A Zen Cohen

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Leonard Cohen's Suzanne

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Seek out the expertise

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If a law-suit has to be filed, one approaches a lawyer. To get rid of a disease, one has to call upon a doctor. In the same way, if God is wanted, the company of Sadhus must be sought. - Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
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Turning Hippies into Happies

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...On the riverbank, sitting cross-legged, Shyamsunder rocked slowly back and forth."It was in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, January 1967. My friends and I had put together this big rock and roll dance at the Avalon Ballroom. We called it Mantra Rock Dance. Everyone was there to welcome 'The Swami' to the West Coast - the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Quicksilver and Moby Grape, they all played. Even Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were there. All the hippie heroes came." Shyamsunder became excited and his body rocked faster. "Picture this scene. The whole place is pulsating with strobe lights and rock and roll, packed with wild, long-haired kids, most of them on acid. Then, about midnight, Srila Prabhupada walks quietly onto the dark stage and sits down cross-legged on an elevated seat. The place falls silent. Srila Prabhupada begins humbly chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. A spotlight finally locates him, and gradu...
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The Seeking runs its own course

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Understand this: No one ever gets up one day and says, I am going to start "seeking" from tomorrow. Seeking happens . And understand this too: once seeking begins, it takes its own course. Though every seeker is led up his own individual path, it has been observed that seeking, by and large , follows a similar pattern for a similar category of seekers. For instance, there is a broadly discernible pattern for seekers who are of contemplative nature (the jnana marg ). Though one cannot generalize , it has been observed that for people who are contemplative, the seeking broadly goes through the following stages: First Step. There is the sense that some other force (other than oneself) has the final word on what happens. To begin with, the seeker starts out by thinking, “I am in charge most of the time but sometimes the other 'force' dictates the course of events - whether I like it or not.” Second Step. The seeker sees how each action happens: the mechanism of thought-v...
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