Didi Ananda Devapriya: Yoga and Meditation Teacher in Romania

Spiritual Inspiration

One Simple Tip for Looking and Feeling Beautiful, Inside and Out

- Didi Deva

Smile! It – is just that simple. Smiling literally lights up our face. We shine when we smile. When we are at our best, we are smiling. When we are in love, we smile more. When we are satisfied, we smile. When we are joyful we smile.

Sometimes – just as I begin to meditate – I remind myself to relax and smile. Immediately – I feel my heart open and a positive, light feeling fills me up. Smiling reflects our natural state of being – it relaxes us , remind who we are. Everyone looks more beautiful when they are smiling – like a flower blooming, our face seems to reflect our soul more completely when we smile.  Nobody is particularly happy with the pictures on their driver’s license or passports when we are not smiling.
But another secret is that we actually feel happier when smiling. While smiling is usually an automatic response to positive feelings, it is a two way street. When we do it intentionally, as a practice, smiling helps us to trigger those same good feelings. We smile when we feel happy and smiling helps us to feel happy.  Researchers have confirmed this, discovering that smiling alters brain chemistry – stimulating the release of dopamine, endorphins and seratonin – which lift your mood and protect you from stress. (1)  In yoga practice, this connection can be considered a part of the science of “mudra”, an ancient study of how different subtle positions of the body, from hand gestures to different gazes of the eyes, to smiling impact our entire system.
One of the fundamental practices of a spiritual lifestyle – from the 10 ethical principles of “Yama and Niyamas” is “Santosh” which means contentment, or happiness. This is not only a principle – it is a practice. It means – we do not just have to wait for happiness to happen – we can cultivate it, with intention. Practicing gratitude is a way to open our hearts towards the beauty of life.
In Italy, I heard a beautiful Italian proverb: “A tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that is growing.”  So often the negative things in life jump to the foreground, obscuring all of the other positives that we are surrounded with.  On the other hand, our gratitude is often like a drop of water on a hot skillet that quickly sizzles and evaporates. What you focus on grows, so when we choose to practice noticing the forest growing around us, cooling our restless mind so that the drop of water doesn’t sizzle away in a few seconds, then we experience the contentment, joy and satisfaction that we crave.
Smile….
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
footnotes:

Right Action, Continuous Effort, Perfect Finish

- Didi Deva

EightfoldPathThe Eight-Fold Path lies at the core of Buddhist teachings.  The eight practices are designed to help us to align our lives more closely to Dharma – our divine potential.  Each of the practices : right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration and right understanding helps to channelize our energy towards spiritual realization. The word “samyak” is translated as “right” – but it could also be translated as “good”, “accurate” or “well-done”.  In this case, these things are “right” when they take us closer to our spiritual self.  Spiritual practice is not something limited to the moments we spend with our eyes closed on a meditation cushion.  It is a way of life. Every moment presents us with the opportunity to live from a deep place of harmony with our soul, and these eight points help us to reflect on the different ways we can train ourselves to remain aligned.  I was recently asked to give a presentation at a spiritual conference on “Samyak Karmanta” – or “Right Action” so this article will limit itself to just reflecting on that point. Read more

What is the best way to open your heart chakra? 

- Didi Deva

heart cakraIf you would like to feel more love in your life, there is a guaranteed method to open your heart: do selfless service.  We all have an inherent human need to feel we are contributing towards making the world a better place. Altruism is not just a characteristic of  a few special saintly people that we admire from afar – it is our part of our true nature. If we are not expressing our need to feel that we are helping others, something is missing, and we feel depressed, lonely, empty – even when we may seem to have everything we need on other levels.

I am speaking from personal experience. In my early 20s I went through a very dark period in my life, and I was suffering from a deep depression.  Something was missing in my life – but I wasn’t sure what it was. My attempts to understand myself had only led me deeper into an inner labyrinth – the more I analyzed my depression, the more reasons I seemed to find to be depressed.  Depression, though, is a wonderful catalyst for personal and spiritual growth – and indeed, it led me to begin my own personal quest to understand the meaning of life.  This led me to the local library where I began to systematically devour the section on spirituality – reading wisdom teachings from many different sources which gave me the thrilling realization that they were all saying remarkably similar things.   Read more

Rasa: the sweet juiciness of the spiritual flow

- Didi Deva

“Existence without juice is dry and tasteless” – Robert Svobodha

Like many sanskrit words, Rasa has multiple layers of meaning, each which contribute to a more complete understanding of its subtler dimensions. In its simplest, most mundane definition, Rasa means “juice”. It is also associated with the sense of taste. In order to taste anything – it becomes a juice before we can sense taste properly – the salivary glands produce saliva which emulsify food into a liquid. If the tongue were to be thoroughly dried off and then you put a piece of food on its surface, it will be difficult to sense its taste. Rasa is also referred to in Ayurvedic medicine as the stage of digestion when food has mixed with digestive fluids and becomes a “juice” which will then be absorbed into the bloodstream – or in Ayurvedic terms converted into “Rakta”. However, this isn’t the definition that we are most interested in. Rasa refers to not only the physical “juice” which gives us the sensation of taste – but that inner essence in all types of experiences that give us the feeling of “sweetness” or “sourness”, bitterness etc..
Read more

Is there more to the Law of Attraction?

- Didi Deva

Since the film “The Secret” was released, there has been a lot of buzz about the “Law of Attraction” – often focused on enhancing our wealth, health and material success. This is natural  – it is natural that all beings seek pleasure, happiness and comfort. Anything that promises to help us to achieve these objectives is bound to attract our attention and capture our imagination. Understanding and utilizing the “Law of Attraction” by focusing on positive thoughts in order to magnetize the things we want to experience and have into our lives promises just that. However, is material success a sign of an enlightened, positive, spiritually elevated mind?  This point of view seems to me to be deeply problematic.   Read more

Glancing to the mirror

- Didi Deva

When I am swimming deep in the Spirit Current
every thought is heard and received
as an offering of beauty that leaves no trace
as watercolors of sunset glowing on clouds

When I drift into the World’s babbling Stream
I create beauty, not for the silent Listener
but for myself – a beautiful story to fall in love with
constant glances to the mirror

Renunciation

- Didi Deva

Renunciation – is it self-denial,
a tortuous kind of thing?
or is it just editing
cutting away all of the extraneous bits
refining, condensing, like poetry
getting to the essence, sculpting
chipping away everything else
to release the pure form within…

January 2007 Bucharest

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