Howard Jay Rubin

Fixing The World

An Interview With Schlomo Carlebach

The way to receive light from God is through praying. The only difference is that some people pray unconsciously, some pray consciously, some pray super-consciously. You can walk into a restaurant and see a person who says, “I’m so hungry. I need some soup.” Deep down his soul is praying to God, “God, please give me life, I’m at the end.”

Changing Things

An Interview With David Spangler

We are completely and wholly unique and in a very special one-on-one relationship with the divine. If I can recognize that in my life, there may still be things I want to do, changes I want to make, growth I want to achieve, but I can do so companioned by this spirit of playful and compassionate lovingness. If I can find ways of extending that to others as God has offered it to me, then I’ve found a real gift.

The Success Inside

An Interview With Tom Paxton

The bottom line is whether I think I have the power to change people’s minds and the answer is no. All I can do is write my songs, put them out there, and what happens after that is out of my control. The effect that they have is beyond me. My job is to make sure that I write the best songs I can write.

Quiet Mind

An Interview With Matt Lippa

Each thought, each feeling, each idea, each sense, each desire creates a pattern. Usually, thought is random, desires are random, fears, worries are unchecked. They’re working counter to each other; there’s a lot of confusion. So what manifests in the person’s life is chaos. Well, you can control your mind and determine what will manifest in your life.

Ordinary Mind

An Interview With Allen Ginsberg

It could be said that sympathy is our most powerful tool, because nothing stops it, except disaster, but disaster’s impermanent. Hell is impermanent as well as heaven. Therefore there’s nothing to stop sympathy; even in the middle of deepest illusion you can be aware that something else is possible when you see things as outside of yourself and can bear with them.

The Secret Sharer

An Interview With Jenovefa Knoop

When you’re really down, there are amazing resources that open up, psychic, emotional, ancestral resources and wisdom. Genuine suffering is never so bad. As heart-rending and bleak as it is, it pulls you to the center of creation, where everyone who has ever lived has suffered, to the great wellspring of wisdom and survival knowledge and grace.

Transfiguring The Ordinary

An Interview With Roger Corless

If the Christian God exists, the plurality of religions is not a problem in his mind. His mind functions in some other way. So it’s only a problem for us. If Mahayana Buddhism is right and the universe is neither One nor Many nor both nor neither but emptiness, unqualifiedness, then it’s not a problem that there are two religions or one or both or neither.

“All Praises Due To Allah”

An Interview With Brother Yusuf Salim

The music is just a vehicle. I can look around and see better musicians all around me who aren’t getting all the publicity that I’m getting. That makes me realize that it’s not the music. The music just puts me on the stage in a position to reach out. My real profession is human relations. I just happen to play a little piano.

We’re All Doing Time

An Interview With Bo And Sita Lozoff

People ask me about getting gang-raped and whether they should defend themselves or submit. I can’t say to somebody, “Submit and don’t worry about it,” and I also can’t say, “Defend yourself and die.” That’s his choice to make. Mahatma Gandhi could and would have submitted because he was so non-attached to his body there was no degradation there, there was no undignity. And yet on the other hand, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce wouldn’t have submitted, he would have said, “Ah, this is a wonderful day to die.”

An Interview With Medicine Story

In the tribal way there is a concern not only with the family and the tribe, but also about a continuum that began with the ancestors, with maintaining a way that has been passed down, a good way, a sacred way, and passing it on to the unborn generations. This is the only major world viewpoint that has such a heavy reliance upon the unborn generations. There is a tradition always to plan for seven generations ahead.