No place is the same because everything is shifting always.

A teacher had two types of students. One type of student is a close student. The other is also a close student, but not in the sense of physical proximity. The close students rotate a lot.

In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.

As long as you fight the system, all of the things that are part of the tonal of the times, then you will be imbalanced and will not do well in the other levels of attention.

Sight is not absolutely essential in this process, but we use sight because it is the dominant sense. It's easiest to interrupt the flow of thought in sense perception and move the mind beyond sense perception with sight.

Unfortunately we've seen meditation insulted in a sense with the image of ritual. You have to dress a certain way, follow a certain type of lifestyle, all that sort of thing, very culty - and that, of course, has nothing to do with the practice whatsoever.

The three principal samskaras have to do with sex, money and power. In all those countless incarnations that one goes through in the religious practice, the avoidance is tremendous. We brand those things as evil.