Paul Dobson speaks with John Astin. Ordinarily, we equate a sense of well-being with the presence of certain body-mind states such as happiness and pleasure and the absence of others such as fear, sadness, and anxiety. Given human beings’ seemingly universal desire to experience well-being, it’s not surprising that we would try to arrange our lives in such a way as to maximize those states and circumstances we associate with well-being while avoiding or minimizing those we deem to be lacking in it. We could say that every experience has two fundamental dimensions. There is the description of whatever appears, and then there is the sheer presence or existence of it. The experiences we define as joyful and clear are, without question, distinct from those we describe as sad or confused. And it’s fine and understandable to prefer some states over others and then seek to have more of the ones we prefer. There’s another dimension of well-being that resides in the sheer nondual presence and existence of things rather than in their descriptions.   

John Aston: https://www.johnastin.com 

Our site: https://nisargayoga.org 

Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library