from Elegant Simplicity by Satish Kumar, New Society Publishers, 2019 Elegant simplicity can only be built on the firm foun­dation of right relationships. Our crises-mental, personal, social, economic, environmental, political, cultural, and re­ligious -- have their origin in disconnection and separation. The moment we see that all things are connected, that we are all related, that everything depends on everything else, we start to see solutions. Why do we have crises between Palestine and Israel, between Sunni and Shia, between America and Russia, India and Pakistan, Christians and Muslims? Because we see ourselves as being separate from others. When all our inter... posted on Apr 4 2019 (7,588 reads)

as $24,000/year for a family of four. When children come from an environment with such scarcity, there is often a residue of existential fear. Neighborhoods of poverty are harsh places to grow up, even if a child’s family is warm and loving. Neighborhoods of poverty are places where there’s a much higher incidence of gun violence; drug and alcohol addiction; homelessness; resource scarcity; and a basic lack of child-friendly, safe places for kids to play, green parks to enjoy nature, and wholesome food. Counteracting the effect of systemic, intergenerational poverty is a huge task. The mindful awareness, gratitude building, and love and kindness exercises we do as an integ... posted on Mar 11 2019 (6,231 reads)

not thinking but a vague symbol indicating a large domain or an assembly of notions which may even contain their negations. Suffice to think what God, truth, justice, honesty, communism, fascism, and so on mean in different human societies to see that much of our trouble lies in the fact that we confuse speaking with thinking. Thinking is a much wider function which contains many forms of possible expression. Speech is a serial event, as words come one after the other in time and by their nature cannot communicate the thought which may contain an immense number of aspects. There is always more than one way of expressing a thought. Most irate discussions and differences between humans a... posted on Apr 29 2019 (4,766 reads)

owner, and Marion. By this stage we were a couple of years in and I was in my second facility. And I finally had enough space to put in a second hand commercial dryer at a really good price. So I installed that and had a bunch of things I was going to manufacture like kale chips and Buckinis as well as gubinge. I figured, okay if I could dry the gubinge, dehydrate it, then we could commercialise it as a shelf stable whole food powder high in natural vitamin C and all the other goodies that nature bundles together. So that’s what we did. We funded the harvest and started small, working with Bruno and Marion to create the product, gubinge powder, and co-brand it with our brand and t... posted on May 19 2019 (5,611 reads)

paid; a young girl who needed braces for her teeth, a friend, down on his luck, who needed a car and a place to stay. And while Mary’s generosity to others is its own legacy, what I want to emphasize here is her strength, for more than anything, Mary Oliver was courageous. We now know, through some of the later poems, a few of the details about the abuse she endured as a child, and we also know that she used her craft to transform not only her own suffering, but also the heartbreaking nature of the world—the fact, say, that everything and everyone is going to die—into a thing of beauty. Think of “Night and The River;” think of the snapping turtle she found a... posted on May 26 2019 (32,092 reads)

Atwood describes The Gift, by Lewis Hyde, as ‘a book about the core nature of what it is that artists do, and also about the relation of these activities to our overwhelmingly commercial society.’ Bill Viola has called it ‘the best book I have read on what it means to be an artist in today’s economic world.’ Robin McKenna is the writer, director and producer of a new feature-length documentary inspired by Hyde’s bestseller. Her film, GIFT, takes us to settings as varied as the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, a potlatch ceremony in British Columbia, and an art museum in Melbourne, to explore some contemporary ways of being wher... posted on May 23 2019 (5,533 reads)

yawning and expressionless. The atmosphere, to his surprise, wasn’t what one would expect of an anarchist militia camp: The dominant impression was that of boredom. Boredom and sleep. The power of concentration of these men seemed exhausted. I almost wished for a sign of hostility, as a human contact. But … they gazed at me without any reaction, as if they were looking at a Chinese fish in an aquarium. (One has to wonder whether that desire for contact, whatever its nature or cost, might be a universality of the human condition — the same impulse that drives trolls to spew the venom of hostility as a desperate antidote to their own apathy and existential bo... posted on Jul 7 2019 (7,777 reads)

What do you say? How do you respond to that? Mr. Ricard: Well, clearly, by first saying, yes, outer circumstances are important; I should do whatever I can. But I should certainly see that at the root of all that, there are inner circumstances, inner conditions. What are they? Well, just look at you. If I say, “OK, come, we’ll spend a weekend cultivating jealousy,” who is going to go for that? We all know that, even say, “Well, that’s part of human nature,” but we are not interested in cultivating more jealousy, neither for hatred, neither for arrogance. Those will be much better off if they didn’t have such a grip on our mind. There... posted on Jun 19 2019 (9,047 reads)

believers in forgiveness. And that gives them the strength to do what they have to do.    RW:  You mean the killer as well as the victim?   RK:  Both. They believe deeply and I understand. They have to have something to hang onto because what's happened is so horrific. But not many of the victim's mothers or family members are willing to meet with the guy in prison. Many still want the guy to be killed. I'm not surprised. It's against the law of nature, the old people go first and then... Things got turned around here. Backwards. But for some reason, I have good boundaries. I can go into that kind of stuff and I'm not scared.   ... posted on Jun 26 2019 (3,844 reads)

to say, I was in a bit of a panic. Nobody answered the phone at my Mom and Dad’s house and as my sister pointed out, her phone was out of minutes. I debated calling my Grandmother or my Uncle in Vermont but decided against it as I figured if they didn’t know anything, they would end up being as panicked as I was. After what could have been ten minutes or an hour, I finally got in touch with my father and I got the information as to what happened. True to the optimistic nature of my family, my Dad told me that everything was fine and there was no need to worry. One thing is very clear about what my family refers to as “The Incident”, due to the quick ... posted on Jun 29 2019 (9,444 reads)

begin to express concern about their weight or body shape, with 40-60 percent of elementary school girls being worried about their weight or about becoming too fat. Moreover, over 50 percent of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys employ unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives. Rachael witnessed several of her peers suffer from eating disorders and poor body image due to the “aesthetic nature” of sports like figure skating. "Unfortunately, being in the spotlight, and when you're getting judged based on how you look in an arena full of 18,000 people and nine judges, it... posted on Jul 1 2019 (4,570 reads)

eccentricities. We can offer compassion and tenderness toward that which is challenging. We can practice beholding rather than belittling, befriending rather than begrudging. We can hold ourselves as we want to be held, as we were once held, and as we can sometimes feel ourselves held in the largest embrace of felt-belonging and Oneness. One way to initiate ourselves into the practice of befriending is to explore and come to know ourselves as if beholding an exquisite newborn. Our essential nature is so much more available to us in the state of infancy. If we can come to treat ourselves with the unconditional tenderness and cherishing that we bring to a new life, we can know ourselves an... posted on Jul 28 2019 (9,054 reads)

are in effect offering a blank check of our lives. This may lead us in directions we had never dreamed of, to new challenges and new ways of living adventurously.” On the other hand, we might reject that we have responsibility for violence. This could be based on all kinds of ideas. Here’s an incomplete list: Believing we humans are too small to know what’s right and so shouldn’t try to change things. (Uncertainty leading to faith in the status quo.) Faith that nature or the divine will help solve society’s problems without us having to engage. (Faith-based determinism/fatalism.) Believing that trying to change things is impossible or too difficult ... posted on Aug 5 2019 (6,701 reads)

a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader,” young Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother as she reflected on her first poem. What is true of a poem is true of any work of art: Art transforms us not with what it contains but with what it creates in us — the constellation of interpretations, revelations, and emotional truths illuminated — which, of course, is why the rise of the term “content” to describe creative output online has been one of the most corrosive developments in contemporary culture. A poem — or an essay, or a painting, or a song — is not its “content”; it trans... posted on Sep 9 2019 (5,028 reads)

in this world for many years to come. What are some of the common challenges associated with your work? Time! Because people lead busy lives, we try to limit the amount of time that we spend with each person that we feature in our films. We typically spend one day filming, during which we need to capture a conversation in order to create the narrative of the story, as well as gather visual imagery to complement – all while making sure that we are being authentic and true to the nature and character of that specific person. We constantly remind ourselves that it is just a brief toe-dip into the life of that person, just an intimate moment of sharing, and we do what we can wit... posted on Sep 17 2019 (11,995 reads)

to tell you that this link is very real. Emotions, you will learn, can and do have a direct physical effect on the human heart.  But before we get into this, let's talk a bit about the metaphorical heart. The symbolism of the emotional heart endures even today. If we ask people which image they most associate with love, there's no question that the Valentine heart would the top the list. The heart shape, called a cardioid, is common in nature. It's found in the leaves, flowers and seeds of many plants, including silphium, which was used for birth control in the Middle Ages and perhaps is the reason why the he... posted on Nov 11 2019 (19,294 reads)

mouth. I wondered what in the world he’d brought back and discovered the wet ball of fur was a very young bunny. Jethro continued to make direct eye contact with me as if he were saying, “Do something.” I picked up the bunny, placed her in a box, gave her water and celery, and figured she wouldn’t survive the night, despite our efforts to keep her alive. I was wrong. Jethro remained by her side and refused walks and meals until I pulled him away so he could heed nature’s call. When I eventually released the bunny, Jethro followed her trail and continued to do so for months. Over the years Jethro approached rabbits as if they should be his friends, bu... posted on Nov 26 2019 (6,739 reads)

away” Calgon style, then I need not only these steady and reliable companions on my spiritual journey, but also more free-style forms of prayer and practice: the spontaneous gladness arising from a variety of experiences and places and things and people. As expressed in a thousand ways in the Brussats’ book Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, the Spirit resides not only in formal religious rituals and spiritual practices, but in everyday life — nature, a cat’s eyes, a beautiful painting, a colorful salad, a lover’s embrace, a new place. This means that I can Spirit Bathe anywhere, anytime. I can be in my kitchen or kneeling over ... posted on Dec 6 2019 (7,325 reads)

experience makes its appearance only when it is being said,” wrote Hannah Arendt in reflecting on how language confers reality upon existence. “And unless it is said it is, so to speak, non-existent.” But if an experience is spoken yet unheard, half of its reality is severed and a certain essential harmony is breached. The great physicist David Bohm knew this: “If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature,” he wrote in his excellent and timely treatise on the paradox of communication, “we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or othe... posted on Jan 9 2020 (30,445 reads)

of the world, it’s really like winning the lottery. JT: The basic message of our book is that bad is stronger than good, but good can prevail. We end the book very optimistically because we think that life has gotten so much better for the average person in the world in the last three centuries. It’s astonishing—we’re the luckiest people in history to be alive now. And things just keep getting better. We’re hopeful that as we understand our inner nature, this negativity effect, we can use our rational brain to override that when it gets in our way and can use it for positive purposes. The more we can get our rational brain involved in overridi... posted on Jan 17 2020 (15,902 reads)