has become a hot topic in recent years. Celebrities from Oprah to James Taylorto Ariana Huffington have promoted an “attitude of gratitude,” and gratitude journals, hashtags, and challenges have become immensely popular. Much of this enthusiasm has been fueled by research linking gratitude to happiness, health, and stronger relationships. Yet there has been a backlash. Some critics and skeptics have charged that gratitude breeds self-satisfaction and acceptance of the status quo. Several articles, including a New York Times essay by journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, have recen... posted on Aug 30 2017 (10,100 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 (10,316 reads)

Remberance of Peace  Several years ago, I traveled for two days on planes, trains and in a tiny car to sit at a Buddhist retreat in the French country side.  The hope was to discover what the Buddha could teach me about how to be alive in the present moment and experience peace. This was the peace I remembered as a child while standing by my mother’s side in the kitchen where we made peanut brittle together, canned tomatoes and washed dishes. It was the peace I felt sitting next to her in church.  It was the peace many others felt too as they would sit with her at the kitchen table, drinking endless cups of coffee as she would laugh and talk with visitors—anyo... posted on Jul 26 2017 (17,360 reads)

is a time finally away from bosses and schedules, stress and assignments. Yet, once retired, many miss the sense of purpose and community their jobs provided. Where retirement once called to mind visions of rocking chairs and mid-day snoozes, many in the Baby Boomer generation are shaking things up, turning their focus in retirement to encore careers and volunteerism. In this Spotlight on Seniors Who are Changing the World, we take a look at some extraordinary individuals who have used their 'retirement' as an opportunity to give back to the world and their communities in remarkable ways, finding along the path both passion and purpose in their golden years. From Me... posted on Aug 14 2017 (14,560 reads)

the teachers in my life, there is one person whose name I don’t know, nor do I know where he is today. I first encountered “Old Uncle”, (this is how I addressed him in Chinese) a decade ago when I was in elementary school in China. He sometimes took me to school in his tricycle. During those morning rides, while riding the tricycle with full strength, ensuring that I would not be late for school, Old Uncle told me about his life. His words still bring up tears as well as smiles when I contemplate them ten years later. Old Uncle’s wife had passed away when their two children were still young. He made a living by riding tricycles, and raised the children o... posted on Aug 13 2017 (11,542 reads)

When we have a family reunion, we all tell stories about our own childhood, and everybody always listens to everybody else’s stories — says, “Did you grow up in the same family as I did?” MS. TIPPETT: Right. There are five versions of every story. DR. VAN DER KOLK: Yeah. There’s all these very, very different versions, and they barely ever overlap. So, people create their own realities in a way. What is so extraordinary about trauma, is that these images or sounds or physical sensations don’t change over time. So people who have been molested as kids continue to see the wallpaper of the room in which they were molested. Or when they exami... posted on Oct 20 2017 (66,880 reads)

9, 2015 I first heard of Vaea Marx from John Toki. Vaea is an old family friend of the Toki family. John’s parents founded Leslie Ceramics Supply in Berkeley in 1946. Their business was built on integrity and a deep spirit of support for both aspiring and established artists who came into their shop, first as customers and then, quite often, as friends.        John told me stories of Vaea and Peter Voulkos, both friends of the Tokis, who worked closely together for decades. Then one day artist Ann Weber handed me a catalog saying, “Here’s an artist you really should interview. He’s been around for a long time and should get more atten... posted on Jan 31 2018 (20 reads)

discoveries happen thanks to a fluke. It’s how I ran across a Japanese practice of stone appreciation called suiseki. I’d arrived at the Oakland Museum in order to plan a studio tour for the Art Guild. As time passed I wondered where the person I was to meet could be. Finally, I called her. Turned out I was a day early. “But listen,” she said, “there’s a great exhibit in the main hall. Look for the rocks.”       Did she say “rocks”?       She did.       I like rocks. (Who doesn’t?) So I decided to follow her advice.       The Oakland Mus... posted on Dec 4 2017 (26,314 reads)

the past ten months I have chaired and co-facilitated MIT’s IDEAS China program—a ten month innovation journey for a group of 30 or so senior Chinese business leaders. This year the IDEAS China program enrolled executives of a major state-owned Chinese bank. One goal of this team was to reinvent the future of their organization in the face of big data and other related disruptive changes, which provided me with a little more exposure to that aspect of the world economy. For example, Jack Ma, the visionary founder of Alibaba, says that “In five years, we anticipate that the human era will move from the information technology era to the data technology era.” But... posted on Oct 4 2017 (10,432 reads)

March 29, 2017, the very unique C3 A/C Coach on the Panchavati Express observed its 10th anniversary. More than a thousand passengers who regularly travel on this superfast train (that runs between Mumbai and Manmad in Nashik district) participated enthusiastically in the celebrations, with 90 passengers making the anniversary trip. The elated railway officials also pitched in by treating the passengers to chocolate cake. The C3 A/C coach, or the ‘Adarsh’ coach as it has been aptly name, allows entry only to monthly season ticket (MST) holders. What makes it unique is the fact that all of its passengers follow a voluntary code of conduct that has ensured it a place in the L... posted on Dec 17 2017 (10,377 reads)

Lessons, by Tracy Cochran November 27, 2015 Vincent Van Gogh, The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888, oil, on canvas (Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) One morning last October, I experienced a moment of grace. It happened as I was walking my black Labrador retriever, Shadow, on one of those warm autumn days when everything looks edged in gold. But I was shuffling along like a waif in a storm because I had just learned that a project I had counted on had fallen through. Shadow staged a sit-down strike when we came to a little lake. Head high, back straight, she refused to budge until she had a chance to explore the shore. So I stood and waited. A pair of white swans and a d... posted on Oct 9 2017 (9,337 reads)

When we have a family reunion, we all tell stories about our own childhood, and everybody always listens to everybody else’s stories — says, “Did you grow up in the same family as I did?” MS. TIPPETT: Right. There are five versions of every story. DR. VAN DER KOLK: Yeah. There’s all these very, very different versions, and they barely ever overlap. So, people create their own realities in a way. What is so extraordinary about trauma, is that these images or sounds or physical sensations don’t change over time. So people who have been molested as kids continue to see the wallpaper of the room in which they were molested. Or when they exami... posted on Oct 20 2017 (1,420 reads)

one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” wrote the thirty-year-old Nietzsche. “The true and durable path into and through experience,” Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney counseled the young more than a century later in his magnificent commencement address, “involves being true … to your own solitude, true to your own secret knowledge.” Every generation believes that it must battle unprecedented pressures of conformity; that it must fight harder than any previous generation to protect that secret knowledge from which our integrity of selfhood springs. Some of this belie... posted on Jan 8 2018 (11,133 reads)

was underway. They were in town for a weekend showing at Davies Symphony Hall of Reggio’s Qatsi Trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. Phillip Glass, along with his ensemble, would be performing the music he had composed for the films.  Koyaanisqatsi left a deep impression on me when I’d first seen it in 1983, as did Powaqqatsi, which came out five years later. This full-length, commercial film consists entirely of a stream of images accompanied by music and was revolutionary at the time. Glass’ music and the film’s dramatic imagery are powerful in themselves, but it’s what they are saying and how it corre... posted on Oct 25 2017 (11,393 reads)

lead the climb instead of this other presence inside you. When you’re climbing there’s always lots of excuse and temptation at the periphery to panic. The more experienced you are as a climber, the less you panic, and the more panic-stricken the circumstances become, the more centred you actually are. So you could say that’s very close to the dynamics of beauty that occur in poetry when you are trying to find the central image that will hold all the thousands of besieging images at the periphery together. It’s what Coleridge and Keats called “The Primary Imagination.” The ability to think up new things is only the secondary imagination, but the primar... posted on May 23 2018 (21,991 reads)

receiving his doctorate in neuroscience in 2011, artist Greg Dunn made an unconventional decision: to dedicate himself to his art. A long time observer of human consciousness, his images of the human brain have been displayed in museums all over the United States, including the Franklin Institute. He recently spoke with the Garrison Institute about his art, philosophy of the mind, and why he compares his work to that of Zen artists. How did you get started as a professional artist? My original plan was to go the academic route. Then I started painting the first year into my neuroscience degree. At some point, I realized that I just wasn’t producing anything in the... posted on May 7 2018 (11,697 reads)

April, 1951. India was burning with a communist revolution where the landless had erupted violently against centuries of exploitation by landlords. The communist leaders in Telangana had been arrested by the government and were in jail. On this day, they were surprised to hear that someone had come to see them. Their elderly visitor was a strange skinny man with a beard, who was interested in their well-being. He had come a long way to talk to them and challenge their views on communism. He listened deeply to what had turned them onto communism, and then presented his views with so much love that something shifted within these young men, who then agreed to create space for nonviolent reso... posted on Jun 18 2018 (13,530 reads)

to me as the fresh cold alpine wind off the slopes I loved to ski: I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, but I give myself to it.   I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? I felt a sense of release, as if I had been let out of a cage I had not known I was in. Rilke’s images lent some pattern, even meaning, to a life I thought had failed in its spiritual vocation. Once I had imagined that my journey would be like the Pilgrim’s Progress, where each adventure b... posted on Jun 25 2018 (10,723 reads)

note: I met José Juan in 2013. I had just returned to Spain from India and was participating in a 21-Day Kindness Challenge. During a 21 day period 5000 people from all over the world performed an act of kindness every day, totalling almost 11,000 transformative actions! The first day of the challenge I decided to buy a cake and gift it to someone random on the street. I wanted it to be anonymous so I needed to enlist a partner in kindness. The first person I met was José Juan! He gave away the cake and since then we have been connected in many adventures of service and generosity, including community experiments like Awakin Circles (which we started in his ... posted on Sep 2 2018 (15,178 reads)

are lots of ways to consider how what we do impacts the people around us, both right away and in the future. Perhaps the most common is the idea of the “footprint” we leave behind. Me, I prefer the image of a boat’s wake and used it for years in my conversations with the teenagers I taught. Among the things I like about the wake image is that a wake is strongest when it’s new and close, and it comes in contact with lots of things as time passes. In this way it is significant both right away AND in the future, the form of significance just being different. Understanding this, I think, helps people become more mindful of their actions, their words, and th... posted on Dec 15 2018 (7,624 reads)