Chapter 15 - Henry David Thoreau
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

Thoreau was foremost a spiritual seeker, a Transcendentalist, a student of the inner light. Keeping himself free of social institutions like governments, churches, and jobs, he studied, thought, and wrote out his innermost thoughts, and sauntered through nature, observing every detail as a communication from a higher sphere.

He stands at the pinnacle of this world wide tradition of keeping nature in focus as a method of tuning the heart to peaceful vibrations. Of all the people I have written about so far, Thoreau probably attained the most abiding equanimity. His story will perfume your mind with peace.

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
32 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 14 - John Muir
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

Muir made harmony his orienting point and built a lifestyle around it. He refused teaching positions at Harvard and the Boston Academy of Science, and instead cleaved to the environment he wrote about.

John Muir’s intimacy with nature deepened to mental states of fusion, during which he lost his sense of individual identity to blend with the whole. “You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a campfire. Presently, you lose consciousness of your own separate existence; you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.” By “nature,” Muir always meant one mood: harmony in every thing, harmony over and over.

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
34 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 13 - Peace In Nature
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

Nature is a stern guru. Those who are not simultaneously knowing themselves as they study nature will be shaken into rude awareness of the great dark truths of the natural world and of their own psyches. Just as nature is the realm of light and beaches and bluebirds, it is the realm of the shadow winter, storms, cold, and death. Immersion in the natural world doesn’t provide a sanctuary from human suffering; it augments and clarifies the deepest origins of distress. When that augmentation is a step toward confrontation and resolution, it is also a step toward inner peace.

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
15 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 12 - Mahatma Gandhi's Mantric Collage
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

India's great political and religious leader, Mahatma Gandhi, intended his monumental public life to be merely an extension of his inner cultivation of peace. Foremost among Gandhi’s peaceful qualities were his reverence for world spiritual literature, his awareness that words transmit feelings as well as ideas, his steady immersion in peaceful language, and his use of linguistic vibrations to transform his followers.

On your own path, peace means listening and speaking as if your words and actions were playing one instrument in the orchestra of the universe. What you say, read, listen to, will influence how your molecules and nervous system dance, and what messages you will conduct and broadcast. Whitman’s poetry may spring you free of foreshortened time; and Gandhi’s dhuns might, if you could reconstruct them, prepare you for noble social action. The words that you absorb will be important contributors to the peace that you will transmit, intentionally or not.

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
22 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 11 - Walt Whitman’s Poetic Peace
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

"A hundred years after his death, Whitman’s life transpires the atmosphere of outdoor freedom. He is known as America’s pagan poet, who set the style of bohemian bard, beckoning to listeners today from old photographs that capture him in his rustic livery, cocked Stetson, open collar, and spirit of dusty rambles on timeless summer days.

The story of Whitman’s relationship with his literary ancestors is not only instructive but intriguing, since he intentionally distorted fact to sculpt a poetic truth. Both what he initially intended to hide, and what his writing and later confessions reveal, highlight the role of the vibration of language in his journey toward poise, since Whitman’s life, for all its breadth and creativity, was an increasingly dynamic, selectively honed pilgrimage into peace."

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
34 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 10 - Speak Your Peace
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

"If I could do one thing for my society today, it would be to create community in which everyone was encouraged to speak from the heart, and to listen to the messages of others. I have spent most of my life listening to varieties of justified complaints that no one listens to or understands. Unfortunately, we live in a non-listening, mass-market, person-inattentive society. The emphasis on efficiency, productivity, pleasure, and hurry that pervade society leave little room for building personal relationships around resonant communication of feelings. We live in a society uniquely devoid of conversation about the backdrop of infinite reality, through which every shaft of light that falls on us has passed. We see the tint of this passage everywhere, but we suffer from derealization when we try to speak about its presence in our lives. Yet this cultural repression is changeable, every time we ourselves dare to refer in our talk to the reality always present around us."

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
22 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 9 - Peace Is the Vibration of Language
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

"Words of peace educate us, temper us through rational inquiry, inspire us with what has already been attained, and transform us in the mere receptivity we have to their tremolo. The practice of imbibing words of peace will create within you a hum of peace. Syllabic peace sends transforming shafts of sound shivering through its listeners. Our hearts continue to beat in rhythmic sympathy."

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
6 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 8 - The Shakers: The Benefits and Limits of Selectivity
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

"The Shakers are an example. Paragons of selectivity, they produced one of the great outpourings of spiritual peace in American history, yet their heritage is masked by an intensely ambivalent reception that speaks to the essential tension which selectivity addresses. The Shakers deserve our attention as exemplars of both the strengths and pitfalls involved in selectivity. Their example highlights how you can intensify your relationship to peace every day via rigorous selectivity, but also how selectivity can be overdone and become paradoxically un-selective. The Shakers command our attention around the question: Just how much selectivity is peace-bearing, and how much is stifling?"

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
27 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 7 - Selectivity in Contemporary Lives
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

"In a complex society, a certain level of intricacy must be added into the life of each citizen in order to be able to functionally mesh with multiple social and economic gears. Simplicity in a farmer doesn’t consist in planting a monoculture. Selectivity doesn’t mean constricted, impoverished, or inviable living. Selectivity means conscious choice of what is important, necessary, and salubrious, with conscious relinquishment of what is diluting, distracting, and obfuscating. The choice is personal: live well, plant your crops, be prosperous but not festooned."

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
30 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 6 - Selectivity and the American Family
from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D.

"Our children have lost permission to dwell in their spacious reverie of newness. They no longer inhabit the structureless domes of uninterrupted afternoons. In order for us to function efficiently, we need them to be busy. We also—out of well-intended concern—want to prepare them to deal competently with our gadget-dense sphere, so that, almost from the start, children are propelled into a high rhythmic froth. This could be a sprightly animation if it were balanced by an equal but opposite emphasis on inward serenity and outward harmony, which would provide an orchestrating principle, a focus to the swirl, not precluding skillful assertion, but orienting it. The receptive neurology of a child can catch and hold real experiences in contemplative stillness and inner joy."

Dr. Paul Fleischman
Massachusetts, USA
2020
20 minutes

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.