Sumangali Morhall | Auspicious Good Fortune

It’s not often I find anything worth watching on telly, and even less often I find anything truly inspiring, but the Beeb have come up trumps for the last 3 weeks with a series called The Big Silence. Benedictine Monk, Father Christopher Jamison, believed he could teach 5 so-called ordinary people the value of silent [...]

“You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life.” – Kahlil Gibran Following my last post, I have read some research on ‘Near-Death Experiences’ (NDEs), which I thought may be interesting to share. Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel made headlines with an [...]

Emily Dickinson referred to herself as a pagan. Some biographers would go so far as to label her a druid for her worship of nature. But was this apparently stubborn heathen life really built on atheism? On the surface what seems a blatant rebellion against the Christian reforms sweeping New England in the 19th Century [...]

It was an ordinary day in Ningbo, China, but an extraordinary miracle took place in a muddy 5-metre ditch. Was it really a miracle, or simply the wise employment of a meditation technique? Maybe a combination of the two. The Times reports: “Wang Jianxin was working at a construction site in the booming city. The [...]

I watched an illumining and interesting film last week. Into Great Silence is surely one of the bravest films ever made. Almost three hours long, no script, no score, no commentary. I was compelled to see such a daring feat of minimalism. Over 20 years before the film’s release, German director Philip Groening applied for [...]

An interesting article called A Commute To Inner Peace by Trushar Barot caught my eye earlier this month at BBC.co.uk. It’s about meditating while commuting to work; making the most of time seemingly wasted, waiting for the bus, or even sitting at the wheel in a traffic jam. Tim Malnick, founder of Meditation at Work [...]

I first became acquainted with the Ramayana when someone lent me a translation many years ago, written in rhyming couplets. It was originally written in rhyming couplets, but in Sanskrit, by the sage Valmiki. I wish I had taken note of the translator, as I have never found a more charming version. The beauty of [...]

Following on from my last post, here is a poem on the same theme. Although I have not read all the poems ever written, I dare say this is one of the greatest in all history. It will not gain anything from my words though, so I shall leave you here to spend a few [...]

Sri Chinmoy recently visited Thailand during his annual harmony and humanitarian travels, and decided to lift some elephants while he was there. A champion decathlete in his youth, Sri Chinmoy later took up weightlifting, and is still weightlifting at age 75. His aim is not to compete with others, but simply to inspire others to [...]