severed, replaced with the diffuse, generic relationships of the market economy. Bereft of a full complement of personal relationships, the self that is lodged in such a world feels out of place, lost and never quite at home. When I am in relationship to the faces I see throughout my day, when I know them and they know me, I know myself as well. I belong. All the more when I am in living relationship to the animals, plants, and earth around me, feeding me, clothing me, housing me. When nature becomes instead a spectacle or an inconvenience, when my daily interactions are with strangers or acquaintances whose important stories are unknown to me ; when my human, bodily needs are met t... posted on Apr 7 2018 (23,623 reads)

exploration of themes, colors, techniques, materials, or styles. Others are recording observations of places, people, animals, and events. Perhaps we simply want to decorate space or capture beauty. Maybe we're expressing dreams, exorcising inner demons, evoking emotions, moving toward healing. We might be attempting to make visible what's spiritually invisible and to understand our place in the world. If we're deeply disturbed by issues of a social, political, and/or economic nature, the challenge of our art could be to exhort public action. Detail of "Red Disaster" (1963), by Andy Warhol. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Museum of Fine... posted on Mar 16 2018 (7,815 reads)

Though my prayer and meditation keep my heart open to seeing the passage of time and seasons with appreciative eyes, mostly I just want the cold days to be over. As the earth begins to thaw, we often want the process to hurry up.  I long for bright flowers blowing in a spring breeze and warm summer evenings on the porch. While impatience with winter is only human, I pause and remember the need to move slowly through this time of year.  If we rush through the change in seasons in nature and in our lives, we will find ourselves missing that edge between winter and spring with its important lessons to teach. What is the natural purpose and symbolism in this time of thawing?&n... posted on Mar 25 2021 (13,039 reads)

economics is based upon the Buddhist concept of interdependence among all people and between people and the Earth. Because we’re all interdependent, our well-being is interconnected. Happiness comes from living a meaningful life and from minimizing suffering—not just our own, but the suffering of others, as well. The wonderful thing is that neuroscientists have verified that when people help others, theyfeel better. They feel happier. They’re also healthier. Being in nature, interacting with nature, has the same positive effects. In Buddhist economics, we say to people who are very rich, use your wealth to help others, to reduce the suffering of people and of t... posted on Jun 22 2018 (9,085 reads)

but with a prayer. He was a human whose doing and rationalization of non-violence was far exceeded by his being of it. Gandhi was deeply influenced by the Jaina philosophy and the Bhagvad Gita, as he was brought up in a part of the world that was steeped in these traditions. His own understanding on non-violence was quite sophisticated. He felt that non-violence in action was superficial, and that the real problem was violence in the mind that arises by not understanding one’s own nature. Known for being provocative at times, Gandhi would exhort those with a superficial understanding of this doctrine to adopt violence instead and go shed their blood in a war. After they had ... posted on Jun 18 2018 (13,550 reads)

in the slackwaters, cleansing flows. Floods dissipate in the ponds; wildfires hiss out in wet meadows. Wetlands capture and store spring rain and snowmelt, releasing water in delayed pulses that sustain crops through the dry summer. A report released by a consulting firm in 2011 estimated that restoring beavers to a single river basin, Utah’s Escalante, would provide tens of millions of dollars in benefits each year.2 Although you can argue with the wisdom of slapping a dollar value on nature, there’s no denying that these are some seriously important critters. To society, though, beavers still appear more menacing than munificent. In 2013 I lived with my partner, Elise, in... posted on Aug 15 2018 (8,017 reads)

and science must come together. Einstein said that science without religion is blind, and that religion without science is lame. And that’s Einstein! Matter without spirit is dead matter. And without matter, spirit is useless. So how can we change education, to incorporate these ideas? Children go to school day, after day, after day. They are almost brainwashed. Conditioned. The answer is to de-condition our minds: the process of unlearning through experience, through seeing nature and people with fresh spontaneous eyes. Fall in love every day. Fall in love with your husband, your wife, your mother, your trees, your land, your soil, whatever, every day! The freshness is m... posted on Sep 11 2018 (9,868 reads)

story. In one recent study, white participants watched brief video clips that elicited either moral elevation, humor, or neither. Elevation videos included a man giving “free hugs” to people on the street or musicians from all over the world simultaneously playing the same song, while humor videos involved comedy troupes either walking an “invisible dog” down the street or reenacting Ghostbusters in a public library. (The “neither” video just featured a nature scene.) Afterwards, participants filled out questionnaires about their emotions and sense of common humanity, and participated in a test of implicit bias toward different groups of people. W... posted on Aug 28 2018 (10,265 reads)

see my life clearly, I felt that I'd been treating it very superficially, and that after this experience, I really needed to inquire more deeply into what it is to be a human being, what the potential of a human being might be. And so I resigned my job, and I stumbled across yoga, and I found I was naturally very adept at yoga. I pursued it, enjoyed it, and it helped me gain trust in myself and the world again. At the same time, I began to look more closely at a long-held interest in the nature of mind, particularly as described in Buddhist practice. And this is the reclining Buddha of my grandfather, which I saw as a child in our home, and which always I wanted to have near me, and t... posted on Sep 7 2018 (6,761 reads)

make them feel better. Create ‘breathing breaks’ where all they do is take 10 deep breaths. Even better, do it with them! Have them visualise what they want. Teach them to visualise, to use the power of their mind, to imagine how they want a situation to be, and that being positive is always the better option. Show them the benefit of computers, phones, but at the same time, have them use those to be creative, to learn something new, to listen to music, to watch an amazing nature video, to see another aspect of the planet. Have technology become something they use to develop their inner world, not keep them away from connecting to the most incredible part of themselves.... posted on Oct 15 2018 (40,399 reads)

do I become a perfect instrument. Live In the Soul and Be Guided By It Dr. V firmly believes that action motivated by love exerts a force and organizing power of its own. He makes the cultivation of unconditional compassion for all beings a daily goal—a Dalai Lama-esque endeavor not always easy to pull off. In an early journal entry, he detailed the petty dynamics that can hijack a doctor’s best intentions, before diving into a stream-of-consciousness meditation on the nature of the mind: You feel drawn to a patient because he’s from your village, known to you, and then you try to do your best for him. But at times, a patient is aggressive and demands some ... posted on Oct 1 2018 (9,788 reads)

that sedates and lies to the dying, ultimately defrauding them of the possibility of a good death. Stephen’s influences are diverse, from farming to Harvard Divinity School to talking with men’s groups, not to mention many years spent leading the palliative care team at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. In some ways, he is a radical, a man deeply at odds with many of the values of modernity. He argues that we have lost touch with our ancestry, with the stories that connect us to nature and those who have come before us. He decries the excessive emphasis on the personal that characterises modern culture, pointing to the deeper cycles of life and death, growth and decay, that u... posted on Oct 19 2018 (12,407 reads)

route by slashing with their machetes here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would follow back when they had left me alone with my destiny. Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries, among half-fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and the urgency of my mission. Through this dangero... posted on Nov 2 2018 (7,380 reads)

planets or the moon. Even in the day we do not experience the sun in any immediate or meaningful manner. Summer and winter are the same inside the mall. Ours is a world of highways, parking lots, shopping centers. We read books written with a strangely contrived alphabet. We no longer read the book of the universe. Nor do we coordinate our world of human meaning with the meaning of our surroundings. We have disengaged from that profound interaction with our environment inherent in our very nature. Our children do not learn how to read the Great Book of Nature or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water comes from or ... posted on Nov 21 2018 (5,653 reads)

because you are, you are because I am. It implies that we find our humanity in each other. Ubuntu literally means a person is a person through other persons. This heartfelt tradition concentrates on the irrevocable connectedness that exists between people. Based on this fundamental commitment to human kinship, there is no word for orphan in the African continent, because each tribe automatically assumes a lost child as part of its larger family. At work here is the belief that in our very nature, we rely on each other to grow. As quarks combine to form protons and neutrons, which then form atoms, which then form molecules, individuals innately form families, which then form tribes, whi... posted on Dec 13 2018 (11,274 reads)

We have a question from Gayathri in India. She asks: "Some of your stories almost sound like you have been divinely protected and guided. Do you feel that that's true? What is your conception of the divine? Do you have any advice on how we can better align ourselves with, and listen to intuition, the divine heart, wisdom, whatever one would call it?” Scilla: I do very much believe in a higher intelligence. I can see it all around me in the way the abundance of nature comes about in each season.  I call on this higher intelligence in the form of a Chinese goddess of compassion called Kwan-Yin. She's been my invisible mentor for many years. W... posted on Feb 15 2019 (7,691 reads)

in the world. After some resistance, they learned how to give their full listening attention to one another and they reported: “What you taught us enables us now to resolve in 15 minutes what previously would have taken four hours of argument, and still not been agreed!” So, real listening is a key skill in transforming conflicts. Interconnectedness is the longing to nurture and protect our planet and her resources. The arrogant celebration of ‘man’s conquest of nature’ is being replaced by the realization that we need to respect, safeguard, and help regenerate the planetary life of which we are a part. This is evident in the refusal of millennials... posted on Dec 21 2018 (8,432 reads)

think it’s enough to keep a person afloat. MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Let’s talk about your last couple of books. Which also are an insight into you at this stage in your life. And then I’d love for you to read some poems. MS. OLIVER: OK. MS. TIPPETT: You have said that you were so captivated. That you were — I don’t know if you’ve said this that way, but it seems to me you’ve kind of written about being so captivated by the world of nature that you were less open to the world of humans. MS. OLIVER: Yes. MS. TIPPETT: And that as you’ve grown older, as you’ve gone through life, what did you say — y... posted on Jan 18 2019 (46,004 reads)

And she wept and wept, all in the container of the community, in the presence of witnesses, along side of others deep in the shedding of their grief. When it was over, she shone like a star and she realized how wrong the stories were about these pieces of who she is. Grief is a powerful solvent, capable of softening the hardest of places in our hearts. To truly weep for ourselves and those places of shame, invites the first soothing waters of healing. Grieving, by its very nature, confirms worth. I am worth crying over: My losses matter. I can still feel the grace that came when I truly allowed myself to grieve all my losses connected to a life filled with shame. Pesha ... posted on Oct 22 2023 (49,372 reads)

The problem with these secondary satisfactions is that we can never get enough of them. We always want more. But once we find our primary satisfactions, we don’t want much else. Though primary satisfactions are rare in our culture, we do experience them. We can remember what that felt like and let our longing for that state become our compass, telling us what direction we need to go to get back to those satisfactions. We can find them through our friendships, by spending time in nature, by risking being vulnerable with someone we trust. McKee: A minute ago you spoke of the “soul.” How do you define that word? Weller: I don’t use soul&nbs... posted on Feb 26 2019 (61,605 reads)