So, how do we develop Santosha-yogic contentment? There are many ways but let's focus on one. Remember, contentment comes from giving ourselves away to one thing and only one thing. It is a needy flower. It demands daily attention, perhaps even daily fixation. If too many options are the problem, this is now a conversation of focus and distraction.

To break our reason and dance with the irrational is the pivotal unpatterning that leads that brave individual to the dance floor of nature and gods where there are no rules and the only hospitable environment where creativity and genius exist.

The complicated answer. No matter how many times we squash our discontent, eventually, it comes back! Meditative philosophy, especially the ascetic lineages of Hatha Yoga, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, believe the problem of discontent isn't so obvious as taking a bubble bath. It's not dissatisfaction that pains us, it's unquestioned systemic desire.

Ignorant of the reasons why we do the things we do, like the things we like, and dislike the things we dislike, as creatures so proud of our consciousness we regretfully must admit we are more like leaves in a river than salmon swimming against the current.

As I read through the pages I regularly felt as if he were in front of me sitting as a grandparent speaking without pretense, straight to what matters most. Be good. Be happy.

There is a healthy dose of pride and a modest bit of arrogance in thinking the future is ours to shape, but we are a proud species. In our minds, we are all conquerors like Gengis Khan, Alexander the Great, or Atilla the Hun.

The same way we trust Google Maps to take us where we need to go, we trust our minds - the shadow monarch - to lead us forward into our future choice after choice. Sometimes it leads us well, often actually, but we do so under its authority.

When we arrest our movement and shut our eyes, forcing ourselves into perfect, intentional paralysis, our bodies get confused and nervous because they are being forced to do the opposite of what they have evolved to do.

When his body died the moon was just left of the summit as intended. The equinox was an auspicious day to take last breaths. He was only a broken branch that had fallen from the tree.

“There is no coming back,” the yogi said. “This seed has sprouted and will continue to grow in you. It is already done. You are already gone. The first petal unfolded the night you learned happiness was only a game.”

"There is a world out there inside each of us." That was the last thing the yogi ever said to Sarup and the last lesson Sarup would ever need to learn.

Yogic ideas have a particular vastness to them and because of that have become temples with tall jutting towers in the landscape of my thoughts.

Then their voices rose up in unison to sing their ancient slogans of life and truth through their closed eyes and their single throbbing voice.

Why do we think and why do we love to think? Perhaps because that’s how it’s supposed to be, or maybe thinking the same thoughts over and over again until we go mentally deaf is easier than interacting with the content of our inner monologues, or what we really love is knowledge and thinking is the burden of learning, knowing, and creating.

So, you want to meditate but you don’t know how and the idea of just sitting on the floor with your eyes closed seems strange.

Our commitment to technology and the Internet is about more than just its functionality and entertainment value. We’re willing to supplement a quarter of our lives to the Internet because it was designed to expand our reality.

I like to imagine long-dead gurus smiling from their Hindu heaven as their practice, that was once secret and shunned, reaches out into a future world that is embracing it as they see fit.

The first lesson is Buddha. Escape your pain. The second is No Buddha. Forget what you've learned. The third lesson is the Tao. Enjoy what is.

Most of my closest friends and family don't meditate at all, zero, yet they are as happy as most of my friends and students that do. They manage their stress in their own ways.

The mastered breath, the living temple, builds physical and psychological peace within the anxious body and mind so that they both may fold into their own aliveness more easily.