not let the circumstances limit us and that’s the crux of my perspective on making a shift. I was raised very simply in a small town and my father built a house which was very far away from the city because that was the space he could afford. And we had a garden so I always had this connection with the soil. Right from Grade 1, most of my vacations were spent roaming around the neighborhood, planting cuttings from neighbors and asking people for seeds from their gardens. I realized my love for greenery was there – a value that my father had that he subliminally transmitted it to me. Making Life Choices: The Three Guiding Principles As we grew up then, the whole focus was ... posted on Sep 22 2016 (24,842 reads)

Agnes Martin admonished aspiring artists to exercise discernment in the interruptions they allow, or else corrupt the mental, emotional, and spiritual privacy where inspiration arises. But just as self-criticism is the most merciless kind of criticism and self-compassion the most elusive kind of compassion, self-distraction is the most hazardous kind of distraction, and the most difficult to protect creative work against. How to hedge against that hazard is what beloved poet Mary Oliver (b. September 10, 1935) explores in a wonderful piece titled “Of Power and Time,” found in the altogether enchanting Upstream: Selected Essays (p... posted on Oct 23 2016 (18,875 reads)

lot, but in fact don’t. Even more, it’s full of details that we either ignore completely or don’t think matter, but that turn out to be important. By understanding motivation, we can structure both our workplaces and our personal lives in ways to make us more productive, more fulfilled, and happier. But how can we increase motivation? To answer this question, let’s think about building something — specifically, a piece of IKEA furniture. The IKEA effect: we love whatever we build IKEA came up with a brilliantly diabolical idea: the company would offer boxes of furniture parts and make customers assemble the items by themselves, with only the help of t... posted on Dec 26 2016 (15,550 reads)

extrinsic side of things while compassion is on the intrinsic side of things, and of course, there's many in between from power to fame to growth to meaning. Each type of incentive has its strengths, and the strength of intrinsic rewards is that they are regenerative. If some has a fulfilling giving experience, they'll want to give again without any external intervention, coercion, or marketing. In ServiceSpace experience, we noted that volunteers are strongest when they are moved by love. :) (Reference: Do Nothing Generosity) Do other incentives, like offering small stipends or school credit, increase their commitment? It actually does the opposite. Research shows that... posted on Jan 12 2017 (19,019 reads)

years ago I moved to the heart of the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona. I was a graduate student, working on my PhD at the University of Illinois, and I wanted to live for a while among the People, the Dine’, to find out what research for my dissertation would be most helpful to the tribe. Within a few weeks, I fell in love: in love with the incredible landscape of red sandstone cliffs and mesas that was as different from the Midwestern rain and black soil as if I had moved to Mars. And in love with the magnificent people and the way they welcomed me as family. So I dropped out of my doctoral program and decided to stay in Navajoland. I needed to provide something in ret... posted on Feb 11 2017 (19,122 reads)

out of remission from a rare blood cancer, and the only treatment left for her was a bone marrow transplant. And against the odds, we found a match for her, who turned out to be me. I come from a family of four girls, and when my sisters found out that I was my sister's perfect genetic match, their reaction was, "Really? You?" (Laughter) "A perfect match for her?" Which is pretty typical for siblings. In a sibling society, there's lots of things.There's love and there's friendship and there's protection. But there's also jealousy and competition and rejection and attack. In siblinghood, that's where we start assembling many of those f... posted on Feb 25 2017 (24,238 reads)

and meditation used to be two terms that made people raise their eyebrows twenty some years ago. Now, there are lots of people interested in these ideas, and lots of people who are practicing. There's been cultural resonance for this work. I don't want to overstate how powerful that resonance is, but there are plenty of lawyers doing this work and there are lawyer sanghas in many cities. It's relatively easy to set one up too.   Birju: Alyssa and Charlie I'd love to jump in here. I really appreciate where this conversation is going, and it strikes me that we're moving to the crux of the kinds of questions our callers would be intrigued to reflect on h... posted on Jul 13 2017 (6,470 reads)

the force of a Zen koan. Dorothy Day was saying, "Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward." When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless - a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless and faithless, based on the ... posted on Jun 12 2017 (12,287 reads)

is constantly changing. Nothing is permanent. This idea can both frighten and inspire us. Yet, embracing the truth of life’s precariousness helps us to appreciate its preciousness.  We stop wasting our lives on meaningless activities. We learn to not hold our opinions, our desires, and even our own identities so tightly. Instead of pinning our hopes on a better future, we focus on the present and being grateful for what we have in front of us right now. We say, “I love you” more often. We become kinder, more compassionate and more forgiving. 2. Welcome Everything; Push Away Nothing In welcoming everything, we don't have to like what's arisin... posted on Aug 2 2017 (51,395 reads)

She was in awe when she finally found herself standing in Jeong Kwan’s kitchen. “In her kitchen for the first time, I was swept immediately into the warmth and bustle of a morning at Chunjinam…  I was in Jeong Kwan’s kitchen. I tried not to pass out. ”  Kwan is full of warmth and laughter in her kitchen, yet has a focus on her food preparation that is akin to meditation.  People come not only for her good food, but because she is a force of love in her simple wisdom.  The Garden is the Kitchen Writer Jeff Gordinier is a New York Times writer who was lucky enough to make a trip to meet Kwan. In an article about his expedition i... posted on Jul 26 2017 (17,053 reads)

original approach to art and to life. A world-renowned painter who trained as a physicist, he’s fascinated by the deeper order that “whispers” beneath the surface of things. Works of art that endure, he says, possess their own form of consciousness. And a quiet life of purpose is a particular form of prophecy. The following is the audio and transcript of an onbeing.org interview between Krista Tippett and  Enrique Celaya. Krista Tippett, host: I love finding extraordinary people, well-known in their fields but hidden from many of the rest of us. Learning about such people, hearing from them, can shift our own world a little bit on its axis. E... posted on Nov 12 2017 (9,242 reads)

leading out. They pushed in and took the Iraqis by surprise. There’s even some footage I found on the Internet, of the Iraqis when they knew they’d lost the battle and fled into underground bunkers. There’s footage of them coming out of the bunkers holding their white T-shirts up in surrender. And this became a sentence in the book. One man was holding up a plate with the prophet Ali on it, to kind of say, “Hey, I'm with the Iranians!” Because the Iranians love the Prophet Ali. So it shows men being flushed out of these bunkers and pouring out like ants.      That’s all to say that when Zahed arrived a day later, his job was t... posted on Oct 10 2017 (7,250 reads)

and always need extra hands to clear debris and restore the paths. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy offers volunteer opportunities, while the Pacific Crest Trail also needs volunteer crews to keep more than 2,500 miles passable throughout the year. Information about trail maintenance projects can be found at local parks or by visiting the National Park Service website. 2. Count Animals Helping scientists count animals and preserve other park resources is an easy way to merge a love for the outdoors with science. Park naturalists and conservationists depend on citizens, usually without scientific training, to help keep tabs on the health of the parks. Glacier National Park o... posted on Sep 3 2017 (5,906 reads)

was crying and screaming at the guy, “You killed my family!” And he goes, “What are you talking about?” I said, “These birds were my family; you killed them. How can you do that?” And I made an oath at that point in my life, in third grade. I said that no matter what happens in my life, I have to make sure people understand they can’t treat creatures like this. We are all connected…. My greatest mentors were those robins. And my greatest love was a bear, Susie Bear, 330 pounds. PB: A bear in Ohio? SK: No, here in California. She was in Grizzly Adams and The Wilderness Family. She was retired and came to the sanctuary before we had... posted on Oct 24 2017 (10,726 reads)

That’s almost a natural component of who we are. There are times when we become obsessed with wanting to know what that information is. “Curiosity has several kinds or flavors, and they are not driven by the same things.” Livio: That’s right. In that sense, the digital age helps us because we can find that information, and that may drive us to look for something else about this. And that would drive perhaps epistemic curiosity, which is this love of knowledge and wanting to learn new things. Knowledge@Wharton: Do you think love of knowledge is truly the driving force behind curiosity and the other pieces are part of the spider web off ... posted on Sep 25 2017 (11,906 reads)

And I’m curious, specifically, whether you would find traces or roots of not just your interest in morality, but in a sense, your passion for morality, in the religious or spiritual background of your childhood. Mr. Haidt: Well, my religious and spiritual background is sort of stereotypical for my generation — born in 1963 to parents who were first generation. All four of my grandparents were born in Russia and Poland, came to New York, worked in the garment industry, loved Roosevelt, union organizers. My parents moved, raised me in Scarsdale, New York. I was very assimilated — I have a strong sense of being Jewish as my culture, but not as, really, as a reli... posted on Sep 21 2018 (17,223 reads)

has Detroit thinking about its city now in a different way, a city that can be both urban and rural. And yes, I know, these stories are small, these stories are neighborhood-based stories, but these stories are powerful. They're powerful because I'm showing you how we're creating a new society left vacant in the places and the spaces that was disintegration from the old. They're powerful stories because they're stories about love, the love that Detroiters have for one another, the love that we have for our community, the love that we have for Mother Earth, but more importantly, these stories are stories&nbs... posted on May 15 2018 (10,339 reads)

be the ones, through our own practice and training, who actually embody the best of human qualities: generosity, kindness, intelligence, sanity, and that we have to be a clear and present embodiment of the best of human nature. TS: Now you mentioned, Meg, that you've studied this pattern of complex civilizations and you've read quite a bit of the literature. You talk about this in your new book, Who Do We Choose To Be?—about the collapse of civilizations. And I'd love for you to talk more to our audience about this time that we're in and how you came to this conclusion, which I think is—for many people, for me—startling. That it's a time to... posted on Mar 29 2018 (26,895 reads)

in the shop, there in the middle is Leonardo at age probably 12 or 13, posing for that statue. He was a misfit. Steve Jobs talked about how he was among the misfits, the rebels, the round pegs in the square holes, those who think differently. Leonardo was illegitimate, which was lucky for him. Being born out of wedlock, he didn’t have to be a notary like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. He was gay. He was left-handed. He was vegetarian. He was heretical. And he was beloved in the town of Florence. They accepted that and assumed, like Leonardo did, that you could learn everything you wanted about anything you wanted. We could still be a little bit more like that. W... posted on Apr 6 2018 (12,292 reads)

be the ones, through our own practice and training, who actually embody the best of human qualities: generosity, kindness, intelligence, sanity, and that we have to be a clear and present embodiment of the best of human nature. TS: Now you mentioned, Meg, that you've studied this pattern of complex civilizations and you've read quite a bit of the literature. You talk about this in your new book, Who Do We Choose To Be?—about the collapse of civilizations. And I'd love for you to talk more to our audience about this time that we're in and how you came to this conclusion, which I think is—for many people, for me—startling. That it's a time to... posted on May 17 2018 (15,875 reads)