Sentient Beings - 04.22.10

Student Question: In many traditions there is a reference to the term "sentient beings," and it appears to me that that’s a very specific term that I don’t think I really understand and I was wondering if you could speak to that?

“It’s difficult to speak to that issue for the simple reason that there are many sentient beings that are not corporeal,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “That’s why here we often use the term actants . . . versus actors. There are many actants in any given situation, which are forces that are operating, some of which are bodiless. . . . But everything is an actant . . . everything that we think of as a thing or an object, even if we think of it as inanimate, is a sentient being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 22, 2010.