senior citizens needing assistance could reduce signs of ageing, maybe we all would develop patience and kindness. Looking good has become so important to us that it could inspire us to take steps that we usually would not consider. Maybe if we lived our lives the way Dahl suggests we would be very different people. I wonder how radically different our priorities, decisions and personalities would be in a world where doing good is rewarded so visibly and tangibly that it becomes second nature. Often I look in the mirror and wonder if I can confidently say my inner self is better than my reflection. Am I almost at a point where I do not have to look at it to check myself for an... posted on Jan 28 2017 (24,524 reads)

I immediately got angry and upset. I wasn't using the pause to my best benefit. I was angry, holding a grudge, not practicing forgiveness. When you sit with that all the time, there's not one iota for that other person. You are not getting back at them, you are not doing anything. All you are doing it hurting yourself. When you can practice forgiveness, when you can have gratitude for your circumstance, you no longer cling or have attachment. All these things allow you to see the true nature of reality. When you have the true nature of reality, one, you are present and two, you cannot do anything but love. At at the end, it is our capacity to love that is most important. ... posted on Feb 1 2017 (12,057 reads)

principle? JT:  Yes. Very much so. Which brings things around to an epistemological, scientific area where we want to disbelieve something unless it's proven. It almost gets to the point where it has a lot to do with what we want to prove. I mean, we're a part of this experiment. We enter into it in ways that can't be denied. This can be troubling and it troubles a lot of scientists, but I think it also is affirming of the fact that we're not apart from nature. In fact, that's one of our greatest conceits, to even think that we're somehow apart from nature. RW:  Yes. And I think this speaks to something you've spent maybe 30 years... posted on Mar 26 2017 (15,046 reads)

you are in Los Angeles, join Interconnected Strategy Meetup group to exchange marketing ideas with other entrepreneurs and community-building visionaries, especially if you are interested in social enterprise. Our first meeting is on February 28 in Culver City. Pranidhi Varshney founded Yoga Shala West to move away from the transactional and image-driven nature of contemporary yoga, opting instead for an alternative fee structure and community-based social enterprise model. We talked about her journey, and what it takes to build a social enterprise based on inclusiveness rather than just profit. Pranidhi writes regularly, has released an album of Sans... posted on Apr 21 2017 (9,971 reads)

like every chakra was opened. From that moment on, the fear and anxiety was replaced with peace and I felt great love towards everyone involved in this frightening situation. So I know it was happening at the universal life force energy. Is there any other explanation that you might have for what happened? Phil: It sounds wonderful. I think you've explained it very well. A couple things come to mind -- you surrendered, you didn't try to fight the symptoms. You connected yourself to nature in a very spiritual way in the backyard, looking up at the sky and you had faith that you could be answered. I think that probably helped a lot, don't you? Mish: Yeah, I just felt we can... posted on Apr 25 2017 (16,935 reads)

can also be deceiving So I encourage you all to practice just being Be still, be happy, be loving, be kind Be humble, be magical, be aware, but be blind Don’t judge, see the good in each and every soul Use your mind when needed, but follow your heart even more Also, don’t forget to thank God, every time you fail, Cuz your journey from failure, will be your legacy and tale Remember to feed birds, hug trees and bow to the sun Until you and mother nature are one The last thing, is to be grateful for all your gifts For gratitude and suffering cannot  co-exist When you reach this space, every moment will be bliss And this gra... posted on May 4 2017 (27,224 reads)

three decades of being engrossed in the craft details of storytelling there is a substantial array of discoveries, dilemmas and unsolved questions clamouring for attention. At the centre of this apparent jumble is a core question: What is the swadharma [a Sanskrit word that loosely translates to duty or unique role accorded to one by nature] of a storyteller in the larger quest for change today? An assortment of dilemmas and sub-questions spin off from this central point. How to be a storyteller without getting embroiled in argumentation? How important is it to sift insight from ideology? What is the most empathic way to link seemingly disparate realities? An inv... posted on May 10 2017 (7,224 reads)

Burdick is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker whose first book, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Overseas Press Club award for environmental reporting. His most recent book, Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation, chronicles his quest to understand the nature of lived time. He recently joined Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist and author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, for a conversation on what we miss about the nature of time when we only think about it as a number. This conversation has been edited and condensed. To view the full... posted on May 23 2017 (18,009 reads)

evidence is overwhelming, it is irrefutable.  Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body health each and every day,” -- Matt Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. Calling the global sleep-loss epidemic “the greatest public health challenge we now face in the 21st century,” Walker examines the impact of sleep on human brain function in healthy and clinical populations.  Through his work at UC Berkeley, he has been at the forefront of sleep research. He has linked sleep deprivation to psychiatric ... posted on May 31 2017 (58,891 reads)

wisdom. Charlie: That's an important matter. On the surface I was being groomed in a very, how shall I say, rationalistic, and intellectual environment. And I distinguished between the cultivation of wisdom, and the cultivation of analytic skill and cognitive intelligence. My early years were definitely on the analytic, cognitive side. When I look back and think, well what was planting the seeds of an impulse to do inner work? a couple of things come to mind. One was my experience in nature. I went to a summer camp in northern Ontario for a number of my formative teenage years, and it was there that I got into the practice of taking fairly extensive canoe trips. And what I found w... posted on Jul 13 2017 (6,633 reads)

the other's need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless and faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need. One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not posse... posted on Jun 12 2017 (12,556 reads)

delicate roots of young saplings. The goal was to grow a forest to stave off erosion in the area. But as his trees grew bigger, Payeng says it dawned on him they were going to be increasingly difficult to protect. “The biggest threat was from men. They would have destroyed the forest for economic gain and the animals would be vulnerable again," he said in a documentary about his forest. He quietly continued planting trees on Majuli for 30 years until he was discovered by nature photographer Jitu Kalita in 2009. Jadav Payeng has been planting trees on Majuli since 1979. Production still courtesy of Will McMaster. “I was exploring a barren part o... posted on Jul 31 2017 (13,753 reads)

apartments and streams and the trees. And it was expansive. If you ever saw the movie Life is Beautiful, my mom was that person—in a way she believed we were in a play. We would get a cardboard box and just think, look at all the things we could do with this! We could make a house! We could make it into a train! I never felt a lack of anything. Audrey: What gives you the ability to be fearless? Arlene: My faith. My connection with the God I am inside of me. Whether it is my Buddha nature or God, or that Life Force. Ameeta: Are you a meditator? Arlene: I am. I could meditate far more than I do. It was funny, the other day a girlfriend asked me how much time I spend practic... posted on Jul 11 2017 (7,540 reads)

of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving towards any goal. The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life. We may take a pause from our ongoing responsibilities by sitting down to meditate. We may pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical. We may pause in a conversation, letting go of what we’re about to say, in order to genuinely listen and be with the other person. We may pause when we feel sudden... posted on Jul 16 2017 (25,842 reads)

GREENE uses her experience of planting seeds to discuss the idea of not expecting anything from the work we do. LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN In my Educational Psychology class, I learned about delayed gratification, the ability to wait for a desired result, to postpone an immediate reward for a greater one later. A study of preschool children had been conducted to determine their capacity for delayed gratification. Each student was offered one marshmallow now with the promise of another marshmallow as well if able to wait fifteen minutes without eating the first one. Some gobbled up the marshmallow immediately, others struggled and finally succumbed before the time was up, ... posted on Jul 22 2017 (10,328 reads)

work in the true temper, patient and accurate in trial, not rushing to conclusions, feeling there is a mystery, not eager to call it by name, till they can know it as a reality: such may learn, such may teach. […] The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open. Complement this fragment of Fuller’s wholly delectable Summer on the Lakes with nineteen-year-old Sylvia Plath on finding transcendence in nature and Diane Ackerman’s secular prayer, then revisit Fuller’s paragon of constructive criticism to the young Thoreau. ... posted on Aug 4 2017 (7,858 reads)

as I think back to the scene, I came to realize that Old Uncle and I shared space, and connected through our spirit. In the midst of an environment that was filled with greed and competition, Old Uncle, a humble tricycle driver guided me to see the beauty of humanity.  Connecting Stories, Pain Becomes Medicine             Sharing makes us more human; becoming more human leads us towards the compassion that is inherent in our nature. Being a ServiceSpace summer intern in these past months, I have been guided into a circle of genuine friends and mentors. It is a space that holds people from different walks of life, and some... posted on Aug 13 2017 (11,555 reads)

economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products. The Indian philosopher and economist J. C. Kumarappa sums the matter up as follows: If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges h... posted on Mar 3 2018 (17,777 reads)

enough. I continued touring the next year, one month in America and another in Europe, and so there was again more money. Then in the year 2000, I started the school with seven students. I rented a house and brought together these girls who wanted to become nuns or wanted to study and would otherwise not have had the chance. And I hired a teacher. At times, I gave lessons myself because I at least know how to teach A B C D—very basic things. I started with that, but then, as is human nature, the more we get, the more we want. I wanted to educate more kids. I couldn't afford to go out and look for them, so I just spread the word around a bit here and there. That was good enough... posted on Nov 20 2017 (10,532 reads)

the southern hemisphere, the night of June 20 is the longest night of the year, marking the arrival of winter. Welcoming the cold as a gift is part of being one with nature and its cycles… Recently we experienced the longest night of the year. The fact might have gone unnoticed–after all, the difference was a matter of seconds. But we all felt the coming of the cold, on time, like a boyfriend arriving for an unbreakable date. Few celebrated, because its arrival officially ends the sweetness of summer and heralds times of hardship and rigor. Cold is an absence, an absence of heat, and yet it feels like a presence…Photo: Jörg Peter/Pixabay... posted on Nov 16 2017 (14,649 reads)