Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

January 30, 2020 By Admin

A Tribute to Ram Dass (Richard Alpert)

A Tribute to Ram Dass (Richard Alpert)

Recently Ram Dass died at his home in Maui. He was 88 years old.  He was born into a well-off Boston family, and enjoyed materialism in his early professional years.  When completing a Ph.D. in Psychology at Stanford University he was still into material things. His spiritual awakening did not exist.  He was once known for his psychedelic drug experimentation while teaching at Harvard University. This experimentation occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, and in 1963 he was fired from Harvard for related reasons. In 1967 he went to India to study under Hindu Sadhu Neem, Karoli Baba, also known as Maharaj-ji. Before his teacher died, Alpert was named Ram Dass (Servant of God). He practiced bhakti yoga – pure love on the spiritual path. In 1974 Ram Dass returned to the United States, where he developed his own style of meditation, a style that radically integrated various forms of spiritual traditions.  In 1971 he published his first book, Be Here Now;  this book helped open up higher consciousness to others without the use of drug and expounded a life role of service to others. In 2004 Ram Dass relocated to Maui, where he remained for the rest of his life.  In 1997 he wrote Still Here. In some ways this book helped to clarify his deeper understanding of himself; the depth was the result of a serious stroke he suffered. His cerebral hemorrhage forced him to go deeper into self-understanding. In 2004 he survived a near-fatal infection. From his stroke on Ram Dass  was mainly homebound. His last book (with Mirabai Bush) was Walking Each Other Home:Conversations on Living and Dying. 

To the end he faced his death with great human grace, and he never gave up his view that to live must involve to love and serve others. Ram Dass, sometimes with the help of others, also established various organizations to provide teachings and service to others. Here is a short list: Hanuman Foundations (the teachings of Neen Karoli Baba); Love Serve Remember Foundation; Prison Ashram Project; Co-creating Living Dying Project and Doorway to Light; Seva Foundation (healthcare for underserved areas); and, Social Venture Network (for businesses). Yes, Ram Dass lived his talk – he walked the walk!

With the passing of Ram Dass, we have lost a great spiritual and meditation teacher. There are few and far between equivalent replacements. May he rest in great inner peace as he travels the bardo.

For more information refer to Duncan Oliver, J. (January, 2020). Ram Dass, beloved spiritual teacher, has died. In Tricycle. See tricycle.org/trikedaily/ram-dass-dies/.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC  

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon

Filed Under: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Featured, People, Ram Dass, Spiritual Energy, Spiritual Experience, Spiriuality Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI.MINDFUL HAPPPINESS, RAM DASS, SPIRITUALITY

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

Meditating in the Gap of Nothingness The Buddha taught about your four best friends, that is how the body changes physiology when you sit, stand, walk/move and every time you are lying down. Modern Western neuroscience now supports this statement of 2500+ years ago. Thich Nhat Hanh added the importance of your breath, walking meditation, […]

Chronic Pain and Doing Body Scanning Although doing body scans cannot fully relieve your pain, it may help you manage it better. If your pain is serious and chronic you need to work with a qualified pain management professional, who will use both psychological and medical interventions. Note that a recent issue of Consumer Reports reviewed […]

A Dark Night with Saint John of the Cross The writings of Saint John of the Cross offer a special viewpoint about the suffering of souls, suffering souls on their way to unity with the divine.  What follows stands in contrast to the Buddha’s views in The Dhammapada about ultimate happiness without any form of union […]

Mindfulness, Movement, and Meditation Practices Meditation Master Thich Nhat Hanh offers some of the most helpful mindfulness, movement, and meditation instructions available today.  His themes here are about reducing your suffering, increasing your satisfactions, and expanding your happiness as a result. Please do not note that “I do not have time to do these things!” […]

Self-Care to Reduce Compassion Fatigue First let’s begin with what some people do to counteract the stressors of living in a hurried,“over-technologized” world. Technically, “technologize” is not a popularly accepted word, but it is a sad  reality. We live in a time when texting while driving may become the new addiction-based cause for many, many […]

Mindful Happiness Explores – The Miracle of Mirror Neurons Between 1996 and 2000 researchers (Gallese and Rizzolatti) at the University of Parme in Italy discovered what are now called mirror neurons. Neuroscientists speculate that mirror neurons (reportedly in the Broca’s area of the prefrontal cortex) activate perceptual responses for internal motor-emotional responses.  Thus mirror neurons […]

Using Your Compassionate Mind in Psychotherapy For you to become a more compassionate therapist, follow the details noted below. These preconditions, skills, and practices are required as a baseline for  compassionate practice. You need the ability to access calmness in an environment of emotional suffering, chaos, or conflict.  Most people do this by breathing in […]

Vipassana Meditation and Introduction Vipassana meditation, as taught by S. N. Goenka, has been practiced in India, Europe, the United States and in many other parts of the world. There are various claims for effectiveness when used as a form of meditative treatment with various populations (often correctional and substance using populations); however, there is […]

Happiness Characteristics – Post #2 Below I will note a few key characteristics of experiences and attitudes associated with happiness. Do your best to experience some of these each day – as much as is possible. Here is the first list. Being Fully Alive to Experiences – Do your best to be fully involved in […]

Mindful Walking Meditation: How to Walk by Thich Nhat Hanh – A Powerful Short Book of Wisdom In my opinion, Thich Nhat Hanh and The 14th Dalai Lama are the two most important and wise teachers of mindfulness, meditation, compassion, and Buddhism in the 21st century.  Below I will offer my interpretation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s […]

The Heart Sutra – Thich Nhat Hanh “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.” This ultimate mantra is one of the most important in Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh’s new translation of The Heart Sutra offers a great deal of enlightened, sometimes more advanced, information and process. Avalokitesvara and other great Bodhisattvas present important views of this […]

How We Make Habits – An Understanding Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha reportedly taught how humans make habits.  The insights of this earliest Buddhist Psychology sheds shame on the West, with its almost-the-same version of this view in the 20th century. One must wonder if B. F. Skinner or N. Chomsky knew about Buddhist […]

Amitabha Buddha – Pure Land Meditation The following meditation had been modified by me to make it a more specific self-healing meditation and to better fit the time we now live in. Sit quietly and complete 3-4 deep, calming breaths. Pay attention to the quality and density of the light you see outside of your […]

Your  Regular  Practice:   Impact  on  Yourself  From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont Compassion Training:  Here is a quick self-assessment process to see if your regular compassion practice has had positive effects on you.  Review the questions below and decide  what  your  answers are. I hope you have noted pleasant […]

Self-Reality Checks Are Needed in Your Mindful Clinical Practice It is highly important for helpers working in the co-occurring conditions field to become keenly aware of their own realities in practice and life that impact clinical effectiveness.  Below I have listed four areas that show up in clinical surveys and added four more that I […]

Tips on Practice During These Troubling Times Some people are religious, and I am sure turn to those sources for support and hope. Others are spiritual, and I hope also pursue those sources for emotional stability and closeness to the “their” divine. Other people may  be Agnostic or Atheist; I am certain such people also […]

ACT – The Absolute Basics; Acceptance & Commitment Therapy In this post I begin a series of writing dealing with ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The details below are basic, but perhaps just enough to develop more interest in learning about ACT. Here we go! 1) Act, developed mainly by Steven Hayes Ph.D.and based on […]

  Mindfulness – Self-Kindness Practice Befriending the self is one of the most difficult things for Americans to do.  It is probably true that self-kindness is difficult for most people; however, the current rampant criticism (I am right! You are wrong!) and extreme greed manifesting in the United States tends to produce two opposite extremes: […]

A Radical Feminist in her Time Over 800 years ago Hildegard of Bingen presented radical viewpoints on women-power and male-dominance in the Christian Church, stone/gem healing, meditation, insight and intellect, the web of life or planetary oneness, being in nature, environmentalism, and personal stories of suffering, etc.  Despite her outspoken manner and her popularity among […]

America’s Opioid Problem-2020; A Brief Update Unfortunately, Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) is alive and well in 2020. Today approximately 150 People are dying each day due to opioid overdose. The CDC noted that from 1999 to 2017 approximately 399,000 people died in the United States from Opioid overdose. Related to chronic pain, this is one […]

Mindful Happiness Tags

MINDFUL TRAINING MINDFULNESS ANTHONY QUINTILIANI SELF MEDICATION WALKING MEDITATION SELF COMPASSION ENLIGHTENMENT ACTIVITY BUDDHISM MINDFUL HAPPINESS TRAUMA ELEANOR R LIEBMAN CENTER MINDFULNESS TRAINING MINDFUL COVID-19 VIPASSANA JOURNALING SELF CLINICAL SUPERVISION SELF CARE HAPPINESS PSYCHOTHERAPY MEDITATION THICH NHAT HANH DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI ACTIVITIES WISE MIND PRACTICE EXERCISES TRAINING MBSR MINDFUL MEDITATION ADDICTION BRAIN BREATHING THERAPY. VERMONT PRACTICES MEDITATION PRACTICE SUFFERING VIPASSANA MEDITATION COMPASSION EMPTINESS CONSCIOUSNESS SELF ESTEEM

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2021 · Mindful Happiness