Ruth King is a writer and Buddhist teacher who focuses on working with racial identity in learning meditation and using the tools of spiritual practice to examine one's own racial being. King combines western psychology with eastern philosophy and indigenous wisdom to coach her students in becoming more aware of their underlying areas of fear and vulnerability as well as the key points of their own rigidity.
James Baldwin describes his own coming of age and awakening to spiritual and political consciousness as beginning with the revelation of sin: 'I became, during my fourteenth year, for the first time in my life, afraid—afraid of the evil within me and afraid of the evil without.'
In this excerpt from an article published prior to the release of Between the World and Me, Coates talks about his childhood in West Baltimore. He describes the gap he felt between his own world and the world he saw through the TV set, as well as the perplexity and disingenuity of being fed a stream of non-violent role models at school.
In this extract from an essay about bhakti and devotional love written in the late 19th century, Swami Vivekananda - the 19th century spiritual reformist and teacher of Vedanta who was instrumental in popularizing Hinduism and yoga in the west - makes the difference between empty religious ritual and the burning desire for union with God, which is as real as any hunger or thirst.
Why is self-acceptance so hard and self-criticism so deeply wired in us? Psychologist and teacher of meditation Tara Brach reminds us that self-love is one of the most neglected areas of our psychic landscapes.
In 1961, Ram Dass famously collaborated with Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, and Allen Ginsberg, to carry out pioneering research on research psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals. This experience led Ram Dass, who was then an academic called Dr Richard Alpert, into a lifelong inquiry into the human condition and its mysterious psyche.… Continue reading Ram Dass on the Anxiety of Extinction
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is one of the most widely read books about Buddhism, having sold more than three million copies since its publication in 1992. Since then, the reputation of the book's author Sogyal Rinpoche, has fallen into ill repute through various allegations of sexual and physical abuse. However, the wisdom… Continue reading Spiritual Care Is The Essential Right of Every Human Being
