Archive for January, 2008

Upcoming in the Nonduality Highlights

January 26, 2008

The Nonduality Highlights is a newsletter published daily since 1998. YahooGroups is the host. Subscribe.

There are three editors of the text edition and one editor of the podcast edition. The three editors are Mark, Gloria, and Jerry. Dustin is the podcast editor. Each editor works independently. We don’t have meetings about what we’re going to publish.

First, I want to tell you about a new direction the Highlights is taking. Dustin, with my participation, is conducting phone interviews with nondual people. We have invested in the best electronic recording equipment and editing software. Our first interview has been completed and is now being edited. When it is published, I’ll write a separate entry for it. That should be next week.

The following are topics that are scheduled to appear in upcoming text issues of The Nonduality Highlights that I edit:

Spiritual autobiographical notes from Robert, grounded in the words of Nisargadatta.

Extracts from Dennis Waite’s new book, Enlightenment: The Path Through the Jungle.

Writings from Jeff Foster’s new work on neo-advaita, Beyond Awakening.

Excerpts from Alan Mann’s Nowletter and capacitie.org.

A review and selections from Richard Beymer’s novel/unauthorized autobiography, Impostor.

Writings from Johanthan Harrison’s We Are All One.

Poetry by David.

Selections from James W. Stelzenmuller’s The Path of Awakening: A Guide to Spiritual
Freedom.

Stephen Wingate’s One Life – One Heart – One Love monthly eLetter will be featured.

New websites, the Center for NonDualism in Florida, poetry by Birgit, poetry by Anna, the Jung Lexicon, Swami Lord Collins.

Excerpts from When Fear Falls Away, by Jan Frazier.

Announcement of the publication of Stewart Bitkoff’s A Commuter’s Guide to Enlightenment, with excerpts.

Writings from regular contributor Vicki Woodyard will appear.

Also the unknown: whatever shows up on any particular day that I feel like including in The Nonduality Highlights. So Subscribe!

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An Ellen Page Break

January 24, 2008

Before I get back to nonduality publishing, a word about Ellen Page, since she is in the news and some of the chatter around her bears on Buddhism. But mainly because she seems like a nondual chick.

Ellen attended a Buddhist high school in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The school actually houses, in a single building, about 130 students ranging from pre-school to 12th grade. Neither all the teachers, nor all the students are practicing Buddhists. Get out of your mind any images of Buddhist monks in orange robes. If you walked past the school, you will see that no thing and no one seems other than ordinary.

Something that is unusual about the school is that the older students learn meditation and Yoga as part of their daily work. The values that permeate the education may be called Buddhist, but they may also be called wholly human.

From interviews I’ve seen on YouTube, Ellen seems minimally materialistic, grounded in relationships with family and friends, and appreciative of life in Nova Scotia. Ellen engages promotion without a lot of apparent fuss. Her style is spare, whether being interviewed or acting, yet deeply direct, so that she communicates in a memorable and impacting way. There’s no neurosis around her.

These are qualities of a person who lives from a nondual approach to life, which means realizing and valuing the atmosphere in which all things are interconnected. I don’t mean to put Ellen Page on a pedestal as an enlightened saint. Nova Scotia is infused with nondual spiritual traditions: Buddhist, Celtic, Hindu, Advaitin, Pagan, Yogic, Native People’s, and unaffiliated/undefined. There must be thousands in Nova Scotia whose nature is inclined toward the nondual.

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Nonduality on Wikipedia

January 10, 2008

Have you seen the article on nonduality in the wikipedia? It’s listed under nondualism. Read it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism.

The article has lots of gaps to fill. I’m not going to point to any of them, nor will I tell you what I’ve contributed. I’ll only say that if you have any extra time, jump in and contribute something.

There should be several pages on wikipedia for nonduality or nondualism. One for each of the traditions. One for each of the nondual perspectives. One for practices. There are so many ways to break down the topic.

What is needed is an encyclopedia of nonduality, compiled by a number of selected authors. It would be a monumental work, wouldn’t it?

It feathers into the topic of getting books published. I’ll address that in the next entries.

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Branding Nonduality

January 9, 2008

Who is doing a notable job of branding in the nonduality genre? Ken Wilber has a solid two-part brand: his name and the term “Integral.”

Recently Peter Fenner has been branding Radiant Mind very clearly with both a book and a course of the same name. “Peter Fenner”, the guy, is less of a brand than “Ken Wilber”, in my opinion.

Deepak Chopra is in Oprah territory with his branding.

Eckhart Tolle? He sells a lot of books, but how’s his branding? Is Eckhart himself as strong a brand as Oprah or Chopra? The “Now” was a budding brand, but has he followed through with it? Compare Tolle to Oprah and Chopra and you decide on the strength of his brand, or even what his brand is.

Dennis Waite is doing an excellent job of sticking to “Advaita” as his brand. His books have Advaita in the title. He is a moderator of the Advaitin email forum. His website is advaita.org.uk. He writes for other Advaita websites. Strong, smart branding. When you think of Advaita, you think of Dennis Waite (among others, of course).

A branding effort that has me puzzled is that of a new and beautiful website, 9choirs.com. It is truly a mainstream nonduality website. They have cool articles. But when you first land on the site, do you know what it is about within the first two or three seconds? 9choirs mentions beliefnet.com and yelp.com as the types of websites they do not want to be like. However, if you land on either of those websites, you will know within a couple of seconds exactly what they are about. 9choirs, in my opinion, could use stronger branding. A brand has to stand for something immediately identifiable.

A purpose of branding is to effectively and efficiently distribute the information your audience wants and needs.

That concludes this brief series on branding.

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Classic branding

January 7, 2008

Branding can make business and communication simple.

A classic example of excellent branding is Oprah. The Oprah brand applies to a tv show, a production company, a magazine, and a book club. When the Oprah brand is placed on a product or service, what more needs to be said? The brand speaks for itself. If there were different names, looks, feels to each one of Oprah’s businesses, a tremendous amount of energy would be required to market each one and to integrate all of them. That’s the power of branding and the power of simplicity.

Branding is an important aspect of a business education. A good introductory article is at http://marketing.about.com/cs/brandmktg/a/whatisbranding.htm.

Next I’ll talk about branding in the world of nonduality. I’ll give a few examples, but mostly leave it up to you to decide what constitutes effective branding.

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Blog time

January 7, 2008

I maintain a website, Nonduality.com, publish a newsletter, The Nonduality Highlights, run an email forum, Nonduality Salon, and keep a place for book reviews. I even edited an anthology, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality.

A blog is needed because the places mentioned above aren’t sufficient to contain what I want to say.

A blog is more like a dry sauna, whereas a Live Journal or an email list such as Nonduality Salon are more like hot tubs. I like the isolation and long sweat of the dry sauna. The hot tub is too social.

You’ll see the word “nonduality” a lot. My works are branded “nonduality.” More about branding in the next entry.

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