V. RAMAKANTHA, Ph.D., is a former Indian Forest Service officer and member of the Green Initiative at the international Heartfulness Center, Kanha Shanti Vanam, India. Having spent most of his working life living in forests and jungles, in tune with the natural world, he shares his knowledge about some of the amazing medicinal plants of India, in this case the Ber tree. Botanical Name: Ziziphus mauritiana Lam. Common Names: Indian Jujube, Indian Plum, Chinese Date, Ber, Gangaregu, Badar The Ber tree is a much branched, thorny deciduous tree with a spreading crown, growing to a height of about 45 feet. It is a hardy species with its origin in India. Its presence is unmistakable in the sandy soils of arid and semi-arid zones of India, and it is widely cultivated for its fruits. The dried fruits purify the blood and are used in the treatment of chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, diarrhea, pharyngitis, bronchitis, anemia, irritability and hysteria. The seeds are used in the treatment of insomnia and nervous exhaustion. Mythology & History Ber fruits have an association with Shabari, one of the extraordinary characters in the epic Ramayana. Shabari exemplifies the fact that the spiritual quest is not a prerogative of any sex, creed, class or community, but the birth right of all human beings. Shabari was born into a hunter-gatherer community, and lived much of her life in Dandakaranya, the jungles of the Deccan Peninsula. At one moment in her life, she started observing in herself the loss of interest in anything other than the deep void engulfing her. To begin with, she developed an aversion to meat eating, and dropped the habit. There was a growing restlessness in her heart, and she did not know what would quench her thirst for the unknown. One fine day, with an…
Last month, DAAJI explored the yogic wisdom on how to create the habit of peace and compassion, by studying the first Yama, known as ahimsa or non-violence. In part 3, he focuses on the second Yama – satya, the habit of truthfulness. TRUTH & AUTHENTICITY Let’s first remind ourselves of how the Yamas and Niyamas guide us to look at the habits we want to remove and create, applying the ancient wisdom of Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga to our modern-day context. Very simply, the Yamas focus on those habits we need to remove, and the Niyamas focus on those habits we need to cultivate if we are to become truly human. It’s also worth remembering that the Yamas and Niyamas can only really be practiced in relationship with others. They are not for ascetics who have renounced society and worldly life. They are there to guide us in how to behave with others in everyday life. Isn’t it interesting that these two of the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga require us to be living in the society, in relationship with others? Many people think of yogis as those who run away from society, who renounce family life and working life in order to pursue their spiritual goal, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is through our interface with the people and the world around us that we develop the qualities of character that allow us to evolve. What is truth? Last month we explored ahimsa, the first Yama that describes the need to remove all forms of violence in our character so that love and compassion can express in our relationships. This month we explore satya, meaning “truth” or “essence” – to remove all the programmed habits of falsity, including hypocrisy and the multiple personas we carry…
ROSALIND PEARMAIN, Ph.D., has been integrating the fields of psychology, psychotherapy and spirituality, through both practical and philosophical approaches, for over 40 years. Here she explores the way a spiritual practice opens up levels of feeling and sensitivity as we expand into deeper and deeper levels of consciousness, and how our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies are integrated through the heart. The great divide between scientific and mystical views of reality lands on the question of our subjective awareness. Measures can be made of physiological and behavioural effects of meditation practices, but it is much harder to demonstrate objectively the transformative experiences that a seeker may undergo in a disciplined practice over years. Ultimately it comes down to how someone feels. This domain of feeling is so extraordinary and intricate in our subjectivity, and yet it has often been quite disregarded as the source of our capacity to orientate and connect with our environment. The word “feeling” is ambiguous in the English language. It includes both emotions and the more diffuse area of perception. In its medieval origins it meant the physical sensation of touch through experience or perception. Touch remains the most helpful way of capturing the lived experience of feeling as we encounter daily life. The domain of feeling is continuously flowing through a shifting synthesis of qualities and textures as an overall array of diffuse meaning coloring and sculpting our responses and moods. Music is a primordial expression of such feeling. Within our current dominant scientific discourse, the fact that such a feeling array is informing us of much more than our physical and mental state is not yet articulated. Yet from the perspective of perennial philosophies, within the experience of feeling are all the domains of our subtle fields of consciousness. Touch as a Core…
TIFFANY FIELD, Ph.D. is the Founder and Director of the Touch Research Center, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Florida. She is well-known for her research on the benefits of touch and massage on babies’ physical and mental development, and the effect on their cognitive abilities in later life. In August 2020, she was interviewed by UDAY KUMAR about her research, and also about the effects of both digital technology and COVID on touch deprivation. Q: Hello, Dr. Field, it’s such an honor to speak with you. How is everything at home, at work? TF: Well, I’m up in Massachusetts. Normally I’m in Miami, but I left Miami to be with my daughter because of the hurricane that was going to hit Miami, and then it just followed us up here. Q: I live in Princeton, New Jersey, and it hit us too, but we were still spared because we lost power for only five to six hours, so it wasn’t too bad. But just a mile away, in the community next to us, they haven’t had power for two days. TF: That’s because of the tornados – you were probably not in the path. I was in a hotel room and outside my window there were some huge evergreen trees. I remember from my childhood when we planted a Christmas tree in the ground, and they became huge evergreens. When I was in Connecticut, these evergreens would sway and swing around. So now I’m a little worried that this evergreen will crash through my window. I was texting my sister in Hawaii, who experienced a hurricane last week, and she said, “Don’t you know that evergreens developed an evolutionary strategy to protect everything around them. They’re very, very deep rooted, they go several feet into the ground. They don’t…
JANMARIE CONNOR explores some practical ways to create harmony and balance where there is tension, conflict and disagreement. How can polar opposites coexist? Years ago, I facilitated a weekend workshop with a group of Catholic Sisters. They were having great difficulty envisioning a way forward for their religious community. From their vantage point, the world they knew, including the Church and their place in it, was on its head. Their capacity to meet the needs of the inner-city population they served was strained. The Sisters’ advancing age and shrinking numbers made it increasingly difficult to fulfill their mission. And their mission was bound to their reason for being – their purpose in life. The complexity of the situation and the chaotic circumstances around them had taken a toll on these dedicated women. Fractures began to appear within the group, resembling the fractures in the community they served, and in the broader societal landscape. Individual perspectives on how or how not to advance had become hardened and polarized. Even simple decisions, like where to have lunch, required facilitation. By their own account, the group members were feeling isolated, angry and sorrowful. Sound familiar? The sisters might have been channeling the voice of our present collective experience. You don’t have to go far to find an angry disagreement on just about anything under the sun. Rigid perspectives and emotional outbursts are no longer confined to topics on religious, economic and political power, although they remain root culprits. For example, an online forum of neighborhood birdwatchers that I previously enjoyed is now off my list after several group members came to verbal blows. Was it a Black-headed Grosbeak or a Spotted Towhee? It wasn’t a battle over the birds, per se. It was a battle of who was right and who was wrong,…
ROSALIND PEARMAIN, Ph.D., has been integrating the fields of psychology, psychotherapy and spirituality, through both practical and philosophical approaches, for over 40 years. Here she explores the way a spiritual...
DR. ICHAK ADIZES explores the different qualities and skills needed to make a decision and then to implement it – when to be open-minded and when to be closed-minded, and...
MAMATA VENKAT opens up about the challenge of finding self-compassion and self-acceptance in a world of judgment and criticism. She also offers 10 tips from her own experience about how...
Last month, DAAJI explored the yogic wisdom on how to create the habit of peace and compassion, by studying the first Yama, known as ahimsa or non-violence. In part 3,...
V. RAMAKANTHA, Ph.D., is a former Indian Forest Service officer and member of the Green Initiative at the international Heartfulness Center, Kanha Shanti Vanam, India. Having spent most of his...
TIFFANY FIELD, Ph.D. is the Founder and Director of the Touch Research Center, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Florida. She is well-known for her research on the benefits...
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