Category: philosophical counseling

• December 1, 2025

  How Does My Heart Stay Open?

  What does it take for my heart to open? And what does it take for my heart to stay open? I must give up being right. I have to stop trying to be right. And I must drop my stance by which I maintain my rightness. Rightness (to be clear: not righteousness and not truthfulness)…
• November 29, 2025

  Atmabhava: ‘Feeling The Pain Of Others As If It Were Your Own’

  The sum and substance of spiritual life, the best teaching of Vedanta, is atmabhava, which means feeling the pain and distress of others as if it were your own, feeling the poverty, sickness and calamities of others as your own. –Swami Satyananda Saraswati, “Atmabhava” Since Satyananda alludes to Advaita Vedanta, one might be surprised to hear…
• November 26, 2025

  The Meeting House: A Weekly Service

  At A Glance Description Quite swiftly is religion becoming less and less salient to ordinary Americans. A recent Gallup report bears this claim out: The 17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life–from 66% in 2015 to 49% today– ranks among the largest Gallup has recorded…
• November 25, 2025

  Metaphysics Is At One With Soteriology

  Indologist Paul Deussen’s summary of the essence of metaphysics is perfect: “All that is changeable ultimately leads back to the unchangeable, to discover and learn to know which is the whole problem of metaphysics; wherefore in the domain of metaphysics there can be no becoming” (The System of the Vedanta, p. 434). First, the changeable…
• November 20, 2025

  NEW RELEASE! Chop Wood, Carry Water: The Yoga Of Work

  Reflections On Work 2.0 I’m delighted to announce—more than 8 years after I began thinking about “total work” (a brief overview can be read on Aeon)—that I’ve just self-published a book entitled Chop Wood, Carry Water: The Yoga Of Work. It’s a practical way of reflecting on the role of work in one’s everyday life.…