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Twenty-one years ago, I was feeling a bit sick much of the time, and so I decided to find a doctor who was interested in a more alternative approach to health, as I had just gotten interested in a more healthy lifestyle. Fortunately for me, C. Norman Shealy, founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, had his offices nearby, so I scheduled an appointment with him.
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Written on July 18, 2010 by Tom Stine
Below is an excerpt from the first online satsang broadcast live on June 20, 2010. In it, I speak about the meaning of the word satsang and its relationship to truth. I will be making excerpts available from time to time from the satsangs as I record each one. Within 2-3 months, full satsangs will be available either by subscription or by download for a small fee. Enjoy! And feel free to leave comments if you wish.
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Written on July 16, 2010 by Tom Stine
I have posted a schedule on the website for the next several live online satsangs. Please check it often for updates:
Online Satsang Schedule
I also must inform you that the live online satsang scheduled for this Sunday, July 18, is canceled due to circumstances beyond my control.
The next live satsang will be Sunday, July 25, 2010, at 8:00 pm EDT. I look forward to seeing you then.
Namaste…. Tom
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Written on June 27, 2010 by Tom Stine
Greetings everyone. The next online, live satsang will be broadcast on Saturday, July 3 at 5:00 pm Eastern/2:00 pm Pacific. For those of you in other lands, that will be 21:00 GMT. (I recommend The World Clock for converting time zones. Very handy.) Satsang will last 60-90 minutes depending upon the volume of questions. As with the last one, please feel free to email questions to me at live@tomstine.com before or during the broadcast.
The last satsang went extremely well. I had a very nice turnout, with an average of 25-30 people throughout the entire broadcast with close to 100 dropping in to check it out. I would have been happy with 5 people showing-up, so I’m very pleased. The questions asked were great, and I think, all in all, I enjoyed…
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Written on June 15, 2010 by Tom Stine
It is my pleasure to announce my first live satsang, broadcast online, on June 20, 2010, at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time in the United States. For those of you in other parts of the world who would like to watch, the time is 21:00 GMT.
To watch, simply point your browser to:
live.tomstine.com
Once you reach that page, you’ll find some additional information on the broadcast, plus the option of watching a higher definition version for those of you with very fast Internet connections.
The format will be: a talk by me for 20-40 minutes followed by questions from the audience. I’ll be taking questions via email before and during the broadcast at the following address:
I’ll also be taking phone calls during the question portion of the satsang. I’ll have the phone number…
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Written on June 13, 2010 by Tom Stine
“The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if…
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Written on May 24, 2010 by Tom Stine
I feel like some sort of strange math problem, in which there is a constant dividing, subtracting, square rooting, you name it, and the answer keeps getting closer and closer to some limit. And the limit is somewhere between 1 and 0. Or maybe the problem simply ends up with no solution. Yes, that’s about right. No solution.
Namaste.
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Written on May 16, 2010 by Tom Stine
Buddhism has a problem, an unfortunate one, but such is life. And that problem is: there is no way to know for certain what the Buddha said. It is a problem with any spiritual teaching more than a thousand years old, or any history for that matter. It has to do with written texts and oral transmission.
The first written Buddhist texts are in the Pali language and are based upon 400 years of oral tradition. That means that whatever the Buddha said 2500 years ago was repeated generation after generation, from one man to the next, for four centuries. Even if the monks who recited the Dharma for 400 years didn’t add a single thing to the words they were taught, not a single new interpretation or correction or…
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Written on April 14, 2010 by Tom Stine
A big theme in spirituality: we’re all one! No matter what the flavor of spiritual discussion, you’ll bump into something about oneness. And you know, if you are going to believe in something, you might as well believe in oneness. It’s a pretty good concept, as concepts go.
But if we are all one, then who are you? I mean that literally. If there is just The One, as in One Spirit or One Consciousness, no second, no sense of two-ness (that’s what nonduality means, by the way), then is there any sense in which I can talk about a “you” that is not me?
I do see other bodies walking around the world. I talk to other bodies. I have interactions with other bodies. But who is the “you” with whom I…
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Written on March 15, 2010 by Tom Stine
My friend Takuin Minamoto recently answered this question on his blog, and I was thrilled by his response. Takuin defined enlightenment as follows:
Enlightenment is limitless expansion within a limited field.
I love this definition because Takuin masterfully dropped all the centuries of spiritual baggage attached to this one simple word and took it directly to the heart of the matter. As he further explained, the limited field he is referring to is the world we find ourselves living in, the experiences that pass through our awareness moment to moment. It is a limited field, isn’t it? While it arises from the infinite, in and of itself it will always be contained, confined, bounded, limited. No question, our world is a limited field.
But enlightenment is the infinite, the limitless, expanding…
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Written on March 12, 2010 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me the following email:
What I’m wondering is in the phrase, “…after enlightment, chop wood, carry water”. The thing is, I’ve lost my zest for my career which I must recapture in order to find work (was laid-off) and to pay my mortgage. In the absolute, I understand there’s no one here. In the relative, I need to find the energy, but I’m no longer interested in the Game–the whole illusion thing. What to do?
I love this question and the entire subject it represents. It gets right to the heart of the seeming paradox between awakening/enlightenment and the world we find ourselves in. What to do about this paradox?
Awakening to the truth of what we are, that there is no separate self, no “me,” is to barely…
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Guru Quotes
The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
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