sense of how we do our jobs, but also to this overextension of what we can achieve in everything we do. Um, I'm just going to read it. "There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs, activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form of its innate violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work. It destroys the fruitfulness of his or her work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom, which makes work fruitful." And then you talk about how this came to you the hard way, as an activist who burned out. And you said, “There's a critical question that you aske... posted on May 8 2015 (16,087 reads)

with all the complexity that entails. She founded the Webby Awards — the “Oscars of the Internet” — which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. And for over six years she and her young family have held to a technology sabbath or “shabbat” — 24 unplugged hours each week. Her perspective on our technology-enhanced lives is ultimately a purposeful and enriching one — the internet is our global brain, towards which we can apply all the wisdom we are gaining about the brains in our heads and the character in our lives. MS. TIFFANY SHLAIN: There’s a point in the development of a child’s brain where all the different par... posted on Apr 11 2016 (10,122 reads)

Occupy Oakland. Images of a peaceful, smiling Pancho being taken away in handcuffs were all over the Internet. A more recent video of Pancho’s life at Casa de Paz is on KarmaTube, inspiring me to interview him for this issue of The MOON.  Pancho lives without salary; Casa de Paz is supported entirely by donations, which are never requested. People are inspired to give, or they don’t give, and Pancho is content with that. If anyone is peaceably defying the conventional wisdom of what it means to live the good life, it is Pancho Ramos-Stierle. He spoke with me by computer phone from Casa de Paz.  – Leslee Goodman The MOON: You seem to be ... posted on Aug 23 2016 (17,303 reads)

five minutes talking with Ron Nakasone and you will sense two things: a wisdom that makes you curious and a casualness that makes you comfortable. One example of this kind of relaxed intelligence was when I was having lunch with him and we were discussing some of the ins and outs of doctoral research. In an off-handed way he said, “Don’t worry about finding the answers; find the questions. When you find the right questions the answers will follow.”       Dr. Nakasone’s inquisitive nature is evident in the variety of activities he has pursued and keeps pursuing. He is an accomplished scholar in Buddhist studies (he is a member of the Core Doc... posted on Feb 22 2017 (7,821 reads)

the ability to persist, to keep trying, to try new ideas, new ways of solving problems, is one of the strongest forces that drives whether people are able to move the world around them. And so I guess I’ve come to think of resilience as a critical skill for living a meaningful life and for living it according to your own values. And I think I’m now much more aware of that than I was before. Ms. Tippett: Yeah, I actually wanted to kind of come to a close with the notion of wisdom, which is connected to a meaningful life. And which, it seems to me, throughout your writing, it’s that resilience is also a building block of wisdom as much as it is healing and kind of ... posted on Jun 17 2017 (17,400 reads)

and humans (or humans and other animals) when we treat them with respect, and interact collaboratively with them rather than domineering over them. That is really the stage our research is conducted at now. Rather than conduct research on dolphins, I have been working collaboratively with them. They are active participants in the study who exert free will on their own terms, not primarily on ours.  Only in this way can we learn from them – and not only about them. There is much wisdom to be gleaned from them and many other animals. The MOON: Can you give me some examples of ways in which the facts exceed the fables? Frohoff: The neurobiology of dolphins demonstrate... posted on Jun 30 2017 (13,062 reads)

I want you to continue to be like a person that has a mission.” My father-in-law is pushing ninety now, and he is an acupuncturist that has seen so many of his patients retire and die. They don't have a drive or a purpose. I think you are living testament to that. Ed:  Well that was very good advice, and I couldn't agree more. Kozo: Yeah, I didn't. When I first heard it, I said, “You're crazy old man,” but now, after listening to you I see the wisdom behind that and I see a path that can lead to a fulfilling and healthy longevity. So thank you. We’ve got some callers on the line, so I'm going to bow down and let others share in yo... posted on Nov 1 2017 (8,031 reads)

following is the audio and transcript of an onbeing.org interview between Krista Tippett and Jean Vanier. May 28, 2015 KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: It took me a while to put a name to the rare quality that is palpable in Jean Vanier’s life and presence. It’s a wisdom of tenderness. He’s a philosopher and a Catholic social innovator and simply one of the great elders in our world today. The L’Arche movement, which he founded, centered around people with mental disabilities, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this month. And, Jean Vanier has just won the Templeton Prize. He has devoted his life to the practical application of Christianity’s most... posted on Feb 23 2018 (12,250 reads)

it is this gift that makes Maria’s blog, Brain Pickings, such a success. Her thirst for knowledge means that she looks past the trends and fads that flash brightly in cyberspace, but are then forgotten hours later. Instead, she blogs about small bits of genius and curiosity that have been forgotten; antique ideas, perhaps. She finds the pearls of human interest amid an ocean of information. For Maria, the most important thing is that every blog post have some element of human wisdom, something both timely and timeless: an illustrated biography of Charles Darwin, John Steinbeck’s hand-written letters to his eldest son about falling in love, Susan Sontag’s musing... posted on Feb 17 2019 (8,543 reads)

corrections system as a whole in order to mitigate its extremely destructive impact on families, communities and the overall social capital of our society. The below text is available for download as a PDF on their website. Composed by the Buddhist Master Langri Tangpa (1054-1123), Eight Verses for Training the Mind is a highly revered text from the Mahayana Lojong (mind training) tradition. These instructions offer essential practices for cultivating the awakening mind of compassion, wisdom, and love. This eight-verse lojong enshrines the very heart of Dharma, revealing the true essence of the Mahayana path to liberation. Even a single line of this practice can be seen as encapsul... posted on May 31 2020 (18,911 reads)

people have stood at the gates of hope — through world wars and environmental crises and personal loss — with more dignity, wisdom, and optimism than Joanna Macy during her six decades as a Buddhist scholar, environmental activist, and pioneering philosopher of ecology. Macy is also the world’s greatest translator-enchantress of Rainer Maria Rilke, in whose poetry she found refuge upon the sudden and devastating death of the love of her life after fifty-six years of marriage. Indeed, our mortality, as well as our quintessential resistance to it, is a subject Rilke unravels frequently and with deeply comforting insight in Macy’s&nbs... posted on Sep 1 2020 (6,273 reads)

later, I began teaching a weekly class in storytelling techniques. With Reverend Sure’s endorsement, the class began with nearly fifty students. After the initial enthusiasm, the class settled into a committed group of ten or twelve storytellers who met once a month. We called ourselves The Buddhist Storytelling Circle.  The Storytelling Circle evolved into a solid collective of storytelling performers. For several years, we told a wide range of Jataka tales, wisdom stories, parables, and international folktales at Buddhist temples and interfaith gatherings. Twice we hosted Buddhist Storytelling Festivals. In 2004, Reverend Sure and I presented a work... posted on Sep 3 2020 (4,752 reads)

in the images of the First Peoples, spirals engraved on stone, or the animals, bison and bulls, even a rhinoceros, painted on the cave walls in Southern France. Our rational world may have banished magic from our consciousness, but it is still very present in the Earth and Her ways. It speaks of the hidden mysteries of life, the power of sacred place, or the healing properties of plants. This is traditionally the domain of the priest or shaman, but is also our common heritage, part of the wisdom of the early days. And when we speak to the Earth with reverence and thanksgiving, when our stories are true, then the magic within the world can come alive, and can nourish life, clear the wat... posted on Sep 20 2020 (6,884 reads)

is what love seeks,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her superb 1929 meditation on love and how to live with the fundamental fear of loss. “Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.” Half a century before her, Leo Tolstoy — who befriended a Buddhist monk late in life and became deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy — echoed these ancient truths as he contemplated the paradoxical nature of love: “Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only.” That in love and in life, freedo... posted on Apr 4 2021 (7,306 reads)

and overwhelmed by their assumptions, judgments, and advice—a common and alienating experience. As a result, we often privatize these vital questions in our lives: at the very moment when we need all the help we can get, we find ourselves cut off from both our inner resources and the support of a community. For people who have experienced this dilemma, I want to describe a method invented by the Quakers, a method that protects individual identity and integrity while drawing on the wisdom of other people. It is called a “Clearness Committee.” If that name sounds like it is from the sixties, it is—the 1660’s! From their beginnings over three hundred years ... posted on Jul 1 2021 (7,406 reads)

or sexual orientation. We have fallen out of alignment with the deepest truths within us. How are we to awaken again to the sacredness at the heart of all life, the sacredness that is also at the heart of our own being? The Celtic spiritual tradition is one that has long emphasized an awareness of the sacred essence of all things. This tradition is in fact part of our Western Christian inheritance, although it has been largely forgotten and at times suppressed. It is this lost stream of wisdom that I will be drawing on in these pages to help us remember. It is a way of seeing, a path of awareness, that can be traced through the centuries, forever unfolding, evolving, emerging again a... posted on Jul 14 2021 (4,943 reads)

All three are excerpted from my poetry book, ‘Early Music’ (Many Rivers Press). The first poem, Turas d’Anam, means ‘journey of your soul’ in the Irish language. This piece is an invitation to grant permission to yourself. To experience a deeper sense of meaning in this life. It reimagines set backs, or conscious retreat, as a strengthening tool. This poem is an invitation to realise the restorative power of rest…and the often agonizing wisdom of hindsight. Turas d'Anam Often times the step backward lets the soul catch up. So that all our happy hindsight’s harmonise and wisdom builds. Sha... posted on Dec 16 2021 (7,134 reads)

the wow, which is just an experience beyond the confines in our mind of who we are and an expansive experience of growing into new possibilities and perspectives and encountering new energies of aliveness inside of ourselves. Mark: Oh, wow. You actually answered one of the questions I was going to pose later, which is when these poems come through, are you cognizing what is spilling out onto the page, or do you go back to it and like myself and other readers, are you extracting gems of wisdom from it much later after its initial commitment to paper? Chelan: Good question. Mark: I think you already sort of answered that. Sorry to interrupt. Chelan: Oh, well, y... posted on Apr 1 2023 (4,219 reads)

will become an unsaleable commodity in an era when the mechanical operation of reasoning can be done more effectively by machines. […] If we are to continue to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork. To be sure, Watts doesn’t dismiss the mind as a worthless or fundamentally perilous human faculty. Rather, he insists that it if we let its unconscious wisdom unfold unhampered — like, for instance, what takes place during the “incubation” stage of unconscious processing in the creative process — it is our ally rathe... posted on Sep 19 2023 (4,030 reads)

that pain of a broken system. It's true that the system is rigged and broken. And, on the other hand, it's actually fundamentally not true. It indeed obscures a more fundamental truth, which is that the economy is functioning as it was designed to do. That is, the economy was designed to be extractive and exploitative. The question is, how could we reimagine an economy whose purpose was different? The animating energy behind everything that I'm doing is trying to pull from many different wisdom traditions. And it is flawed. So anything that I share, I beg your forgiveness and your grace, and I invite you to say, "Oh, that doesn't make sense." Or, "Here is a growth edge." Because of co... posted on Apr 16 2024 (1,530 reads)