My own strategy is to keep cultivating the witness, that part of me that notices how I’m doing it — to cultivate the quiet place in me that watches the process of needing approval, of the smile on the face, of the false humility, of all the horrible creepy little psychological things that are just my humanity. And watching them occur again and again and again.
- Ram Dass -
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Drawing on his 40 years of wisdom and experience, Dr. Svoboda offers some advice for students of Ayurveda. He talks about taking on the attitude of always being a student of Ayurveda, the difference between modern knowledge and ancient knowledge, and the importance of integrating one’s own experience into the Ayurvedic energy of healing.
“The way of modern knowledge is to accumulate various facts and pray that somehow they will cohere together in one’s conscious mind, so that they can be employed when required. This is a process of accumulation. Ayurveda is, in many ways, the opposite.” – Dr. Robert Svoboda
You and I are in training to be free. We’re in training to be so
present, so spacious, so embracing, we’re in training to not look away,
deny or close our hearts when we can’t bear something. The statement, “I
can’t bear it,” is what burns you out in social action. When you’re in
the presence of suffering and contracting, it’s the contraction that
starves you to death.
When you close your heart down to protect yourself from suffering, you
also close yourself off from being fed by that same life situation.
If you can stay open to both the suffering and the joys and the stuff of
life, all of it, then it’s like a living spirit. It just connects to
your living spirit and there’s a tremendous feeding going on.
Once you see all this, what else is there to do but keep working on
becoming conscious? You’d be a fool not to. You’re only going to
perpetuate your misery and suffering and everybody else’s if you don’t.
The other thing is to do it joyfully! When you meet somebody that’s
suffering, what do you have to offer them? You could offer them your
empathy. That’s a good thing to offer because they feel somebody else is
listening to them. The other thing you can offer them is your joy, your
presence, and your ‘not getting caught in it all.’
Having that empathy for another means your heart is breaking, because
you understand the intensity of their experience, and at the same
moment, you are absolutely, equanimously, present. You are not clinging
to anything, just watching the phenomena of the universe change.
- Ram Dass -
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2017 -
The Wit of Oscar Wilde A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her. A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. A poet can survive everything but a misprint. A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. A true friend stabs you in the front. | ||
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