Swami Ramananda

Practice and Non-Attachment:  A Two Pronged Approach to Liberation

If you want to see well through a window, you have to clean both sides. Practice (abhyasa) and non-attachment (vairagya) work much the same way. They are the complimentary practices given in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras as a means to quiet the movement of thought in the...

Santosha – Making Peace with the Present

Contentment is a deceptively simple concept that offers tremendous benefit if we fully embrace its practice. It is referred to as santosha in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and is not so easy to master because the habit of wanting and achieving is so deeply ingrained in...

Humility: Access to Deeper Wisdom

While humility is the hallmark of a sincere spiritual aspirant, we may rarely think of practicing it. In an age where self-empowerment is synonymous with personal growth, the idea of humbling oneself is decidedly unpopular. It can easily be dismissed as a sign of...

Breathing Spiritual Life into Each Day

The beginning of a new year is a natural time to reflect on and re-envision our lives. The tradition of New Year’s resolutions can be life-changing or it can be a temporary way of fooling ourselves with lofty ideas that fade when reality hits. Clarifying our...

Seeing Through the Illusion of “Normal”

Do we still believe that the sun travels across the sky while we stand stationary on a flat piece of earth? No, these once held beliefs were dispelled long ago. But how many other things do we accept as true simply because our limited senses tell us so, or that is...