Tag: Love

• June 18, 2025

  Maya As A Kind Of Seduction

  Atmananda offers us a helpful clue when it comes to trying to understand the nature of maya. In Atma Nivriti, he likens bondage, or maya, to the captivation one experiences while being transfixed by “the beauty of the figure” carved into a rock. There are three key remarks to make about this metaphor: One, maya…
• October 30, 2024

  Does Sickness Contradict The Nondual Teaching?

  Question: I still can’t seem to kick this illness…. You mentioned a few conversations ago that I should look for places where the teaching seems not to be true and investigate. Having this illness [that won’t go away], I am struggling. While I recognize that all these experiences are arising to me, I still feel…
• July 8, 2015

  ‘I Know the Most Beauty There is…’

  Love of another human being adds density, real heft, gristle, girth, to a human life, i.e., mine. A life without love is only “rather nice.” A few pennies in a drawer, a thought before bed about washing. The worst fate is not that of a loveless life, but it is the least beautiful and therefore the least…
• March 21, 2014

  Kissing a ‘thing which is human’

  1 At bedtime, I lie on my side, facing her. Her hand is so warm, rough from climbing. 2 After I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I lie back down and listen. There: her breath. 3 Epicetus says, ‘If you kiss your wife, say you only kiss a thing which is human.…
• January 4, 2014

  Love, friendship, and work

  In Sources of the Self, the philosopher Charles Taylor argues that what is distinctive about the modern world is that many of us have come to regard the claims of ordinary life as being ultimately fulfilling. Someone’s falling in love, raising a family, maintaing a close-knit group of friends, and doing meaningful work would, on this…