Rely on the teachings to evaluate a guru: Do not have blind faith, but also no blind criticism. His Holiness the Dalai Lama power of faith is amazing. Some years ago we were teaching a workshop in Plymouth, England, when a student eagerly told us that Deepak Chopra had 'renounced the world' and was teaching at the local Heart and Soul Healing Center. He was holding gatherings each night and participants were experiencing profound healings and personal transformations. When we went to meet the so-called 'Deepak' we discovered him to be an artful imposter. With his exposure, his followers lost faith and the healings and transformations stopped. This was a classic example of when belief in a guru / healer supersedes our own intelligence, due to the faith and longing to be 'saved'. The real Deepak Chopra later thanked us!
In yogic terms the word guru means 'remover of darkness or ignorance'. One of India's greatest holy men, Ramana Maharshi, often said that the role of the guru was to push the student inside in order to see the guru within– as the true guru is within each and every one of us.
Yet invariably the opposite is true, as seen when a guru encourages adoration, dependence and obedience to them and them only. This is known in India as gurudom (as in kingdom) where the guru amasses a big following and sees him/herself as the ultimate authority but does not empower their students. The guru may even call their followers babies or treat them like children, thereby keeping the student feeling inferior and the teacher all-knowing and superior.
This can lead to an 'enlightened ego,' where one experiences all the wonders of enlightenment but the ego snatches the reward: “I am Enlightened!” Yet who or what is enlightened? This is not unusual, as the ego is subtle and seductive, and it is a trap when we believe we are enlightened. Those that say don’t know and those who know don’t say!
Similarly, many people go to every healer that comes to town in their longing to be fixed or healed. They believe every healer will be the one to solve the mystery of whatever is causing their ill health. We also get addicted to movie stars and their seemingly wonderful lives as a way of filling the void in our own lives.
Hence the scenario where we see followers becoming guru junkies, not just dependent but actually addicted to their guru, as if he or she were a therapist or movie star with their followers doing anything to meet them, wearing necklaces with the guru's photo, and hanging the guru's picture on their wall, but often only seeing them from a distance and knowing nothing about them. As with therapy where a patient may 'fall in love' with their therapist, so the spiritual student can 'fall in love' with the guru, although this is more of a strong infatuation. Many times female followers will fall so in love with the guru that they even submit to sexual abuse, and we know of gurus mistreating students in the name of obedience: if you are truly devoted then you will do this or that for me. The innocent student obeys, only to regret it afterwards and in need of therapy to make sense of it.
We have both had personal time experiencing the guru student relationship. In the late 1960’s Ed went through a classic traditional yogic training where obedience was paramount and his devotion was unswerving. "I trusted that whatever I was told without question and that if I surrendered my point of view or whatever I believed to be true then I would be a candidate for self realization. My guru once said: 'True surrender is when you are right and the guru is wrong and you can surrender being right.' At the same time I believed my guru was the incarnation of god. My blind devotion caused me to be too dependent on my guru and left me unable to function as an ordinary person. I even felt I was more special than others who didn't have this experience, that as I had a yoga name and title I was so superior!"
We worship the guru as god and see them as divine while mistreating or denigrating others. When we were last in India we were visiting the ashram of a guru who hugs each of her thousands of devoted followers. When we arrived the guru was in the middle of a devotional goddess worship, where both she and her many disciples enter into ecstatic states. We noticed a man standing with his young child directly in front of the guru, expressing deep devotion. Soon afterwards we were all in line to catch an elevator to the residential floors. As there was only one elevator there was a long line. Suddenly this man and his child came right to the front. Ed pointed out there was a line of waiting people, at which the man retorted "F…k you!" Aha! The guru is divine; everyone else is not.
This is ironic because in India the most wonderful greeting is Namaste, which means 'the god in me honors the god in you.' Unless we see the god or truth in all people we are like a misguided missile. We limit our own growth and chance to be free. As the Dalai Lama said to us when we were with him at his residence in India: "We are all equal here!"
Many people surrender to a guru with a kind of blind faith, or without checking the teacher out first. Yet, would you marry a person as soon as you met them, without knowing them? Wouldn’t you spend as much time as possible so you know they are right for you? The crazy wisdom Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, said we should always be sceptical. Swami Satchidananda said that we should check out a guru just as we would check out a chicken before buying one.
Perhaps we worship a guru so blindly and surrender so willingly due to our own self-doubt, the reluctance to acknowledge our own innate understanding, insights and wisdom. We make the guru greater than we are, demeaning ourselves in the process. And yet the same truth that is within the guru is within us all. What we learn from the external guru is that just as one person can awaken, so we all can. Perhaps we need help, yes, but only until we stop searching outside ourselves. Then the seeker becomes the seer.

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See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jane Fonda, Jack Kornfield, Marianne Williamson, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, and many others.

Our 3 meditation CD's: Metta—Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi–Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra–Inner Conscious Relaxation, are available at: www.EdandDebShapiro.com

There are billions of people on our planet and yet, amazingly, each one of us has a completely different mind with exclusive thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes. One may desire to be an astronaut and walk on the moon, another a caregiver helping the elderly, another gets lost in the world of delusion or depression.

This mind is able to grasp the most complicated technical theories or create beautiful works of art, yet it can just as easily be distracted by meaningless trivia or get painfully addicted to heroin. Have you ever wondered about your own mind? How it can move so quickly from feeling good to despair, from clarity to utter confusion, and all in just a moment?

In yoga and meditation we teach to quiet the mind, to sink into a quiet inner spaciousness free of the normal babble and dramas. Some find this hard to do as, like a monkey, the mind is used to running amok and having its own way.

“When you begin to watch your mind, it becomes careful. It’s almost like the moment you don’t watch your children, they’re ready to get into some mischief. If you keep an eye on them, they will be quiet. The mind is like that – when it knows that you're watching, it will behave.” -- Swami Satchidananda

Our thoughts can be brilliantly productive but they can just as easily generate confusion or even fear. For no matter how intellectually astute or creative we are, this may have little or no effect upon habitual feelings such as shame, guilt, anger, or insecurity.

Over time these fears and neuroses become like iron bars that surround us, immovable and fixed. How often have you heard it said, “This is just the way I am, I can’t (or won’t) change!” As we unfortunately believe our fleeting thoughts are real, so we just have to live with and suffer the consequences.

It should be noted here that we are talking about the ego-mind that we deal with daily and gets so caught up in itself that it cannot see outside of its basic selfish nature. Through meditation we can become aware of its games and go beyond the fixation of "all about me" to see the wisdom-mind that is radiant, altruistic and free.

But being locked in the mind is like having your head stuck in a cardboard box with no escape. All we are able to see are our own issues going round and round. The mind that perpetually repeats itself becomes its own enemy, as resentments, hurt, desire, and bitterness are relentless.

Yet, to top it all, this is considered to be normal. We even proclaim, “My mind is so busy it’s driving me crazy!” as if this were some sort of achievement. Despite that the mind is habitual and neurotic, we continue to believe our issues are real and play the dramas out over and again, like a dog chasing its own tail.

So, how do we break this pattern? We only find peace when we finally get the message that to be living inside our heads all the time is actually not much fun. When we reach such a point of dissatisfaction and have had our fill of suffering, when the monkey mind is exhausted, then a shift can begin to take place, a shift of emphasis.

And we discover that there is a place we can function from that is not subject to such chaos or limited by fear or neuroses, but is actually joyful, creative, meaningful and loving.

From being locked into the head with all its attendant fears and manifestations, we become aware that there is this other part of our being that operates in a different way and is actually a source of great richness, a wealth that cannot be squandered or lost. We realize that if we can come out of the endlessly distracted and discursive mind and come into the heart, then we find a deeper happiness awaiting us that we had never realized existed.

Where do we point when we say “me”? We point to our heart, don’t we? Tibetan Buddhists says the true mind is the heart. We can cultivate this heart awareness through meditation: Breathing into the area of the heart, silently repeat, “May I be well, may I be filled with loving kindness. May all beings be well, may all beings be filled with loving kindness.”

You can also repeat this to yourself throughout the day whenever your monkey mind peaks out its head.

So this is when losing your mind becomes something you really want to do!

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See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Marianne Williamson, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, and many others.

Our 3 meditation CD's: Metta—Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi–Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra–Inner Conscious Relaxation, are available at: www.EdandDebShapiro.com

However you try to define meditation, it’s not that. Swami Brahmananda

Through many years of being involved with meditation we have seen how easily people miss the point, mainly because they take the practice and themselves too seriously. Many 'try' to meditate but their minds are so busy they get frustrated and quickly believe they are no good at it. Others turn into die-hard advocates of a particular method or technique and become like a salesperson trying to sell their product.

Just like Yoga, people want to own meditation and to believe that their technique is the best one. They give it a name: TM or Vipassana or Mindfulness and sometimes make outrageous claims of what can be achieved, but that is not the point. Meditation is not a technique – being quiet happens by itself, not because of following the breath in and out, reciting a specific mantra or creating a visualization.

Teachers, through their compassion, created the many methods and techniques in order to help their students to concentrate and focus their minds, to be one-pointed. No one technique is better than another; they equally give our monkey minds something to do other than drive us bananas. Many of the practices known as meditation are actually concentration; they bring the mental energy together so the mind is less fragmented. But this is not meditation.
Meditation invites us to stop, just stop, breathe and be. Just as with a musician playing or an artist painting, when we stop trying to make it happen something occurs, like the radiant sun that suddenly emerges in a cloudy sky. But because we try so hard, we identify more with the technique instead of allowing the meditation to reveal itself.

The practice of meditation easily gets put in a box: "I will practice now, at this time, at this place and in this posture, and I will do this particular method." But a method is simply an aide; it is not the experience itself. A hammer can help build a house but it is not the house. There is no doubt that through practice we can release stress and feel wonderfully peaceful, but genuine meditation is about waking up, where the mind is clear and free of obscuration.

This is not a mental process but an experiential one as meditation is an opening, a release of ego identity when all attempts to meditate, all striving, all doing stops, when there is no past or future, just radiant emptiness. It is being present – fully aware and present in every moment -- and we can do that whatever we are doing and wherever we are. It is the freedom to be fully oneself without limitations or ideologies – there is just this.

Deb's father, Richard, was on a Zen retreat where he was taught to temper his sensuality, not to give in to his senses or think of sensual things but to stay focused and single minded. While walking in the garden he then came across a pond laden with happily fornicating frogs. We think meditation has to be something special but true meditation is opening and expanding our perception, as if seeing with new eyes.

The technique becomes redundant when meditation becomes our natural state. It doesn't matter what the technique is -- when we drive to Rome the car is necessary but when we get there it is immaterial – what matters is the attitude and awareness that we bring to practice. The teacher is also more important than the technique. They must be skillful, peaceful and clear, regardless of the method or tradition they are teaching.

The moon trusts that the world will continue to go round on its axis, birds trust there will be berries and seeds to eat, trees trust the seasons will follow in the right order. Until we trust that things will unfold naturally then we are slaves to our doubts, fears and neurosis, to the constant chatter in our heads that says we are useless and don't know anything. But we don’t make the sun to rise or set. The planet is in orbit and neither we nor Jesus or Buddha or any of the wise ones run the show. Our job is simply to surrender to the moment.

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See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman. www.EdandDebShapiro.com

There is nothing more certain and unchanging than uncertainty and change. -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Did you ever notice how in one moment you can be ecstatically happy and then suddenly depressed? How you can be friends with someone and then they become an enemy? How something is good and then turns sour, like a delicious mango that becomes rotten?

The world around us is not the same as it was just a moment ago. Babies have been born, people have died, clouds have passed overhead, waves have risen and fallen. Who we are now is not who we were last year, last week, yesterday, even a few minutes ago. Already we have changed, some of our cells have died while others have been created, while our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas, even our relationships are as changeable as the weather or the seasons.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. -- Ursula K. LeGuin

Change happens in the flash of a moment but the ego mind – our self-obsessiveness – needs to make everything appear solid and permanent. We even push death away like an unwanted object, no one actually believes they are going to die.

But just imagine if everything was permanent! Imagine how boring it would be if we were always the same: there would be no butterflies, no full moon, no cherry blossoms and no cherries. Change is the reality of life so if we resist it then we are resisting the meaning of being here, which is to be always becoming something different, other than what we were before.

Without change in ourselves we become stifled and stagnant. Being with what is as it is, and integrating the reality of change is wonderfully liberating, the opportunity to clear away layers of dust and cobwebs and to start anew in each moment. Just as palm trees transform muddy water into sweet coconut milk, so we can transform fear into courage, selfishness into kindness, and loss into a new beginning. Spring is here with new life bursting forth, and in the same way we can create a new life for ourselves in every moment.

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. -- Maria Robinson

Here are 10 ways to make change your best friend:

    1-     Accept what is! If you can change something, then do; if you can't change anything, then release resistance and simply be with what is.

    2-     Take risks. Life is about not having answers, taking chances and risks, and making the most of every moment, all without knowing what is going to happen next.

    3-     Be your own best friend. It is easy to blame and shame yourself, but now is the time you deserve the most love and kindness of all.

    4-     Every day is a new beginning. Each time you take a step forward you have no idea what might happen. But nothing will happen if you continue to stay where you are.

    5-     Keep falling as long as you keep picking yourself up! Making mistakes is not the problem, but not learning from them and moving on is.

    6-     Nothing lasts forever, so appreciate every moment fully and completely, as it will never happen again.

    7-     Think with your heart instead of your head. When you come from your heart you come to your senses!

    8-     Meditate. Take time to just stop and breathe, to remember why you are here, and to find what is of real meaning to you.

    9-     Don't take yourself too seriously. A good sense of humour prevents a hardening of your attitudes, and stops your opinions from getting too rigid!

    10-     Do something for someone else and make giving to others a part of your life, especially if it is a smile and a hug.

See more on Ed and Deb

It's a simple equation. When we are unhappy or angry then we will be angry with other people and increase the suffering in the world. When we are in pain, that pain gets projected onto others or blamed onto everything around us: “It's your fault I'm unhappy!” When we find our peace, as we do in meditation, then that means there is one less person suffering and one less person causing suffering to others.

We have spent the better part of our lives studying, practicing and teaching meditation in different countries around the world. Yoga and Buddhism are our spiritual roots. And we often wonder how we could possibly function without it, or how anyone functions without some form of spiritual practice as their foundation, without the awareness and sanity that meditation brings.

“We have to find a way to remove ourselves from all those messages of unfulfilled desire coming at us or we do not have a chance to clear our minds,” writes Lindsay Crouse in Be The Change. “The kind of constant busyness we are a part of is actually a kind of aggression against ourselves, because we have no peace. More importantly, we construct the world by how we think. For instance, when we are in love, we will run out in the rain with our lover, dancing and singing and celebrating, getting entirely wet; whereas most days when we open the door and we see it raining, we use an expletive. It is not the rain’s fault; there is no quality in the rain that should make us either happy or unhappy. That is coming from us. So, if the way we are seeing the world is coming from within us, then the world is a reflection of how we are thinking and feeling and acting and speaking. In that case, we need to take time out to deeply consider how we want to behave.”

Meditation equals sanity in an insane world. The Middle East is crumbling, going through massive and violent changes; Japan is facing unbelievable difficulties and suffering due to man's need for endless nuclear power; the U.S., directed by Obama, just killed the world's most infamous terrorist; while the Republicans in America are horror stricken that there is a black president. All this is sourced from the need for power, from greed, hatred, ignorance and unhappiness. As Ed recalls: “I am a Jew and you are not, meaning that, as children, we were only allowed to relate to people who were like us. I wasn’t allowed to bring a friend home or to eat in his home if he was not Jewish. I was taught to fear anyone who was different.”

How do we deal with this? How can we claim our dignity, humanity and humility, both as individuals and as a human race? The most obvious and simplest way to stop the aggression is to find our peace. And the sanest way to do that is by stopping, being quiet, and making friends with ourselves through meditation. It has the effect of lifting us out of the quicksand of the mind, out of misunderstanding and suffering. Through it we find our freedom from reactive, rash, and self-serving behavior. Having a more compassionate understanding is vital to our development and survival as a human race.

“Meditation is calming the reptilian brain,” writes Matthew Fox in Be The Change. “We have all got three brains in us: One is a reptilian brain, which is about 420 million years old, our mammal brain is half that old, and our most recent one is the intellectual creative brain. The reptilian brain is very prominent; it runs our respiratory and sexual systems; it is action and reaction. We have to calm this reptilian brain so that the mammal brain, which is the brain of compassion and is here to bring kindness and kinship and bonding, can function. I mean, reptiles do not make good lovers; that is not their thing. Meditation allows us to treat the reptilian brain well: ‘Nice crocodile, nice crocodile.’ When we calm the crocodile, then the mammal brain can assert itself. Meditation is not just for professional monks; it is a survival mechanism for us all, especially in this time of crowdedness and rubbing shoulders with people of different faiths and traditions. We all have to learn to calm our reptilian brain.”

You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself. -- Nelson Mandela

Arianna Huffington recently said at Urban Zen NYC's Conversations on Sustainable Wellness series: "If there's one thing the world is starving for it's wisdom, and health is connected to wisdom."

We couldn’t agree with her more, as we need wise and productive change now! The world is in turmoil and, until we can come together in a healthy way, life will be even more challenging than it need be. Amidst the confusion, there is a crucial need to bring business leaders to this same understanding, as they are in a position to make lasting and effective differences. Which is the very purpose of LOHAS, aka Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability.

As we are all well aware, times have changed. What we were talking about three years ago is now happening: bringing bags to the grocery store, using CFL light bulbs, driving a hybrid car – thankfully, these are all accepted as normal. We’ve got the green bit going, got recycling sorted, so now it’s about ensuring green assets are fully sustainable so that everyone participates. We need to be inspired. It may be the right thing to do but it has to be worth it to turn computers off at night or refit a whole office with recyclable materials.

LOHAS is a wonderful and innovated global phenomena bigger in Asia than even in the west. In Chinese LOHAS translates as ‘happy living’ and has spread like wildfire. The concept wraps traditional values of Asian believes, philosophy and cultural understanding in with a cool western packaging, which is very attractive to the younger generation. There are LOHAS department stores, energy bars, and restaurants, to name a few. Amazingly, director Ted Ning has conducted LOHAS tours of Boulder, Colorado, for Japanese businessmen who are fascinated to see what healthy and sustainable lifestyle looks like in a living environment.

As change is where it’s at, the theme of this year’s forum is the Future of Possibility. “If we took a snapshot of how everyone is right now, there’s a real frantic energy,” believes Ted Ning. “Everyone seems to be on the run going everywhere and anywhere, busily trying to make things happen. Two words that reflect the world this year could be instability and uncertainty. If we look at Japan, the Middle East, the weather, everything is changing and is really uncertain and no one knows what’s going to happen next.”

Doom and gloom can be depressing, but the upside means there are many possibilities ahead. Out of the mud comes new growth, such as a beautiful lotus flower.

The Future of Possibilities is at the cutting edge. Among many speakers is brilliant futurist Jean Houston, founder of the Mystery School and author of many new thought books, talking on “Understanding the Great Mystery;” and Dan Millman, bestselling author of The Peaceful Warrior and The Four Purposes of Life, talking on “The Business of Living — on Purpose.”

“We must find the way that speaks to our innate capacity for knowing, for being, for entering into those wisdom states that give us the intuitive knowledge of what we are and what we must do in this most important time, for what we do now will most profoundly make a difference to our future.” -- Jean Houston, from our book Be The Change

Also speaking is Chris Kilham, named by CNN ‘the Indiana Jones of Natural Medicine,’ who will tell “Tales From The Medicine Trail,” while John Peterson, founder of the Arlington Institute, will talk on “2012: The Shift We have Been Waiting For.”

And to top it all, the former keyboardist for Santana, Freddie Ravel, will be headlining the closing in a “Tune Up for Success.”

Participants come looking for meaning and value-based purposes. That’s why LOHAS is a beacon showing how business can be profitable, even in these difficult times. Yogis and successful ‘green’ companies will be rubbing shoulders with Coca Cola, Walmart, a Russian trade association, as well as prominent Chinese and Japanese business leaders, as they share new ways of thinking and sustainable practices.

‘Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability’ describes a marketplace focused on health, the environment, social justice, personal development and sustainable living. One in four Americans is part of this group—nearly 41 million people. They are the future of business and also the future of progressive social, environmental and economic change.

We will be at this exciting event as we have been for the past few years, for you never know who you will meet —last year we found business cards made from elephant pooh while Ed overdosed on delicious organic chocolate!

The LOHAS Forum is June 22-24th in Boulder, Colorado. It provides a cross section of thoughtful and progressive executives, and is known for fantastic networking with decision makers who are involved in LOHAS business. There will also be a special regional event on May 12th in Minneapolis, MN

What can you do to make life more healthy or sustainable in your world?
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See our award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Marianne Williamson, Joseph Goldstein, Marc Ian Barasch, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, Mark Mawrence, and many others.
Our 3 meditation CD's: Metta—Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi–Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra–Inner Conscious Relaxation, are available at: www.EdandDebShapiro.com



 

If there is one yoga that that leads to Self-Realization it is non-injury or ahimsa. Yoga Master Swami Satchidananda

 Imagine, as John Lennon said, what a world it would be if there were no wars and no suffering. How cool it would be if we could set just one day aside each year when we all stop causing pain and focus on harmlessness. A day when peace is more important than all our differences.

‘Make love not war’ may be the key to a better life but if we look around that isn’t what’s happening in today’s world. Yet there is nothing that could be more significant, helpful, or honoring of human existence and decency than non-injury, called ahimsa in yoga. If we were to practice this we would be aware not to think ill of others, not to use words that are hurtful or aggressive, or commit actions that can be destructive and cause pain.

This may sound so simple, but ahimsa actually requires a complete shift in attitude. Few of us get through life without causing harm, whether by ignoring someone’s feelings, by using more of the earth’s resources than we need, or by buying products made by underage and underpaid workers. What to do when insects invade the kitchen or slugs eat away at the vegetable garden, yet we don’t want to harm them? And how often do we do things that are hurtful or harmful to ourselves?

How many times a day, consciously or otherwise, do we put ourselves down, reaffirm our hopelessness, dislike our appearance, or see ourselves as incompetent or unworthy? How much resentment, guilt, or shame do we hold on to, thus perpetuating negativity? 

In a world where selfishness and self-interest are the norm, it takes great courage not to react with greed or anger, which can so easily lead to violence. Yoga teaches us to be honest, respectful, to take care of ourselves and others. Ahimsa is integral to these fundamental yoga teachings. Simply through the intent to cause less pain each of us can bring greater dignity to our world, so that harm is replaced with harmlessness and disrespect with respect.

Gandhi, one of India’s greatest yogis, was the champion of ahimsa. He changed the course of history in India by showing how harmlessness is more powerful than violence, inspiring millions of others to follow his lead. Both Nobel Peace Prize winners, the Dalai Lama and Ang San Suu Kyi, are long-term meditation practitioners and activists devoted to peacefully reclaiming the freedom of their countries. All three have used the power of meditation and harmlessness to show that human dignity through non-injury is the essence of human decency.

For instance, while the Dalai Lama is known for his pacifist attitude toward the Chinese, it is less well known that he rises at four a.m. each day to meditate for at least two hours – he is a true yogi!

Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu, and Martin Luther King, Jr., have all being fearlessly dedicated to non-violence, often in the face of tremendous opposition, as have numerous other lesser-known figures who, motivated by their meditation, faith, and belief in non-injury, have added their voices and sometimes even their lives. President Clinton asked Nelson Mandela if he was angry at his imprisonment and he answered, “If I were I would be still in prison.”

By developing a sense of respect for others and a concern for their welfare we reduce our own selfishness, which is the source of all problems, and enhance our sense of kindness, which is a natural source of goodness. The Dalai Lama

Practicing mindful yoga, sitting in quiet reflection, meditation or prayer has an immediately calming and peaceful effect. When we get off the cushion that peace stays with us, highlighting any tendency to cause harm and making such behavior far less likely. It becomes even more improbable as we deepen in awareness of our fundamental interconnectedness, for then violence toward another is the same as causing harm to ourselves.

Try this: Throughout the day, whether practicing yoga or meditation or wherever you are, silently repeat: “May I be well, May others be well, May I practice harmlessness to myself and to all others.”

Ed and Deb Shapiro are featured bloggers at Oprah.com and HuffingtonPost.com. See their award-winning book: BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World, with forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, and many others. They also have 3 meditation CD's: Metta—Loving kindness and Forgiveness; Samadhi–Breath Awareness and Insight; and Yoga Nidra–Inner Conscious Relaxation; which are available at: EdandDebShapiro.com