Ann Hjälmås

Lama Tsultrim Allione teaches you how to embody the enlightened, fierce power of the sacred feminine - the tantric dakinis.

The message of Tantra endorses Osho's understanding that only through total acceptance of ourselves can we grow. Osho speaks on Tantra meditation techniques (let go and surrender), and tantric love and spirituality in sex. Here the Tantra message - don't live a repressed life, otherwise you don't live at all - is made accessible and understandable to modern man, who will learn to live a life of expression, creativity, and joy.

The realm of emotion is one of those areas where Buddhism and Western psychology are often thought to be at odds: Are emotions to be valued, examined, worked with as signs leading us to deeper self-knowledge? Or are they something to be ignored and avoided as soon as we recognize them?

Through the centuries, countless people from around the world have been coming to India, thirsty in their search for truth. Considered to be the birthplace of spirituality, India has produced more great mystics and spiritual teachers than any other country. What more fitting place for Eckhart to speak of the eternal Now? During this seven-day retreat, Eckhart speaks with humble authenticity, wisdom and humor on a wide range of subjects.

In a world overabundant with stimuli, body-based practices are a powerful way to maintain spiritual awareness and physical health. In this session, Reginald Ray teaches a Tibetan Buddhist meditation to directly connect with the earth, which is understood in the tradition to be a living, enlightened being with the ability to bestow equanimity, calm, and healing.

In this modern spiritual classic, the Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa highlights the commonest pitfall to which every aspirant on the spiritual path falls prey: what he calls spiritual materialism. The universal tendency, he shows, is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement - the impulse to develop and refine the ego when the ego is, by nature, essentially empty. "The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use," he said, "even spirituality."

One of the most powerful acts of devotion is also one of the most simple: bowing down and surrendering to the earth. This is the basis for "The Five Prostrations", a time-honored Buddhist meditation practice that joins the mind and body. On Touching the Earth, Buddhist masters Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong update this ancient teaching for the modern student. You learn each phase of this practice, which will help empty your body of resentment while opening it to compassion for all life.

In this inspirational collection of stories, Swami Rama relates his experiences with the great teachers who guided his life, including Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Ramana Maharshi. It documents Swami Rama's spiritual quest, which showed him that direct experience is the source of real knowledge.