Get A Copy of Lama Marut’s New Book
Yes… You CAN Start a Revolution…
Just INCITE HAPPINESS!
In Lama Marut’s new book; “A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life,” you will find an honest, fearless, and often humorous manifesto that stands as a practical and achievable (if not radical and revolutionary) blueprint for creating and sustaining happiness in an age of consumerism, self-absorption, and stress.
Through a series of meditations, exercises, and insights, Lama Marut offers a fresh take on our quest for happiness and the good life, here and now.
This book is bound to disrupt your suffering, disturb your dissatisfaction, and elicit a deep-seated contentment. Happiness is in our hands; we only need to shake off our inertia and incite it!
And for a limited time you can pre-order the book at
a discounted price through our publishers site!
Using Failure in Your Spiritual Path
Lama Marut answers a student’s question about how to transform failure into something spiritually positive and useful. From a teaching over Skype to a group in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on April 4, 2012.
The Qualities of Spiritual Maturity, Part 2: Kindness
Quality #2: Kindness
Kindness – in which we can include love, compassion, good will, helpfulness, generosity, forgiveness, and a general interest in others’ welfare – is, of course, the very cornerstone of any meaningful spiritual practice. One could even say that it is definitive of it.
Kindness is the heart of the spiritual way of life; it is, one could argue, the whole enchilada. “My religion,” the Dalai Lama has famously declared, “is kindness.”
As we begin our spiritual training, we learn to subdue our deeply entrenched selfish inclinations and cultivate a more altruistic outlook. Kindness towards others acts as the antidote to our natural tendency toward egoistic self-aggrandizement. We try to become better human beings by un-learning our habitual inclination to worry always and only about ourselves.
There are many methods to help us cultivate selflessness and kindness toward others, but perhaps all of them can be reduced to the recognition that we are all the same when it comes to our basic desires. Others are just like ourselves – they too just want to be happy and avoid suffering – and they have exactly the same claim to these rights that we do. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” said Jesus, and this sentiment is reiterated in the Buddhist classic, the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:
From the very beginning exert yourself in the practice of treating others and yourself the same. When the happiness and sufferings are the same, than you will care for all just as you do yourself. (8.90)
In the first years (decades?) of our spiritual path we are fighting against our deeply entrenched habit of thinking exclusively about ourselves. We know all too well that we just want to enjoy life and avoid pain and unpleasantness, and we train ourselves to acknowledge that others feel the same. We know how we want other people to treat us, and we extrapolate from that to imagine how others would wish to be treated by us. We put ourselves in others’ shoes and try to see things from their perspective.
But as time passes, we may come to realize that we need to think more deeply and with a more nuanced understanding about what kindness towards others really entails. Cultivating a more sophisticated version of this virtue requires us to move beyond a simple warm and fuzzy sentimentality. “Grandmother love,” as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called it – the kindness that manifests as extreme gentleness and benignity – is not always the kindest thing you can do for another person. The object of your concern may need a bit of “tough love” instead of a grandmother love that ends up just encouraging and enabling more self-destructive thinking and behavior.
Of course, tough love can simply function as an excuse to bully others if selfishness and our own inexhaustible ego needs are not taken out of the equation. As our spiritual practice matures and ages, we become more and more aware of the many and often subterranean strategies the self deploys to enhance itself. “Being kind” (in either the grandmotherly way or in the tough love modality) can become just another such self-seeking scheme, masking a deep-seated obsession about whether others like you and think of you as a “good person” or respect and fear you as their moral supervisor and cosmic boss.
“True compassion,” writes Trungpa Rinpoche, “is ruthless, from the ego’s point of view, because it does not consider ego’s drive to maintain itself.” A deeper, less self-interested form of kindness involves getting your ego out of the way altogether in order to do what is best for another – even when the other might not like you, praise you, or be grateful to you for doing so.
Another manifestation of a more fully developed take on kindness involves turning it towards oneself – not in the old, egotistical way but in a manner that spawns self-acceptance rather than self-centeredness.
Practitioners, like so many others in our modern culture, are susceptible to a particularly virulent form of self-absorption – depression and low self-esteem. Thinking about oneself and how bad we feel is still thinking about oneself and not about others. And with a little misunderstanding, we can perversely convince ourselves that self-pity is a sign of selflessness and that feeling like a loser is self-sacrificial.
A mature practitioner fully comprehends that being dejected and unhappy is not an advanced spiritual attainment. On the contrary, such gloomy self-indulgence is just another ego ploy. In order to combat it, we learn to exercise kindness towards ourselves in the form of forgiveness.
Anyone who has labored on a genuine spiritual path will have been encouraged from the start to forgive others who have hurt or angered us. But we must also learn to forgive ourselves for our failures and shortcomings, realizing that we are in this regard also just like other people. We too make mistakes. And we too deserve forgiveness.
In the spiritual life, we do have our little successes. But far more often, trying to live a good life is shot through with failure: we regularly fail to live up to the expectations we have of ourselves, to our own ideals, and to our highest goals. Instead of using failure and disappointment as excuses to give in to narcissistic pity, as mature practitioners we will treat ourselves as we have learned to treat others who fail.
We forgive.
And then we move on.
We get back on the job of working to become helpers who practice kindness to others instead of helpees who demand only the kindness of others. We doggedly, patiently, and cheerfully keep on keepin’ on, knowing that there’s nothing else nearly as important to be doing with this short and precious life.
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At the end of his modern spiritual classic, A Path With Heart, Jack Kornfield reviews ten qualities that he thinks characterize someone who has “come of age” in their spiritual life. The ten traits Kornfield identifies have inspired me to write down some of my own thoughts about each of them.
I explore the subject of forgiveness at greater length in Chapter Four (“Preemptive and Unilateral Forgiveness: Ending the Repeated Resurrection of Frankenstein’s Monster”) of my forthcoming book, A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life. To order your copy, click here:
The Qualities of Spiritual Maturity, Part 1: Nonidealism
At the end of his modern spiritual classic, A Path With Heart, Jack Kornfield reviews ten qualities that he thinks characterize someone who has “come of age” in their spiritual life. The ten traits Kornfield identifies have inspired me to write down some of my own thoughts about each of them.
Quality #1: Nonidealism
When we first come to a spiritual life – battered and traumatized by a life without moorings or guidance, desperate for some solace and peace of mind – we are naturally attracted by the promise of something completely different. We eagerly lap up the stories of heaven, the Pure Land, liberation, nirvana, and enlightenment – especially those that present the spiritual goal as a place or condition wholly different from our present situation.
A truly inspired spiritual life begins with a profound disillusionment with one’s current condition. We give up on finding any real and lasting happiness within the purely secular life (“samsara”) and embark on a search for a radically different alternative (“nirvana”).
This stage is both necessary and beneficial at the beginning of our practice. We should be dissatisfied with the unhappiness and suffering that characterizes so much of life up to that point. We should be dissatisfied enough to do something about our dissatisfaction! Disenchantment with our nonreligious lives motivates us to work for improvement. Without it we won’t even start the hard work necessary to bring about a change.
It’s also important initially to have ideals — visions of what should be and who we could become. We set up new goals for ourselves and we then work hard to try to reach them. We look to the examples of the spiritual heroes of the past and immerse ourselves in their hagiographies. We may in this phase idealize our teachers, ministers, rabbis, or clerics, regarding them with starry-eyed admiration and a somewhat naïve and innocent reverence.
But as we mature in our spiritual practice we begin to recognize that dissatisfaction with who we are and the lives we are leading cannot in and of itself bring about the goals of happiness and contentment. In fact, endemic discontentment turns out to be the problem, not the solution. We also come to understand that harboring unrealistic ideals keeps them perpetually out of our reach, leaving us perpetually disappointed; and putting our teachers and spiritual heroes on pedestals just sets them up to fall.
Repeatedly failing to reach our aspirations is obviously a recipe for frustration and depression, and if it happens often enough over a long enough period of time, the natural tendency is to give up altogether.
This phenomenon of constituting and grasping to, but never reaching, lofty spiritual attainments seems fairly common among practitioners. We posit what I would call surreal goals, wholly different from our commonplace reality, and then we deploy the conditional: Unless and until I become (and here fill in the blank according to your tradition: an omniscient Buddha, a perfected saint, an angel of light, or whatever) and the world I live becomes (again, pick your idealized version of a perfect environment—a heaven or “Pure Land”), I won’t be satisfied with myself and with my life.
If we’re honest we can’t really say that such surreal visions of the goal are totally impossible. Who really knows? Such seemingly fantastical ends might indeed be realizable some day. But what most of us can say with certainty is that ideals like these are radically different from the reality we are experiencing in the here and now. In comparison to such idyllic, pie-in-the-sky future scenarios our present lives might very well look rather shabby and ordinary.
Focusing too much on remote and extraordinary attainments can easily function to increase, rather than decrease, our discontentment with our present lives. At some point in our spiritual evolution, ideals cease to be useful and simply exacerbate the problem of unending dissatisfaction – of the “craving” and “thirst” the Buddha identified as the principal cause of suffering. When we reach a certain stage in our spiritual maturation, we need to begin to systematically disabuse ourselves of the fantasies and dreams that undermine our contentment with reality as it is.
As we ripen on our path, we become less naïve about the real purposes and aims of the spiritual life. It will ultimately be more conducive to our happiness not to obsess about surreal goals. Rather, we must fully embrace life in a way we might describe as hyperreal.
We come to see our lives, here and now, as having the potential to be experienced as perfect. We realize that it is not the externals of life that need to change but only our perspective on them. And we understand that it is nowhere other than in samsara that nirvana will be found.
As we grow in our wisdom and spiritual sophistication, we begin to take both a more realistic (“hyperreal”) and more optimistic view of what our present reality has to offer – the potential that ordinary life has to be a heaven on earth. And we begin to feel that the perfection of the self will come not by trying to become someone else but by discovering our own true, in-born nature.
It perhaps begins to dawn on us that the only thing that’s keeping us from the supreme goal of perfect contentment is our own discontentment with ourselves and with reality as it is – a discontentment fueled by unrealistic idealism and unrealizable expectations.
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I explore the subject nonidealism at greater length in the concluding chapter (“Good Enough to Be Perfect”) of my forthcoming book, A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life. To order your copy, click the image below:
Sticking With One Religion
Why is it important to learn and practice one spiritual tradition well, and what are the disadvantages of spiritual eclecticism? Lama Marut answers a student’s question in a teaching over skype to a group in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on April 4, 2012.
Four Universal Truths
What principles do all authentic spiritual traditions have in common? Lama Marut suggests there are four in this teaching via skype to a group in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on April 4, 2012.
How to Get Spiritually Motivated
We’re living totally blessed lives. But we’re mostly just spacing out and squandering the miracle, wasting this amazing opportunity to really help ourselves and others. This excerpt is from last year’s “Summer Retreat” in Massachusetts.
Join us this summer for the 2012 “Summer Retreat”: http://thesummerretreat.com/
Learning to Be Nobody
The purpose of a spiritual life is not to enhance your ego. It is to destroy it. But you have to have an ego in order to deconstruct it. This audio was recorded during the 2011 Summer Retreat at Governor’s Academy, in Byfield, Massachusetts.
Pandemic Depression and Its Real Causes…
Pandemic Depression, Consumer Capitalism, and Television.
What is the link between widespread depression and consumer capitalism? And what role is television playing in our personal and cultural malaise? From the “Trouble in Paradise” retreat in Hawaii, August 21, 2011.
Stay Connected Be Inspired
Thank you for looking at the options for staying connected!
As you know, the social media opportunities are pretty boundless these days. Everything is out there from the tried and true old friends such as Twitter, to the latest Generation of Connection via Pinterest.
Because the Social component is such an important element in staying connected these days, we of course must participate. Please do share what you feel would be helpful with and to others and please engage in the dialogue as you are able. And if you feel like helping, please send us an email and let us know how you think you may be able to help… we can always use more hands and eyes and hearts.
Below is a list of our main social outreach efforts:
- Our Latest: Lama Marut’s News on Twitter. The account is @marutnews and here you will get the updates about events, teachings, new blog posts, other lineage events and links to inspirational materials posted in other places. You want to stay up to date the easy way with Lama Marut? This is the way! (Please spread the word)
- Daily Inspiration (Well almost): This is where Lama Marut sends out his wisdom in short bits to inspire, challenge and transform. A great way to stay mindful and a great addition to any spiritual renegade who is tweeting along the way to enlightenment. The link is @marut on Twitter. Enjoy!
- Videos: Great tidbits of footage edited to be on a single topic all pulled from a variety of Lama Marut’s teachings from around the world. So if you are chillin’ at your computer and have 3 minutes or 5 minutes or even 7 minutes, you can get a nice dose of something that is actually good for your brain! Enjoy! Click here for the “Official” YouTube channel for Lama Marut.
- Facebook: It’s all about community and friends. Connect here and new doors of opportunity and friends and inspiration will open for you. Through Lama Marut’s Facebook page you will not only get smatterings of delicious pearls of wisdom filtering through, you will also learn about lots of other events and teachings not only in the USA but also overseas. And not just with Lama Marut but also his ACI Centers and other teaching events and retreats. Definitely a “must do” for any Facebook participant.
- Eblasts: Want this info sent to you inbox? Great! Sign up for our newsletter which keeps you updated on all things Marut. Enjoy! Just Sign-Up over in the sidebar widget >
- Pinterest: This is a new one to us brought to our attention by David Simmons of Nashville Dharma. Though we don’t have an official presence there, David has pointed out that many people have accounts and are actively sharing content at an algorithmic rate! Check it out and see if this social channel is something you may like. Who knows… maybe someday we will have an “official” presence there as well. Here’s a link to the Pinterest.com home page >
