An Interview with Simcha Raphael, PhD, on Kabbalah, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Journey of Consciousness “How we think about life after death is determined by what we think it means to be human.” – Simcha Raphael, PhD Although Tibetan Buddhism and the Kabbalah stem from different cultural contexts, both offer a transformative way of thinking about the question we all wonder about yet so often avoid: What happens after we die? Ahead of his October 18th workshop, Afterlife and the Journey of Consciousness in

Living as a Highly Sensitive Person: Balancing Openness & Boundaries How do we remain attuned to the emotions and experiences of others without losing our own sense of self? Empaths, or "highly sensitive people," tend to feel things more deeply and intensely than others. The term feels increasingly present in the collective consciousness, perhaps because people feel more attuned to the bittersweet nature of empathy. It allows you to let in more of the world: more feeling, more experience, more of what other people

On Ayurveda, Imbalance, and the Body's Own Wisdom ​The once fringe, dismissed idea of the "mind, body, spirit connection" is now a common phrase in our cultural milieu — but in some ways, the commercialization and popularization of the concept has obscured its profound significance. What does it really mean to cultivate balance in one’s mind, body, and spirit? How are the three interdependent? ​One exploration of this balance can be found in Ayurveda, a holistic medicine tradition that emerged in India thousands of

1. From a neutral place, we can learn to contemplate the universe as a continuum, spatially & temporally & energetically. Our senses operate mostly within the known world, the 4% of ordinary matter, but we want to learn how to open up to the full existence and potential of all mass and energy in the universe, that is the 96% of dark matter and dark energy, in order to be able to tap into the energy of the entire universe. In this regard, we

In Appreciation of Robert A. F. Thurman​ One of the Great Tibetan Scholars and Teachers of Our Time We begin this week's New Center NY newsletter by honoring the life of Robert Thurman, Tibetan scholar and teacher exrraordinaire, who died last week. Bob was a good friend of the Open Center, which preceded the New Center and offered many Tibetan programs in its early years, before Tibet House came into existence as a repository of Tibetan culture. Bob was president of Tibet House New