Angelica’s Brilliant Lama – Samsara’s Seven Flavors #1/12

Peak of summer, Manhattan 1995….life was on the upswing, what with an admin gig at a top law firm a hop, skip and jump from Grand Central, and my very own co-op apartment in picturesque Brooklyn Heights, whose major attraction happened to be a fabulous roof garden with a scintillating nocturnal view of New York’s other three boroughs (Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island), and glimpses of the cool blue profile of the Lady of Liberty towering majestically over the horizon.

A swirl of friends — artists, musicians, writers, poets, sculptors, photographers, and the occasional lawyer or stockbroker befriended during my years of freelancing on Wall Street and in Manhattan’s law firms — added zest to the mix. And while the week was one crazy stretch of slogging to keep body and soul together, weekends allowed me to dip my soul into hatha yoga and meditation, an amazing novel, an off-Broadway show, or even a Shakespeare evening performance in Central Park, after which a bunch of us would troop over to some generous stranger’s penthouse on the upper west side to party beneath a canopy of stars.

Demon of Eclipses & Illusions – Part 7/9

I once confessed to a guru that I suffered from an addictive personality. He startled me by roaring with laughter. “You and everyone else on the planet, Mira,” he retorted. “Anyone not fully enlightened is an addict of samsara.” Today I interpret his words this way: some of us are outright addicts to a range of substances. But there are subtle addictions too — to a particular lifestyle, a work routine that massages the ego, a favorite person, a diet, attention from others, sexual gratification, the consuming need to be appreciated by the world — and the list goes on, ad nauseam.

Substance addictions are the most easy to spot — and therefore easier to heal. Stop smoking, for instance, and you instantly halt the addiction. But subtle addictions are far more slippery: how to deal with the egoic compulsion to impress others with one’s beauty, intelligence, talent or wealth? Especially in an increasingly insane and plastic world, where we are encouraged to live artificial lives and are held to false standards, and where the workaholic, film star or billionaire is lauded and applauded?