MASTER SHI HENG YI

MASTER SHI HENG YI

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35th Generation of Shaolin Masters
Headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe

Just getting to know what is Buddhism, which is the foundation of every monastery. The Shaolin Temple is in the core, first of all, it’s a Buddhist monastery and when you are starting to read about Buddhism, one of the key sentences, in the beginning, is: With your thoughts, you are creating the world…So it’s very rarely clearly stated that it is the thoughts that are creating the world. Nevertheless, if you are now looking at the practices that the Shaolin Temple offers, that is quite physical. There is a lot of physicality in there, so you might think but why are you saying with thoughts you create the world, but you have so many different physical activities. It is because if you want to have mental freedom. If you want to approach freedom, you cannot just approach freedom by doing things or trying to chase freedom. The freedom that we are looking for is the type of freedom that is derived and that is very closely related to its counterpart, which is very hard restriction or very hard structure. So if you want to experience what freedom is, look at the restrictions of your life.

(Highlights) JERICHO BROWN

(Highlights) JERICHO BROWN

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Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet
Author of The Tradition & The New Testament

I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experiences are what come to fruition in your writing. You become aware. Oh, I did come on that roller coaster that time that I haven’t thought about in twenty years. Oh I did make love to that cute person that I haven’t thought about in ten years, but you’ve got to make love, you’ve got to get on roller coasters, you’ve got to get your heart broken. You’ve got to dance. You gotta get out and do things and that, too, is a part of writing. You have to trust you’re a writer by identity. And if you can trust that you’re a writer by identity, then you don’t have to be at a desk.

JERICHO BROWN

JERICHO BROWN

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Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet
Author of The Tradition & The New Testament

I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experiences are what come to fruition in your writing. You become aware. Oh, I did come on that roller coaster that time that I haven’t thought about in twenty years. Oh I did make love to that cute person that I haven’t thought about in ten years, but you’ve got to make love, you’ve got to get on roller coasters, you’ve got to get your heart broken. You’ve got to dance. You gotta get out and do things and that, too, is a part of writing. You have to trust you’re a writer by identity. And if you can trust that you’re a writer by identity, then you don’t have to be at a desk.

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

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Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

ANA CASTILLO

ANA CASTILLO

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Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

(Highlights) REBECCA WALKER

(Highlights) REBECCA WALKER

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Award-Winning Writer, Producer & Co-founder of Third Wave Fund

The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you discover your own story because your story is basically made up of all the memories that continue to hold the charge for you. All the memories that are lodged in your mind that you’ve secreted away and when you can excavate that story and you can write it down, then you can make sense of it and you can understand why you’re living the way you’re living and why you feel the way you feel. And you can also decide to to release those memories so that you can have new memories that can define and can shape your life.

REBECCA WALKER

REBECCA WALKER

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Award-Winning Writer, Producer & Co-founder of Third Wave Fund

The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you discover your own story because your story is basically made up of all the memories that continue to hold the charge for you. All the memories that are lodged in your mind that you’ve secreted away and when you can excavate that story and you can write it down, then you can make sense of it and you can understand why you’re living the way you’re living and why you feel the way you feel. And you can also decide to to release those memories so that you can have new memories that can define and can shape your life.

(Highlights) DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

(Highlights) DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

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Neurosurgeon
Author of NYTimes #1 Bestseller Proof of Heaven, Seeking Heaven, The Map of Heaven & Living in a Mindful Universe.

Take care of yourself. Bring that love and kindness and compassion into your dealings with self and others. And this world will change dramatically. I think you’ll find great reason for optimism and hope and viewing the way our world can go, but it absolutely involves a change from the status quo from our current direction.

DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

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Neurosurgeon
Author of NYTimes #1 Bestseller Proof of Heaven, Seeking Heaven, The Map of Heaven & Living in a Mindful Universe.

Take care of yourself. Bring that love and kindness and compassion into your dealings with self and others. And this world will change dramatically. I think you’ll find great reason for optimism and hope and viewing the way our world can go, but it absolutely involves a change from the status quo from our current direction.

(Highlights) JESSA REED

(Highlights) JESSA REED

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Comedian & Host of Awakening Orientation Dept. & Soberish

That’s just always been something that’s been inspiring to me which is helping people from the wrong side of the tracks, the misunderstood, the addicted, helping people step into their power and believe in themselves.

JESSA REED

JESSA REED

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Comedian & Host of Awakening Orientation Dept. & Soberish

That’s just always been something that’s been inspiring to me which is helping people from the wrong side of the tracks, the misunderstood, the addicted, helping people step into their power and believe in themselves.

(Highlights) MITCH HOROWITZ

(Highlights) MITCH HOROWITZ

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Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author

I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.

MITCH HOROWITZ

MITCH HOROWITZ

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Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author

I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.

(Highlights) DONALD ROBERTSON

(Highlights) DONALD ROBERTSON

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Writer, Cognitive-Behavioural Psychotherapist
Author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

At first when I began writing these books, people told me that they didn’t think there was an audience for them. They thought it was a kind of niche subject, nobody was really that interested in it. And then gradually it became clear that there’s a surprisingly big audience of people that really have a craving for Classical wisdom and are interested in history, in the relationship between history and self-improvement and philosophy and psychotherapy.

DONALD ROBERTSON

DONALD ROBERTSON

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Writer, Cognitive-Behavioural Psychotherapist
Author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

At first when I began writing these books, people told me that they didn’t think there was an audience for them. They thought it was a kind of niche subject, nobody was really that interested in it. And then gradually it became clear that there’s a surprisingly big audience of people that really have a craving for Classical wisdom and are interested in history, in the relationship between history and self-improvement and philosophy and psychotherapy.