How Do You Know If You Are Actually Humble?, by Tyrone Sgambati
have recently linked intellectual humility to a host of benefits: showing more persistence in the face of failure, holding less polarized beliefs and attitudes, and being received as warm and friendly by others. But what does it take to be intellectually humble—and how do you know if you already are? 

The old joke about humility—that “it’s my greatest quality”—speaks to the difficulty in knowing how humble you actually are. It’s a paradox: If you’re walking around thinking you’re humbler than most people, then chances are good that you’re not. For precisely that reason, a trait like humility presents sp... posted on Jul 24 2022 (4,466 reads)

Living Dying Man, by Barbara McAfee, Maren Showkeir
would have been Jamie Showkeir's 70th birthday. The music video and conversation below was inspired by his unflinching and curious walk with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). That walk ended on his 63rd birthday seven years ago today. The conversation below is between his beloved wife, Maren Showkeir, and his friend, Barbara McAfee. MAREN SHOWKEIR: I really love the way we can have these rich conversations about death. So many people tend to shy away from that topic. What led you to that place where talking about death feels both natural and interesting? BARBARA MCAFEE: I was 31 when my dad died in my arms from pancreatic cancer. I had a very short hospice ti... posted on Aug 16 2022 (6,485 reads)

Silent Drum: Tips for Rhythmic Meditation, by Christine Stevens
18, 2015 “Drumming may be the oldest form of active meditation known to humanity.” What could meditation and drumming possibly have in common? I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I heard world-famous sound healing expert Jill Purce say “The purpose of sound is silence.” First, both meditation and drumming help us get out of our heads and into our hearts. They just go about it in different ways. In meditation, placing our attention on the breath occupies the mind. In drumming, the rhythm becomes a mantra that captures our attention. You can’t drum while thinking. Both act as mind sweepers; to clear the mental space of worries and n... posted on Sep 6 2022 (4,085 reads)

Ikebana & The Jedi Model, by Mayuka Yamakazi
Mayuka Yamazaki, a high-level business executive, ikebana — the ancient Japanese art of floral creations — is not just about arranging flowers. It is about attuning to the wisdom and beauty of nature and enriching our experience of being human. As a master of the art, she explains that ikebana is a word derived from the verb ikeru (to bring alive) and hana (flowers), or combined, “letting flowers live.” For over 20 years, Mayuka has been letting flowers live, and most recently, she has brought this practice to help restore wholeness to schools, international organizations, communities, and most notably, corporations. As a young child in ... posted on Jan 10 2023 (2,176 reads)

June Jordan's Legacy of Solidarity & Love, by Sriram Shamasunder
Shamasundar (left) with June Jordan (right). Photo courtesy Sriram Shamasunder. I remember being a kid with shaky confidence. I entered the University of California, Berkeley, as a freshman, a child of Indian immigrants, keeping my head down and taking primarily science classes. To fill a humanities requirement, I meandered into a class called Poetry for the People, a course taught and conceived by June Jordan, the great poet and activist.  Even though I fulfilled the requirement in just one semester, I stayed in the class for two years, not so much because I thought I was a poet, but because June—as I later came to call her—made me feel that even a youn... posted on Feb 14 2023 (2,991 reads)

David Rothenberg: The Joy & Mystery of Interspecies Music Making , by David Rothenberg
from Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound, by David Rothenberg. Published by University of Chicago Press (May, 2019.)  Are you surprised there are nightingales in Berlin? They have flown thousands of miles to get here, up from Africa and over the sea like refugees of the air. They sing from wells of silence, their voices piercing the urban noise. Each has his chosen perch to come back to each year. We know they will return, and yet when they do arrive every song still seems a wonder. Of all the days to schedule a midnight concert in Berlin’s Treptower Park, we have somehow chosen May 9, the one night people descend upon this park in the... posted on Feb 21 2023 (2,644 reads)

What Can Music Do to Change a Destructive Story?, by Duncan Neilson
is the transcript of Duncan Neilson's talk delivered at TEDx Lewis&Clark College The spark of wonder. I’ve always trusted that to pull me into a project and to guide me through. Because I think it’s wonder that fires me up as a composer, and at the root of what I like to convey. But there was a time when that spark— and its sustaining power— almost went out. I went to a lecture. It was given by my uncle Ron Neilson. He’s a scientist. He had just received a Nobel Prize for his work. I was excited to go because he was going to discuss his work and why he had been given the award. The subject? Human-caused worldwide climat... posted on Feb 27 2023 (2,152 reads)

Young Forever: Why Balance Matters, by Mark Hyman, MD
FROM YOUNG FOREVER BY MARK HYMAN, MD. COPYRIGHT © 2023 BY MARK HYMAN, MD. USED WITH PERMISSION OF LITTLE, BROWN SPARK, AN IMPRINT OF LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. NEW YORK, NY.  Those who disobey the laws of Heaven and Earth have a lifetime of calamities, while those who follow the laws remain free from dangerous illness. —Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine) How many chemical reactions happen every second in the human body? A million? A trillion? Nope. Thirty-seven billion billion. That’s twenty-seven zeros! It is beyond our minds’ ability to comprehend the complexities of the human organism. This magical ... posted on Mar 2 2023 (4,422 reads)

The Hidden Teachings on Life and Death, by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus (2022) by Neil Douglas-Klotz. For a longer excerpt and more information, please see: www.revelationsofthearamaicjesus.com Why consider Jesus’ sayings in this language, much less use them in prayer or meditation? Language determines our way viewing the world. Languages have different words for the same thing, but also unique words that cannot be put into words in another language. In ancient languages, these unique expressions were all about the way people perceived their relationships to nature, other human beings, and Reality itself (a reality often translated “God”). Aramaic offers a way of looking at life as an inter... posted on Mar 22 2023 (3,787 reads)

Caring for the Vulnerable: A Gateway to Our Deepest Brain States, by Alison Gopnik, Aeon
often fancy themselves quite extraordinary specimens in the animal kingdom. But while most recent research undermines our centuries-long claims of human exceptionalism, there are some ways in which we are quite unique – especially when it comes to childhood and childcare. Indeed, even when compared with our closest primate relatives, humans spend a truly inordinate amount of time – roughly 15 years at the beginning and the end of the lifespan – as vulnerable creatures, not reproducing, and largely dependent on others. In this Aeon Original animation, Alison Gopnik, a writer and a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of Calif... posted on Mar 26 2023 (2,890 reads)

Vivek Murthy: To Be a Healer, by On Being
follows is the syndicated transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett and Vivek Murthy. You can listen to the audio recording of the interview here.  Krista Tippett:We need a modicum of vitality for what simply being alive in this time asks of us. And we’re in an enduringly tender place. The mental health crisis that is invoked all around, especially as we look to the young, is one manifestation of the gravity of the post-2020 world that each of us is carrying. Even as we try to power through in the face of ungrieved losses and unnerving change. I’m longing for us to find ways to name and honor this more openly. Because it is showing up sideways in our... posted on Apr 14 2023 (4,018 reads)

When Savoring a Pleasant Moment Is a Radical Act, by Ari Honarvar
9, 2020 As we grapple with the first global pandemic lockdown of our lifetime, our daily routines have been upended, and it’s difficult to keep up with new changes. Many of us are overwhelmed by the precarious nature of our health, our loved ones’ well-being, and our financial security. But in the midst of uncertainty and fear, inspiring videos are emerging from the countries most affected by coronavirus—Iranian doctors and nurses dancing in hospitals and Italian residents singing from their balconies. This footage not only uplifts the spirit of those in close proximity, it also brightens the mood of people watching from around the world.  ... posted on Apr 18 2023 (26,035 reads)

Unpacking a Gift from 21 Years Ago, by Guri Mehta
I was cleaning out my dresser, I found a small red, blue, and green hand-woven pouch, with a silver zipper on top. Ms. Macias, an English teacher I had in my Senior year of high school had given it to me fifteen years before I ever visited Guatemala, the country in which it was made. I remember sitting near Ms. Macias’ desk every day to the right side of the classroom, near my best friend Tia. We would both bombard her with questions about life and all that is important to a teenager. She would willingly engage in many conversations with us. One day she took out this little woven bag from her desk, walked over to my desk and asked if I liked it. I told her it was beautiful. ... posted on Dec 22 2014 (22,812 reads)

Make Good Art, by Neil Gaiman
Commencement May 17, 2012 I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.  I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I'd become the writer I wanted to be was stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn't, and often they commissioned me to write somethi... posted on May 21 2023 (4,618 reads)

The Most Tender Gaze I Have Ever Beheld, by Catherine Carney-Feldman
exquisite face of a doe with her summer coat I will always remember the date, November 16, 2001, not only for an unforgettable deer encounter but also for another reason which I will tell you about at the end of this blog.  On that day, David and I were doing many chores on our 2 ½ acre animal sanctuary. We, along with our horses, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and rooster, live in a pine forest with many wild animals all claiming the same territory and calling it home.  David was at the front of the property working on a project next to the street. I was at the back of the property on a sloped area digging holes in the ground to put in some new native hydrangea bushe... posted on May 22 2023 (7,144 reads)

Attention as an Instrument of Love, by Maria Popova
fundamental reality might exist, we live out our lives in a subjective reality defined by what we agree to attend to. “An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer,” D.H. Lawrence wrote. But we live largely in the territory of the unanswerable because there is no pure attention — the aperture of our attention is constricted by myriad conditionings and focused by a brain honed on millions of years of evolutionary necessities, many of which we have long outgrown. How the brain metes out attention and what that means for our intimacy with reality is what the philosophy-lensed British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist take... posted on May 23 2023 (3,421 reads)

Off By an Inch in the Beginning..., by Preeta Bansal
Speech Delivered to Dharma Realm Buddhist University May 20, 2023   Thank you, President Susan Rounds and to the distinguished faculty and board of DRBU. Special thanks to the many dear friends who are part of the extended community here and have been shining lights for me for more than a decade now. Above all, warmest Congratulations to all of you in the Class of 2023. And to the families, friends, ancestors, and loved ones – near and far – who have set in motion and nurtured the ripples that allow us to be here today. It’s customary, I realize, for the person standing here to pretend or at least attempt to share with you sto... posted on May 30 2023 (8,635 reads)

In Praise of Fallibility, Everybodyism & Confusers of Certainty, by Awakin Call Editors
bodies are radiant but not all radiance is visible: stars radiate visible light; planets and donkeys and couches radiate infrared waves. (If your couch is emitting visible light GET UP IMMEDIATELY!)" -- Amy Leach Everything is visibly illuminated under Amy Leach's virtuosic pen. Whether she's writing about beavers, migratory birds, mesquite trees, or the moon, to read her words is to see things in a new light. To see in things a new light. And to find your mind being woken up, your conventions jostled, and your ribs being tickled multiple times along the way. Arguably no other writer in the world waltzes so delightfully between scientific fact, p... posted on Jun 21 2023 (1,992 reads)

Hermann Hesse on Breaking the Trance of Busyness, by Maria Popova
all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work,” Kierkegaard admonished in 1843 as he contemplated our greatest source of unhappiness. It’s a sobering sentiment against the backdrop of modern life, where the cult of busyness and productivity plays out as the chief drama of our existence — a drama we persistently lament as singular to our time. We reflexively blame on the Internet our corrosive compulsion for doing at the cost of being, forgetting that every technology is a symptom and not, or at least not at first, a cause of our desires and pathologies. Our intentions are th... posted on Jul 2 2023 (6,138 reads)

Love's Work: Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting it Wrong, by Maria Popova
is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love,” the humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in his classic on the art of loving. In some sense, no love ever fails, for no experience is ever wasted — even the most harrowing becomes compost for our growth, fodder for our combinatorial creativity. But in another, it is indeed astonishing how often we get love wrong — how, over and over, it stokes our hopes and breaks our hearts and hurls us onto the cold hard baseboards of our being, flattened by defeat and despair, and how, over and over,... posted on Jul 14 2023 (2,500 reads)