Banyen Blog

In June 2011, Abbott of a monastery in India, Mingyur Rinpoche, left his esteemed post and spent four and a half years in a wandering Retreat. Living without money, clothing (other than the dhoti cloth on his body) or material comforts, he tested the boundaries of his meditation practice and found a freedom and happiness not bound by external conditions and comforts. In this illuminating video interview, Rinpoche speaks about his near-death experience and the importance of dying every day in order to embrace the impermanence of life and experience the luminosity of pure awareness.

Watch the video here:

0r listen to the podcast here:

Jean Vanier
September 10, 1928 – May 7, 2019

Jean Vanier, CC, GOQ, was a Canadian Catholic philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. In 1964 he founded L’Arche, an international federation of communities for people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them; and he co-founded Faith and Light with Marie-Hélène Mathieu, a Christian charity for people with learning disabilities. Today L’Arche (“the ark”) has 150 communities in 38 countries, supporting 3,500 people with learning disabilities with day services as well as residential homes. Most of the communities are small and residents often stay for decades.

Barbara Marx Hubbard
December 22, 1929 – April 10, 2019

"It’s strange to use the words ‘untimely death’ about someone who would have been 90 in December, but there was nothing old about Barbara. She was one of the most youthfully optimistic people I’ve ever known.

In one sense, she was born at the wrong time, and came of age when the role of women was relegated to being homemaker and caregiver.

In the midst of Barbara’s adolescence, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  She maintained that that event was perhaps the defining moment of her life. She realized that the enormous destructive human potential that had produced the atomic bomb could be turned on its head and mined for our greatest creative potential.

In this new Banyen interview, Deva Premal and Miten speak about their life together touring the world on the wings of sacred music, and the blessings it brings to them and to all those to gather and sing together.

A testament to the healing power of prayer and community, Miten speaks about his recovery from open heart surgery and the insights from having a second chance to live, love, and sing.

This is an inspirational video about the power of sacred chant as a portal to Divine Light.

Watch the video here:

0r listen to the podcast here:

Raven Grimassi
April 12, 1951 – March 10, 2019

Gary Charles Erbe, known as Raven Grimassi, was an American scholar of paganism and author of over 20 books on the subjects of Wicca, Stregheria, and neo-paganism. Descended from Italian witches on his mother’s side, he popularized Stregheria, the religious practice of witchcraft with roots in Italy. Grimassi was a practitioner of witchcraft for over 45 years.