Adyashanti dares all seekers of peace and freedom to take the possibility of liberation in this life seriously. He began teaching in 1996, at the request of his Zen teacher with whom he had been studying for 14 years. Since then many spiritual seekers have awakened to their true nature while spending time with Adyashanti.
The author of The End of Your World, Emptiness Dancing, and True Meditation, Adyashanti offers spontaneous and direct nondual teachings that have been compared to those of the early Zen masters and Advaita Vedanta sages. However, Adya says, “If you filter my words through any tradition or ‘-ism’, you will miss altogether what I am saying. The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond—awake and present, here and now already. I am simply helping you to realize that.”
A native of Northern California, Adyashanti lives with his wife, Mukti, and teaches extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area offering satsangs, weekend intensives, and silent retreats. He also travels to teach in other areas of the United States and Canada.
“Adyashanti” means primordial peace.
- Adyashanti’s website.
- Adya’s “Basic Teachings” videos.
- Recent interview on Conscious.tv covering a lot of biographical info.
Interview recorded 8/30/2011
Video and audio below. I’m sorry about the technical quality of this video. We had technical problems which we weren’t able to surmount. Audio also available as a Podcast.
Predominantly, I feel appreciation and gratitude toward him. His impact on my life was inestimable. I’m well aware of the paradoxical stuff (women, money, apparent ego aggrandisement), but let any of us take on a task as large as he did and see if we do as well. He swung for the fences and despite some strike-outs, he hit plenty out of the park.
I also find Adya fits me like a glove.
He doesn’t provoke me (as yet) to the cutting edge of Noticing what is here – to the Self-Inclusive Unified view before any seduction with a split minded perception.
But he would have done some years back. And may do in the next few moments.
So I listen, smiling in the heart.
I feel an enjoyment of sharing as friends, something of what we have come to share in, as an inheritance of teaching through which Love’s meaning and the truth of loving, rises as fresh cultural reference. The Source of all value is undefinable – but ‘working mind’ uses its own contents to either play in the dream of self creation or serve awakening from the dream of self creation.
Hey – I was just flowing with a feeling of connecting.
This is a lovely resource that presents and connects to a lovely resource.
Awakening Purpose is a Movement of Wholeness that feels like something definite and brings us into relationship from a different premise than thought-based identities.
And whose purpose is not fitted to support or fulfil the mind that thinks it knows … but IS inherently fulfilling to the Feeling of Be-ing.
Releasing the personal will is the story reflected in Jesus’ story.
Rather than work on ourselves (‘doing something’) we can let into real relationship as we Notice what we are already doing which blocks relationship – (And cease or desist). Without real relationship, we simply run like a program that engages attention and meets an unconscious desire to be deceived.
Awakening to the mechanism of mind is as much part of awakening as awakening in Love’s Intimacy – as Expression.
in Gratitude
Brian
Thanks, Rick. Loved the interview. You drew out a number of key points and articulated why Adya’s been valuable to many on their path. I could point to a number of things, but I quite enjoyed the “dirty secret” of the loss of personal will. The detachment of that phase can also contribute to the sense of it being desert-like. I know some who’s lives did indeed fall apart, not to mention the karma he spoke of. I think in End of Your World he described how there is now this open space, so everything unresolved rushes in for resolution. (laughs)
It’s a good point that having commitments to others can be helpful during this phase. Routine and structure.
I also quite like his “head, heart & gut” approach as it beautifully describes the experiential process we might know as CC, GC, UC intellectually. Releasing the grip in the gut, what Loch Kelly called the BBQ, ends the separation between “inside” and “outside” and is thus the kindergarten of unity. I’d add that this “decent” continues to the 2nd and root as Self/Divine/Tao moves out into the world (experientially) and into what might be called embodiment.
Thanks again
Adyashanti interview with Bob Cowart… thre are 11 parts on YT…