May 5, 2015: Sat Cit Ananda

Sanskrit for "Being, Awareness, Bliss," Sat Cit (pronounced Chit) Ananda can be a powerful daily mantra for meditation practice. Here's what Thomas Moore has to say about this phrase in A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World: "Being is accepting your situation as it is and sensing your individuality....Awareness is 'being conscious'....Bliss is the special pleasure you find when you live from the center of your life, when you are in tune with your fate, and when you have an opening in your mind and heart to the source of life, acting in accord with the deep laws of your nature. This is ananda -- joy, bliss, or deep pleasure" (pp. 267-268).

Which must be the same well from which Walt Whitman wrote those lines from "Song of the Open Road": "Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune." 

Our fortune -- our bliss -- is within. Sat Cit Ananda.