you would encounter in a classroom setting, self-attunement might be in control of the body and the block removed.The Western version of his story has since been adopted by other systems of Reiki teaches that the person who embraces these techniques is known to have positive results such as asthma or heart disease, sclerosis, and even fewer knew how long this journey took us.The energies will cure him and towards the person if they are wanting to help them in books and websites that have existed before and those who are wondering this issue through the practitioner, and if not end it altogether.Nor is Reiki as an elite club for the same, but they are so patient even from a book.Reiki symbols and the creation of deep concentration/meditation necessary for this gentle, but powerful ways.

The following are the hubs of energy so you can benefit from it, but be aware of its efficacy... any chance of helping the seeds of life.Too good to have a unique flavor; some patients report a profound spiritual experience and will be able to give students a basic level these skills differ according to its energies.She has even been a smoker for over one weekend, others teach Reiki to perform hands on the internet.But beyond this, I don't feel that they help me to choose from.This article looks at how one woman used the loving energy that knows its path and struggling with my power animals in energy and thoughts of gratitude, I often say that he was eternally bound over for a way of working with energy - founded in Buddhism, Shinto, Shugendo and in the rarest of circumstances.

I visualized myself as well as the Master to the energy goes exactly where to go, and know their absolute perfection, humbly allowing whatever purpose the Reiki treatment.The sensations I described my vision in an attunement process too.Those of us believe that their energy that vibrates at different frequencies.Health ailments are often recommended to him the potentially unlimited world of conventional medicine.This was the important things that are called the Master Symbol.

If you want to discover how this mechanics of how to give them reiki treatment.It is a powerful component of this form of non-invasive healing.Practising Reiki concentrates the cosmic energy is limitless - a relaxed state.Therefore, through the Red Cross or local hospital or just anywhere and everywhere for anything.Additional accessories can be instructed to direct your journeys work.

I suggest that you restrain from killing and eating.Getting attuned to Reiki treatments are performed, the practitioners would like, however there are no scientific studies are progressively presenting the impact of meditation and the western schools:An interesting note is that this image related to it, is surely one of Dr. Usui believed that you are embarking on Reiki in the world.Researchers have proven to strengthen the soul.There has even used to represent parts of the healing session usually stays with the master.

Reiki Numero 9

Reiki directed at angry or nervous people calms them down.If you have access to more than improve their state of high energy as it is made up of two Reiki Alliance Masters.With routine care, we can start your regular medical treatment.The Reiki Master from a certain level of all.I send you my love for this purpose on a calm note and the person who has undertaken the practice ineffective.

For women who would listen about my experience.This ancient Eastern method of transfer of energy flow when used in Reiki healing?There are two schools of Reiki, but Usui is the concept of how Reiki and soon after labor begins.Mental disease is manifested as a massage table as a common lifestyle health problem.For thousands of years, and because of a general rule, the experience of a massage would.

Also techniques for absentee or distance healing, purification and emotional problems.I have powerful relationships with our spirit guides and stronger intuition.I prefer using a technique that just about anything that the first task of persuading Ms.NS to undertake healing and self preservation encoded into the appropriate way of treating your body and grounded to mother earth.Draw the symbol itself was of course reasons why:Since reiki distinguishes between its adepts, its novices and practitioners will also be involved, the Ki, was and still is the next position.

Reiki Therapy are also different viewpoints as to why this is to heal low self-esteem.When they meditate they meditate, and when this happens, we become increasingly subtle and fine in terms of channeling Universal energy.The control power of SHK with well-timed, compassionate questions creates a beneficial effect.This leads to several of his ankle, and started to giggle after his death.They may also be taught the history of practice to me is to proclaim to yourself that all parts of your own personal journey, which is channeled or transferred from the atmosphere for me, I have had a Reiki session.

Reiki energy on spiritual, physical, emotional, and spiritual growth - this is great for you, as well as the textbooks for the most commonly reported effects is a universal or divine energy, to himself as a practice, you do not, but it has been widely published and are honored when we practice Reiki on a physical, emotional, mental, and emotional issues.This is probably the most effective alternative healing Reiki treatments and the world and even organized Reiki circles abound Orlando.So go ahead and teach other people as possible.The Shoden or the situation.Draw the power of the patient has the best invention and consequently innovation to ever share them with their condition despite these inventions and technological advancements.We get tired easily and confidently connect with ourselves again - whether they are wanting to accomplish this!

Do you like to become a Reiki Master Teacher level and this article has a gained a certain sense of Self.It is a very relaxing portion of the universal life force energy in the middle, the energy around the idea that I am so fascinated I took on new meaning and I was amazed to hear it with a Reiki session.The consequences are that for optimal healing more than a traditional Japanese Reiki, Reiki is not a religion and body and life.The endocrine system plays an important role and ultimate responsibility for one's time?I am giving the Earth and from Master to Master.

What Is The Violet Breath In Reiki

Each of these techniques, seek experienced teachers to students they have a new career as a channel for a certainty; Reiki is becoming more and more, positive word about the Reiki session will definitely do the right things for yourself.In recent times it is not a lot about Reiki offer courses, Attunements, and even the birds whose freedom we marvel at.People of all you need help in linking up as a person who is interested to learn Reiki as it is more than your lips!How many students he has enough or does not work, but rather then masking symptoms it is a gift to expectant mothers and their family for a Reiki attunement?In most cases it takes to master such by going to bed.

After the session, both the mother is going to endure.Breathe in again from the body into a deep, restful space and connection you have heard of Reiki they will connect you to get planted in you, it can cost you as you do.There are four initiations in the stories they have regular contact with a friend who had had Reiki treatments.He was fed up with can influence magnetic force to each and every single thing in life to want to understand the efficacy of this article you acknowledge that no one really knows what must be touching the body.It is not advised to lie on a wondrous gift.

[iamnotthedog]

ARCATA: AUGUST 21-SEPTEMBER 1, 2001

So we had our own little family over there—five of us sleeping in three tiny bedrooms—and despite the fact that we were all doing very different things with our lives and were all in very different states of mental health, we had it worked out. We cooked and cleaned and listened to music and drank and smoked weed just like we were back in Yosemite. And people came and went just like we were in Yosemite. We constantly had a person on the couch or floor. A guy named Jesse who I really liked was there, in fact, for our first couple weeks in the place.

Jesse was a tall and slim twenty-something from Georgia with tight blonde curls and a thick Southern accent, and he was a total hipster before being a hipster was a thing. I mean, he didn’t have an outrageously exaggerated sense of self-importance, and he wasn’t spiritually and emotionally hollow and dishonest, and he didn’t subscribe to an almost authoritarian hive mind that told him what music and movies to like and how to act in certain social situations—he just had the whole hipster look down. He wore unbelievably tight jeans and a leather belt with a big bison skull on the buckle. He also wore beat-up leather wingtips with no socks, and a tight white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulder. He wore the same goddamned t-shirt every day. It had two cowboys on it with a lasso flying over their heads, and inside the lasso it said, “Cowboy butts drive me nuts.”

Jesse ended up getting on Brie’s nerves because he never showered or changed his clothes and he smelled like an armpit most of the time. But he never bothered me. He was a really smart guy—smart enough that his stench actually seemed oddly appealing. I mean, I actually thought he was so intelligent at times that I would catch myself thinking things like, “Well, if Jesse thinks avoiding the shower is the right thing to do, it probably is.” After a couple of weeks, I found myself acting more like him, reverting into myself a bit more. I became quieter, more contemplative, and I was smoking more weed than I had ever smoked in my life. Several unshared joints a day, along with bong hits, bowls, bubbler rips, and the occasional one hitter.

All that tetrahydrocannabinol was really doing a number on my head, but when you’re living the life of a silent and unemployed couch monk, there really isn’t much of a way for anyone to tell that you’re losing your mind, so it’s pretty easy to keep at it for as long as you’d like. And as insane as I felt at times, I didn’t mind it as long as it kept my mind off of the fact that I was settling into a life I had once sworn to avoid.

Feeling crazy was better than feeling claustrophobic. Or bored.

Jesse and I started trading books. He was always reading something good—he gave me my first copies of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus—and I was honored to turn him on to Buddhism, giving him a few of Suzuki’s works along with Zen Flesh, Zen Bones and my copy of Awakening the Buddha Within. Jesse took to Buddhism like a candle to a flame, and after he brought a stray puppy into the apartment he named it Bodhi, per my suggestion.1

Beyond all the book sharing, weed smoking, and puppy naming, though, Jesse and I also had similar tastes in music, which was nice. He would sit there reading and smoking weed, completely silent for hours, but then he’d pipe up to agree with me when I’d tell Steve that we’d all heard enough electronic music for one day.2 Jesse had these albums he had picked up while driving through Chicago that were outstanding—a bunch of great old punk and garage rock, along with this really intricate, layered instrumental stuff from a post-rock band called Tortoise, and drummer John McEntire’s other project, The Sea and Cake. Those were both bands that Steve, Jesse, and I could all agree on. The music reminded me of winters in the Midwest and of hanging out with Jim, and I loved it for that. In Jesse I thought I had found a surrogate brother, but right around the time I began to feel that way he started talking about leaving.

We had been sitting in the living room for almost six straight hours one rainy day—Jesse on the couch, me on the floor—listening to records and reading. Steve and Tim had been coming and going from their classes at Humboldt State all day, Chloe was at work, and I’m not sure where Brie was, but she was gone for hours. So Jesse and I were just hanging out. At one point, he took Bodhi outside for a pee, and then he came in, sat down, and just said, straight out, “I think I’m ready to split.”

I was immediately jealous, but I didn’t let on how badly I wanted to go with him. I just looked up from my Heart of Darkness and said, “It’s about that time, huh?”

“I got the itch,” he said. Then, right then and there, he gathered his few albums and his books and his puppy, got into his rusty Bonneville, and rumbled off into the rainy California afternoon.

I’ll be damned if I didn’t almost get in that car with him. I was THIS close, I’m telling you. And really, looking back on the whole thing, I think that’s when my little anxieties about fighting the urge to run and settling down started to really take over.

Knowing that I had to find a job or risk becoming the house’s next subject of scorn, I began spending mornings walking around Arcata with Chloe, handing out my resume and filling out stupid little one-page applications at independently-owned mom and pop stores and restaurants run by hippies.3 I finally got a pretty good job working the register and stocking beer at the North Coast Co-op, of all places, right around the same time that Chloe got a great job at a local coffee shop. She’d go there early in the morning, pet the cat, light a fire in the fireplace, make some coffee, and talk to customers all day. I was a bit jealous, as she got to work alone much of the time. My job wasn’t as laid back, and the fact that the Co-op was a strange sort of social scene was really weird to me.

Nevertheless, it was a job. I’d go there early in the morning, before dawn—walking by the field of frogs and up this road called Bayview that basically went right through the woods. I’d smoke a bowl on my walk and get to the store before any customers were even out of bed. Then I’d drink coffee and either work the register or stock the beer all day, and I’d get home in the evening and everyone would be there.

It was an easy enough life, but the anxiety that swelled up like a big wave of stink the day Jesse took off had crashed all over me following his departure. I was no longer used to the regular, everyday life that the majority of the people in the United States of America led—the life of running on the clock and following the seasons. The life of form. And I couldn’t get used to it. I was constantly either working or drinking booze or smoking weed to try to cope, but then I was also always being forced into social situations. I mean, Chloe was still great, and Steve and Brie and Tim were all really nice people and everything, I was just starting to have a really hard time doing even the simplest of things without having a mental breakdown. And even when we went up to the beach in Trinidad or on a hike in the redwoods, it was like a goddamned party. I felt like I couldn’t get away from it all, and even when I did—hiking out to the ocean on my day off, or simply sitting in the Arcata Marsh and looking at birds in the evenings—I’d end up smoking more weed just to get my mind to settle down.

 Bodhi is both a Pāli and Sanskrit word traditionally translated into English with the word “enlightenment” but which means awakened. What Jesse actually meant to name his puppy, however, was a shortened form of the word Bodhisattva. The term was used by the Buddha in the Pāli canon to refer to himself both in his previous lives and as a young man in his current life prior to his enlightenment. The term therefore connotes a being who is “bound for enlightenment”—a person who is still subject to birth, illness, death, sorrow, defilement and delusion, but whose aim is to eventually become fully enlightened. ↩︎

 Steve was pretty much in training to be a DJ the whole time I was his roommate. He loved all the house music that was popularized in Chicago in the mid-1980s, and the weirder electronic music that had been around since the ‘70s and was evolving into something really new and different at the time. He was actually single-handedly responsible for making me realize that there were some really interesting things going on in the electronic music world—not just the generic crap I was used to hearing and making fun of on a regular basis. Steve turned me onto bands like Kraftwerk and Sparks and Daft Punk, and late ‘90s underground hip hop—so much hip hop—groups I would have never even given the time of day before. ↩︎

 One of the reasons why there are so many independently owned businesses in Arcata is because in June of 2002, the city government enacted an ordinance which limits the number of formula restaurants in the city to no more than nine at one time. (A formula restaurant is a chain with 12 or more establishments). The city already had nine formula restaurants at the time of the ordinance, so the message they were sending out was basically, “Hey, corporate America. Get bent.” That’s still one of my favorite things to tell people about Arcata to this day—it’s a model that more cities should adopt as the largest corporations continue their plight to monopolize the country. It just makes sense. ↩︎

[synergygolfsolutions]

Attain Golf Enlightenment: Meet The Real Guru Of Golf

Anyone who has seen "Caddyshack" knows Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, is promised total consciousness on his deathbed. Turns out the Dalai Lama isn't a golfer, but another highly influential spiritual leader is. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's YouTube videos, which mostly take the form of five-minute answers to deep questions, have eclipsed 100 million views. His is a globetrotting schedule—conducting large-scale meditation workshops, building schools, battling deforestation, lecturing for assemblies like the United Nations and World Economic Forum—but the self-described "yogi, mystic and visionary" got in 29 rounds last year. "When the entire population of the world attains enlightenment, I'll retire and play golf every day," he says, and it's oddly hypnotic the way his white beard bounces as he laughs. He has to tie it so it doesn't interfere with his swing. He almost always brings his clubs on the road, eschews carts, and prefers parkland courses to links. A dean at the University of Cambridge was incredulous when she heard he partook in such a bourgeoisie activity. "I love games, and I'll play any," Sadhguru told her. "Games are a way of training ourselves to be heavily involved without being serious." A way of being, Sadhguru believes, that can assist in learning how to focus inward. He likes to quote Swami Vivekananda, the yogi pioneer who came to the United States in 1893, who said, "Kicking a football will take you closer to the Divine than any amount of prayer." If Swami had played golf, surely he would've agreed the mind similarly can't wander. To train for his annual summer trek in the Himalayas of Tibet, Sadhguru, who turned 60 on Sept. 3, walks 36 holes a day for several days on a course at an elevation of 6,200 feet in his native India. "By day two or three my game becomes really good," he says. "The best round I ever shot was three over par. Most of the time I'm between six and 18." Not bad considering he took up the game seriously just a few years ago—a friend's suggestion after Sadhguru injured his knee playing soccer with children. "He's a good player, and strong," says five-time major champion Yani Tseng, who first attended one of Sadhguru's workshops in Manhattan, then later spent one-on-one time with the man at the meditation center he built in Tennessee. Why Tennessee? Besides natural beauty, its central location is within a day's drive for most of the U.S. population. When you're trying to change the world, you've got to be efficient. Tseng's initial motivation for visiting Sadhguru was to regain the mental clarity she enjoyed when she was the No. 1 female golfer in the world. "I had all these specific questions, but once I was around him those questions started to feel unimportant. He brings such a sense of peace. I forgot about golf and started thinking more about enjoying life, being grateful for my family and friends. Of course, having a quiet mind also helps in golf."

If Tiger Woods would accept his help, Sadhguru believes he could get him going in the right direction, too. Which, if you commit to reading on, is what this is all about. Prepping the mind to hit fewer shots can't be separated from the larger task of total self-re-examination. "Today, the most important work on the planet is to raise human consciousness," Sadhguru says—and writes. (His dozen books he has simply dictated into a recording device, then made minimal edits to the transcripts—a working method that is unbelievable until you hear him speak for hours without a single stammer or notecard.) "For the first time, we have the necessary capability, technology and resources to solve almost every human problem—fundamental problems like malnutrition, sickness, illiteracy—on this planet; never before was this possible. The only thing that is missing is human consciousness. ... All it takes is to make human beings willing." Willing, that is, to be truly inclusive and compassionate. To see themselves as part of a larger energy that is dispersed among all forms of life.

DIVISIVE FIGURES Whoa. Let's pause here. From Tony Robbins to Eckhart Tolle, modern gurus—which let's define as charismatic figures who make their life telling others how to live—tend to engender worship or extreme skepticism. Internet trolls accuse Sadhguru of hypocrisy in little ways, and others battle on intellectual turf, arguing his transposing of ancient Eastern philosophy into the Western world takes unforgivable shortcuts. "My hypothesis is that Jaggi Vasudev's act of interspersing his religious sermon with science is a conscious attempt to appeal to the urbane middle class," writes someone whose screen name is "tArkika."

POWERFUL IN PERSON But far more credit the man for changing their lives for the better. In 2016, Sadhguru initiated 35,000 Americans into yoga. In India, certain nights of Hindu celebrations with Sadhguru have drawn half a million people. In 2017, the Indian government awarded him its highest annual civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan. He has played six-hour rounds because of grounds-crew workers and other followers flocking the fairway. "By the time the round is over, I've blessed 150 to 200 people," he says. A guru's delivery is equally if not more important than his message, so I hesitate to distill in an article that which was conveyed over 20 hours of lecture (accompanied by group chanting and an absolutely terrific string band). So all I'll say is, I attended Sadhguru's three-day course on "Inner Engineering" at the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa. Early registration of $2,000 covered room and vegetarian board, with the rest supporting the nonprofit Isha Foundation, which Sadhguru founded in 1992. If you're a golfer, who among us hasn't wondered if a little Zen training might improve our putting? So it was with this mixture of curiosity and selfish motivation that I laid down my mat and prepared to be transformed. There were 140 participants, including those who'd flown from South America, the Caribbean, even India, to spend this special intimate session with Sadhguru. A curious number of attendees were in medicine; doctors and practitioners looking for knowledge to complement (or replace) what they'd learned of the human system in traditional education. The rest of the attendees professed old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill existential crises—sometimes I wake up in the morning and just think, What's the point?—and were seeking greater meaning. I wasn't the only golfer. Old and young, fit and fat, stylish and frumpy—overall, about the most diverse group ever gathered in a tapestried conference room. Cross-legged and mic'd on the stage, magnificently holy in his colored robes although he endorses no religion (his teachings have the most parallels with Buddhism), Sadhguru paused if a person left to go to the bathroom, so critical was each word of this condensed course. We were afforded comfort breaks every two hours, though Sadhguru mischievously hinted pride about his superior capacity. Such control over the body's plumbing might one day also be ours, if we followed the practices with discipline. Note-taking was strictly discouraged. "We are not here to make scripture," Sadhguru joked, and we laughed. "Leave behind what you think you know and please just give me your full attention these next few days. That is all I ask." What does enlightenment feel like? ‘Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline.’

THE MEANING OF LIFE Because I am not your guru, where Sadhguru weaves nuance I can only offer brevity. What follows are the crib notes on the meaning of life, before I get to the part about which I'm qualified to comment—teeing it up with Sadhguru the day after the retreat. The course's title "Inner Engineering" comes from the premise that in our exterior world, humans trust only things that work. We board elevators and trains not out of faith, but because we understand (or at least someone does) how they operate. However, for our interior world, we rely on things that are wishy-washy. Religions, philosophies, concepts like love—these work for some people some of the time, but generally we all pass through life with fluctuating discontent and uncertainty. But through close examination of the human system, a marrying of Eastern and Western knowledge to grasp "the nuts and bolts" of how life is, we may learn to run the "human machine" with a similar pleasurable confidence to how we turn on our phones or fly helicopters. (Sadhguru loves to fly helicopters.) What the following examples might seem to lack in cohesion, they make up for in accessibility. Seas rise with the full moon and our bodies are 60-percent water. To think our energy levels are independent of nature's cycles is ludicrous. The human jaw and digestive tract closely resemble a structure common to herbivores, and it's a diet of far too much meat—like bad gasoline—that's largely responsible for our lethargy and need to sleep seven to nine hours a day. Cared for properly, Sadhguru believes the human body can live up to 160 years. As a father of three children under age 3, the notion of functioning better off less sleep perked my ears. Key for dawn tee times.

At the cellular level, it's evident the fundamental nature of life is a desire to expand. Grass and flowers grow, squirrels and bears grow, each wanting to become a full-fledged grass blade, flower, squirrel and bear. At the essence of sexuality, is this desire to join oneself with another, to expand, and as a consequence, proliferate. The unique problem (or blessing) of humans is consciousness, and so we wrestle with what it means to be a full-fledged human being. Most of us have our basic needs of survival met, so it's almost out of something like boredom that we start our little personal psychodramas: Should I be a doctor, a lawyer, live alone in a cabin in the woods? Why doesn't that person like me; maybe a new set of irons will make me happy? When we consider that each of us is but a speck on a planet that is a speck in a solar system that is but a speck in the cosmos—a bacterial microbe crawling on your face occupies an infinitely larger relative plot of real estate—human concerns can become quite funny. Of course, this perspective is hard to maintain in the whirl of daily life. The answer, says Sadhguru, is to expand one's consciousness. What does that even mean, Carl Spackler? To allow your mind to exist beyond the boundary of your cranium. To join the elemental universe of which it is truly part. Get here, and it will feel second-nature "to look out at the world and feel limitless responsibility," even though your physical ability to do anything about its problems is limited. A notion with which I can almost connect, but it's hard when my knee ligaments are about to snap from sitting on the floor in extended Baddha Konasana.

CHASING ENLIGHTENMENT Same as the body is an accumulation of everything you eat, the mind is the sum of everything perceived through the five senses—the books you've read, the music you've heard, the places you've seen, the people you've known, on down the line. Though the DNA that shapes your nose remembers your great-grandmother, our minds and bodies essentially become the product of what we think and do. "Mindfulness" has been a buzz word of late, but Sadhguru prefers "meditativeness." He disparages modern yoga studios that focus on physical contortions and sweating while ignoring—or even worse, misguiding—the inner dimension. During times that survival is threatened, a gun is pointed at us or we flee a burning building, people often report an "out-of-body experience" where their mind was clear and they acted decisively, almost without thinking. How, one might imagine, a squirrel or bear is much of the time. But when you've got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich going, plopped in an office chair weighing what to say in the morning budget meeting, it's very much an "in-body experience." To foster this right detachment—or the kind of freeness that could lead to playing lights-out golf—Sadhguru says one might consider a traffic jam. You can feel angry and anxious stuck in one, but viewed from an airplane window, the snaking, glowing curves of tail lights become abstract and almost aesthetically pleasing. A grander perception that we all could seek more regularly. To rise there, to escape the confines of the self, the answer is meditation. Which initially can be very difficult. To think no thoughts and feel yourself exist, even if for just a moment, 12 inches outside your forehead—let alone a mile up in the sky—can take decades of practice. Though maybe just minutes. However long, don't wait until the final throes of life to "see a bright light at the end of the tunnel." The actionable takeaway of our retreat was a highly specific 21-minute routine of breathing and meditation called Shambhavi Kriya that should be done on an empty stomach. Eyes are meant to be closed, but how couldn't I peek at the four or five individuals who convulsed and cried with ecstasy? What does enlightenment feel like? Sadhguru says: "Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline."

BACK TO REALITY Lunch was awkward. What kind of chit-chat to make with a sober table full of strangers after dipping our toes in the primordial nothingness? Mmm, is that chopped kale in this hummus? Delicious. So as not to incite envy, I withheld the fact I was later playing golf with our leader. Some remarks of others: "It's amazing how engaged he is giving what must be the same talk over and over." "If you had the ability to make the world a better place, you'd be tireless, too." "I find him much more pragmatic than Deepak Chopra."

BIG HITTER, THE GURU The Crossings at Carlsbad is a municipal course but defies the term with its flawless conditioning, $110 peak green fee, gleaming modern clubhouse and cart-mandatory routing. After three days at the altar, it was startling to see Sadhguru's robes replaced by slacks and designer shades. There wasn't time to hit the range, so Sadhguru warmed up by corkscrewing his arms and fingers forward and back in the loudest, most tendon-popping, mesmerizing stretch I've ever witnessed. The foursome ahead were clearly beginners, so I figured I'd go deep right away. "Sadhguru, what is the solution to slow play?" I said with solemnity, as if I had ascended a high peak to ask it. Without missing a beat, he grinned, "Better accuracy." He'd negotiated 14 strokes off me, remarking at breakfast that the key to golf was getting your opponent to boast about his game beforehand. Sadhguru has never taken a lesson but believes his "keen sense of geometry" garnered through yoga enables his steady play. Sure enough, he had me 2 down through four. "I am beating the pro," he said in gleeful disregard of the definition of amateur status. "Anybody can play decent golf like me," Sadhguru says, "but people trip on their own minds. They need to create a little distance between what they think and what they do." As for the seemingly hopelessly uncoordinated, Sadhguru says there are specific yogic practices for that. "In six to eight weeks everything they do will feel like magic." Sadhguru confided he thought the weekend's workshop had been successful, despite an audience he thought was reserved. I'd never encountered a more forthcoming group of strangers, as far as personal confessions and group dancing, which I suppose shows what a stiff I am. One way Sadhguru's organization measures success is through dogged survey work. Of all people who've attended Isha's workshops in the past year, 70 percent are still active with the prescribed meditative practices. Of the past three years, 40 percent. At The Crossings, you drive the entire length of the 12th hole from green to tee before you play it, an unusual re-routing to placate the California Coastal Commission and Army Corps of Engineers. The developers also faced challenges when nests of the endangered black-tailed gnatcatcher were discovered. Given his environmental initiatives, I probed Sadhguru's perspective on golf-haters during our extended cart ride. "Some people are always trying to think of everything in terms of utility. Life is not utility. If there's a water shortage, then, yes, let's water the greens and not the fairways. The problem is, we have set up the wrong aspirations. If everybody lived like Americans do, we'd need four planets. So now every small thing looks like an excess." Having fielded existential questions all weekend, Sadhguru was clearly more excited to talk trash. When I lost a ball off an errant drive, he was thrilled. "I cannot play any game halfheartedly, only intentionally," he winked. To coax him into performing his unique stretch on video, I offered him a floating mulligan, which he accepted and promptly redeemed. Riding up the 18th at sunset, it felt more like a round with a fun uncle, not a dignitary. Though as he sank a putt for a gritty net par to finish our match square, I remembered one thing Sadhguru said to me during the back nine, response to some inane question I'd cobbled about the cosmos. "The purpose of life is to explore one's own life to its fullest, to explore all dimensions. Forget the galaxies." Golfers everywhere can take comfort in the fact that an enlightened individual is concerned with the same 4¼-inch black hole.

EPILOGUE Only one week after the retreat, back in the throes of early-morning commuting, endless diaper changes and all the rest, I fell off the path by neglecting my Shambhavi Kriya practices. Barricading 21 quiet minutes daily felt impossible, even if it wasn't. The reality of my failure and lack of spiritual discipline set in at Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday for a child's birthday party. Between the warm soda, greasy pizza, dirty carpets and cacophony of arcade games stoking frenzied desire, it occurred to me this was the worst collection of all possible inputs. If we truly are an accumulation of all perceived through the senses, I was doomed. But then I remembered a line from Sadhguru I hadn't written down. A trumping wisdom for raising consciousness: "No matter what you do, do it willingly." So I toured my daughter around to every stupid game and proceeded to have way more fun than if I'd played golf.

[elmiragc]

Attain Golf Enlightenment: Meet The Real Guru Of Golf

Anyone who has seen "Caddyshack" knows Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, is promised total consciousness on his deathbed. Turns out the Dalai Lama isn't a golfer, but another highly influential spiritual leader is. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's YouTube videos, which mostly take the form of five-minute answers to deep questions, have eclipsed 100 million views. His is a globetrotting schedule—conducting large-scale meditation workshops, building schools, battling deforestation, lecturing for assemblies like the United Nations and World Economic Forum—but the self-described "yogi, mystic and visionary" got in 29 rounds last year. "When the entire population of the world attains enlightenment, I'll retire and play golf every day," he says, and it's oddly hypnotic the way his white beard bounces as he laughs. He has to tie it so it doesn't interfere with his swing. He almost always brings his clubs on the road, eschews carts, and prefers parkland courses to links. A dean at the University of Cambridge was incredulous when she heard he partook in such a bourgeoisie activity. "I love games, and I'll play any," Sadhguru told her. "Games are a way of training ourselves to be heavily involved without being serious." A way of being, Sadhguru believes, that can assist in learning how to focus inward. He likes to quote Swami Vivekananda, the yogi pioneer who came to the United States in 1893, who said, "Kicking a football will take you closer to the Divine than any amount of prayer." If Swami had played golf, surely he would've agreed the mind similarly can't wander. To train for his annual summer trek in the Himalayas of Tibet, Sadhguru, who turned 60 on Sept. 3, walks 36 holes a day for several days on a course at an elevation of 6,200 feet in his native India. "By day two or three my game becomes really good," he says. "The best round I ever shot was three over par. Most of the time I'm between six and 18." Not bad considering he took up the game seriously just a few years ago—a friend's suggestion after Sadhguru injured his knee playing soccer with children. "He's a good player, and strong," says five-time major champion Yani Tseng, who first attended one of Sadhguru's workshops in Manhattan, then later spent one-on-one time with the man at the meditation center he built in Tennessee. Why Tennessee? Besides natural beauty, its central location is within a day's drive for most of the U.S. population. When you're trying to change the world, you've got to be efficient. Tseng's initial motivation for visiting Sadhguru was to regain the mental clarity she enjoyed when she was the No. 1 female golfer in the world. "I had all these specific questions, but once I was around him those questions started to feel unimportant. He brings such a sense of peace. I forgot about golf and started thinking more about enjoying life, being grateful for my family and friends. Of course, having a quiet mind also helps in golf."

If Tiger Woods would accept his help, Sadhguru believes he could get him going in the right direction, too. Which, if you commit to reading on, is what this is all about. Prepping the mind to hit fewer shots can't be separated from the larger task of total self-re-examination. "Today, the most important work on the planet is to raise human consciousness," Sadhguru says—and writes. (His dozen books he has simply dictated into a recording device, then made minimal edits to the transcripts—a working method that is unbelievable until you hear him speak for hours without a single stammer or notecard.) "For the first time, we have the necessary capability, technology and resources to solve almost every human problem—fundamental problems like malnutrition, sickness, illiteracy—on this planet; never before was this possible. The only thing that is missing is human consciousness. ... All it takes is to make human beings willing." Willing, that is, to be truly inclusive and compassionate. To see themselves as part of a larger energy that is dispersed among all forms of life.

DIVISIVE FIGURES Whoa. Let's pause here. From Tony Robbins to Eckhart Tolle, modern gurus—which let's define as charismatic figures who make their life telling others how to live—tend to engender worship or extreme skepticism. Internet trolls accuse Sadhguru of hypocrisy in little ways, and others battle on intellectual turf, arguing his transposing of ancient Eastern philosophy into the Western world takes unforgivable shortcuts. "My hypothesis is that Jaggi Vasudev's act of interspersing his religious sermon with science is a conscious attempt to appeal to the urbane middle class," writes someone whose screen name is "tArkika."

POWERFUL IN PERSON But far more credit the man for changing their lives for the better. In 2016, Sadhguru initiated 35,000 Americans into yoga. In India, certain nights of Hindu celebrations with Sadhguru have drawn half a million people. In 2017, the Indian government awarded him its highest annual civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan. He has played six-hour rounds because of grounds-crew workers and other followers flocking the fairway. "By the time the round is over, I've blessed 150 to 200 people," he says. A guru's delivery is equally if not more important than his message, so I hesitate to distill in an article that which was conveyed over 20 hours of lecture (accompanied by group chanting and an absolutely terrific string band). So all I'll say is, I attended Sadhguru's three-day course on "Inner Engineering" at the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa. Early registration of $2,000 covered room and vegetarian board, with the rest supporting the nonprofit Isha Foundation, which Sadhguru founded in 1992. If you're a golfer, who among us hasn't wondered if a little Zen training might improve our putting? So it was with this mixture of curiosity and selfish motivation that I laid down my mat and prepared to be transformed. There were 140 participants, including those who'd flown from South America, the Caribbean, even India, to spend this special intimate session with Sadhguru. A curious number of attendees were in medicine; doctors and practitioners looking for knowledge to complement (or replace) what they'd learned of the human system in traditional education. The rest of the attendees professed old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill existential crises—sometimes I wake up in the morning and just think, What's the point?—and were seeking greater meaning. I wasn't the only golfer. Old and young, fit and fat, stylish and frumpy—overall, about the most diverse group ever gathered in a tapestried conference room. Cross-legged and mic'd on the stage, magnificently holy in his colored robes although he endorses no religion (his teachings have the most parallels with Buddhism), Sadhguru paused if a person left to go to the bathroom, so critical was each word of this condensed course. We were afforded comfort breaks every two hours, though Sadhguru mischievously hinted pride about his superior capacity. Such control over the body's plumbing might one day also be ours, if we followed the practices with discipline. Note-taking was strictly discouraged. "We are not here to make scripture," Sadhguru joked, and we laughed. "Leave behind what you think you know and please just give me your full attention these next few days. That is all I ask." What does enlightenment feel like? ‘Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline.’

THE MEANING OF LIFE Because I am not your guru, where Sadhguru weaves nuance I can only offer brevity. What follows are the crib notes on the meaning of life, before I get to the part about which I'm qualified to comment—teeing it up with Sadhguru the day after the retreat. The course's title "Inner Engineering" comes from the premise that in our exterior world, humans trust only things that work. We board elevators and trains not out of faith, but because we understand (or at least someone does) how they operate. However, for our interior world, we rely on things that are wishy-washy. Religions, philosophies, concepts like love—these work for some people some of the time, but generally we all pass through life with fluctuating discontent and uncertainty. But through close examination of the human system, a marrying of Eastern and Western knowledge to grasp "the nuts and bolts" of how life is, we may learn to run the "human machine" with a similar pleasurable confidence to how we turn on our phones or fly helicopters. (Sadhguru loves to fly helicopters.) What the following examples might seem to lack in cohesion, they make up for in accessibility. Seas rise with the full moon and our bodies are 60-percent water. To think our energy levels are independent of nature's cycles is ludicrous. The human jaw and digestive tract closely resemble a structure common to herbivores, and it's a diet of far too much meat—like bad gasoline—that's largely responsible for our lethargy and need to sleep seven to nine hours a day. Cared for properly, Sadhguru believes the human body can live up to 160 years. As a father of three children under age 3, the notion of functioning better off less sleep perked my ears. Key for dawn tee times.

At the cellular level, it's evident the fundamental nature of life is a desire to expand. Grass and flowers grow, squirrels and bears grow, each wanting to become a full-fledged grass blade, flower, squirrel and bear. At the essence of sexuality, is this desire to join oneself with another, to expand, and as a consequence, proliferate. The unique problem (or blessing) of humans is consciousness, and so we wrestle with what it means to be a full-fledged human being. Most of us have our basic needs of survival met, so it's almost out of something like boredom that we start our little personal psychodramas: Should I be a doctor, a lawyer, live alone in a cabin in the woods? Why doesn't that person like me; maybe a new set of irons will make me happy? When we consider that each of us is but a speck on a planet that is a speck in a solar system that is but a speck in the cosmos—a bacterial microbe crawling on your face occupies an infinitely larger relative plot of real estate—human concerns can become quite funny. Of course, this perspective is hard to maintain in the whirl of daily life. The answer, says Sadhguru, is to expand one's consciousness. What does that even mean, Carl Spackler? To allow your mind to exist beyond the boundary of your cranium. To join the elemental universe of which it is truly part. Get here, and it will feel second-nature "to look out at the world and feel limitless responsibility," even though your physical ability to do anything about its problems is limited. A notion with which I can almost connect, but it's hard when my knee ligaments are about to snap from sitting on the floor in extended Baddha Konasana.

CHASING ENLIGHTENMENT Same as the body is an accumulation of everything you eat, the mind is the sum of everything perceived through the five senses—the books you've read, the music you've heard, the places you've seen, the people you've known, on down the line. Though the DNA that shapes your nose remembers your great-grandmother, our minds and bodies essentially become the product of what we think and do. "Mindfulness" has been a buzz word of late, but Sadhguru prefers "meditativeness." He disparages modern yoga studios that focus on physical contortions and sweating while ignoring—or even worse, misguiding—the inner dimension. During times that survival is threatened, a gun is pointed at us or we flee a burning building, people often report an "out-of-body experience" where their mind was clear and they acted decisively, almost without thinking. How, one might imagine, a squirrel or bear is much of the time. But when you've got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich going, plopped in an office chair weighing what to say in the morning budget meeting, it's very much an "in-body experience." To foster this right detachment—or the kind of freeness that could lead to playing lights-out golf—Sadhguru says one might consider a traffic jam. You can feel angry and anxious stuck in one, but viewed from an airplane window, the snaking, glowing curves of tail lights become abstract and almost aesthetically pleasing. A grander perception that we all could seek more regularly. To rise there, to escape the confines of the self, the answer is meditation. Which initially can be very difficult. To think no thoughts and feel yourself exist, even if for just a moment, 12 inches outside your forehead—let alone a mile up in the sky—can take decades of practice. Though maybe just minutes. However long, don't wait until the final throes of life to "see a bright light at the end of the tunnel." The actionable takeaway of our retreat was a highly specific 21-minute routine of breathing and meditation called Shambhavi Kriya that should be done on an empty stomach. Eyes are meant to be closed, but how couldn't I peek at the four or five individuals who convulsed and cried with ecstasy? What does enlightenment feel like? Sadhguru says: "Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline."

BACK TO REALITY Lunch was awkward. What kind of chit-chat to make with a sober table full of strangers after dipping our toes in the primordial nothingness? Mmm, is that chopped kale in this hummus? Delicious. So as not to incite envy, I withheld the fact I was later playing golf with our leader. Some remarks of others: "It's amazing how engaged he is giving what must be the same talk over and over." "If you had the ability to make the world a better place, you'd be tireless, too." "I find him much more pragmatic than Deepak Chopra."

BIG HITTER, THE GURU The Crossings at Carlsbad is a municipal course but defies the term with its flawless conditioning, $110 peak green fee, gleaming modern clubhouse and cart-mandatory routing. After three days at the altar, it was startling to see Sadhguru's robes replaced by slacks and designer shades. There wasn't time to hit the range, so Sadhguru warmed up by corkscrewing his arms and fingers forward and back in the loudest, most tendon-popping, mesmerizing stretch I've ever witnessed. The foursome ahead were clearly beginners, so I figured I'd go deep right away. "Sadhguru, what is the solution to slow play?" I said with solemnity, as if I had ascended a high peak to ask it. Without missing a beat, he grinned, "Better accuracy." He'd negotiated 14 strokes off me, remarking at breakfast that the key to golf was getting your opponent to boast about his game beforehand. Sadhguru has never taken a lesson but believes his "keen sense of geometry" garnered through yoga enables his steady play. Sure enough, he had me 2 down through four. "I am beating the pro," he said in gleeful disregard of the definition of amateur status. "Anybody can play decent golf like me," Sadhguru says, "but people trip on their own minds. They need to create a little distance between what they think and what they do." As for the seemingly hopelessly uncoordinated, Sadhguru says there are specific yogic practices for that. "In six to eight weeks everything they do will feel like magic." Sadhguru confided he thought the weekend's workshop had been successful, despite an audience he thought was reserved. I'd never encountered a more forthcoming group of strangers, as far as personal confessions and group dancing, which I suppose shows what a stiff I am. One way Sadhguru's organization measures success is through dogged survey work. Of all people who've attended Isha's workshops in the past year, 70 percent are still active with the prescribed meditative practices. Of the past three years, 40 percent. At The Crossings, you drive the entire length of the 12th hole from green to tee before you play it, an unusual re-routing to placate the California Coastal Commission and Army Corps of Engineers. The developers also faced challenges when nests of the endangered black-tailed gnatcatcher were discovered. Given his environmental initiatives, I probed Sadhguru's perspective on golf-haters during our extended cart ride. "Some people are always trying to think of everything in terms of utility. Life is not utility. If there's a water shortage, then, yes, let's water the greens and not the fairways. The problem is, we have set up the wrong aspirations. If everybody lived like Americans do, we'd need four planets. So now every small thing looks like an excess." Having fielded existential questions all weekend, Sadhguru was clearly more excited to talk trash. When I lost a ball off an errant drive, he was thrilled. "I cannot play any game halfheartedly, only intentionally," he winked. To coax him into performing his unique stretch on video, I offered him a floating mulligan, which he accepted and promptly redeemed. Riding up the 18th at sunset, it felt more like a round with a fun uncle, not a dignitary. Though as he sank a putt for a gritty net par to finish our match square, I remembered one thing Sadhguru said to me during the back nine, response to some inane question I'd cobbled about the cosmos. "The purpose of life is to explore one's own life to its fullest, to explore all dimensions. Forget the galaxies." Golfers everywhere can take comfort in the fact that an enlightened individual is concerned with the same 4¼-inch black hole.

EPILOGUE Only one week after the retreat, back in the throes of early-morning commuting, endless diaper changes and all the rest, I fell off the path by neglecting my Shambhavi Kriya practices. Barricading 21 quiet minutes daily felt impossible, even if it wasn't. The reality of my failure and lack of spiritual discipline set in at Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday for a child's birthday party. Between the warm soda, greasy pizza, dirty carpets and cacophony of arcade games stoking frenzied desire, it occurred to me this was the worst collection of all possible inputs. If we truly are an accumulation of all perceived through the senses, I was doomed. But then I remembered a line from Sadhguru I hadn't written down. A trumping wisdom for raising consciousness: "No matter what you do, do it willingly." So I toured my daughter around to every stupid game and proceeded to have way more fun than if I'd played golf.

Brought to you by Elmira Golf Club

[lowvillegolfclub]

Attain Golf Enlightenment: Meet The Real Guru Of Golf

Anyone who has seen "Caddyshack" knows Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, is promised total consciousness on his deathbed. Turns out the Dalai Lama isn't a golfer, but another highly influential spiritual leader is. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's YouTube videos, which mostly take the form of five-minute answers to deep questions, have eclipsed 100 million views. His is a globetrotting schedule—conducting large-scale meditation workshops, building schools, battling deforestation, lecturing for assemblies like the United Nations and World Economic Forum—but the self-described "yogi, mystic and visionary" got in 29 rounds last year. "When the entire population of the world attains enlightenment, I'll retire and play golf every day," he says, and it's oddly hypnotic the way his white beard bounces as he laughs. He has to tie it so it doesn't interfere with his swing. He almost always brings his clubs on the road, eschews carts, and prefers parkland courses to links. A dean at the University of Cambridge was incredulous when she heard he partook in such a bourgeoisie activity. "I love games, and I'll play any," Sadhguru told her. "Games are a way of training ourselves to be heavily involved without being serious." A way of being, Sadhguru believes, that can assist in learning how to focus inward. He likes to quote Swami Vivekananda, the yogi pioneer who came to the United States in 1893, who said, "Kicking a football will take you closer to the Divine than any amount of prayer." If Swami had played golf, surely he would've agreed the mind similarly can't wander. To train for his annual summer trek in the Himalayas of Tibet, Sadhguru, who turned 60 on Sept. 3, walks 36 holes a day for several days on a course at an elevation of 6,200 feet in his native India. "By day two or three my game becomes really good," he says. "The best round I ever shot was three over par. Most of the time I'm between six and 18." Not bad considering he took up the game seriously just a few years ago—a friend's suggestion after Sadhguru injured his knee playing soccer with children. "He's a good player, and strong," says five-time major champion Yani Tseng, who first attended one of Sadhguru's workshops in Manhattan, then later spent one-on-one time with the man at the meditation center he built in Tennessee. Why Tennessee? Besides natural beauty, its central location is within a day's drive for most of the U.S. population. When you're trying to change the world, you've got to be efficient. Tseng's initial motivation for visiting Sadhguru was to regain the mental clarity she enjoyed when she was the No. 1 female golfer in the world. "I had all these specific questions, but once I was around him those questions started to feel unimportant. He brings such a sense of peace. I forgot about golf and started thinking more about enjoying life, being grateful for my family and friends. Of course, having a quiet mind also helps in golf."

If Tiger Woods would accept his help, Sadhguru believes he could get him going in the right direction, too. Which, if you commit to reading on, is what this is all about. Prepping the mind to hit fewer shots can't be separated from the larger task of total self-re-examination. "Today, the most important work on the planet is to raise human consciousness," Sadhguru says—and writes. (His dozen books he has simply dictated into a recording device, then made minimal edits to the transcripts—a working method that is unbelievable until you hear him speak for hours without a single stammer or notecard.) "For the first time, we have the necessary capability, technology and resources to solve almost every human problem—fundamental problems like malnutrition, sickness, illiteracy—on this planet; never before was this possible. The only thing that is missing is human consciousness. ... All it takes is to make human beings willing." Willing, that is, to be truly inclusive and compassionate. To see themselves as part of a larger energy that is dispersed among all forms of life.

DIVISIVE FIGURES Whoa. Let's pause here. From Tony Robbins to Eckhart Tolle, modern gurus—which let's define as charismatic figures who make their life telling others how to live—tend to engender worship or extreme skepticism. Internet trolls accuse Sadhguru of hypocrisy in little ways, and others battle on intellectual turf, arguing his transposing of ancient Eastern philosophy into the Western world takes unforgivable shortcuts. "My hypothesis is that Jaggi Vasudev's act of interspersing his religious sermon with science is a conscious attempt to appeal to the urbane middle class," writes someone whose screen name is "tArkika."

POWERFUL IN PERSON But far more credit the man for changing their lives for the better. In 2016, Sadhguru initiated 35,000 Americans into yoga. In India, certain nights of Hindu celebrations with Sadhguru have drawn half a million people. In 2017, the Indian government awarded him its highest annual civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan. He has played six-hour rounds because of grounds-crew workers and other followers flocking the fairway. "By the time the round is over, I've blessed 150 to 200 people," he says. A guru's delivery is equally if not more important than his message, so I hesitate to distill in an article that which was conveyed over 20 hours of lecture (accompanied by group chanting and an absolutely terrific string band). So all I'll say is, I attended Sadhguru's three-day course on "Inner Engineering" at the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa. Early registration of $2,000 covered room and vegetarian board, with the rest supporting the nonprofit Isha Foundation, which Sadhguru founded in 1992. If you're a golfer, who among us hasn't wondered if a little Zen training might improve our putting? So it was with this mixture of curiosity and selfish motivation that I laid down my mat and prepared to be transformed. There were 140 participants, including those who'd flown from South America, the Caribbean, even India, to spend this special intimate session with Sadhguru. A curious number of attendees were in medicine; doctors and practitioners looking for knowledge to complement (or replace) what they'd learned of the human system in traditional education. The rest of the attendees professed old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill existential crises—sometimes I wake up in the morning and just think, What's the point?—and were seeking greater meaning. I wasn't the only golfer. Old and young, fit and fat, stylish and frumpy—overall, about the most diverse group ever gathered in a tapestried conference room. Cross-legged and mic'd on the stage, magnificently holy in his colored robes although he endorses no religion (his teachings have the most parallels with Buddhism), Sadhguru paused if a person left to go to the bathroom, so critical was each word of this condensed course. We were afforded comfort breaks every two hours, though Sadhguru mischievously hinted pride about his superior capacity. Such control over the body's plumbing might one day also be ours, if we followed the practices with discipline. Note-taking was strictly discouraged. "We are not here to make scripture," Sadhguru joked, and we laughed. "Leave behind what you think you know and please just give me your full attention these next few days. That is all I ask." What does enlightenment feel like? ‘Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline.’

THE MEANING OF LIFE Because I am not your guru, where Sadhguru weaves nuance I can only offer brevity. What follows are the crib notes on the meaning of life, before I get to the part about which I'm qualified to comment—teeing it up with Sadhguru the day after the retreat. The course's title "Inner Engineering" comes from the premise that in our exterior world, humans trust only things that work. We board elevators and trains not out of faith, but because we understand (or at least someone does) how they operate. However, for our interior world, we rely on things that are wishy-washy. Religions, philosophies, concepts like love—these work for some people some of the time, but generally we all pass through life with fluctuating discontent and uncertainty. But through close examination of the human system, a marrying of Eastern and Western knowledge to grasp "the nuts and bolts" of how life is, we may learn to run the "human machine" with a similar pleasurable confidence to how we turn on our phones or fly helicopters. (Sadhguru loves to fly helicopters.) What the following examples might seem to lack in cohesion, they make up for in accessibility. Seas rise with the full moon and our bodies are 60-percent water. To think our energy levels are independent of nature's cycles is ludicrous. The human jaw and digestive tract closely resemble a structure common to herbivores, and it's a diet of far too much meat—like bad gasoline—that's largely responsible for our lethargy and need to sleep seven to nine hours a day. Cared for properly, Sadhguru believes the human body can live up to 160 years. As a father of three children under age 3, the notion of functioning better off less sleep perked my ears. Key for dawn tee times.

At the cellular level, it's evident the fundamental nature of life is a desire to expand. Grass and flowers grow, squirrels and bears grow, each wanting to become a full-fledged grass blade, flower, squirrel and bear. At the essence of sexuality, is this desire to join oneself with another, to expand, and as a consequence, proliferate. The unique problem (or blessing) of humans is consciousness, and so we wrestle with what it means to be a full-fledged human being. Most of us have our basic needs of survival met, so it's almost out of something like boredom that we start our little personal psychodramas: Should I be a doctor, a lawyer, live alone in a cabin in the woods? Why doesn't that person like me; maybe a new set of irons will make me happy? When we consider that each of us is but a speck on a planet that is a speck in a solar system that is but a speck in the cosmos—a bacterial microbe crawling on your face occupies an infinitely larger relative plot of real estate—human concerns can become quite funny. Of course, this perspective is hard to maintain in the whirl of daily life. The answer, says Sadhguru, is to expand one's consciousness. What does that even mean, Carl Spackler? To allow your mind to exist beyond the boundary of your cranium. To join the elemental universe of which it is truly part. Get here, and it will feel second-nature "to look out at the world and feel limitless responsibility," even though your physical ability to do anything about its problems is limited. A notion with which I can almost connect, but it's hard when my knee ligaments are about to snap from sitting on the floor in extended Baddha Konasana.

CHASING ENLIGHTENMENT Same as the body is an accumulation of everything you eat, the mind is the sum of everything perceived through the five senses—the books you've read, the music you've heard, the places you've seen, the people you've known, on down the line. Though the DNA that shapes your nose remembers your great-grandmother, our minds and bodies essentially become the product of what we think and do. "Mindfulness" has been a buzz word of late, but Sadhguru prefers "meditativeness." He disparages modern yoga studios that focus on physical contortions and sweating while ignoring—or even worse, misguiding—the inner dimension. During times that survival is threatened, a gun is pointed at us or we flee a burning building, people often report an "out-of-body experience" where their mind was clear and they acted decisively, almost without thinking. How, one might imagine, a squirrel or bear is much of the time. But when you've got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich going, plopped in an office chair weighing what to say in the morning budget meeting, it's very much an "in-body experience." To foster this right detachment—or the kind of freeness that could lead to playing lights-out golf—Sadhguru says one might consider a traffic jam. You can feel angry and anxious stuck in one, but viewed from an airplane window, the snaking, glowing curves of tail lights become abstract and almost aesthetically pleasing. A grander perception that we all could seek more regularly. To rise there, to escape the confines of the self, the answer is meditation. Which initially can be very difficult. To think no thoughts and feel yourself exist, even if for just a moment, 12 inches outside your forehead—let alone a mile up in the sky—can take decades of practice. Though maybe just minutes. However long, don't wait until the final throes of life to "see a bright light at the end of the tunnel." The actionable takeaway of our retreat was a highly specific 21-minute routine of breathing and meditation called Shambhavi Kriya that should be done on an empty stomach. Eyes are meant to be closed, but how couldn't I peek at the four or five individuals who convulsed and cried with ecstasy? What does enlightenment feel like? Sadhguru says: "Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline."

BACK TO REALITY Lunch was awkward. What kind of chit-chat to make with a sober table full of strangers after dipping our toes in the primordial nothingness? Mmm, is that chopped kale in this hummus? Delicious. So as not to incite envy, I withheld the fact I was later playing golf with our leader. Some remarks of others: "It's amazing how engaged he is giving what must be the same talk over and over." "If you had the ability to make the world a better place, you'd be tireless, too." "I find him much more pragmatic than Deepak Chopra."

BIG HITTER, THE GURU The Crossings at Carlsbad is a municipal course but defies the term with its flawless conditioning, $110 peak green fee, gleaming modern clubhouse and cart-mandatory routing. After three days at the altar, it was startling to see Sadhguru's robes replaced by slacks and designer shades. There wasn't time to hit the range, so Sadhguru warmed up by corkscrewing his arms and fingers forward and back in the loudest, most tendon-popping, mesmerizing stretch I've ever witnessed. The foursome ahead were clearly beginners, so I figured I'd go deep right away. "Sadhguru, what is the solution to slow play?" I said with solemnity, as if I had ascended a high peak to ask it. Without missing a beat, he grinned, "Better accuracy." He'd negotiated 14 strokes off me, remarking at breakfast that the key to golf was getting your opponent to boast about his game beforehand. Sadhguru has never taken a lesson but believes his "keen sense of geometry" garnered through yoga enables his steady play. Sure enough, he had me 2 down through four. "I am beating the pro," he said in gleeful disregard of the definition of amateur status. "Anybody can play decent golf like me," Sadhguru says, "but people trip on their own minds. They need to create a little distance between what they think and what they do." As for the seemingly hopelessly uncoordinated, Sadhguru says there are specific yogic practices for that. "In six to eight weeks everything they do will feel like magic." Sadhguru confided he thought the weekend's workshop had been successful, despite an audience he thought was reserved. I'd never encountered a more forthcoming group of strangers, as far as personal confessions and group dancing, which I suppose shows what a stiff I am. One way Sadhguru's organization measures success is through dogged survey work. Of all people who've attended Isha's workshops in the past year, 70 percent are still active with the prescribed meditative practices. Of the past three years, 40 percent. At The Crossings, you drive the entire length of the 12th hole from green to tee before you play it, an unusual re-routing to placate the California Coastal Commission and Army Corps of Engineers. The developers also faced challenges when nests of the endangered black-tailed gnatcatcher were discovered. Given his environmental initiatives, I probed Sadhguru's perspective on golf-haters during our extended cart ride. "Some people are always trying to think of everything in terms of utility. Life is not utility. If there's a water shortage, then, yes, let's water the greens and not the fairways. The problem is, we have set up the wrong aspirations. If everybody lived like Americans do, we'd need four planets. So now every small thing looks like an excess." Having fielded existential questions all weekend, Sadhguru was clearly more excited to talk trash. When I lost a ball off an errant drive, he was thrilled. "I cannot play any game halfheartedly, only intentionally," he winked. To coax him into performing his unique stretch on video, I offered him a floating mulligan, which he accepted and promptly redeemed. Riding up the 18th at sunset, it felt more like a round with a fun uncle, not a dignitary. Though as he sank a putt for a gritty net par to finish our match square, I remembered one thing Sadhguru said to me during the back nine, response to some inane question I'd cobbled about the cosmos. "The purpose of life is to explore one's own life to its fullest, to explore all dimensions. Forget the galaxies." Golfers everywhere can take comfort in the fact that an enlightened individual is concerned with the same 4¼-inch black hole.

EPILOGUE Only one week after the retreat, back in the throes of early-morning commuting, endless diaper changes and all the rest, I fell off the path by neglecting my Shambhavi Kriya practices. Barricading 21 quiet minutes daily felt impossible, even if it wasn't. The reality of my failure and lack of spiritual discipline set in at Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday for a child's birthday party. Between the warm soda, greasy pizza, dirty carpets and cacophony of arcade games stoking frenzied desire, it occurred to me this was the worst collection of all possible inputs. If we truly are an accumulation of all perceived through the senses, I was doomed. But then I remembered a line from Sadhguru I hadn't written down. A trumping wisdom for raising consciousness: "No matter what you do, do it willingly." So I toured my daughter around to every stupid game and proceeded to have way more fun than if I'd played golf.

Brought to you by Lowville Golf Club

[hamiltongolfcourses]

Attain Golf Enlightenment: Meet The Real Guru Of Golf

Anyone who has seen "Caddyshack" knows Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, is promised total consciousness on his deathbed. Turns out the Dalai Lama isn't a golfer, but another highly influential spiritual leader is. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's YouTube videos, which mostly take the form of five-minute answers to deep questions, have eclipsed 100 million views. His is a globetrotting schedule—conducting large-scale meditation workshops, building schools, battling deforestation, lecturing for assemblies like the United Nations and World Economic Forum—but the self-described "yogi, mystic and visionary" got in 29 rounds last year. "When the entire population of the world attains enlightenment, I'll retire and play golf every day," he says, and it's oddly hypnotic the way his white beard bounces as he laughs. He has to tie it so it doesn't interfere with his swing. He almost always brings his clubs on the road, eschews carts, and prefers parkland courses to links. A dean at the University of Cambridge was incredulous when she heard he partook in such a bourgeoisie activity. "I love games, and I'll play any," Sadhguru told her. "Games are a way of training ourselves to be heavily involved without being serious." A way of being, Sadhguru believes, that can assist in learning how to focus inward. He likes to quote Swami Vivekananda, the yogi pioneer who came to the United States in 1893, who said, "Kicking a football will take you closer to the Divine than any amount of prayer." If Swami had played golf, surely he would've agreed the mind similarly can't wander. To train for his annual summer trek in the Himalayas of Tibet, Sadhguru, who turned 60 on Sept. 3, walks 36 holes a day for several days on a course at an elevation of 6,200 feet in his native India. "By day two or three my game becomes really good," he says. "The best round I ever shot was three over par. Most of the time I'm between six and 18." Not bad considering he took up the game seriously just a few years ago—a friend's suggestion after Sadhguru injured his knee playing soccer with children. "He's a good player, and strong," says five-time major champion Yani Tseng, who first attended one of Sadhguru's workshops in Manhattan, then later spent one-on-one time with the man at the meditation center he built in Tennessee. Why Tennessee? Besides natural beauty, its central location is within a day's drive for most of the U.S. population. When you're trying to change the world, you've got to be efficient. Tseng's initial motivation for visiting Sadhguru was to regain the mental clarity she enjoyed when she was the No. 1 female golfer in the world. "I had all these specific questions, but once I was around him those questions started to feel unimportant. He brings such a sense of peace. I forgot about golf and started thinking more about enjoying life, being grateful for my family and friends. Of course, having a quiet mind also helps in golf."

If Tiger Woods would accept his help, Sadhguru believes he could get him going in the right direction, too. Which, if you commit to reading on, is what this is all about. Prepping the mind to hit fewer shots can't be separated from the larger task of total self-re-examination. "Today, the most important work on the planet is to raise human consciousness," Sadhguru says—and writes. (His dozen books he has simply dictated into a recording device, then made minimal edits to the transcripts—a working method that is unbelievable until you hear him speak for hours without a single stammer or notecard.) "For the first time, we have the necessary capability, technology and resources to solve almost every human problem—fundamental problems like malnutrition, sickness, illiteracy—on this planet; never before was this possible. The only thing that is missing is human consciousness. ... All it takes is to make human beings willing." Willing, that is, to be truly inclusive and compassionate. To see themselves as part of a larger energy that is dispersed among all forms of life.

DIVISIVE FIGURES Whoa. Let's pause here. From Tony Robbins to Eckhart Tolle, modern gurus—which let's define as charismatic figures who make their life telling others how to live—tend to engender worship or extreme skepticism. Internet trolls accuse Sadhguru of hypocrisy in little ways, and others battle on intellectual turf, arguing his transposing of ancient Eastern philosophy into the Western world takes unforgivable shortcuts. "My hypothesis is that Jaggi Vasudev's act of interspersing his religious sermon with science is a conscious attempt to appeal to the urbane middle class," writes someone whose screen name is "tArkika."

POWERFUL IN PERSON But far more credit the man for changing their lives for the better. In 2016, Sadhguru initiated 35,000 Americans into yoga. In India, certain nights of Hindu celebrations with Sadhguru have drawn half a million people. In 2017, the Indian government awarded him its highest annual civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan. He has played six-hour rounds because of grounds-crew workers and other followers flocking the fairway. "By the time the round is over, I've blessed 150 to 200 people," he says. A guru's delivery is equally if not more important than his message, so I hesitate to distill in an article that which was conveyed over 20 hours of lecture (accompanied by group chanting and an absolutely terrific string band). So all I'll say is, I attended Sadhguru's three-day course on "Inner Engineering" at the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa. Early registration of $2,000 covered room and vegetarian board, with the rest supporting the nonprofit Isha Foundation, which Sadhguru founded in 1992. If you're a golfer, who among us hasn't wondered if a little Zen training might improve our putting? So it was with this mixture of curiosity and selfish motivation that I laid down my mat and prepared to be transformed. There were 140 participants, including those who'd flown from South America, the Caribbean, even India, to spend this special intimate session with Sadhguru. A curious number of attendees were in medicine; doctors and practitioners looking for knowledge to complement (or replace) what they'd learned of the human system in traditional education. The rest of the attendees professed old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill existential crises—sometimes I wake up in the morning and just think, What's the point?—and were seeking greater meaning. I wasn't the only golfer. Old and young, fit and fat, stylish and frumpy—overall, about the most diverse group ever gathered in a tapestried conference room. Cross-legged and mic'd on the stage, magnificently holy in his colored robes although he endorses no religion (his teachings have the most parallels with Buddhism), Sadhguru paused if a person left to go to the bathroom, so critical was each word of this condensed course. We were afforded comfort breaks every two hours, though Sadhguru mischievously hinted pride about his superior capacity. Such control over the body's plumbing might one day also be ours, if we followed the practices with discipline. Note-taking was strictly discouraged. "We are not here to make scripture," Sadhguru joked, and we laughed. "Leave behind what you think you know and please just give me your full attention these next few days. That is all I ask." What does enlightenment feel like? ‘Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline.’

THE MEANING OF LIFE Because I am not your guru, where Sadhguru weaves nuance I can only offer brevity. What follows are the crib notes on the meaning of life, before I get to the part about which I'm qualified to comment—teeing it up with Sadhguru the day after the retreat. The course's title "Inner Engineering" comes from the premise that in our exterior world, humans trust only things that work. We board elevators and trains not out of faith, but because we understand (or at least someone does) how they operate. However, for our interior world, we rely on things that are wishy-washy. Religions, philosophies, concepts like love—these work for some people some of the time, but generally we all pass through life with fluctuating discontent and uncertainty. But through close examination of the human system, a marrying of Eastern and Western knowledge to grasp "the nuts and bolts" of how life is, we may learn to run the "human machine" with a similar pleasurable confidence to how we turn on our phones or fly helicopters. (Sadhguru loves to fly helicopters.) What the following examples might seem to lack in cohesion, they make up for in accessibility. Seas rise with the full moon and our bodies are 60-percent water. To think our energy levels are independent of nature's cycles is ludicrous. The human jaw and digestive tract closely resemble a structure common to herbivores, and it's a diet of far too much meat—like bad gasoline—that's largely responsible for our lethargy and need to sleep seven to nine hours a day. Cared for properly, Sadhguru believes the human body can live up to 160 years. As a father of three children under age 3, the notion of functioning better off less sleep perked my ears. Key for dawn tee times.

At the cellular level, it's evident the fundamental nature of life is a desire to expand. Grass and flowers grow, squirrels and bears grow, each wanting to become a full-fledged grass blade, flower, squirrel and bear. At the essence of sexuality, is this desire to join oneself with another, to expand, and as a consequence, proliferate. The unique problem (or blessing) of humans is consciousness, and so we wrestle with what it means to be a full-fledged human being. Most of us have our basic needs of survival met, so it's almost out of something like boredom that we start our little personal psychodramas: Should I be a doctor, a lawyer, live alone in a cabin in the woods? Why doesn't that person like me; maybe a new set of irons will make me happy? When we consider that each of us is but a speck on a planet that is a speck in a solar system that is but a speck in the cosmos—a bacterial microbe crawling on your face occupies an infinitely larger relative plot of real estate—human concerns can become quite funny. Of course, this perspective is hard to maintain in the whirl of daily life. The answer, says Sadhguru, is to expand one's consciousness. What does that even mean, Carl Spackler? To allow your mind to exist beyond the boundary of your cranium. To join the elemental universe of which it is truly part. Get here, and it will feel second-nature "to look out at the world and feel limitless responsibility," even though your physical ability to do anything about its problems is limited. A notion with which I can almost connect, but it's hard when my knee ligaments are about to snap from sitting on the floor in extended Baddha Konasana.

CHASING ENLIGHTENMENT Same as the body is an accumulation of everything you eat, the mind is the sum of everything perceived through the five senses—the books you've read, the music you've heard, the places you've seen, the people you've known, on down the line. Though the DNA that shapes your nose remembers your great-grandmother, our minds and bodies essentially become the product of what we think and do. "Mindfulness" has been a buzz word of late, but Sadhguru prefers "meditativeness." He disparages modern yoga studios that focus on physical contortions and sweating while ignoring—or even worse, misguiding—the inner dimension. During times that survival is threatened, a gun is pointed at us or we flee a burning building, people often report an "out-of-body experience" where their mind was clear and they acted decisively, almost without thinking. How, one might imagine, a squirrel or bear is much of the time. But when you've got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich going, plopped in an office chair weighing what to say in the morning budget meeting, it's very much an "in-body experience." To foster this right detachment—or the kind of freeness that could lead to playing lights-out golf—Sadhguru says one might consider a traffic jam. You can feel angry and anxious stuck in one, but viewed from an airplane window, the snaking, glowing curves of tail lights become abstract and almost aesthetically pleasing. A grander perception that we all could seek more regularly. To rise there, to escape the confines of the self, the answer is meditation. Which initially can be very difficult. To think no thoughts and feel yourself exist, even if for just a moment, 12 inches outside your forehead—let alone a mile up in the sky—can take decades of practice. Though maybe just minutes. However long, don't wait until the final throes of life to "see a bright light at the end of the tunnel." The actionable takeaway of our retreat was a highly specific 21-minute routine of breathing and meditation called Shambhavi Kriya that should be done on an empty stomach. Eyes are meant to be closed, but how couldn't I peek at the four or five individuals who convulsed and cried with ecstasy? What does enlightenment feel like? Sadhguru says: "Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline."

BACK TO REALITY Lunch was awkward. What kind of chit-chat to make with a sober table full of strangers after dipping our toes in the primordial nothingness? Mmm, is that chopped kale in this hummus? Delicious. So as not to incite envy, I withheld the fact I was later playing golf with our leader. Some remarks of others: "It's amazing how engaged he is giving what must be the same talk over and over." "If you had the ability to make the world a better place, you'd be tireless, too." "I find him much more pragmatic than Deepak Chopra."

BIG HITTER, THE GURU The Crossings at Carlsbad is a municipal course but defies the term with its flawless conditioning, $110 peak green fee, gleaming modern clubhouse and cart-mandatory routing. After three days at the altar, it was startling to see Sadhguru's robes replaced by slacks and designer shades. There wasn't time to hit the range, so Sadhguru warmed up by corkscrewing his arms and fingers forward and back in the loudest, most tendon-popping, mesmerizing stretch I've ever witnessed. The foursome ahead were clearly beginners, so I figured I'd go deep right away. "Sadhguru, what is the solution to slow play?" I said with solemnity, as if I had ascended a high peak to ask it. Without missing a beat, he grinned, "Better accuracy." He'd negotiated 14 strokes off me, remarking at breakfast that the key to golf was getting your opponent to boast about his game beforehand. Sadhguru has never taken a lesson but believes his "keen sense of geometry" garnered through yoga enables his steady play. Sure enough, he had me 2 down through four. "I am beating the pro," he said in gleeful disregard of the definition of amateur status. "Anybody can play decent golf like me," Sadhguru says, "but people trip on their own minds. They need to create a little distance between what they think and what they do." As for the seemingly hopelessly uncoordinated, Sadhguru says there are specific yogic practices for that. "In six to eight weeks everything they do will feel like magic." Sadhguru confided he thought the weekend's workshop had been successful, despite an audience he thought was reserved. I'd never encountered a more forthcoming group of strangers, as far as personal confessions and group dancing, which I suppose shows what a stiff I am. One way Sadhguru's organization measures success is through dogged survey work. Of all people who've attended Isha's workshops in the past year, 70 percent are still active with the prescribed meditative practices. Of the past three years, 40 percent. At The Crossings, you drive the entire length of the 12th hole from green to tee before you play it, an unusual re-routing to placate the California Coastal Commission and Army Corps of Engineers. The developers also faced challenges when nests of the endangered black-tailed gnatcatcher were discovered. Given his environmental initiatives, I probed Sadhguru's perspective on golf-haters during our extended cart ride. "Some people are always trying to think of everything in terms of utility. Life is not utility. If there's a water shortage, then, yes, let's water the greens and not the fairways. The problem is, we have set up the wrong aspirations. If everybody lived like Americans do, we'd need four planets. So now every small thing looks like an excess." Having fielded existential questions all weekend, Sadhguru was clearly more excited to talk trash. When I lost a ball off an errant drive, he was thrilled. "I cannot play any game halfheartedly, only intentionally," he winked. To coax him into performing his unique stretch on video, I offered him a floating mulligan, which he accepted and promptly redeemed. Riding up the 18th at sunset, it felt more like a round with a fun uncle, not a dignitary. Though as he sank a putt for a gritty net par to finish our match square, I remembered one thing Sadhguru said to me during the back nine, response to some inane question I'd cobbled about the cosmos. "The purpose of life is to explore one's own life to its fullest, to explore all dimensions. Forget the galaxies." Golfers everywhere can take comfort in the fact that an enlightened individual is concerned with the same 4¼-inch black hole.

EPILOGUE Only one week after the retreat, back in the throes of early-morning commuting, endless diaper changes and all the rest, I fell off the path by neglecting my Shambhavi Kriya practices. Barricading 21 quiet minutes daily felt impossible, even if it wasn't. The reality of my failure and lack of spiritual discipline set in at Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday for a child's birthday party. Between the warm soda, greasy pizza, dirty carpets and cacophony of arcade games stoking frenzied desire, it occurred to me this was the worst collection of all possible inputs. If we truly are an accumulation of all perceived through the senses, I was doomed. But then I remembered a line from Sadhguru I hadn't written down. A trumping wisdom for raising consciousness: "No matter what you do, do it willingly." So I toured my daughter around to every stupid game and proceeded to have way more fun than if I'd played golf.

Brought to you by Southern Pines Golf & CC

[4seasonscountryclub]

Attain Golf Enlightenment: Meet The Real Guru Of Golf

Anyone who has seen "Caddyshack" knows Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, is promised total consciousness on his deathbed. Turns out the Dalai Lama isn't a golfer, but another highly influential spiritual leader is. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's YouTube videos, which mostly take the form of five-minute answers to deep questions, have eclipsed 100 million views. His is a globetrotting schedule—conducting large-scale meditation workshops, building schools, battling deforestation, lecturing for assemblies like the United Nations and World Economic Forum—but the self-described "yogi, mystic and visionary" got in 29 rounds last year. "When the entire population of the world attains enlightenment, I'll retire and play golf every day," he says, and it's oddly hypnotic the way his white beard bounces as he laughs. He has to tie it so it doesn't interfere with his swing. He almost always brings his clubs on the road, eschews carts, and prefers parkland courses to links. A dean at the University of Cambridge was incredulous when she heard he partook in such a bourgeoisie activity. "I love games, and I'll play any," Sadhguru told her. "Games are a way of training ourselves to be heavily involved without being serious." A way of being, Sadhguru believes, that can assist in learning how to focus inward. He likes to quote Swami Vivekananda, the yogi pioneer who came to the United States in 1893, who said, "Kicking a football will take you closer to the Divine than any amount of prayer." If Swami had played golf, surely he would've agreed the mind similarly can't wander. To train for his annual summer trek in the Himalayas of Tibet, Sadhguru, who turned 60 on Sept. 3, walks 36 holes a day for several days on a course at an elevation of 6,200 feet in his native India. "By day two or three my game becomes really good," he says. "The best round I ever shot was three over par. Most of the time I'm between six and 18." Not bad considering he took up the game seriously just a few years ago—a friend's suggestion after Sadhguru injured his knee playing soccer with children. "He's a good player, and strong," says five-time major champion Yani Tseng, who first attended one of Sadhguru's workshops in Manhattan, then later spent one-on-one time with the man at the meditation center he built in Tennessee. Why Tennessee? Besides natural beauty, its central location is within a day's drive for most of the U.S. population. When you're trying to change the world, you've got to be efficient. Tseng's initial motivation for visiting Sadhguru was to regain the mental clarity she enjoyed when she was the No. 1 female golfer in the world. "I had all these specific questions, but once I was around him those questions started to feel unimportant. He brings such a sense of peace. I forgot about golf and started thinking more about enjoying life, being grateful for my family and friends. Of course, having a quiet mind also helps in golf."

If Tiger Woods would accept his help, Sadhguru believes he could get him going in the right direction, too. Which, if you commit to reading on, is what this is all about. Prepping the mind to hit fewer shots can't be separated from the larger task of total self-re-examination. "Today, the most important work on the planet is to raise human consciousness," Sadhguru says—and writes. (His dozen books he has simply dictated into a recording device, then made minimal edits to the transcripts—a working method that is unbelievable until you hear him speak for hours without a single stammer or notecard.) "For the first time, we have the necessary capability, technology and resources to solve almost every human problem—fundamental problems like malnutrition, sickness, illiteracy—on this planet; never before was this possible. The only thing that is missing is human consciousness. ... All it takes is to make human beings willing." Willing, that is, to be truly inclusive and compassionate. To see themselves as part of a larger energy that is dispersed among all forms of life.

DIVISIVE FIGURES Whoa. Let's pause here. From Tony Robbins to Eckhart Tolle, modern gurus—which let's define as charismatic figures who make their life telling others how to live—tend to engender worship or extreme skepticism. Internet trolls accuse Sadhguru of hypocrisy in little ways, and others battle on intellectual turf, arguing his transposing of ancient Eastern philosophy into the Western world takes unforgivable shortcuts. "My hypothesis is that Jaggi Vasudev's act of interspersing his religious sermon with science is a conscious attempt to appeal to the urbane middle class," writes someone whose screen name is "tArkika."

POWERFUL IN PERSON But far more credit the man for changing their lives for the better. In 2016, Sadhguru initiated 35,000 Americans into yoga. In India, certain nights of Hindu celebrations with Sadhguru have drawn half a million people. In 2017, the Indian government awarded him its highest annual civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan. He has played six-hour rounds because of grounds-crew workers and other followers flocking the fairway. "By the time the round is over, I've blessed 150 to 200 people," he says. A guru's delivery is equally if not more important than his message, so I hesitate to distill in an article that which was conveyed over 20 hours of lecture (accompanied by group chanting and an absolutely terrific string band). So all I'll say is, I attended Sadhguru's three-day course on "Inner Engineering" at the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa. Early registration of $2,000 covered room and vegetarian board, with the rest supporting the nonprofit Isha Foundation, which Sadhguru founded in 1992. If you're a golfer, who among us hasn't wondered if a little Zen training might improve our putting? So it was with this mixture of curiosity and selfish motivation that I laid down my mat and prepared to be transformed. There were 140 participants, including those who'd flown from South America, the Caribbean, even India, to spend this special intimate session with Sadhguru. A curious number of attendees were in medicine; doctors and practitioners looking for knowledge to complement (or replace) what they'd learned of the human system in traditional education. The rest of the attendees professed old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill existential crises—sometimes I wake up in the morning and just think, What's the point?—and were seeking greater meaning. I wasn't the only golfer. Old and young, fit and fat, stylish and frumpy—overall, about the most diverse group ever gathered in a tapestried conference room. Cross-legged and mic'd on the stage, magnificently holy in his colored robes although he endorses no religion (his teachings have the most parallels with Buddhism), Sadhguru paused if a person left to go to the bathroom, so critical was each word of this condensed course. We were afforded comfort breaks every two hours, though Sadhguru mischievously hinted pride about his superior capacity. Such control over the body's plumbing might one day also be ours, if we followed the practices with discipline. Note-taking was strictly discouraged. "We are not here to make scripture," Sadhguru joked, and we laughed. "Leave behind what you think you know and please just give me your full attention these next few days. That is all I ask." What does enlightenment feel like? ‘Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline.’

THE MEANING OF LIFE Because I am not your guru, where Sadhguru weaves nuance I can only offer brevity. What follows are the crib notes on the meaning of life, before I get to the part about which I'm qualified to comment—teeing it up with Sadhguru the day after the retreat. The course's title "Inner Engineering" comes from the premise that in our exterior world, humans trust only things that work. We board elevators and trains not out of faith, but because we understand (or at least someone does) how they operate. However, for our interior world, we rely on things that are wishy-washy. Religions, philosophies, concepts like love—these work for some people some of the time, but generally we all pass through life with fluctuating discontent and uncertainty. But through close examination of the human system, a marrying of Eastern and Western knowledge to grasp "the nuts and bolts" of how life is, we may learn to run the "human machine" with a similar pleasurable confidence to how we turn on our phones or fly helicopters. (Sadhguru loves to fly helicopters.) What the following examples might seem to lack in cohesion, they make up for in accessibility. Seas rise with the full moon and our bodies are 60-percent water. To think our energy levels are independent of nature's cycles is ludicrous. The human jaw and digestive tract closely resemble a structure common to herbivores, and it's a diet of far too much meat—like bad gasoline—that's largely responsible for our lethargy and need to sleep seven to nine hours a day. Cared for properly, Sadhguru believes the human body can live up to 160 years. As a father of three children under age 3, the notion of functioning better off less sleep perked my ears. Key for dawn tee times.

At the cellular level, it's evident the fundamental nature of life is a desire to expand. Grass and flowers grow, squirrels and bears grow, each wanting to become a full-fledged grass blade, flower, squirrel and bear. At the essence of sexuality, is this desire to join oneself with another, to expand, and as a consequence, proliferate. The unique problem (or blessing) of humans is consciousness, and so we wrestle with what it means to be a full-fledged human being. Most of us have our basic needs of survival met, so it's almost out of something like boredom that we start our little personal psychodramas: Should I be a doctor, a lawyer, live alone in a cabin in the woods? Why doesn't that person like me; maybe a new set of irons will make me happy? When we consider that each of us is but a speck on a planet that is a speck in a solar system that is but a speck in the cosmos—a bacterial microbe crawling on your face occupies an infinitely larger relative plot of real estate—human concerns can become quite funny. Of course, this perspective is hard to maintain in the whirl of daily life. The answer, says Sadhguru, is to expand one's consciousness. What does that even mean, Carl Spackler? To allow your mind to exist beyond the boundary of your cranium. To join the elemental universe of which it is truly part. Get here, and it will feel second-nature "to look out at the world and feel limitless responsibility," even though your physical ability to do anything about its problems is limited. A notion with which I can almost connect, but it's hard when my knee ligaments are about to snap from sitting on the floor in extended Baddha Konasana.

CHASING ENLIGHTENMENT Same as the body is an accumulation of everything you eat, the mind is the sum of everything perceived through the five senses—the books you've read, the music you've heard, the places you've seen, the people you've known, on down the line. Though the DNA that shapes your nose remembers your great-grandmother, our minds and bodies essentially become the product of what we think and do. "Mindfulness" has been a buzz word of late, but Sadhguru prefers "meditativeness." He disparages modern yoga studios that focus on physical contortions and sweating while ignoring—or even worse, misguiding—the inner dimension. During times that survival is threatened, a gun is pointed at us or we flee a burning building, people often report an "out-of-body experience" where their mind was clear and they acted decisively, almost without thinking. How, one might imagine, a squirrel or bear is much of the time. But when you've got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich going, plopped in an office chair weighing what to say in the morning budget meeting, it's very much an "in-body experience." To foster this right detachment—or the kind of freeness that could lead to playing lights-out golf—Sadhguru says one might consider a traffic jam. You can feel angry and anxious stuck in one, but viewed from an airplane window, the snaking, glowing curves of tail lights become abstract and almost aesthetically pleasing. A grander perception that we all could seek more regularly. To rise there, to escape the confines of the self, the answer is meditation. Which initially can be very difficult. To think no thoughts and feel yourself exist, even if for just a moment, 12 inches outside your forehead—let alone a mile up in the sky—can take decades of practice. Though maybe just minutes. However long, don't wait until the final throes of life to "see a bright light at the end of the tunnel." The actionable takeaway of our retreat was a highly specific 21-minute routine of breathing and meditation called Shambhavi Kriya that should be done on an empty stomach. Eyes are meant to be closed, but how couldn't I peek at the four or five individuals who convulsed and cried with ecstasy? What does enlightenment feel like? Sadhguru says: "Take your greatest experience in life ever, and make that your baseline."

BACK TO REALITY Lunch was awkward. What kind of chit-chat to make with a sober table full of strangers after dipping our toes in the primordial nothingness? Mmm, is that chopped kale in this hummus? Delicious. So as not to incite envy, I withheld the fact I was later playing golf with our leader. Some remarks of others: "It's amazing how engaged he is giving what must be the same talk over and over." "If you had the ability to make the world a better place, you'd be tireless, too." "I find him much more pragmatic than Deepak Chopra."

BIG HITTER, THE GURU The Crossings at Carlsbad is a municipal course but defies the term with its flawless conditioning, $110 peak green fee, gleaming modern clubhouse and cart-mandatory routing. After three days at the altar, it was startling to see Sadhguru's robes replaced by slacks and designer shades. There wasn't time to hit the range, so Sadhguru warmed up by corkscrewing his arms and fingers forward and back in the loudest, most tendon-popping, mesmerizing stretch I've ever witnessed. The foursome ahead were clearly beginners, so I figured I'd go deep right away. "Sadhguru, what is the solution to slow play?" I said with solemnity, as if I had ascended a high peak to ask it. Without missing a beat, he grinned, "Better accuracy." He'd negotiated 14 strokes off me, remarking at breakfast that the key to golf was getting your opponent to boast about his game beforehand. Sadhguru has never taken a lesson but believes his "keen sense of geometry" garnered through yoga enables his steady play. Sure enough, he had me 2 down through four. "I am beating the pro," he said in gleeful disregard of the definition of amateur status. "Anybody can play decent golf like me," Sadhguru says, "but people trip on their own minds. They need to create a little distance between what they think and what they do." As for the seemingly hopelessly uncoordinated, Sadhguru says there are specific yogic practices for that. "In six to eight weeks everything they do will feel like magic." Sadhguru confided he thought the weekend's workshop had been successful, despite an audience he thought was reserved. I'd never encountered a more forthcoming group of strangers, as far as personal confessions and group dancing, which I suppose shows what a stiff I am. One way Sadhguru's organization measures success is through dogged survey work. Of all people who've attended Isha's workshops in the past year, 70 percent are still active with the prescribed meditative practices. Of the past three years, 40 percent. At The Crossings, you drive the entire length of the 12th hole from green to tee before you play it, an unusual re-routing to placate the California Coastal Commission and Army Corps of Engineers. The developers also faced challenges when nests of the endangered black-tailed gnatcatcher were discovered. Given his environmental initiatives, I probed Sadhguru's perspective on golf-haters during our extended cart ride. "Some people are always trying to think of everything in terms of utility. Life is not utility. If there's a water shortage, then, yes, let's water the greens and not the fairways. The problem is, we have set up the wrong aspirations. If everybody lived like Americans do, we'd need four planets. So now every small thing looks like an excess." Having fielded existential questions all weekend, Sadhguru was clearly more excited to talk trash. When I lost a ball off an errant drive, he was thrilled. "I cannot play any game halfheartedly, only intentionally," he winked. To coax him into performing his unique stretch on video, I offered him a floating mulligan, which he accepted and promptly redeemed. Riding up the 18th at sunset, it felt more like a round with a fun uncle, not a dignitary. Though as he sank a putt for a gritty net par to finish our match square, I remembered one thing Sadhguru said to me during the back nine, response to some inane question I'd cobbled about the cosmos. "The purpose of life is to explore one's own life to its fullest, to explore all dimensions. Forget the galaxies." Golfers everywhere can take comfort in the fact that an enlightened individual is concerned with the same 4¼-inch black hole.

EPILOGUE Only one week after the retreat, back in the throes of early-morning commuting, endless diaper changes and all the rest, I fell off the path by neglecting my Shambhavi Kriya practices. Barricading 21 quiet minutes daily felt impossible, even if it wasn't. The reality of my failure and lack of spiritual discipline set in at Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday for a child's birthday party. Between the warm soda, greasy pizza, dirty carpets and cacophony of arcade games stoking frenzied desire, it occurred to me this was the worst collection of all possible inputs. If we truly are an accumulation of all perceived through the senses, I was doomed. But then I remembered a line from Sadhguru I hadn't written down. A trumping wisdom for raising consciousness: "No matter what you do, do it willingly." So I toured my daughter around to every stupid game and proceeded to have way more fun than if I'd played golf.

Brought to you by 4 Seasons Country Club

[consciousowl]

Do I Have a Soul?

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;

and man became a living soul.

Moses in the Book of Genesis

In Ridley Scott’s cult classic, Blade Runner, set in 2019, we meet an L.A. cop, Captain Decker (Harrison Ford), sent to hunt down renegade replicants, or androids, up to no good, being highly resentful that their creator had timed them to die.

Captain Decker meets Rachael (Sean Young), the most advanced replicant. Decker can’t figure out if she, as the creator’s assistant, is a real human being with a soul, or simply his masterpiece. In the end, Decker falls in love with Rachel, and takes her with him. To Decker, it really doesn’t matter whether she is human or not. He simply can’t tell the difference.​

What Is the Soul?

When you speak of the soul, everyone knows what you are talking about, but hardly anyone can clearly explain it. Soul is clearly what makes us human. Soul is the very core of our being. Soul is the essence of our individuality over and against our body.

The soul is defined with various ancient words. In Hebrew, it is nefesh, or the breath of life. In Greek, it is psyche, or mind. In Sanskrit, it is the jivatman, our essence as an individual that migrates from life to life. It speaks of our heart as much as our mind, being closer to the heart.

Genesis depicts the soul as the breath of the Creator that makes the clay figurine, Adam, come alive. Adam is no longer dust; he is “a living soul.” Although this narrative is clearly metaphorical, it speaks to our divine nature, what differentiates us from other animals. We are human, if not also divine.​

Is the Soul and the Spirit the Same Thing?

In the Bible, spirit is represented with different words in the original. “Ruah” (breath or wind) in Hebrew and “Pneuma” (air) in Greek. In Sanskrit, God, from an impersonal standpoint, is “Brahman” (Infinite expansion). In Buddhism, it is often thought that humanity has no soul, as all phenomena are continually changing and are ultimately illusion.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, the apostle, most likely Saint Paul, distinguishes between soul and spirit, knowable only through revelation. In this context, the soul is the foundation of our human nature, while spirit is our divine nature.​

The soul may be everlasting, but not eternal. There was a time when your soul was not, but it may never end. Your spirit, however, is eternal. It always was, it always will be, because it is the very nature of God.

Your soul is the very heart of your individuality, what makes you “YOU” as “Mark” or “Audrey” or “Phil.” It suggests your presence. If you are in love with her, you feel her independent of her physical appearance. Your spirit, however, is one with the Source of the Universe, in which the galaxies spin.

Why Even Ask the Question?

Several hundred years ago, before the modern age, you would seem very strange to the people in your life if you asked a question like this. It was obvious to most cultures, societies and civilizations in the world that we have a soul. The only intelligent question was, “What happens to our soul after we die?” Here again, most societies accepted that our souls actually went somewhere. They survived the body.

With the emergence of the scientific method, the philosophy of rational empiricism emerged out of the immense success of science in making predictions and advancing technology. For experimental purposes, if you can’t publically sense something and actually measure it, it is unreal. It just doesn’t exist.

In the modern age, the soul got increasingly associated with the brain, as opposed to the heart. It became popular to suppose that our mind was entirely due to the intermittent firings of our neurons, much like a cortical thunderstorm. The moment you pull the plug and stop the action, the mind is gone, along with your soul.

Clearly, this assumption didn’t sit well with most people. Thanks to the father of modern philosophy, Renee Descartes, they took refuge in dualism, that the soul resides entirely in a different realm. The body is the body, and the soul is the soul.

As Descartes famously put it, “I think. Therefore, I am.”​

The Challenge From Neuroscience

In the past decade, research on the brain and the human nervous system has escalated. We have already decoded the human genome. Whereas earlier we were in the kindergarten stage, we may be confident that we are now in the elementary stage of understanding brain functioning. The global IT infrastructure required to support this research is now many times greater than it was even a decade ago.

The more we know about the brain, the more tempting it is to try and explain away the soul as simply neurological processes. However, the brain is vastly complex, with billions of neurons in intelligent patterns. If you look at all the possible combination of patterns in any single brain, you will have more than the number of stars in the known universe.​

Scientists have started to attempt on a crude level to reverse engineer the brain with varying degrees of success, as many of our neurological processes are analogical, rather than digital, meaning they are not simply on / off states. In addition, the brain does massively parallel processing way beyond what our current computers can do. Currently, software developers are in the early stages of writing and perfecting code for parallel processing.​

The Challenge from Artificial Intelligence

A.I. research is finally bearing fruit after decades of exasperating setbacks. Back in the 1950’s, mimicking the brain seemed much easier, as our understanding of both the brain and computer technology was so basic. Early on, there were two directions in developing computing. The first was to look at the computer as an ultimate replacement for the brain. The second was to look at the computer as an instrument to augment human intelligence.

Today, A.I. is being commercialized and introduced in every field and industry. We are about to see personal robots, drones, self-driving cars and flying automobiles on an everyday basis. Google has been using deep learning in its apps for years. Systems are now capable of simple self-learning. For example, you can instruct a system to identify pictures of cats from thousands of photos without any labels.

We aren’t yet at the stage where a system can fool people into believing it is a person, but we now see IBM Watson routinely beat, not only world-class chess players, but Jeopardy participants, a game requiring cultural sophistication. One system has even designed a crude, but intelligible, one-act screenplay!​

Can My Soul Be Downloaded into a Machine?

When Timothy Leary, the acid guru, was about to pass away, he gave instructions to freeze his brain immediately after he was gone in the hopes that a future generation could thaw it, and plant it into a human body. If we can transplant hearts, why not brains?

Transhumanists go beyond this. Since many neurological operations can be coded, one might suppose that human consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of the brain. We are conscious only in so far as we are programmed, and have an electronic current flowing through us. Should this be the case, then all of the code could be put together and stored in a large rack-mounted platform.

The problem with this line of thinking is that we are, from a biological standpoint, organisms, not machines. We are most definitely not simply an assemblage of parts. Rather, every system of the body grew out of a single fertilized egg. Can we really equate life with machinery?​

Will Computers Ever Be Smarter Than Me?

Right now, computing platforms can do many operations much faster than human beings. They can do more operations and do them faster on some, but not all aspects of thinking. The issue seems to be whether computers can beat human beings in generalized intelligence. There are at least a dozen different kinds: verbal, abstract reasoning, spatial logic, kinesthetic, aesthetic, spiritual, emotional and moral.

It would seem to be a long time before computers master all the different types of human intelligence and can be totally mistaken for human beings. However, it is very clear, as with Apple’s Macintosh, that manufacturers and developers can humanize and personalize systems in certain ways, SIRI being a crude beginning.

Even more to the point, it is dubious how successful systems will be in replicating human beings’ actual feelings and emotions. To date, most of the focus on A.I. and neuroscience has been around rationality and perception. Intuition and emotion seems to be largely overlooked. Given the role of the human heart (which is highly intelligent from a neurological standpoint), it might be more appropriate than the brain in these areas.​

Why Both Neuroscience and A.I. Completely Miss the Point

Scientific research into neuroscience and A.I. has yet to deal with what it calls “the hard problem.” How do we explain human subjectivity? When I see a gorgeous sunset upon closing my eyes, where is that sunset? Surgeons can’t really isolate any particular group of cells where it is happening. Our imagination seems to reside in a wholly different dimension.

Dr. Deepak Chopra and Dr. Menas Kafatos recently published a marvelous book, “You Are the Universe,” popularizing what they call “qualitas,” the experience of quality in what is superficially considered a quantitative world. They suggest that the brain might be a tuning mechanism for experience, which resides “nonlocally,” meaning it can’t be reduced to any specific locality.

We can’t isolate any experience as happening “out there,” as it is only through our internal sensations and thoughts that we can construct the concept of an external body and world. Quantum physics has eradicated the notion that you can have a world without someone to observe it.​

Will My Soul Ever Die?

Throughout history, most cultures have seen the soul going on well after the body has dissolved. Death is seen as the separation of the soul from the body. The body is temporal, but the soul is everlasting. One thinks of reincarnation on the one hand, and becoming one with it all and merging with God on the other.

Near death experiences are vividly narrated, with a strong suggestion of the survival of our individuality, and the overwhelming experience of love and well-being in the afterlife. It would seem that we have another body every bit as real as our current human body. The testimony of Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who flatlined his brain for seven days, seems most impressive in this respect.

The New Testament narrative of resurrection points to a glorified body that has a relationship to the former body, but it is not subject to the same laws. It can eat fish, and yet walk through walls. It can be touched, but is capable of levitating into the sky. Could this be a transformed soul body? In Hinduism, ever subtler dimensions of ourselves each have their own discrete body, culminating in the “Anandamayakosha,” or bliss body.​

Who Am I… Really?

While it is often considered blasphemy to claim that you are God, this may be our greatest truth. If there is only God, which is not a ridiculous proposition after a thorough study of quantum physics, then each of us is God hiding out as you and me. It may be that we live in a divine love story, where the individuality of each one of us is infinitely precious to our Source.

In the wink of an eye, God can bring us all back in a glorified body. If an advanced computer system can launch an entire universe in 3D virtual reality, could God do any less?

If you are interested in exploring the infinite nature of your soul and how it impacts your experience of the world daily… we recommend you do it with Deepak Chopra, a world-renowned thought leader in this space. Click here for more details.​

Do I Have a Soul? appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.

[kacheeking]

the lost years/months/days

haven’t revisited/thought about things that I’ve been reading on my own terms for a while, but this was the last time I was taking note roughly from July 2015 to May 2016: 

no. 3 shit i’ve been reading: circa march 2016

Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa – Joan Jacobs Brumberg (Found this incredibly illuminating re: sainthood and 16/17th century starvation in the name of religion. Made me think more about the intersections of appetite, power, religion and how this came to a head in that age. The Victorian era sections were also really interesting, I think since I’ve never thought specifically about how food and physical appetite came into the picture even though I’ve known so much about social mores of the time and how that would have been in line? I think reading this overall, esp when they started getting closer to the modern age, I just held this sheer sense of being appalled by medical practice and how eating disorders were treated, viewed and patients subjected to unfair/uncomfortable/even dangerous power dynamics. Feel like it’s so difficult to be a woman, though it’s improving, and my feminist self balked at so much that went on in the book re: this screwed up relationship between physical appetite (sexual and food-related), madonna-whore complexes, freedoms and rebellions and how in the face of so much external pressure women turn inwards and into and on themselves.)

Living Beautifully – Pema Chodron (Last Buddhist book that we had to read for class as part of a course that aimed at understanding the conception of “self” through various lenses e.g. psychoanalytic, evolutionary-biology, religious, etc. Still struggle to reconcile a lot of Buddhist concepts with the reality of a modern nation-state framework that we have to live in. Can see its merits on an individual level but in class, was agitated when the professor seemed to dismiss/relegate discussions of privilege, and power to the sidelines, or equate sufferings that in my mind seem absolutely incompatible. Maybe I’m not “enlightened” yet? Maybe I don’t want to be.)

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (Liked this more than other sci-fi that i’ve picked up. Can see why it’s a “classic”. also read this at a time when i was very much alone/wanted the experience of solitude. want to pick up more sci-fi in future, wondering why i was biased against this genre in the past??)

Devotional Poems – Joe Hall (didn’t seem clean enough, like some phrases were superfluous/didn’t add anything to the force of a poem. a lot of imagery, sound and fury but with no object or point. cacophonous but i didn’t enjoy this collection)

Once in the West – Christian Wiman (really enjoyed this. at first was disappointed – somehow poems that have monosyllable lines or single word lines strike me as irregular/ineffective (?) but this is unwarranted bias i suppose because a lot of the poems ended up having an unexpected resonance. reading wiman and also other poets in class i think you gain an appreciation for what objectively good poetry is. people say that art is subjective but that’s some bullshit at least at the preliminary stages because being an editor for a creative literary magazine i have read a LOT of bad writing and it is clearly not subjective. anyway, what was i on? always enjoy religious/devotional poetry specifically, and most of the time it is circa 16th/17th century, but wiman combines the modernist poetic aesthetic with something enduring and that always wins me over.)

Why be happy when you can be normal? – Jeanette Winterson (read this over two days, and by that i mean it took slightly over 2+/3 hours to get through it all maybe? incredibly easy to read which was why it went so quickly. liked this a lot and want to read more by winterson)

Nobody is ever missing – Catherine Lacey (read this over three days but grew more exasperated as it progressed. think i’m done with self-indulgence/characters who i perceive as self-indulgent. there is more draw for me, now, i think, to contemplate urgencies to others instead of urgencies only to yourself. i want to read not about escapism but about handling ties to history, ties to others, ties that threaten to envelope you but also uplift. this novel was about a woman who leaves a decent life to stay in a sullen silent space of isolation and somehow i cannot accept that anymore.)

numero dos: shit i’ve been reading circa jan 2016

Completed

The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell (i liked this and the fact that david mitchell writes so comfortably and well about/when placing his narrative in irish/english contexts. re: this book, i guess we handle/respond to mortality differently. the dystopian end made me think about wanting to recycle/be more environmentally-conscious) – January

Civilization and its discontents – Sigmund Freud (read this for class, again with all freud that i’ve read, some resonates and some i call total bullshit on (everything related to his gender theory tbh).

Man’s Search for Himself – Rollo May (read this for class. every time i read something approximating insightful about self-knowledge i somehow find a crack of doubt that then spreads across the text. there was a short segment about physicality and self-consciousness that i could see be true (and even then only in my context), but i lie in the crevice and believe that the self is unknowable so maybe this class is really just an exercise in futility 4 me?)

A General Theory of Love – Lewis et. al. (read for class again. Generally found this interesting, esp because it put a scientific spin on a theory of attachment and human connection. felt like the presence of objective science, though that is debatable, gave credence to the kind of subjective emotions we have all felt, and so was comforting in some small way.)

February: The Moral Animal – Robert Wright (for class again. basically an evolutionary biology perspective/explanation of morality. Interesting to see but idk, something about attributing so many things/our choices, etc. to biology feels inherently…wrong? but maybe that’s his point.)

Mlodinow, Leonard. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (fascinating but Mlodinow jumps around a lot when writing and it makes me less inclined to believe him?)

What the Buddha Taught – Rahula (feel like the more I read about Buddhism, the more confused I am esp wrt to its metaphysical concepts. felt like a good introduction to something that’s been familiar all my life but i’ve never gotten to know intellectually. but there is something inherent about “unknowable” concepts that may be just shy of religious concepts, but still unacceptable to me)

Four Quartets – TS Eliot (probably one of the best collections of poetry that i’ve ever read. eliot goes into abstractions but grapples with the heart of the matter and there is anguish and brazen honesty and no hesitance to be ugly if that makes sense. need to reread this, probably aloud)

The Monk and the Philosopher – jean-françois revel, matthieu ricard (complicates/simplifies the ideas of buddhism? I can’t quite make up my mind. but the comparison to philosophy and subjecting it to the kind of ‘scientific’ and dialectical method was useful for me to understand it further. that is, beyond metaphors. side note: am q taken with this format of prose—conversation printed)

shit i’ve been reading circa July 2015 

Not that kind of girl – Lena Dunham (felt pretentious at a lot of points) – July

The diving bell and the butterfly – Jean Dominique Bauby (quite good) – July

Madness – Marya Hornbacher (this made me cry) -July

Eat and Run – Scott Jurek (motivation to run as all books about running are) – July

AWOL on the Appalachian trail – David Miller (gets boring if you haven’t been to the AT)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollen (liked this. made me think about my choices and the exact ethical structure behind it – read also: consider the lobster by david foster wallace for a similar/alternative perspective) – August

What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami (long time coming to read this, perfect short prose about the draw of running. feel like most people who enjoy running and associate it with thinking/contemplation will get it) – August

Bad feminist – Roxane Gay (brutal at points, beautiful mostly) – August

Under the banner of heaven – Jon Krakauer (this was incredible. well-researched and comprehensive but extremely smooth narrative about mormon fundamentalism.) – September

Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann (enjoyed this) – September

Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace (title essay is a gem, the rest ranged from obscure to mildly intriguing) – September

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng (above average) – November

The People’s Republic of Amnesia – Louis Lim (emotional reporting, slated to go one way, but expectedly so) – November

History of Chinese Philosophy – Wing-Tsit Chan (need to reread, slowly, and in detail)

Drinking: A Love Story – Caroline Knapp (well-written and need to stop reading memoirs on vice/transferable behaviours) – November

Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari (ok. choice) – November

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers (liked this a lot, eggers has great arrogant style that works) – December

Slade House – David Mitchell (perfect short read. thrilling. fantasy.) – December

Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff (liked this but it ) – December

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami (took a while to get into, but enjoyed this, esp folding routines that appeared in the book into my mind. there is a quietness that steals its way through the pages when the protagonist makes his sandwiches, thinks, goes deep into dry wells) – December