Posts Tagged With: thich nhat hanh

Technology Spirituality Mash-Up

Some final thoughts this month’s focus at Jivamukti Yoga as we close the month of May…⁣⁣

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We live in a technological world, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! We have become interconnected with other human beings in ways most of us couldn’t have ever imagined! I wouldn’t be able to connect with most of you if not for this technological world! But there should be a happy medium…we cannot solely rely on technology, and we cannot go off to live in a cave somewhere to meditate all the time and ditch life (Bharati also spoke about this at Ananda Ashram this weekend)⁣⁣

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Here are some thoughts on this by Thich Nhat Hanh, from his book The Sun My Heart:⁣⁣

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“Meditators have always known that they must use their own eyes and the language of their own times to express their insight. Wisdom is a living stream, not an icon to be preserved in a museum. Only when a practitioner finds the spring of wisdom in his or her own life can it flow to future generations. All of us must keep the torch of wisdom glowing in order to light the path ahead.⁣⁣

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Our insight and our language are inseparable from the times in which we live. For many years, the East followed the West down the path of technological and material development, to the point of neglecting its own spiritual values. In our world, technology is the main force behind economics and politics, but scientists in the West have begun to see something similar to what the spiritual disciplines of the East discovered long ago. If we can survive our times, the gap that separates science and spirituality will close, and East and West will meet one another on the path to discover true mind. We can start working towards convergence right now, using our own daily mindful lives.” ⁣

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The Heart of Understanding

Comprehend:

Latin root  com = together in mind; prehendere = to grasp it, or pick it up

“To comprehend something means to pick it up and be one with it. There is no other way to understand something.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Respect:

Latin root respectus; from the verb respicere = look back at, regard; consisting of re = back; specere = look at or look back

“Respect means to look again, to keep looking with increasingly sensitive eyes.” Zoe Slatoff-Ponte

From Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of Understanding:

“When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand. If we want to understand a person, we have to feel their feelings, suffer their sufferings, and enjoy their joy.

If we are concerned with peace and want to understand another country, we can’t just stand outside and observe. We have to be one with a citizen of that country in order to understand her feelings, perceptions, and mental formations. Any meaningful work for peace must follow the principal of non-duality, the principal of comprehension [and respect]. This is our peace practice: to comprehend, to be one with, in order to really understand.”

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