seed will naturally begin to develop. The seed of Buddha Nature is the same. It will lie dormant until the right conditions come together. But once we discover this potential within us, we can water our seed with loving kindness and prepare its bed with mindfulness. When we do so, the growth of the seed of awakening will be effortless and natural." —Acharya Judy Lief from "A Little Seed of Awakening" Photo by: Ana Castilho "Because of the nature of our constitution, we have been gifted with a diversity of seeds and nutrients to ensure our survival. These gifts are not about reinforcing our human propensity to dominate; rather they are ... posted on Jan 29 2015 (40,239 reads)

at all,” said Kasl. Since her family is still in the process of moving out of their old home, she and her kids often stop by to finish up the cleaning and prepare it for sale. She says her kids don’t even want to go back into their old house. “They want to get back home to the tiny house as quick as they can.” There’s been no mention of the toys that were lost in the tiny transition or the bedrooms that no longer exist. And, perhaps because of the adventurous nature of their new home, her kids are more eager than ever to help with chores like cleaning, cooking, and gathering firewood. The Kasl kids rearranged their room to make space for a p... posted on Feb 12 2015 (25,797 reads)

The simple idea that all streets should offer safe, convenient, and comfortable travel for everyone—those on foot, on bike, on transit, in wheelchairs, young, old or disabled. Twenty-seven states and 625 local communities across the U.S. have adopted Complete Streets policies in some form. The Healing Properties of Nature and the Outdoors: Not all exercise offers the same health benefits, according to a growing body of research showing that outdoor physical activity, especially in nature, boosts our health, improves our concentration, and may speed up our natural healing process. A walk in the park is not only more interesting than a workout at the gym, but it may also be healt... posted on Feb 10 2015 (25,989 reads)

century. The good news is that rescuing silence can come much more easily than tackling these other problems. A single law would signal a huge and immediate improvement. That law would prohibit all aircraft from flying over our most pristine national parks. Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything. It lives here, profoundly, at One Square Inch in the Hoh Rain Forest. It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried l... posted on Feb 16 2015 (21,733 reads)

that can slash prices by paying rock-bottom wages. Production workers find themselves unwilling participants in a race to the bottom for the lowest wage. Employers pick up and relocate if wages and safety standards are lower somewhere else or if workers begin organizing a union. The nonhuman life of the planet suffers, too, from the colossal ecological burden of producing all our stuff. Human activity is causing species to go extinct at 1,000 times the rate that would otherwise occur in nature, according to a recent study published in Science. Industrial chemicals turn up in the bodies of sea mammals in the Arctic—and in our own bodies. A giant patch of plastic garbage circulat... posted on Mar 13 2015 (34,266 reads)

inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility. Colonization, we know, attempts to replace indigenous cultures with the culture of the settler. One of its tools is linguistic imperialism, or the overwriting of language and names. Among the many examples of linguistic imperialism, perhaps none is more pernicious than the replacement of the language of nature as subject with the language of nature as object. We can see the consequences all around us as we enter an age of extinction precipitated by how we think and how we live. Let me make here a ... posted on Jun 6 2015 (17,862 reads)

and a perspective and a passion. When my son dies, it’s my son who dies. I don’t frame my son’s death in your narrative; I frame my son’s death in my narrative. You frame my son’s death in your narrative. YES: You talk about the South African Truth and Reconciliation process both revealing “an extraordinary capacity for evil” and “a marvelous magnanimity” on the part of victims. What has that insight led you to believe about human nature? Desmond Tutu: That we are extraordinary beings! All of us have the capacity for the greatest possible evil. All of us! None of us can predict that under certain circumstances we would not b... posted on Jun 21 2015 (13,307 reads)

like sustainable development and wellbeing. Gross Domestic “Problem”: why GDP doesn’t add up GDP is not a measure of “all” economic activities. Because of its design, it only counts what is formally transacted in the market, which means that other economic activities occurring in the “informal” economy or within households as well as a variety of services made available free of charge, from volunteering to the ecosystem services provided by nature that allow our economies to function, are not counted as part of economic growth (Fioramonti 2013, p. 6f.). This generates evident paradoxes. Take the case of a country in which natural resourc... posted on Aug 22 2015 (13,311 reads)

We wanted those cows; we didn't want the bison. That's what the Indians ate. RW: It’s one example of what some people could call our hubris—that we can make it work the way we want it to. What you've just described suggests how sadly mistaken we can be. Peter: I call that the myth of progress. We pride ourselves on not being superstitious anymore, right? Because we've got science and technology; we've come out of the Dark Ages and we're mastering nature; we're making a better life for ourselves. It's what we tell ourselves. But we’ve replaced what we thought of as superstition with a new superstition, which is the myth of progres... posted on Oct 11 2020 (17,926 reads)

blood pressure, blood sugar, stress.” Nongtraw farmers, like Ranee, are proud that their village has sustained its traditional organic farming practices in spite of industrial agriculture entering the state. Ranee said that some farmers tried using chemical fertilizers on small plots of land when the government promoted them, but later refused. “My mother told me to grow food without fertilizers,” Ranee said. “What indigenous famers do is they follow the rules of nature,” Miller said in an interview with Indigenous Rights Radio. “They have a huge amount of biodiversity within their land, they use dozens of different seeds. They are not just organic... posted on Mar 23 2016 (11,923 reads)

follows is the audio and transcript of an onbeing.org interview between Krista Tippett and Dr. B.J. Miller:   MS. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: “Let death be what takes us,” Dr. B.J. Miller has written, “not a lack of imagination.” As a palliative care physician, he brings a design sensibility to the matter of living until we die. And he’s largely redesigned his own physical presence after an accident at college left him without both of his legs and part of one arm. B.J. Miller’s wisdom extends to how we can all reframe our relationship to our imperfect bodies and all that we don’t control. DR. BRUCE (B.J.) MILLER: There’s a big di... posted on Apr 4 2016 (25,941 reads)

are the conditions and factors that make an ordinary experience complete. Dewey’s most salient point — a point that applies not only to art but to our deepest sense of ourselves as agents of aliveness — deals precisely with this question of completeness. Life, like art, is never complete without what he so poetically calls “all the rhythmic crises that punctuate the stream of living.” Our creaturely destiny is intimately entwined with the realities of nature, and nature is forever oscillating between mutually necessary highs and lows. Echoing Nietzsche’s immortal wisdom on why a fulfilling life requires embracing rather than running from... posted on Jun 26 2016 (12,076 reads)

that end with a click, like Yeats’s well-made box, and I hope this poem does that. MR: You raise the question of persevering in light of the fact that “things are always ending.” This is in your poem “Poem on a Line from Anne Sexton, ‘We Are All Writing God’s Poem’” (published on The Writer’s Almanac, March 21, 2009). The image at the end of that poem suggests your answer to death, illness, mutability, comes from observation of nature: “The moon spills its milk on the black table top/for the thousandth time.” Though not explicit in the poem, the title adds a religious note. Are those important sources of your joy... posted on Jul 26 2016 (11,193 reads)

tasks of our time. The mastery of that task is what the poet Jane Hirshfield examines in her 1997 essay collection Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (public library). Defining poetry as “the clarification and magnification of being,” she writes: “Here, as elsewhere in life, attentiveness only deepens what it regards.” In the superb opening essay, titled “Poetry and the Mind of Concentration,” Hirshfield examines the nature of this clarified, magnified deepening of being — concentration as consecration — by probing its six main components: music, rhetoric, image, emotion, story, and voice. Although foc... posted on Sep 6 2016 (11,022 reads)

therefore, is an alleviation and a blessing. Rebecca Solnit, in her beautiful meditation on the life-saving vanishing act of reading, wrote: “I disappeared into books when I was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the woods.” Oliver disappeared into both. For her, the woods were not a metaphor but a locale of self-salvation — she found respite from the brutality of the real world in the benediction of two parallel sacred worlds: nature and literature. She vanished into the woods, where she found “beauty and interest and mystery,” and she vanished into books. In a sentiment that calls to mind Kafka’s unforget... posted on Dec 7 2016 (15,468 reads)

you, a human being, real strength. The energy that is the total awareness of one’s own existence is — or can become, can be — the strongest energy in human life. In another exchange, Jacob steers Jerry toward the idea that acknowledging the illusoriness of free will liberates us rather than taking away our freedom. Pointing out how impossible it is to understand freedom without understanding the influences acting upon us, the laws of the universe, and the nature of reality, he considers the source of real freedom: Ask yourself what is your understanding of the influences acting upon us — of the universal laws in nature? What are your thought... posted on Dec 24 2016 (10,765 reads)

or family worry for me? And how to gradually and skillfully invite them to open up to these values, without creating a ‘holier than thou’ feeling?” With such a rich field of inquiry, we transitioned into some stories and insights from Nipun—who graciously joined us in the midst of a week+ of nonstop circles. :) Nature and 'Survival' On the question of how to ‘survive’ in a gift-economy, he noted, “There is abundance in nature… How do we reconnect with nature’s abundance? How do we reconnect with this principle that sages have talked about for so long: ‘It is in giving that we receive’?&rdquo... posted on Jan 26 2017 (11,716 reads)

our understandings of community so that we can move from the closed protectionism of current forms to an openness and embrace of the planetary community. It is ironic that in the midst of this proliferation of specialty islands, we live surrounded by communities that know how to connect to others through their diversity, communities that succeed in creating sustainable relationships over long periods of time. These communities are the webs of relationships called ecosystems. Everywhere in nature, communities of diverse individuals live together in ways that support both the individual and the entire system. As they spin these systems into existence, new capabilities and talents emerge ... posted on Jun 4 2017 (12,373 reads)

snow leopard is one of the world’s most beautiful, albeit elusive animals. Concentrated in the mountainous regions, these arresting animals can be spotted by the fortunate few in countries like China (where the bulk of the population resides), Bhutan and India. In Himachal Pradesh, the snow leopard enjoys the distinction of being the state animal. Image source: Eric Kelby/Wikipedia Commons With their inherent reclusive nature and shrinking natural habitats, the number of snow leopards in the wild has dropped over the years. In the Himalayas, Nature Conservation Foundation (NSF) and Snow Leopard Trust have been working to conserve the local population of snow leop... posted on Jun 24 2017 (14,423 reads)

knowing the extremes of sadness and joy we can never fully know or feel all that life is.   Melancholy by Edgar Degas. Credit: Edgar Degas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. “There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy. It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.” Leo Tolstoy What if melancholy can be passed down through generations, not just culturally but at the level of our DNA? Melancholia has long been seen as a key element in artistic inspiration, along with a way of turning pain and sorrow into healing, and ultimately, an acceptance of life’s ... posted on Jun 26 2017 (12,622 reads)