Siir

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Secret Nature

When we think of nature and the sacred, several images come to mind: the first Christian monks who fled to the Egyptian desert in the fourth and fifth centuries, Vedic sages meditating upon truth and seeking union with the Divine in the deep forests of India, a solitary Lakota crying for a vision upon a remote precipice in the Black Hills of South Dakota, or the T’ang poet Han Shan writing Zen verses on scraps of bark and leaving them along the path that climbs Cold Mountain.

All of these scenes, and others too numerous to mention, remind us that throughout the centuries, and across many religious traditions, we have sought the presence of the Real in the wilderness Landscapes. Deserts, forests, mountains, and oceans are all places where the eye of the heart has opened, and we have caught a glimpse of the beauty and the majesty of the Divine. Immersed in the silence of the great forest cathedrals and listening to the pure song of a mountain stream, we have come to know the inner man who has always lived upon the threshold of Heaven. And it is not only through the large and dramatic manifestations of nature that we have perceived the sacred: what wisdom did not the Buddha transmit by silently holding up a simple flower to the venerable Kashyapa.

Why are we drawn into the heart of nature? Why do we feel uplifted and spiritually renewed after spending time in some wild place far removed from the ordinary business of men? There are many answers to these questions, ranging from the healthful benefits associated with the exhilarating effects of fresh air and exercise to the pleasure of sitting by an evening campfire and gazing at the stars.

There is another reason, however, and it is far more profound. In the opening pages of this book, Frithjof Schuon speaks of “seeing God everywhere”. The “remembrance of God in all things” and the “metaphysical transparency of phenomena” are other pertinent expressions that Schuon uses to underline the immanence of God in the world. These words remind us that it is not only through sacred books like the Bible, the Upanishads, and the Quran that God reveals Himself to man. He also shows us the shining facets of His Reality through the beauties of the natural world; and just as we learn something about the nature of an artist through his art, we may discover the presence of the Creator in His creation. Whether the Absolute was referred to as God, Brahman, Allah, Wakan Tanka, Shunyamurti, Tao, or by some other Name, every branch of human society has, without doubt, seen traces of the One in the many wonders of nature. This vision of the immanence of God, which is most often associated with the mystical dimension of religion, finds one of its greatest voices in the 12th century Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, whose metaphysical writings on the Oneness of Being and the Self-Disclosure of God are among the most profound and comprehensive treatments of the subject in the history of spiritual literature. As Toshihiko Izutsu explains in his article in this book, Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology teaches “that the very root of creation is the singleness of the Absolute.” This subject is far too vast to be explored in our brief Preface; however, I would point the interested reader to the many examples of the same doctrine which may be discovered in the mystical literature of both Eastern and Western religious traditions, including the visions of Hildegard of Bingen, the Canticle of Saint Francis, the Kashmiri Shaivism of Abhinavagupta, the Taoism of Lao Tzu, the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, the angelophany of Zoroastrianism, and the Hua-Yen Buddhism of Tu Shun. One of the most beautiful articulations of the doctrine of the Oneness of Being is found among the Lakota Indians of the American West. Their expression mitakuye oyasin (we are all related) extends beyond tribal members to all living things. When the Onondaga Elder, Oren Lyons, writes in his essay “Our Mother Earth” that, “the bears and the wolves and the eagles are Indians” he is directly undermining the metaphysical Reality of the fundamental unity and spiritual kinship of all creation. North American Native Traditions, as well as all other forms of Shamanism, are founded upon the holiness of creation which is directly based upon the idea of the immanence of God. If we understand that creation is the sacred art of the Creator, what should be our role concerning the surrounding world? And what must we do to fulfill that role? According to the Bible and the Quran, the nature of man is theo-morphic; we are “made in the image of God.” Consequently, we have a sacred responsibility towards the creation because we are providentially destined to serve as pontiff or vice-regent; we are created with a free will and we are responsible to God for our treatment of the earth. Virtually all of our ancestors realized that holiness is the defining characteristic of creation, and through their reliance upon Mother Earth to provide them with the necessities of daily life, they cultivated a deep and sustaining relationship with the natural world. They saw the Hand of God touching everything and they understood that their existence, as well as the existence of all other forms of life, was dependent upon the harmonious inter-relationship of all living things. The very root of the word nature, which comes from the Latin nascitura, means, “to give birth.” Our ancestors, who lived out of doors in constant communion with the elements, understood concretely that nature is the progenitor of life. And as the sacred source of life, nature was revered as a beloved Mother. Today, many people are interested in whole foods and holistic medicine and this is easily understood as a contemporary echo of the ancient belief in the inter-relatedness of all things. Entering the portal of the 21st century, we are facing one of the most serious problems in the history of man. The current environmental crisis stems from our forgetfulness of who we are and what creation is. The causes of this forgetfulness are many; however, in large part, it may be traced back to that point where we lost touch with the sacred quality of nature and began to view the world as a vast mechanism which could be best understood through the lens of physical science. This world-view, which has many of its roots in the Renaissance, has brought us to a point where we no longer understand the connection between the physical and the metaphysical. We have forgotten that the physical cannot be separated from the metaphysical without suffering potentially disastrous consequences. Assuming, as we do, an infinite supply of natural resources, we exercise power over the earth and forget that with this power comes our sacred responsibility to serve as shepherds of the creation. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a world-renowned authority on Sufism and the Religio Perennis has repeatedly pointed out in his many profound studies on religion and nature, as well as in his essay in this book, the current environmental crisis is, in fact, a spiritual crisis.3 Dr. Nasr writes, “The ultimate question for us, the ultimate challenge, is: who are we? What are we doing here? And the response has always been that we are here, first of all, to remember who we are; we are here to remember what the world is in its spiritual reality; above all, we are here to remember God who is the source of both the world and ourselves.”

As various forms ofsecularism gained ascendancy in the 20th century, so did their underlying presuppositions – that nature is a purely quantitative phenomenon that can be defined and measured by physics and mathematics. This perspective, which René Guénon called the “reign of quantity” more than fifty years ago, created spiritual myopia preventing us from seeing the presence of God in the world. As modern men, we are the first collectivity in the history of humanity to fail to see the Reality of the Creator in His creation and to draw the consequences of that vision. This blindness has spread into nearly every aspect of human life, but nowhere is there more tangible evidence of the greed and gross materialism that stems from this quantitative worldview than in our exploitation of the earth. We have been lulled into a false sense of security by scientism which tells us that all obstacles to future progress and prosperity may be overcome in a test tube. And despite the positive efforts made by certain ecological groups to reverse the disastrous consequences of numerous agendas based upon modern science and the quantification of nature, most of these well-intentioned efforts have not gone far enough. We are desperately in need of a deeper ecological vision founded upon spiritual insight into the profound order of nature. Some 300 years before the birth of Christ this ecological vision was summarized by the Chinese sage Chuang Tzu who said, “Heaven and earth and I spring from the same root, and all things are one with me.” The fundamental thesis of this book is that our continuing physical and spiritual well-being is ultimately linked with our ability to “see God everywhere” and “remember Him in all things.” From the non-theistic perspective of Buddhism, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama speaks in his article, “A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective on Nature” about the principle of the interdependence of all things and the exchange between human spirit and nature. He states that the “Buddhist literature mentions the sanctity of the environment inspiring and blessing the practitioner and in turn the practitioner’s spiritual realization blessing the environment.” This thesis is clearly and beautifully articulated in the cosmology of Hua-Yen, which teaches that the entire universe is like a net of dazzling jewels, infinitely complex and interdependent every part of life is joined to every other part of life and each is reflected in the other. This means that we cannot plunder the earth without robbing ourselves. We cannot deplete natural resources without diminishing ourselves. To continue to live from generation to generation we need to recognize and embrace this interdependence and we need to extend our definition of the spiritual into the ecological Among the many ecological perspectives which have been brought to bear upon the current environmental crisis, this vision of the immanence of God in and its implicit understanding of the interdependence of all things is the most radical because it points to the Origin of all that is. The future of the earth may be determined by the degree to which we understand this vision, which underlines the deepest relationship between nature and the sacred.

In “Christianity and the Survival of Creation” Wendell Berry reminds us that the Bible is not “enough appreciated as an outdoor book.” He states that “it is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about—a book opens to the sky. It is the best-read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better.” This is good advice. We should also remember that our ancestors knew that nature is a holy book, and that Heaven speaks to us through the manifestations of the natural world. They knew that just as the many return to the One, the One returns to the many. It is this spiritual vision that defines the wisdom of the human state and to heal nature and ourselves we must reclaim this wisdom. Every essay in this collection, each in its way, calls attention to the pressing urgency of this necessity. And each short poem is meant to be a flower through which God wants to be known. I would encourage every reader to take this book outdoors and read it under the open sky. To appreciate and understand the message contained in these pages you could do no better than to start by closing your eyes and feeling the sunlight on your face. That sunlight, shining everywhere, is the signature of God.

Barry McDonald

July 2002

From the book ‘Seeing God Everywhere’

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TREE LEAVES

Secret Nature

Bee Bounty

Bird

Botany

Dairy

Perfume & Essential Oils

Fish

Flower Tea

Fruits

Grocery Shop

Grow With Me

Herbs Seasonings

Modhupak

Music,Art,Craft

Seed

Vegetable

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Mindful Food

Relies on mindfulness

Mindful food relies on mindfulness, which is a form of meditation. Mindful eating is about developing awareness of our experiences, physical cues, and feelings about food. Actually, it’s been derived from a Buddhist concept.

Mindful living starts with mindful eating. Mindful eating is developing an awareness of what we eat, how we eat, where our food comes from, and what it does to us, and our entire eco-system. Food is directly connected to our mental and physical health.

Our body is just an accumulation of the food we eat after it has been transformed and assimilated. There is a certain intelligence, memory, and genetic code in the body that determines what the food that we eat is converted into. For example, the same apple, depending on who eats it, becomes part of the body of a woman, a man, or a cow. Similarly, there is information about the food we consume. The way our food is harvested, how far it has traveled, and how we are feeling while consuming the food, all these aspects determine our mental and physical wellbeing.

One very important aspect of mindful food is how we are feeling when we are about to consume food. We should spend a few moments to be thankful for the food that is about to nourish us. It is of utmost significance that we generate feelings of gratitude towards all the lives that contributed to bringing the food to our plate, including the life of the food itself. This not only changes how our body handles the food but how the food handles our body.

Another aspect of food is that it is essentially the fuel to the body and also the mind. If we want to refuel our car, we go to the station and choose the appropriate fuel for this particular machine, to achieve optimal performance. We could put kerosene into our car, and it would drive, but it may smoke and cough, and we may not be able to accelerate as we want. This is the situation with most of us when it comes to our food choices. To choose the appropriate fuel, we need to know what type of machine we are. The ideal fuel for your body is what leaves you alert, agile, and active.

However, eating properly is an important aspect of health. If we are interested in our wellbeing and that of our children, we must ensure that the food you eat is fresh. In the yogic culture, cooked food is consumed within 1.5 hours after it comes off the stove. If it’s any later, inertia will set in. If we eat food that creates inertia in the system, we will lose all our dynamism. There is also a correlation between the kind of food we eat and the amount of sleep you need. Generally, doctors advise that everyone must sleep a minimum of eight hours. If we sleep eight hours per night, it means we are sleeping one-third of our life. The body needs restfulness, not sleep. One important factor of how much sleep we need is what type of fuel we put into your system. If we put the wrong fuel into our car, it will need a lot of services. Similarly, if we put the wrong fuel (food) into our system, it will need a lot of sleep.

In the yogic tradition, we always said you must eat what is furthest away from you, genetically. In that sense, plant life is furthest away from us. If you must eat non-vegetarian food, we advise the consumption of fish, because, among the animals, it is furthest away from a human being, if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective. As the first animal life on the planet is thought to have evolved in water, indicating the fish.

After a century of saying, the best thing to eat is meat, doctors in the West are slowly shifting to a different view today. For some time now, they have been saying that beef is the main cause for most of the cardiac ailments and cause of cancer in America. In the yogic culture, it is said that if you eat foods with a complex genetic code, your system will break down, one way or the other. So, do not make food some kind of religion. If it is a question of survival, eat – what is available. But when survival is taken care of, there is a choice. When you have a choice, you must eat sensibly, which is best for your system.

Tips:

– Try paying close attention to the taste of the food you are eating. Eat slowly, carefully, and silently. Chew your food thoroughly. Try to notice every ingredient within each mouthful of food. Mindfulness will help you to experience the true joy of eating and will likewise draw your attention to the silent power contained within every moment.

– You could experiment by yourself. One day, just eat fruits; another day, just eat raw vegetables; yet another day, you cook the vegetables; then you eat fish, you eat meat – try out everything. Pay attention to how your body feels. It will differ from one person to another as our genes and other aspects of life also differ. With whichever kind of food, we experience maximum levels of energy and alertness in our body that is what we should eat to be healthy.

– Having organic food regularly delivers a 3-way of health benefits such as – rich nutrients, naturally harvested and restoring mindset. Also, mindful eating may effectively treat common, unhealthy eating behaviors like emotional and external eating.

– To transition from mindless to mindful eating, try some of the simple tips above. In doing so, we may improve our overall health and even lose weight in a way that feels easy and can be maintained over the long term.

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Mindful Living

DISCOVER YOUR INNER SANCTUARY

‘Mindfulness’ is paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment without judgment. It creates awareness without judgment in the long and short-term effects of your everyday choices and decisions. Having more choices to life and also includes our making conscious decisions of every little thing we do from moment to moment. It is a day to day existence that gives us understanding into the master plan of life which normally permits us to be really accepting, appreciative and compassionate regardless of what condition we are in.

“Mindfulness, called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences.”

Sharon Salzberg

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it to work, realize it is a play.”

Alan Watts

Mindful living is not a destination, it is rather a journey that allows us to slowly but surely blossom our inborn potentials. Being mindful can open a path to the best possible long-term outcome in every situation. It is the ability to stay present at the moment without allowing the mind to get side-tracked. It’s somewhat a state of heightened sensory awareness where you are no longer at the mercy of your habitual thought patterns. You are instead able to see things more clearly and consciously and maximizes the effects of everyday choices and decisions.

Tips:

Several times throughout the day, take some time to consciously experience your environment. Stop and smell your surroundings. Experience each scent as if it was for the very first time. Listen to the sounds of your environment. What specific sounds do you hear? Maybe you hear the ticking of a clock, the traffic from the street, people speaking, the chirping of a bird, the rustle of the wind blowing through the trees, or a faint piece of music playing in the distance. No matter what it is you smell or hear, fully experience it and be there with it at the moment. Let nothing else distract you. Instead, just allow these smells and sounds to captivate your entire being right here, right now, for moments at a time.

Aspects of mindful living
⸎ Breathing – Control over the body, feel every breath
⸎ Yoga – Basic method of healing
⸎ Meditation - Control over stress, improve will-power
⸎ Belief system – Control on the mind, more proactive
⸎ Prayer – Connection, peace
⸎ Compassion – Basic morality, empathy

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Mindful Farming

Natural farming practices implemented

The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Human has sacrificed its natural resources for economic development from the dawn of human civilization to the modern world.

In the evolutionary period of agriculture, people used the practice of slash and burn cultivation or shifting cultivation, which is still prevalent in the tribal regions in the world. There was a culture of pray before seed sowing and harvest as a thanksgiving to God in ancient times. Starting with a tiny seed planted in the hopes, dreams, and faithful prayers it’s beginning to come to fruition with the belief “sow where you want Him to bless you”.

Siir is committed to framing a new narrative for agriculture that encompasses regenerative farming techniques, a thriving regionalized food economy based on food justice reform, and mindful inner practice. Through mindful farming, we reveal innovative ways in which we implement natural farming practices to build a healthy generation for the future. In other words, we combine mindfulness, meditation, yoga, natural beliefs, organic farming into a healing system of natural transformation.

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Breathing

The power of life

Breath is the power of life and healing. Not only does breath give us life, but the very way we breathe determines the way we live. It is not only fair trade of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our body but the very vital life energies that we are.

‘When the breath wanders, the mind is unsteady, but when the breath is still, so is the mind still’

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

It is truly astonishing how little attention we pay to the importance of proper breathing in daily life. When we are born, it is in our instinct to take deep breaths but as we grow older our breath tends to become more and shallower, never reaching the abdomen as it used to when we were carefree children. If we pay enough attention, we can notice that when we are angry, peaceful, happy, or sad, our breath goes through subtle changes. Whichever way you breathe, that is the way you think. Whichever way you think, that is the way you breathe. Whichever, way we think, is the way our lives are going to be? Therefore, breath is the most important and powerful factor to maneuver our lives the very way we want it. As you breathe consciously, you become aware of your life forces - in that awareness, you discover joy, positive emotions, and all the mindless thinking just dissolves. Focusing on how we breathe can have a major effect in our psychological and actual wellbeing.

Tips:

“If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.”

Andrew Weil

Conscious breathing demands you to be in the present and when you are mindful of the present, you aren’t loaded with thoughts of the past and future. ‘Just breathe’ are two magical words that you can always remember and practice. It will lead to a balanced mind that swims in the realm of peace, truth, and serenity. The conscious act of breathing involves sitting up straight, inhaling oxygen deeply, holding your breath for 3-4 seconds, and then exhaling slowly, till you can’t feel any sensation near your nose. If you sit with your spine erect, your organs will have the maximum possible comfort and improve breathing. Just following this simple technique brings a great number of positive changes in your body, mind, and soul. It leads to a burst of energy as a million cells get rejuvenated which were starving due to unconscious breathing. Conscious breathing also helps in reducing stress levels, blood pressure, muscular tension, and much more. Try to mindfully breathe, slowly and gently like this as much as you can throughout the day.
Did you remember to take deep breaths?
Change your context. “The quality of our lives changes and transforms not because we change the content of our lives, but only because we change the context of our lives.” Consciously relieve yourself of tension. “If you create any tension in the body or the mind, you will slowly work against yourself. If your body is tense, your mind will be tense. If your mind is tense, your body will be tense. Don’t turn your energies against you!” Manage yourself, not your stress. “Stress is your inability to manage your body, mind, and energies. If your mind took instructions from you, would you keep it stressful or blissful? What’s your choice? Isn’t it blissful?”

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Yoga

A way of life

Yoga is a way of life. The practical implications of yogaic ideals in daily life includes the simple philosophies that contributes to better living. Anything and everything that brings us to a state of union with existence is yoga; the very fundamentals of the brain’s activity, inner chemistry, and genetic predispositions can be changed by practicing certain systems of yoga. According to modern science, it is now proven beyond any doubt that the whole existence is just one energy manifesting itself into various forms which is a living reality for us and we begin to experience everything as one, then we are in yoga. Yoga predates all religions, making it a tool for people of any faith to practice it and reap its benefits.
Yoga can be transmitted on many different levels such as, physical and mental wellbeing which includes health and other aspects. Yoga can be practiced just to get rid of our backache, get better mental focus, peace of mind, and happiness in our life, as a way of climbing up to the highest possibility within ourselves.

‘We should know the joy of being truly well, not just physical wellbeing, but to know and exude wellbeing in all dimensions of your existence.’

Sadhguru

Did you know? If you stick to the classical form of yoga, over a while, your breath will become slow. There are very poetic expressions for this like if it becomes 11 per minute, you understand the language of every animal and bird around you. If it becomes 9, and you understand the very language that the Earth is speaking. If it becomes 7, you know everything worth knowing in existence. That means your body becomes so stable that there is no static, no crackle – it just perceives everything.

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Meditation

A way to enter new environment

Mindful meditation is a way to enter new environment and listen to a guided voice that encourages mindfulness and relaxation. It means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.

Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them – without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future. Though it has its roots in Buddhist meditation, a secular practice of mindfulness has entered the American mainstream in recent years, in part through the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which he launched at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. Since that time, thousands of studies have documented the physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in general and MBSR in particular, inspiring countless programs to adapt the MBSR model for schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans’ centers, and beyond. Mindful meditation is a mental training practice that teaches you to slow down racing thoughts, let go of negativity, and calm both your mind and body.

Mindfulness has its origins in Buddhist and Hindu teachings, from which the concept “sati” was roughly translated to “mindfulness.” The practice was popularized in the West through the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. Zinn created MBSR to treat pain, anxiety, and stress, and he ultimately brought mindfulness into mainstream clinical practice.

The cultivation of mindfulness has roots in Buddhism, but most religions include some type of prayer or meditation technique that helps shift your thoughts away from your usual preoccupations toward an appreciation of the moment and a larger perspective on life.

Professor Emeritus Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder and former director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, helped to bring the practice of mindfulness meditation into mainstream medicine and demonstrated that practicing mindfulness can bring improvements in both physical and psychological symptoms as well as positive changes in health, attitudes, and behaviors.

Mindfulness improves well-being: Increasing your capacity for mindfulness supports many attitudes that contribute to a satisfying life. Being mindful makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life as they occur, helps you become fully engaged in activities, and creates a greater capacity to deal with adverse events. By focusing on the here and now, many people who practice mindfulness find that they are less likely to get caught up in worries about the future or regrets over the past, are less preoccupied with concerns about success and self-esteem and are better able to form deep connections with others.

Mindfulness improves physical health: If greater well-being isn’t enough of an incentive, scientists have discovered that mindfulness techniques help improve physical health in several ways. Mindfulness can help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.

Mindfulness improves mental health: In recent years, psychotherapists have turned to mindfulness meditation as an important element in the treatment of several problems, including depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, couples’ conflicts, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Tips

Several times a day, draw your attention to your breath, body, and mind. Begin by taking a few deep breaths, close your eyes, then tune-in to your body. Feel your lungs expanding and contracting as you breathe in and out. Now listen to the ticking of your heart, and feel the blood rushing through your veins. Be there in the moment with just “yourself”, and fully experience and appreciate who you are right here, right now without any other thoughts, distractions, or judgment.

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Belief system

Control on mind, More proactive.

Beliefs are the core values that provides significance and guidance to our life. They filter our perceptions of the world. When we freely choose to believe something is true, a command is delivered to our spiritual heart (mind) telling us how to represent what we have come to believe to be true. Then the process has been accomplished with DIVINE GRACE, our belief can become our most effective force for creating the positive and good in our lives.

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Prayer

Connection, Peace

“Always pray to have eyes that see the best in people, a heart that forgives the worst, a mind that forgets the bad, and a soul that never loses faith in God.”

“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”

Mother Teresa

“Prayer and the seed of faith are similar. Both have nothing within, but have the potential of creating everything.”

Sirshree

“Islam suggests living with divinely-ordained nature, not opposed to it.”

Prayer, an act of communication by humans with the sacred or holy – God, the gods, the transcendent realm, or supernatural powers. Found in all religions at all times, prayer may be a corporate or personal act utilizing various forms and techniques.

The necessity for prayer has been taught at all times by all religions, and forms of prayer have been given to their followers. People hold different opinions about prayer. Some maintain that as God knows all their wants, why should they pray? Others wonder if it is alright to pray when God knows what is best for them. Others say that praise is the only prayer, while some even claim that they are God so that for them there is no necessity for prayer. Regarding the latter class of people, it may be said that all the masters and holy ones have taught not only the necessity of prayer, but their own lives have been lives of continual prayer. The following little story gives us an illustration of this.

Abdul Qadir Jilani, a great Sufi saint, was one day engaged in prayer. When in a vision, he saw the semblance of an angel, who addressed him saying, “O thou who hast prayed continuously all thy life, to the God sends the good tidings that no more prayers are required of thee.” The saint, recognizing the tempter, replied, “Begone, thou wicked one, I recognize thee despite thy angelic disguise: thou art a devil come to tempt me. All the holy ones have passed their lives in prayer, and how can I deem myself worthy to be exempt from it?” On hearing these words, the evil one vanished.

To those who ask, “Is it right to pray for our wants?” it may be said that man has always sought to express himself. If for instance, he has conceived some scheme or plan that he wants to carry out, as a rule, he seeks out a capable and trusted friend whose advice he values, to whom he can confide his ideas. Or, if he is in trouble or distress, he goes to a loving and kind friend for sympathy. In both cases, he shows his limitation. If a man with his sense of justice judges himself worthy of that for which he prays, then he is amply justified, regardless of the opinion of the world as to its rightness, and he attracts the answer to his prayer. If a man has agreed to work for a certain sum of money and knows he has worked well and earned it, he feels justified in claiming his money. And so, it is with prayer when a man knows he deserves that for which he prays.

Before praying for the mercy of God, man must first learn to recognize God in all around him, in the care and protection he receives from all. God's mercy shows its hands and eyes everywhere in nature, so man must try to imitate it in his own life. He will then attract to himself the mercy of God.

If our actions are harsh, we naturally attract the wrath of God. To the class of people who claim that they are God, the answer may be given in the words of the Urdu poet, who says, “Man is not God, but man is not apart from God.” One drop cannot call itself the ocean, yet the drop is part of the ocean. Those who lay claim to this should bear witness to it in their lives, and if they can do this, then they will keep silent and not speak one word about it in the presence of others.

There is a necessity for praise in prayer, the praise of the beauty of God, for man must learn to recognize and praise the beauty of God as manifested in all His creation. In this way, he impresses beauty on his soul, and he can manifest it in himself, and he becomes the friend of all and is without prejudice. For this reason, the Sufi cultivates his heart. The emblem of the Sufi is a heart between two wings, meaning that when the heart is cultivated man can soar up into the heights of heaven.

A man who does not believe in prayer, in times of illness seeks a doctor, for no one is self-sufficient. In life, everyone needs kindness, sympathy, and the help of others, however rich or mighty he may be, and this explains the need for prayer. What man cannot do, God can do, and what is done through man, is also done by the command of God. “Not even the weight of one atom is concealed from the Lord,” says the holy Quran.

There is a story that illustrates the need for prayer. A king was once hunting in the forest when he was overtaken by a storm and had to take refuge in the hut of a peasant. The peasant set before the king a simple meal, which he partook of with gratitude. On his departure, he asked the peasant if there was any service that he could render him. The man, not knowing that it was a king who was speaking to him, replied that his needs were simple and that he had all that he required. The king then drew off a ring from his finger, and gave it to the peasant, saying, “Take this ring, and if ever you require anything, bring it to the city and show it to some official, and ask for me.”

Some months later bad times came and famine was rife in the land. The peasant was near starvation when he thought of the ring. He set out for the city, and on arrival there, showed it to an official, who immediately conducted him to the king's presence. When he arrived, he found the king on his knees in prayer. When the king had finished, he rose from his knees and asked the peasant what he could do for him.

The man, who was surprised to find that his friend was the king, and still more surprised to find him on his knees, asked him why he was in that posture. The king replied that he was praying to Allah. The peasant asked, “Who is Allah?” The king replied, “One even higher than myself, the king of kings, and I am asking Him for my own needs and those of my people.”

The peasant on hearing these words said, “If you, the king, have to pray to somebody above you, then why should I not ask Him direct, and not trouble you?”

This story teaches us that every seeming source is a limited one when compared with the real source, the God whose dominion is overall. Prayer has been described in its sublimity as “an intimate friendship, a frequent conversation held alone with the Beloved”, by St. Teresa of Avila, a 16th century Spanish mystic. Prayer is a significant and universal aspect of religion, whether of primitive peoples or of modern mystics, that expresses the broad range of religious feelings and attitudes that command human relations with the sacred or holy.

During the 19th century, when various evolutionary theories were in vogue, prayer was viewed as a stage in the development of religion from a magical to a “higher” stage. Such theories, which saw in prayer no more than a development of magic or incantation, failed to recognize the strictly personal characteristics of prayer.

Though some scholars, such as Costa Guimaraens, a French psychologist in the early 20th century, have attempted to trace prayer back to a biological need, the attempt, on the whole, has been unsuccessful. If sometimes – especially with exceptional subjects or those with fragile nervous systems – the act of prayer is accompanied by corporal phenomena (e.g., bleeding, shaking), such phenomena can accompany it without having provoked it and without explaining its deep inspiration. To analyze normal prayer psychologically, it is especially important to choose normal subjects. Affective sources such as fear, joy, and sadness doubtless play a role in prayer. Such affectations are expressed in prayers recorded in various religions and particularly in the book of Psalms in the Bible, but they do not explain the recourse to prayer itself, which is explained by a motivation deeper than effective elements. The cause and occasion of prayer must not be confused.

Moral sentiments also are integrating elements, but they are accidental to the development of prayer; virtue is not necessarily expressed in the act of praying, because there exist atheists of incontestable morality. Morality is more a consequence than a cause of prayer; and it follows more than it prepares for the development of the religious person.

The psychological explanation has the advantage of probing the subconscious, of describing the various forces that act within the psyche, but the emergence of the subconscious in the act of prayer is not the essence of prayer, since it minimizes the role of intelligence and the will. Among what are called the higher religions (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), divine action, which is the object of the human action of prayer, violates neither human consciousness nor human freedom.

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Compassion

Basic Morality, Empathy

The word ‘mindfulness’

Compassion – “to endure together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related. While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. Altruism, in turn, is the kind, selfless behavior often prompted by feelings of compassion, though one can feel compassion without acting on it, and altruism isn’t always motivated by compassion.

While cynics may dismiss compassion as touchy-feely or irrational, scientists have started to map the biological basis of compassion, suggesting its deep evolutionary purpose. This research has shown that when we feel compassion, our heart rate slows down, we secrete the “bonding hormone” oxytocin, and regions of the brain linked to empathy, caregiving, and feelings of pleasure light up, which often results in our wanting to approach and care for other people.

The key difference between love and compassion is that love is a deep feeling of affection and attachment towards someone, whereas compassion is a sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. Love and compassion are two positive feelings that help to make the world a better place. We feel compassion for people who are in unfortunate situations (poverty, sickness, etc.), and we feel the desire to help them. Love, however, is an emotion we feel for someone close to us.

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

Mother Teresa

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his beauty or perceive a sense of his worth until it has been reflected to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”

John Joseph Powell

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”

John Green

Compassion is empathy and caring in action. Being open to others enables us to face tough times with creativity and resilience. Empathy enables us to connect with people. It helps us get things done, and to deal with power stress and the sacrifices inherent in leadership.

Compassion gives us the ability to understand someone else's situation and the desire to take action to improve their lives. For people who are dependent on others for help and support, compassion is often the most important factor in allowing them to lead fulfilling lives.

Compassion is the most powerful force in the world. It can defeat indifference, intolerance, and injustice. It can replace judgment with acceptance because it makes no distinction between age, ethnicity, gender, or disability. It freely embraces the rich diversity of humanity by treating everyone as equals. It benefits both those who receive it and those who share it. Every person on earth desires it, and every human being deserves it.

A single act of compassion can change a person’s life forever. Compassion is the bond that unites all of humanity. We each have an endless supply of compassion, and it costs us nothing to share it. We can create a meaningful difference in the world simply by performing one simple act of compassion after another.

Compassion is the greatest gift one human being can share with another. It is impossible to know how many wells can come from a single act of compassion.

Self-compassion is a process of self-kindness and accepting suffering as a quality of being human.

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Siir

Secret of the heart

Siir is a Turkish word, which means poem. The concept of Siir has been derived from a philosophical belief which means ‘secret of the heart that connects us to the divine’. A secret that takes one through an intense and rich journey of experiences unfolding through time such as, love, attention, gratitude, and mindfulness.

Except from the divine concept, Siir also holds different meaning in different language. Among those, the Turkish use of the word Siir is noteworthy because it indicates a special genre of literature which is poem. As we know, one of the characteristics of poetry is that it is a unique language that combines and uses words to convey meaning and communicate ideas, feelings, sounds, gestures, signs, and symbols. It is a wisdom language because it relates the experiences and observations of human life and the universe around us.

So, there’s nothing left to explain why the word Siir has been chosen and how perfectly it fits into the criteria of our vision. Siir is a platform that grew out of a passion to share the fundamentals of mindful living to nurture health and well-being to live a fulfilling life through mindful food and blossom the inborn potential in every being. In a hectic pace of life, allow us to weave joy and wellbeing through mindful food into your life. Siir is the result of our ten years of planning, hardworking and diligence. We believe, our decade long vision of Siir will go far successfully.

Balance

Mindful Living

Breathing

Yoga

Meditation

Belief system

Prayer

Compassion

Mindful Food

How we start our day

Mindful Farming

Barry McDonald

Tips:

Sharon Salzberg

Alan Watts

Tips:

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Tips:

Andrew Weil

Sadhguru

Tips

Mother Teresa

Sirshree

The word ‘mindfulness’

Mother Teresa

John Joseph Powell

John Green