Sharon Gannon
We can't have happiness if we cause others unhappiness.Collection: Causes
Live with the anticipation that something incredible might happen at any time.Collection: Might
Worry is a prayer for something you don't want.Collection: Inspirational
When we have a choice it is always best to choose kindness. Veganism is simply the kinder choice.Collection: Kindness
You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.Collection: Success
The enemy of the spirit is the selfish ego, which thinks that happiness can be gained through causing unhappiness and disharmony to others. In many ancient languages, the word for enemy means "one who falls out of rhythm; one who is not working in harmony with the larger group."Collection: Selfish
The practice of yoga allows us to become more conscious of our own physical existence and how significant we really are.Collection: Yoga
There are atoms of air in your lungs that were once in the lungs of everyone who has ever lived. In essence, we are breathing (inspiring) one another.Collection: Air
The raising of animals for food and all that it entails is the single most destructive force impacting our planet's fragile ecosystems. Our planet simply cannot sustain the greed of billions of human beings who are eating other animals.Collection: Animal
The way you treat others determines the way others treat you; the way others treat you determines the way you see yourself; the way you see yourself determines who you are.Collection: Way
Life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. ln between that inhale and that exhale is our life.Collection: Ends
If we want to consider the sanctity of life in deciding what to eat, the choice is clear. Eating a plant based diet causes less harm, to ourselves, to the other animals, to the planet.Collection: Animal
Human beings are Earthlings and as Earthlings are connected to every other living being on this planet.Collection: Planets
Our breath is connected to the air that every being breathes. By breathing consciously, we acknowledge our communion with all of life.Collection: Air
If you practice Yoga for small, selfish reasons, you will remain the same, bound by your beliefs about what you can and cannot do. Let go and offer your effort to limitless potential. Dedicate yourself to the happiness of all beings.Collection: Letting Go
One of the definitions for "mad" is "wild"; I'm certainly all for wild as opposed to domesticated.Collection: Mad
We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don't like in the world, we must start by changing what we don't like about ourselves.Collection: World
The best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others.Collection: Uplifting
What we see in the world around us is just a reflection of what is inside of us.Collection: Reflection
If it were possible to live without causing harm to any living being at all, then indeed we might well choose not to eat carrots or other vegetables. But that is not possible - merely by being alive, we necessarily cause harm to many, many beings: we step on them inadvertently, we breathe them in without noticing, we kill them when we brush our teeth or wash our bodies, etc.Collection: Vegetables
Yoga practices shift our identity away from the ego-personality and its struggles so that we can begin to reconnect with the essential nature of our being, which is bliss.Collection: Struggle
The way we treat animals is the root cause of all the human suffering in the world, from poverty, starvation, disease, and war to lack of clean air and water, not to mention all the varied forms of human emotional and spiritual suffering.Collection: Spiritual
Don't expect others to change. Instead, take on the project and see if you can become the change you want to see in the world. Try your best to let go of anger, blame and seeing yourself as a victim.Collection: Letting Go
In the United States, the average is two children per family, while in Africa it is five children per family. On the surface, the statistic seems to indicate that Africans are having way too many kids and are taxing the Earth's resources, while American kids are born into families who are able to take care of them. However, the average American child consumes roughly the same resources as fifteen African children. So when an American family says they only have two children, they are actually consuming the resources of an African family of thirty children!Collection: Children
It is a fact that the ecological devastation of the planet can be traced to the consumption of meat and dairy, which contributes to water, soil, and air pollution as well as global warming and the mass extinction of many species of plant and animal forms.Collection: Animal
Today's fishing industry supplies land farms with fish as well. Over fifty percent of the fish caught is fed to livestock on factory farms and "regular" farms. It is an ingredient in the enriched "feed meal" fed to livestock. Farm animals, like cows, who by nature are vegans, are routinely force-fed fish as well as the flesh, blood, and manure of other animals. It may take sixteen pounds of grain to make one pound of beef, but it also takes one hundred pounds of fish to make that one pound of beef.Collection: Animal
To meet the huge consumer demand for fish, the industry can no longer rely on hunting wild fish. Now we are doing to fish what was done to wild cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and ducks thousands of years ago: we are confining them in holding pens.Collection: Hunting
Human population growth is a problem in that most humans consume more than they need. The Earth's resources are now strained to sustain the needs and wants of the human population, which continues to escalate.Collection: Growth
Through yoga practice you can change the course of your life by purifying your karma. But to do that you must have an idea of where you've been and where you want to go.Collection: Karma
What you eat should not just be "good for you" but it should contribute to your happiness; it should make you a happier person.Collection: Should
Patanjali tells us that if we practice aparigraha, (greedlessness) we will begin to understand not only where we have come from but where we are going and how our karmas have contributed to where we are now.Collection: Karma
There are many activities that human beings have been doing "forever." We might argue from that perspective that eating meat should be allowed to continue. Men have been raping women for thousands of years; does that mean that it is normal and should be allowed to continue?Collection: Mean
Be confident in yourself, in your abilities, and in your goals. Then go for it.Collection: Goal
To live and breathe with an exclusive focus on one's small self, disconnected from the whole, is the definition of egotism.Collection: Self
Compassion is the key to a successful relationship because by means of compassion we can access the innermost needs of the other. When we are aware of those needs, we can begin to communicate and not just profess what we think we know and demand that others change because we want them to.Collection: Mean
If you want people to listen to you, then be willing to listen to them.Collection: People
Compassion is essential for any type of relationship between anybody – human to human, human to dog, human to cat, human to bird.Collection: Dog
Everyone is caught in the web of his or her own actions and is bound by past karmas (actions). Good and bad are relative terms. Every action takes one to the next place.Collection: Karma
Human overconsumption is a greater problem than human population growth, and meat eating is a big part of that problem.Collection: Meat Eating
One's knowledge of karma should not be used to judge others. You should ask yourself: Do I like where I am going, or do I want to change my direction?Collection: Karma
Some well-to-do parents may say, "I have a right to have as many children as I want because I can take care of them." That may be so, but can the Earth take care of them?Collection: Children
Because of our unenlightenment, we do not know that what we do to others we ultimately do to ourselves.Collection: Knows
We are so unconscious about our actions that we don't even realize the immense suffering we are causing to animals, the planet, and ourselves.Collection: Animal
Welfarists are concerned with the quality of the animals' lives before or even during their slaughter and want animals to be treated, and slaughtered, "humanely." Welfarists don't necessarily feel that it is wrong for humans to use animals for our own purposes.Collection: Animal
Farms, whether small or large, are places where slaves are kept. The animals are fattened up to be eaten, or exploited for their ability to make honey or milk, or for their fur, wool or body parts; they are kept as breeders to produce more animals who can in turn be exploited and ultimately sold, slaughtered, and eaten.Collection: Animal
Some people may argue that if the animals are treated humanely prior to being slaughtered, this justifies their confinement and slaughter. Is it ethical to rob beings of their freedom but give them a comfortable prison and provide them with food until they become fat enough to be slaughtered? Any way you look at it, farms are places where animals are kept in preparation to be slaughtered and ultimately eaten as food.Collection: Animal
Is it really that much better to make friends with animals before you kill them than to treat them as nameless, faceless objects before you kill them? From a yogic point of view, one must weigh the karmic consequences of perceiving others as mere objects to be used and the consequences of profiting from the suffering of others.Collection: Animal
Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or for any exploitative purpose.Collection: Animal
It is true that every being is enjoying life or suffering as a direct result of his or her own past actions. The animals in the factory farms may have been meat-eating human beings in a previous birth; we don't know, and it is not our place to judge.Collection: Animal
By choosing to be kind instead of cruel, we can break the karmic chain of reacting to violence with more violence, contributing to a more peaceful future for everyone.Collection: Peaceful