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Gautama Buddha (560-480 B.C.E.)was born a prince in the Sakya or warrior caste, the second highest in the Hindu faith of India. His mother died when he was young and the boy was brought in luxury with servants in a palace.

When Gautama was 29 and just after the birth of his son he felt the need to leave and felt great sorrow at leaving his family. He wandered across the fertile Ganges plains to the tree covered hills of Vindhya hills where he lived for six years.

Here Buddha practiced the usual ways of the ascetic then common among holy men in India. He shaved his head and beard, put on the yellow robes and tortured his body with long fasts and every known form of physical mortification.

He became known as a pure man yet the truth seemed to escape him until he awoke from a fainting fit from hunger he awoke as light came like a flash to his mind.

All the fasting, the suppression and control of the breath, the fasting were leading him to enfeeblement of mind and body. To reach unclouded reason, flawless thinking, surveying the processes of thought, acquire clarity of vision and unadulterated experience, a person must have proper food and lead a healthy life.

Buddha was thrilled by his discovery but his disciples were so shocked that their master would turn away from constant suffering and all left him. The day that followed has been said to be one of those defining moments in history.

Left to himself Gautama walked the forests in now Bihar and sat by the banks of the River Neranjara where he sat under a wild fig tree. Here a lady presented him with a dish of milk which invigorated him.

And it is said there, after his ranging through every emotion known to humanity from blackest despair to sublime hope. Gautama found at last the peace and certainty he sought. Truth was revealed to him and he became the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

Followers became drawn to him from the great and ancient Hindu religion, which caused consternation among the ruling courts. The caste system which Buddha rejected held that all were born into one of five levels of caste, with the ruling court on top.

Next were the warrior caste to protect the court, then down to merchants who were needed for trade and wealth, the higher skilled laborer, and at the bottom the Untouchables. They were all stuck in their positions for life, an Untouchable could never work his way up into court. This is changing now in modern India finally.

Buddhism exported better in other nearby lands, where the gentle teachings allowed all to reach heaven, or Nirvana by living pure lives and forgoing excess. Buddha has long since taken on more oriental eyes and the fat belly in south east Asia, Japan and again now in China.

It seems the feeling of empty lives is driving young affluent coastal Chinese to be meditating in city parks and the authorities are so far able to realize this is not threat.

People are reporting happier lives and feeling more calm. What came to the West in a faddish wave in the 1960 era and has shown evidence of reducing high blood pressure and many calming effects. Good news circles the world in way and waves that can be very good news.

We will carry these thoughts into further articles that had Gautama be the first to break through the Hindu anger about his greater freedom to a rather court style Nirvana that was not sure Untouchables were ever going to more than the septic brigade.

Buddha overlapped their eight steps which might have you become a cow or monkey on your steps through reincarnation. He added a fast track that anyone could choose to make it to Nirvana or Eternal Bliss or Heaven in this life if one lived a pure life and learned the four basic truths.

Derek Dashwood enjoys antique religion books that can show how small acts can lead to great or small changes we later take for granted. Now antique religion has prove to show which ways were helpful, and which were most vital, and we talk about it further at
http://www.antiquereligionbooks.com
Rare Religious Books

It was a quiet night by the Ganges as the young man sat on the steps and watched the sun set over the holy waters.

Despite the beauty of the scene, he did not appreciate it.

The lilting cadence of the bathers chatting loudly seemed far away, and even their playful splashing of each other did not amuse him.

Someone started chanting a bhajan about Krishna and the gopis and others soon joined him until their happy voices slapped on the shores of the river and made the mosquitoes pause in midair.

This only irritated the young man more. He was worried about his job how little it paid and how he was going to pay for the rent for his 250 rupee room.

He was also lonely and wanted to get married, but what good family would accept someone who spent most of his time serving in a tea stall.

A holy man came and sat by him. He was only wearing sacred ash from head to toe.

“You seem troubled, young man,” said the man, almost jovially.

Soon they began talking and the young man poured out his heart. He learned that the holy man, who spoke very well, had once been a college professor at the University of Allahabad. Then, one day, after he had given a lecture on the philosophy of renunciation he had decided to pursue what he most desired, the quest for enlightenment.

After many years, one night, as he was stroking a stray cat and the two had been sitting for hours under a banyan tree, he understood his true nature and an immense peace filled his life and miracles happened to him spontaneously from then on.

The young man listened impatiently, feeling increasingly irritated.

Finally, in exasperation, the young man said, “I don’t understand how you can be either enlightened or happy. You have even less than I. You don’t even have any clothes and you don’t even know where your next meal is going to come from.”

Suddenly serious, the sadhu said:

“It’s tempting to believe that your problems are real and that your life is hard and that things are simply not going your way.

“After all, isn’t that what everybody else thinks, too?

“It’s a great temptation to believe in yourself as a limited being.

“And everyone will back you up. The newspapers will. The TV will. Your neighbors will.

“How long are you going to let this painful delusion continue?

“You’ve read the great books. You’ve heard the avatars. You’ve walked on the path yourself. You know.

“You know that you’re pure energy.

“You also know that your reach is infinite. You can be, have, and do anything that you choose. You have the power. Right now its turned back on itself and being used to create limitations for yourself.

“Your imaging power is how you express your infinite power.

“All ideas of limitations are an illusion fostered by the mind.

“And you can’t fall back on science either to confirm your limitation.

“Because what physicists say is that there is nothing but energy everywhere and that matter only seems solid but isn’t really. It’s just that the atoms clump together and the electrons spin so fast that even I look like a real thing.

“Of course, it’s fine to keep seeing yourself as “just human” but it’s not going to last for very long. Sooner or later, you’ll drop your body and be faced with your energy form. I just think it’s easier to admit it now and see how you can go around expressing your spiritual power while you’re still in this dimension.”

“Yes,” said the young man, “I think I understand.”

“What do you understand?” challenged the sadhu.

“I understand that I can be, have, and do anything that I choose because I have the power. The only reason that I don’t recognize it is because I misuse it to limit myself to the extreme.”

“Yes,” said the holy man, pleased. “The world for you is only the images you hold in your mind; change your images and you change the world for you.”

“One thing I don’t understand, though,” said the young man. “Why did you give up everything a fine education, an excellent job, and a devoted family? Why? Was it worth such a heavy price for enlightenment?”

“Yes, because it led up to that moment under the banyan tree with the cat that I mentioned earlier.”

“What is this enlightenment? What happened?”

“I caught a glimpse of the infinite.”

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

It seems that there is a contradiction between the psychology of transcendence and the spiritual idea of transcendence.

Psychologists believe that through the proper application of intelligence and self-cognition one can have a full and enjoyable life, with wealth, health, and a great relationship, as well as a sense of communal belonging and contribution.

Those in spiritual groups, in particular of an eastern orientation, believe that one has to get rid of the lustful ego that craves only fleeting things and to unify with divine consciousness.

The most popular compromise to resolve this seeming paradox is that you have to build up the self and let it go. In Vedic philosophy this is expressed as becoming a householder in the first stages of life then retiring to pursue transcendence.

Yet most believe, because of cognitive dissonance, that they should choose one view or the other.

Thus, there are those who believe that they should be worldly and experience the world as it appears to be.

Then there are those who believe that they should reject the world and dedicate themselves to getting out of the misery of the cycle of birth and death.

Here is another way of understanding this paradox.

The self is a transcendent consciousness. It is not limited to a particular body or a particular lifetime. Because it is not anything in particular, the “I” is not an “it.” This is why Buddhists say there is “no-self.”

Similarly, the world itself is entirely illusory. I don’t mean this metaphorically or even psychologically. At the subatomic level, again there is no substance. There are just probability patterns that literally flit in and out of existence! For example, an electron can appear under an observing instrument then disappear, then reappear again. There literally is no stuff! This is why the Vedantists say that the world is Maya, or illusory.

Yet to all purposes, on the macroscopic level, both an intelligent being and an intelligible world appear to exist.

On this level, personal growth and advancement is necessary, not because it means anything on a cosmic scale, but because there is literally nothing else to do with this adventure of life. You can either resist evolution and suffer all kinds of lack or you can embrace evolution and the refining of mind and enjoy fulfillment of resources and experiences.

Thus, when you look at things from the view of levels of perception, all contradictions disappear, just as the contradiction of day and night disappears when you understand that the sun and earth are in a cosmic dance.

It is possible to be engaged in the world and to actually enjoy it and at the same time to enjoy meditation and contemplation to experience the inner sky of blissful freedom. It is by no means an easy path, but after a while, they will support each other. Material success and harmonious relationships will give you the opportunity to retreat to your inner work. Similarly your inner work will contribute to your increase of abundance and maintaining a loving relationship with others.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

The only way to live a happy, prosperous, successful and fulfilling life is to learn to express the love that is within you. When you meet yourself, others, and the life that you express with love, then you will change everything for the better.

Who you are is an incarnation of love because what you seek, above all else, is to be well, safe, and happy; and that is what love provides, an assurance and promise of well-being.

The absence of love, the varying degrees of hatred, create conditions of distress that destroy the cells of the body and ruin the structure of a life, causing only illness, aging, stress, and destruction.

The human condition as we know it, in all its distressing dilemmas, is made possible only because of this denial of love.

Apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, and pride which lead to poverty, illness, and loneliness all arise out of a denial of the love that is your very nature.

Love does not have to be invented. It is fully manifested in a new born. However, with social conditioning, it gets covered up quickly, as the little person is consistently denied assurances of well-being. Criticism, punishment, expressions of coercion, cause love to hide, become distorted, and retreat from full expression.

Even when avatars come to teach love, pointing out that your real nature is only love, they are met with various levels of resistance. Those who oppose them have a lust for power because they mistakenly believe that only force creates favorable conditions.

Yet if you look at the history of this world, you will always see that force only destroys, both the enforcer and the enforced. It does not replace what love does; it does not assure well-being.

All the disasters in our own lives and the world as a whole is a result of this substitution of force for love. We force ourselves, we force others, and we create institutions that assure the expression of force.

Yet force does not create safety, and enforced compliance does not create a better world.

Ironically, it is very simple to change everything to start working for you. In all cases where you want to apply force, apply love.

Within a week, your life will be much better. Within a year, you will not even be able to recognize your life.

As you learn to be more loving, you will not only affect your own life, but the lives of all those whom you touch. They will, then, pass on your blessing to others.
You will literally be changing the world; not by doing anything special, but just by being more yourself, the self that is naturally kind, loving, and nurturing.

A return to love is the answer to discover the life that you really want to live.

Love, like sunshine, can light up all the dark places in your life and heal the wounds of the world.

We are all in this life together, all hoping for some miracle that will right wrongs and make the crooked places straight; but the power that we seek to do good is our own lovingness. All we have to do to change everything for the better is gradually build up our courage to express it.

The great wisdom of life will not be discovered by your mind but by your heart. You, in your own divine splendor, are the light of the world, the promise of hope, and the assurance of better things for all beings everywhere.

If you ask for the happiness, prosperity, success, and fulfillment of the world, this is what will come back to visit you in your quiet hours. At every moment you have the choice to turn the mundane into the magical.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

The thesis of this discourse is this: love is the answer to happiness.

Love, the most powerful force in creation, is also the most misunderstood.

It is misunderstood because of the context with which it arises: that of relationship. All relationships imply love, either an offering of it or a withdrawal of it. Thus, our understanding of love is conditioned by varying degrees of attachment and aversion. And because of this, there is an element of self-protection that is projected outwardly and becomes control.

Thus, our understanding of love is completely contaminated by all the associations that arise from it.

So what we have then is conditional love; love that is allowed if certain conditions are met.

In truth, none of this is really love, just as a delicious meal, sprinkled with some mud cannot be said to be appetizing any longer.

Love, real love, is acceptance. That is all it is. Simply accepting what is. From that acceptance flows giving and caring, nurturing and compassion.

When you see a beautiful flower wet with dew, you feel an out-flowing force from your heart. This emotion is love. It is a complete acceptance of the flower. You may call it beauty or appreciation, but it is really love.

A mother, seeing her child sleeping peacefully, feels love. This is a pure acceptance of the being of the other. Of course, when the child is awake, shouting, crying, and arguing, expressing it’s being in a radical way, breaking some social convention of one sort or another, the mother’s love is still there, but now it is mixed up with other emotions, anger, confusion, embarrassment. Thus, control is now exerted. A tension visits the relationship and the love that is implied in it is clouded over, at the heart of which are various degrees of non-acceptance.

When the love is uninterrupted, as in the still flower or the sleeping child, it is pure. It is spontaneous. When conditions are imposed, the love becomes something else, not quite definable, but definitely not as spontaneous, pure, and free.

What made Mother Teresa a lover of life? She accepted what was before her. Poverty, disease, and distressing situations. Her love then moved her to give, and the giving was to provide relief to the other.

Love that has conditions, that exerts control to bring the other into alignment with one’s belief systems is not real love. There may be elements of love in it, but it is tarnished with some desire for egoic gain. The other must love back. The other must be appreciative. The other must return something to us.

Philosophers, poets, and spiritual people have long believed that love is the central force that holds the universe together. The physical union of love creates children. The emotional union of love creates families and nations. The intellectual union of love creates ideas, discoveries, and inventions. Philosophically, one can even say that the union of subatomic elements in relationship to each other or of planetary bodies in relationship to each other is part of that harmonious, blending, accepting energy that we call love.

Love does not necessarily mean approval. One cannot truly love something despicable. But love does mean acceptance. And once there is acceptance, there is understanding and insight, and if change is necessary for well-being, it is done with wisdom, not reactive emotion.

If human beings were committed to studying love and applying it, the entire planet would change rapidly, and instead of our continued creation of chaos, harmony and cooperation would occur. All sorts of wonderful prospering circumstances for the well-being of all life would emerge.

But as a species, we associate contention with intelligence and survival, and as long as we prefer exclusion to inclusion, we will continue to wreck our own lives and the world in general with our confused thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

When we begin an inquiry into love, then the journey to right living can be said to begin. What is right living? That which provides well-being for self and other. When well-being is high, there is a feeling of safety and acceptance, which creates happiness, a sense that all is well, good, and true and that we need not guard against sorrow.

The summum bonum of all life is happiness. It is the ultimate motive, the end of all striving. Yet this happiness does not come uninvited. It feels invited when love is present.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

Imagine what would happen if you made a decision not to be unhappy anymore.

Yes, that’s right. Give it up. Quit being unhappy. Sure there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy–the unpaid bills, the ache in your shoulders, and your difficult parents, spouse, children, friends, and so on.

In fact, if you really focus on it, the earth has always been a miserable place and if you read the newspapers it appears to be falling apart at the seams even faster than ever before.

There are plenty of reasons to be unhappy. The sensory evidence just keeps piling up.

On the other hand, there is only one reason to be happy. You’re alive!

Do you understand what a miracle and wonder that happens to be? No one on this entire planet, ever, has been you. Only you are you. You have a total exclusive on this total immersion movie called life.

Expand this idea a little. The entire universe exists for you only. It only exists through your eyes. If you were to completely blink out of existence, it really would not matter much whether the universe still existed or not because there would be no you to appreciate it.

This means that the only reason the sun shines is so that it can settle on your skin, that rain falls only to make the earth green and beautiful for you, and that mountains and rivers and oceans exist in case you might see them.

True, for everyone else, it exists only for them, too. But what of it? It does not detract from your own exclusive experience.

Only you breathe for you, see for you, hear for you, talk for you. Just think for a moment of the sensory pleasure of being alive. All of this grandeur–just for YOU! Focus on your breath for a moment, and notice how delicious is that experience. You did nothing to deserve that breath or the air around you, yet here it is, offering itself freely to you.

Unhappiness is such a waste of life. It seems to me now that unhappiness is just a bad habit, an expression of ingratitude.

Every day life is blessing you with awareness and all everyone appears to do is grumble, grumble, grumble. Things will never be perfect. Life is short. If you don’t enjoy it now, chances are it won’t get any better tomorrow. Besides, it’s not going to last long anyway.

Life is about love, laughter, and happiness. That’s all. Not a complicated concept.

If people lack things, it is because their bad attitude brings them scarcity.

Imagine, for a moment, if instead of crumbling under every adversity, and drowning in uncertainty, you were to remain mindful. Imagine if you had a taste for the adventure that is your life. Imagine if you stopped taking everything so very seriously.

In the cosmic scheme of things, decades pass in the blink of an eye. Before you know it, the show will be over. All your suffering will cease. But before that happens, you still have a chance to grab some happiness.

Who knows, your happiness might even be contagious, and instead of spreading your irritation at the imperfection of all created things, you can just as easily start blessing others with the sunshine of your presence.

If you focus on unhappy events, either in your past or in the world at large, you will only dig yourself deeper into misery. Yet, with just a little effort, you can notice the bird that hops on a branch and think that this little scene was enacted just for you.

Nobody is going to start taking pleasure in life for you. It really is up to you to start connecting with the joy of your own existence and to the magical promise of your own gifts of love, laughter, and song.

It means much to be happy. Even for a day. And it is only today, every day.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul