[email protected]

Constant Cravings

Cravings for pleasure are never ending. Every time you try to fulfill a craving, it’s like adding more gasoline to a fire that is already burning. We can’t eliminate desires completely and we don’t need to. Desires naturally arise in the mind. They only become...

Making Peace with Desires

How to let go of or make peace with a desire in the mind? Try to stay away from the object. Then the thought will slowly die away because the thought is not being fulfilled; the desire is not being fulfilled. Even though the desire comes in, when you don’t give it the...

What Yoga Teaches Us About Emotional Pain

One of Patanjali’s sutras buried in the Second Pada is: “Pain that has not yet come is avoidable” (2.16). This is very similar to, I would even say, exactly, what the Buddha taught: that suffering can end—as stated in the Third Noble Truth—though we hardly...

Pratipaksha Bhavana in Judaism

By Reverend Sam Rudra Swartz “Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba . . .” As I realized that these words of the Mourner’s Kaddish were coming out of my mouth, my head dropped, my eyes closed and I heard wails of grief come from both me and my...

Emotional Self-Mastery

Emotions are part of the mind and are one part of its functioning. According to Raja Yoga, there are several different ways the mind functions: the analytic mind, the feeling mind, the thinking mind and the desiring mind. Some people think if you are a big yogi, you...