What is the meaning of our existence? What is our purpose in life? We all find ourselves confronted with these questions throughout our lives. We come by them in various ways. Many of us likely first heard of these questions from schooling and socialization in our faith traditions. For example, our elders taught us our …
An important aspect of the LLP mindset is that it acts as if it is radiating outwards from ourselves. This is perhaps the easiest to see with respect to love. We naturally start off with caring more about ourselves and those most closely related to us. As we progress in awakening our LLP mindset, our …
Love To love is to have deep-seated compassion for others. The highest forms of love would have us give ourselves entirely without an expectation of reciprocity. In our adult lives, we all too often confuse – and even conflate – romantic love and physical relationships and thereby only allow ourselves to see one manifestation of …
“Are you a god?” they asked. “No.” “An angel?” “No.” “A saint?” “No.” “Then what are you?” Buddha answered, “I am awake(conscious).” How easy is it to live consciously? Isn’t it our natural condition? Yes, but we start losing it as we grow up and instead we start living compulsively due to the socialization process …
I am very fond of reading commencement speeches at universities. One of the most impactful commencement speeches that I read was by David Foster Wallace. In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, he told a story, There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the …
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age.—Albert Einstein Means and ends debate is not new. Philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, and John Maynard Keynes had all given us the same message: to “value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.” However, …
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The season of thanksgiving sees the gathering of families and communities to celebrate harvest, a metaphorical representation of the gift of blessing and abundance that is bestowed upon humanity yearly. This special festival is about the gift of providence, the blessing of community and the embracing of values of gratitude, hope, and unity. “Gratitude is …
Thanksgiving: A Festival of Gratitude, Unity, and Sharing Read More »
Due to the ongoing major conflicts in our world, and the profound impacts they’ve had on people near and far from the actual epicenters of violence, we have decided to bring you a special edition of our Weekly Wisdom series. In addition to the horrors of massive loss of life and destruction, escalations of violence …
Happiness. Fulfillment. Plenitude. We humans are always longing for the state of consciousness we label with our favorite placeholder phrase to denote ‘life satisfaction’. At UEF, our favorite is flourishing. Related to the word “flowering”, flourishing is about blossoming into who we are at our state of fullest potential. A flower blooms to its full …
BY ADAM RUDOLPH Speaking over lunch recently, my friend Akhil Gupta spoke to me about his work as director and founder of Universal Enlightenment & Flourishing. We always exchange ideas and share books we read about spiritual and philosophical ideas. He shared with me that he stumbled on a simple but powerful insight that our deepest yearnings are only …
In his classic Working, Studs Terkel went around the United States in the 1970s interviewing workers from all walks of life. Over and over again he found — not surprisingly — that work is central to our lives and that we derive a significant part of our self-image from our relationship with work. I find the volume …
What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose? What happens after death? Why is there something instead of nothing? These are some of our basic existential questions. Why do we even ask these questions? Throughout history, our constant yearning for answers to the existential questions drove – and still drives – our creation …
Love, Learn, Play: The Triple Helix of Human Flourishing Read More »
The COVID-19 crisis in 2020 forced us to hit the pause button on our regular lives. In the process, we were given the rare and unexpected gift of time free from the compulsive activities that drive so many of us. There was no roadmap to navigate this new normal. We were all responding differently based …
Finding Happiness and Meaning in Challenging Times Read More »
We have described the LLP mindset, a mantra for living a fulfilled life through the pursuit of our three deepest longings: love, learning and play. In this article, we focus the lens on racism and how we can overcome it through continuing to deeply engage in LLP. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd’s death threw …
Overcoming Racism Through Love, Learning and Play Read More »
So many religions, so many paths to reach the same goal. I have practiced Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and in Hinduism again the ways of the different sects. I have found that it is the same God towards whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. -Swami Ramakrishna, Hindu Monk My parents celebrated my …
Key Points: Religion is often associated with the concept of God, but there are many different conceptions of God. Children are naturally curious about different religions and can easily incorporate the concepts of different religions into their lives. As adults, we should also be open to learning about different religions and respecting the beliefs of …
As we explore commonalities across religions as “common threads” woven throughout human history, we come to reflect that we are all made of the same fabric. However, there is great diversity and beauty in the many different colors of dye observed across cultures and belief systems. We have explored the common thread of belief in …
