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Yoga
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BOOK REVIEWS:
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Title:
Loving Kindness, The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
Author: Sharon
Salzberg
Description from
Introduction:
"Throughout our lives we
long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected
with the others. Instead, we often contract, fear
intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of
separation. We crave love, and yet we are
lonely. Our delusion of bing separate from one
another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives
rise to all of this pain. What is the way out of this?
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Spiritual practice, by
uprooting our persoal mythologies of isolation, uncovers the
radiat, joyful heart within each of us and manifest this
radiance to the world. We find, beneath the wounding
concepts of separation, a connection both to ourselves and
to all beings. We find a source fo great happiness
that is beyond concepts and beyond convention.
Freeeing ourselves from the illusion of separation allows us
to livein a natural freedom rather than be driven gby
preconceptions about our own boundaries.
The Buddha described the
spiritual path that leads to this freedom as "the
liberation of the heart which is love," and he taught a
systematic, integrated path that moves the heart out of
isolating contracitno into true connection. The path
is still with us s a living tradition of meditation
practices that culitvate love, compassion, sympathetic joy
and equanimity. These four qualities are amoun the
most beautiful and powerful states of consciousness we can
experience. Together they are called in Pali, the
language spoken by the Buddha, the brahma-viharas. Brahm
means "heavenly" and vihara which means
"abode" or "home." By practicing
these meditations, we establish love, compassion,
sympathetic, joy, and equanimity as our home."
Review: Sharon
Salzberg is a beloved American Buddish and a founder of the
Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. She has
shared with us her past 25 years of work by delivering a
profound exploration of the deepest meanings of brahma-viharas.
It brings light to the spiritual value, practical utility
and psychological insight that most Americans are longing
for. Her insight into understanding loving-kindness
shines through this book.
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