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 (15,505 reads)

by one puzzle piece profoundly affects each of the others. You matter, your actions matter, your art matters. We’d like to be clear that while this letter is written with an artistic audience in mind, these thoughts transcend professional boundaries and apply to all people, regardless of profession. FIRST, AWAKEN TO YOUR HUMANITY We are not alone. We do not exist alone and we cannot create alone. What this world needs is a humanistic awakening of the desire to raise one’s life condition to a place where our actions are rooted in altruism and compassion. You cannot hide behind a profession or instrument; you have to be human. Focus your energy on becoming the best human... posted on Mar 16 2016 (16,839 reads)

Lawrence Bloom. His team invented today’s ubiquitous hotel cards that promote towel reuse. But the businessman turned earth guru doesn’t plan to stop there; he’s on a lifetime mission to save us from ourselves. Alicia Buller reports. One day, many years ago, Lawrence Bloom sat in his luxury Mercedes, parked outside his seven-bedroomed, three-bathroomed house in London’s wealthy Hampstead. “Is this it?” he asked himself, as a familiar charge of fear coursed through his veins. “I had reached that material place where everybody aspires to be and, for me, anxiety was like a coat hanger: the jacket that I had worn before that moment was &lsq... posted on Mar 19 2016 (11,786 reads)

the person that he was, and if you are the lucky child who gets his heart, you should know what you can expect. *** Eric’s heart was the biggest part of him. He loved more than normal people. He seemed to have an extra portion of vitality and capacity to love than most of us have. Maybe he knew, somehow, that he wouldn’t have as much time as the rest of us, and he was determined to get as much living done as he could. Eric loved life. In the summer he begged to go swimming, in the winter he wanted to go sledding. When I went to adopt my dog he came with me and rode with her all the way home. He had a childlike optimism... posted on Apr 1 2016 (10,254 reads)

my own mind, there would have been no reason to write”. ~ Joan Didion I was at my parent’s dinner table. Before me was a worn journal of thin and discolored pages and a neat script that was gently fading away. It was my grand fathers journal and now belonged to my father. I never knew my grandfather. He had died in the months leading up to my birth, and had named me in his final days even though there was no proof that the baby to come would be a girl. In the expat life I grew up in, I never got to visit the home he had lived in, the places he had frequented and the people who had been a part of his life’s journey. I was now about to enter his world, th... posted on May 23 2016 (14,482 reads)

for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), where the Dalai Lama was a founding benefactor. As a philanthropist, he has given millions of dollars to support health care and educational charities around the world. He attributes his success partly to a kind woman named Ruth, who took 12-year-old Doty under her wing. Over the course of a memorable summer, she taught him techniques of mindfulness, visualization, and compassion that would transform his life. Now, with his book and with CCARE, he is sharing those practices (and the new science behind them) with others—and hoping to help them avoid his mistakes. “It can hurt to go throu... posted on Jul 5 2016 (56,506 reads)

                                      — Leslee Goodman The MOON: How do you describe yourself and your work? What do you do? Leyva:  I work with high school students for a program called AHA!—Attitude, Harmony, Achievement—teaching social and emotional learning skills through in-school and after-school programs. It’s the best job I’ve ever had in my life. It’s one of those jobs where you get up in the morning and you can’t wait to go to work. There’s so much meaning there. I’m a licensed drug and alcohol treatment couns... posted on Sep 3 2016 (13,400 reads)

completing a mourning process. Of seeking clarity of purpose and where next to call home. Of thinking for some time how our culture lacks deep rituals that mark the transition to manhood, and how easy it is without them to get lost somewhere between boy and man. And of how, maybe twenty years late, I am here to finally step across. _______________ The next day begins with sage smudging and a Blessing of the Seven Directions. Robert instructs us in basic survival techniques. The wildlife here is more likely to sting you than eat you, but there are bears in the woods and a pack of coyotes — chattering, yelping, barking — that visits us in the ni... posted on Oct 19 2016 (10,362 reads)

like this. First, there has been a collapse of civic virtue in the society around us, a collapse into expressive and competitive individualism, and a loss of integrated vision. This view was articulated for us most recently by the work of Robert Bellah and his colleagues in Habits of the Heart. Second, the argument runs, higher education can and should respond to this collapse by becoming a model of community in at least two ways. One is to develop new- cooperative social forms for campus life (i.e., in dormitory classroom life, where habits can be formed). Second, higher education should reorganize curricula toward a more integrated vision of the world offer more interdisciplinary stu... posted on Nov 13 2016 (12,489 reads)

we look back through prior articles on the issue and offer this Daily Good Spotlight on Gratitude. Science shows us that cultivating a sense of gratitude is beneficial to our health in many interesting ways. People who practice gratitude have stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure. They tend to exercise more and take better care of their health. Their sleep is longer and more refreshing. Psychologically, those who practice gratitude take more joy and pleasure in life and experience higher levels of positive emotions. They feel more alert, alive and awake in their lives. Socially, a gratitude practice leaves people more outgoing, forgiving, helpful, ge... posted on Nov 24 2016 (14,341 reads)

to be a sense of finality with every new scientific model? With every major new theory, we like to think that we have reached our destination, and that we can all get on with our lives secure in the knowledge that the answers are here. We thought for a while that everything was about protons, neutrons and electrons – that is, until quantum physics came along. For a while, we also thought that human health necessitated the killing of germs. But even Pasteur was not sure by the end of his life, when, on his deathbed he famously confessed: “Bernard was right; the pathogen is nothing; the terrain is everything.” And though Darwin enlightened the world about the reality o... posted on May 15 2021 (42,764 reads)

Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Random House Written with eloquence, insight, and a healthy measure of humor, When Breath Becomes Air captures the thoughts and memories of neurosurgeon Kalanithi just before his death from lung cancer in March 2015. Having devoted his previous 10 years to the preservation of life, Kalanithi was in a unique position to reflect on mortality as he faced it himself at age 37.  —Damon Orion     Grace without God The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging in a Secular Age by Katherine Ozment Harper Wave Ozment went on a quest to find grace without God, and during her exploration, met... posted on Apr 4 2017 (37,461 reads)

do you do with a toaster when you no longer want it? Until recently, no one thought about that question until the toaster was ready for the scrap heap. Today, advocates of the circular economy suggest that the best time to address end-of-life issues is when a product is first being designed. It’s at that point that it has the greatest potential for circularity. If the designers of your toaster had thought about it not as a disposable appliance but as a product with value worth preserving, your options would be considerably enhanced. That, in fact, is what the designers at the London-based Agency of Design (AoD) did. As part of a project that “looked at the end of life of ... posted on Apr 24 2017 (15,743 reads)

corporations.  A diabetes diagnosis after nearly bleeding to death.  A recommitment to health, and a Kickstarter campaign to learn to cook and share it with the world.  A return to Vietnam as a foodie and blogger, and a newfound sense of purpose as a traveling food writer and published author.  Then back on the technology career track as an engineer in leading companies and at a booming startup.  Pre-cancer diagnosis.  A fight for life and a return to health (for the second time), but this time via naturopathy, meditation, and numerous alternative healing modalities -- modalities that allowed her to uncover buried issues i... posted on Apr 20 2017 (13,190 reads)

you so much. I'm so very grateful to share this deeply sacred space with all of you. -- Padmaja Murtinty **** A Pediatrician's Search for Meaning I work as a pediatric doctor in a large HMO and I've been working there for over 10 years now. I'm sure some of you will probably identify with this. When you come out of medical school and then residency, you have this vision of saving people.  You're intubating patients and you're giving lifesaving medications and you're doing tracheotomies and whatnot -- to actually save people's lives. After I did my pediatric residency, I wanted to do a fellowship but I was so burned out... posted on Aug 3 2017 (10,686 reads)

now and then, someone asks me for advice on how to become a writer. I aspire to live by the insightful words of theologian Nelle Morton, “Our job is to hear people into speech.”[i] So instead of offering a dozen do’s and don’ts, I ask questions meant to evoke my conversation partner’s inner teacher, the best source of guidance any of us has. If he or she presses me, the best I can do is draw a few lessons from the story of my own writing life. Call it “advice lite.”The urge to write first dropped in on me in my early twenties and soon made it clear it was here for the duration. Nearly two decades passed before my first book was published, ... posted on May 9 2017 (13,254 reads)

it can be said that we are always practicing something. Most often, we are practicing what is habitual, familiar, and mostly unconscious… All the great wisdom traditions teach us that life is precious; that what is happening right now IS life, not some future destination, time, or state of mind. “Carpe Diem,” they say, implying that we must take none of this moment, and its opportunities, for granted. But as we all know, this is easier said than done, especially when our lives deliver us genuine challenges to living out this simple and profound philosophy. Fortunately, wisdom traditions, including gratefulness, offer a wide range ... posted on May 18 2017 (21,184 reads)

can forget Maria at the opening of The Sound of Music, when she goes to the mountains, twirling in a grand circle of life and joy? "I go to the hills, when my heart is lonely--I know I will hear, what I've heard before, my heart will be blessed with the sound of music, and I'll sing once more." A lonely heart, fear, stress over the political state of the world, ill health, job worries, all these can create anxiety that can drag down our spirits. When the unexpected happens, we always have our inner core strength; we can cultivate that from our connection to the earth, to God, and our relationships with people as well as animals and plants. John Muir says, “... posted on Aug 12 2017 (15,536 reads)

Kolbert and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard each had big books in 2015. Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction—takes an unflinching look at the history of extinction and the different ways that human beings are negatively impacting life on the planet. Ricard’s Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World explores global challenges, such as climate change, and argues that compassion and altruism are the keys to creating a better future. Together these books—filled with grief and hope—feel like two sides of a coin, each necess... posted on Jun 19 2017 (15,666 reads)

Brother David, I’d like to bring up a question that has been on my mind for some time. It has to do with what we call the heart. The heart is a great symbol in spiritual life and in Christianity especially. But the fact is that I don’t know what the heart is. When people talk about the heart they seem to do so in a number of ways. In a general sense, it seems to refer to the feelings; at other times, to love and devotion. It also refers to courage and faithfulness (as when a fighter is said to have heart). And sometimes it refers to one’s basic attitude toward life (as when we say, he had a change of heart). Probably there are other meanings, and probably they ar... posted on Jul 17 2017 (10,805 reads)