full audio of the following dialogue is available here.] Point Reyes Dialogues explores the great questions of life and our current condition within the context of the spiritual revolution of California begun in the 1960s and continuing today. We inquire into their broad impact on culture, education, religious life and moral values. Host Jacob Needleman, philosopher, author and teacher discusses these questions with guests who are recognized internationally for their philosophic, religious and spiritual influence.             Richard Whittaker is the founding editor of the art journal, works & conversations and is the West Co... posted on Apr 3 2014 (21,170 reads)

conquers all, and few people better understand that than the couple in this poignant film. The 11-and-a-half-minute-long New York Times documentary, entitled, "Good Night Margaret," shows a glimpse into the lives of Margaret "Muffi" Lavigne and Chris Plum. Both Lavigne and Plum have muscular dystrophy, and the two met and fell in love at the Hospital for Special Care in New Britain, Connecticut. "I realized all the suffering in the hospital led up to me meeting her," Plum says in the film, "and finding the love of my life, and really finding true happiness." Watch their touching love story above, which will have you reaching for... posted on Sep 8 2014 (19,699 reads)

Keegan, Her Parents, and The Opposite of Loneliness Borne of forgiveness, a young author’s first and last book rings silently true BY ALICE PECK ON APRIL 8, 2014 Marina Keegan’s The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories got a lot of attention when it was published by Scribner. It has already received accolades from The New York Times, The New Republic, and other major publications, and it deserves all the buzz, shares, and likes it will get. This posthumous collection of essays and short stories is beautiful and brilliant, young but not childish—just like the author was. Every essay is a gem you want to pick up and put in your pocket, taking it out from... posted on Apr 6 2021 (59,673 reads)

my 60th birthday, I challenged myself to do 60 very deliberate acts of kindness for 60 consecutive days and write about my experiences each day. Now I am no stranger to going out and doing things, but this is the first time I have ever been focused and paid attention to 'Kindness Acts' to the degree that was required in coming up with what I was going to do each day, preparing for it when I needed to, and then writing about it for 60 days. Here is what I want to share. In my experience, there is no such thing as a 'kindness act' There is no separate 'act' that can be called Kindness. I believe our true nature IS kindness and that when we are not acting out o... posted on Feb 13 2015 (36,079 reads)

do you fit a full-sized family into a tiny house? The Morrisons and Kasls found that the benefits of life in 200 square feet outweigh the difficulties. The Kasls, of Minnesota, simplified family life by going tiny. Photo by Nichole Freiberger. Andrew and Gabriella Morrison live in Oregon and have two teenage kids, 18-year-old Paiute and 14-year-old Terra. They made the decision to downsize their home four years ago. They now live in a 207-square-foot house with an additional 110 square feet of sleeping lofts. Although their son, Paiute, no longer lives at home, Terra lives in the tiny house full time with her parents. The Morrisons both work in straw bale construct... posted on Feb 12 2015 (25,719 reads)

Palmer’s Spectacular Commencement Address on the Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life “Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself… When you are able to say, ‘I am … my shadow as well as my light,’ the shadow’s power is put in service of the good.” In 1974, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford alumnus Chögyam Trungpa founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado — a most unusual and emboldening not-for-profit educational institution named after the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa and intended as a 100-year experiment of combining the best... posted on Nov 3 2015 (59,739 reads)

emotional life maps our incompleteness,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in her luminousletter of advice to the young. “A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.” Anger, indeed, is one of the emotions we judge most harshly — in others, as well as in ourselves — and yet understanding anger is central to mapping out the landscape of our interior lives. Aristotle, in planting the civilizational seed for practical wisdom, recognized this when he asked not whether anger is “good” or “bad” but how it shall be used: directed at whom, manifested how, for how long and to what end. ... posted on Feb 8 2016 (42,970 reads)

our entire lives are spent in a quest to gain control, security and comfort in our lives. Unfortunately, we never really get it, so we keep trying, relentlessly. This is the main activity of our lives. What would happen if we stopped? We could be less restricted by fear, less anxious, less driven by the need for comfort … and more in love with life as it is. You might be surprised by how much we strive for control. The Ways We Try to Get Control The basic nature of life is that it is everchanging, uncontrollable. When we think we have stability in life, something comes up to remind us that no, we don’t. There is no stability, no matter how much we’... posted on Mar 10 2016 (15,576 reads)

Conversation with Mary Rothschild Late one afternoon I got a call from Jacob Needleman. He’d been talking with a friend visiting from New York. “She has some very interesting things to say about children and media. I was thinking you might want to talk with her.”      It wasn’t necessary to spell it out any further. Twenty minutes later, I met Mary Rothschild at my door. I’d already set my trusty recorder out, made some space on the dining room table, and after a few friendly preliminaries, we sat down to talk… Richard Whittaker:  Would you tell me a little bit about your interests? Mary Rothschild:  My main focus is the... posted on Jul 11 2016 (20,931 reads)

the past five years, I haven’t lived anywhere for more than six months. I spent 28 days in Lisbon, three months in Bali, and a random half-year in downtown Las Vegas. With just two suitcases in tow, I was lucky enough to scuba-dive in Thailand, explore the ruins of Pompeii, and do karaoke with a Korean movie star. According to Melody Warnick, author of the new book This Is Where You Belong, that makes me a Mover with a capital M. And I have plenty of company: These days, the average American moves nearly 12 times in their lifetime, and 12 percent of Americans move in a given year. But moving continuously has its downsides, according to Warnick. Research sho... posted on Aug 31 2016 (14,984 reads)

are perhaps no days of our childhood that we lived as fully,” Proust wrote in contemplating why we read, “as the days we think we left behind without living at all: the days we spent with a favourite book.” And yet childhoods come in varied hues, some much darker than others; some children only survive by leaving the anguish of the real world behind and seeking shelter in the world of books. Among them was the poet Mary Oliver (b. September 10, 1935), who recounts the redemptive refuge of reading and writing in her essay “Staying Alive,” found in Upstream: Selected Essays(public library) — the radiant coll... posted on Dec 7 2016 (15,288 reads)

recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. James Doty who is the founder and the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at the Stanford University School of Medicine of which the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. He also happens to be a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford and the New York Times bestselling author of “Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart” that has been translated into 22 languages. Dr. Doty also is an inventor with multiple patents and is a well-known entrepreneur who at one-time was the CEO of Accuray, a company... posted on Feb 1 2017 (11,967 reads)

by Glen Shackley When you consider its synchronicities and various plot twists, Luc Reynaud’s life seems stage directed by the universe.  Perhaps it all started when at 6 years old he announced to his teacher Rayma Hayes that he was going to paint the moon.  “And what about the Earth, Luc?” responded Rayma, “What about all the other planets? What about the universe?” Luc felt an electric surge of energy through his body, as his teacher picked up a huge bolt of construction paper and unfurled it across the classroom floor. “Paint the entire universe Luc,” Rayma said, “I’ll help you.” For the next few weeks, Luc... posted on Mar 29 2017 (9,957 reads)

Pradervand has worked for decades in personal development and social justice. His career includes work on nearly every continent. He is the author of The Gentle Art of Blessing: A Simple Practice That Will Transform You and Your World, in which he posits that making the conscious choice to bless every person or being around you can truly make a world of difference in yourself and in others around you. Drawing from his own personally transformative experience while engaged in international development work, through which he converted to joy his own resentment (that “was literally eating me up”) by consciously blessing his detractors, Pierre shows that the pra... posted on Apr 7 2017 (15,709 reads)

Borges is a dentist-turned-photographer, author, filmmaker and social change storyteller. For more than 25 years, he has been documenting indigenous and tribal cultures in some of the world's most remote, inaccessible areas. Phil uses his gifts so that the rest of the world might understand the challenges individuals living in remote area face, and the resilience, spirit and wisdom they possess. What follows is the official trailer of Phil's most recent film, and an edited version of an Awakin Calls interview with him. You can access the recording and full transcript here.   Pavi Mehta (moderator): Phil Borges’ breathtaking work has been featured in National G... posted on Apr 25 2017 (16,805 reads)

all know that what will transform education is not another theory or another book or another formula but a transformed way of being in the world. In the midst of the familiar trappings of education—competition, intellectual combat, obsession with a narrow range of facts, credentials—we seek a life illumined by spirit and infused with soul. This is not romanticism, as John Cobb (President of the Naropa Institute and host of the Spirituality in Education conference) has properly cautioned us. I saw the other day a remarkable documentary called The Transformation of Allen School. Allen School is an inner-city school in Dayton, Ohio. It was for many years at the bottom of the l... posted on Aug 25 2017 (15,475 reads)

following is the audio and transcript of an onbeing.org interview between Krista Tippett and Bessel van der Kolk. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences on people and society. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments, including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy. He’s been a leading researcher of traumatic stress since it first became a diagnos... posted on Oct 20 2017 (66,708 reads)

follows is the transcript of an interview between Bessel van der Kolk and On Being's Krista Tippett KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences on people and society. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments, including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy. He’s been a leading researcher of traumatic stress since it first became a diagnosis in... posted on Oct 20 2017 (1,357 reads)

introduction by Maria Jain Earlier this year, I sat in an airplane waiting to take off from New York. The sun was setting beyond the edge of the tarmac. In the distance, the Manhattan skyline stood like a row of tiny charred matchsticks against the burning horizon. For a moment, I admired this instant art. Then, I shifted my gaze to the book on my lap: “That Bird Has My Wings” written by Jarvis Jay Masters, a Buddhist practitioner on Death Row in California. As I opened the first page, graceful italics shot Masters’ resounding dedication straight into my heart: To all those who who have lost someone by an act of violence, to the memory of those who... posted on Sep 28 2017 (13,077 reads)

Robert Lax—A Conversation with Steve Georgiou May 11, 2017   My introduction to S. T. Georgiou came via his most recent book: In the Beginning Was Love—Contemplative Words of Robert Lax. The name rang a bell. It was buried in memory, but wrapped in an aura and connected with Thomas Merton. I'd never followed up on Lax and had forgotten about him long ago. So it was surprising to find myself suddenly alert in front of that name.      The book had arrived with Georgiou's handwritten note. Perhaps I'd take an interest. It happened that I was headed for a getaway. Perfect. In addition to the beauty of the northern Oregon coast, ... posted on Nov 17 2017 (14,206 reads)