in. Somehow just looking at that one point, the whole world emerges. As William Blake said, “seeing the world in a grain of sand.” The “looking over” of equanimity can mean looking through that one point to everything, seeing the whole picture by looking closely and carefully at one point. COCHRAN So this looking over doesn’t mean overlooking. SHARPE No. Practicing equanimity we come to a point where we understand what the Taoists call the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows, because a beautiful balance comes into our lives. We see that through the sorrow, we can also have joy, and that without joy, our sorrows would be unbearable. We see... posted on Jan 30 2016 (19,119 reads)

students often get stereotyped as stressed out and sleep-deprived. But at universities across the country, students are aiming to change that as they join clubs dedicated to a common, joyful purpose: spreading happiness. Eleanor Collier / Stanford Happiness Collective The Stanford Happiness Collective was started three years ago "with the goal of doing things to brighten people's days," its president, junior Eleanor Collier told TODAY. Northwestern University is home to one of the country's oldest college happiness clubs, which began unofficially in 2008 when a group of students handed out hot chocolate outside the library on a cold evening right before fin... posted on Feb 24 2016 (11,966 reads)

journey as a parent of a specially-abled son has been one of extreme emotions – from disappointment to hope; from pain to joy; from love to anguish – it’s been a journey like never before. When Vivaan was born, one of my close friends sent me Kahlil Gibran’s famous poem On Children. The first verse in the poem is often quoted, but I would still like to share it here. Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. My journey as a parent of a differently abled son has been one of extreme emotions &ndash... posted on May 2 2016 (14,995 reads)

name to Vivian because she wanted to fit in here in America. Her first job was at an inner-city motel in San Francisco as a maid. I happened to buy that motel about three months after Vivian started working there. So Vivian and I have been working together for 23 years. With the youthful idealism of a 26-year-old, in 1987, I started my company and I called it Joie de Vivre, a very impractical name, because I actually was looking to create joy of life. And this first hotel that I bought, motel, was a pay-by-the-hour, no-tell motel in the inner-city of San Francisco. As I spent time with Vivian, I saw that she ha... posted on Sep 2 2016 (26,423 reads)

and reaches into the psychological, even the spiritual: Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and their art; learning to come into steady presence, free from the distractions of interest or boredom. Illustration by Sydney Smith from The White Cat and the Monk, a 9th-century ode to the joy of uncompetitive purposefulness With an eye to the obsessive daily routines and strange creative rituals of many writers, and to the state of intense focus in the creative a... posted on Sep 6 2016 (10,849 reads)

 They are each dealing a wide variety of different situations, from blindness to abuse to open sores to autism.  There are only 1-2 adults supervising throughout the day, and they aren’t social workers, just underpaid guys who use sticks to force the kids into order because they don’t know how else to control the situation.   Different NGO’s come throughout the week, but no one comes on Sundays.   So, we try to bring some light and joy in to the space, painting murals with the kids, showing movies, playing games, music etc.  And they teach us! They are able to make the most incredible things from the paper, cameras and... posted on Sep 8 2016 (13,696 reads)

It is very difficult. If I say yes to one family I am saying no to 10 others. At present we don’t have enough accommodation or resources to take any new kids. Finally, what is your practice? My main practice is always based on my training to generate more compassion, stabilize myself, remain focused, and practice on patience and perseverance. Human beings—rich or poor, East or West, educated or uneducated, man or woman—all have one thing in common: we all want joy and happiness in our life. I feel lucky that I found something in my life where there’s so much happiness and joy doing something useful and meaningful. That is what I feel. I am so lucky... posted on Oct 18 2018 (122,596 reads)

text is an adaptation of the first chapter in The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (Jossey-Bass, 2007) by Parker J. Palmer. We Teach Who We Are I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illumined by the lightning-life of the mind—then teaching is the finest work I know. But at other moments, the classroom is so lifeless or painful or confused—and I am so powerless to do anything about it that my claim to be a teacher seems a tra... posted on Oct 3 2016 (31,663 reads)

into something more manageable. This is a different process than organizing your to-do list, or formatting it in a more effective way. This is about shortening that list—dumping the stuff you dread—without suffering the consequences of not doing what you actually have to do to get done. In an ideal world, we would all be able to apply Marie Kondo’s world-famous principles for cleaning out our closet to our to-do list: Anything that doesn’t “spark joy” we put in the trash (delete) or give away (delegate). Most of my clients start off with very little on their task list that they look forward to doing; one recently declared that she o... posted on Dec 17 2016 (22,571 reads)

Yogi’s Guide to Joy by Sadhguru Spiegel & Grau “Fun” isn’t usually the first word to spring to mind when it comes to the writings of Indian gurus, but that description applies to the latest in a long list of books by Jaggi Vasudev, better known as Sadhguru. He has honed his ability to communicate mystical concepts in an informal, accessible way, presenting perspectives and practices designed to further the author’s stated goal of helping “make joy your constant companion.”  —DO   Awake at the Bedside Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care Edited by Koshin Paley Ellison and Mat... posted on Apr 4 2017 (37,461 reads)

of Pádraig Ó Tuama, an extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered literal refuge and seeds of new life in and since the violent fracture that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. But Pádraig and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative force far beyond their northern coast. They’ve learned what they know the hard way, yet they carry it with an infectious, calming joy. “Over cups of tea, and over the experience of bringing people together,” as Padraig describes it, it does become possible “to talk with each other and be in the same room with t... posted on May 6 2017 (9,593 reads)

and the way each individual life is its own way in to this question is, “What does it mean to be human?” And I also know every one of our sense of that is constantly evolving across life. But there’s some things you’ve said about writing that I just find so intriguing. I feel like the way you’ve written about them is how writing forms you as a human being. Like you wrote somewhere, “It’s an endeavor I grew into and now provides a solid deep joy. Perhaps this joy from writing is seated comfortably in my core because of the life lesson it’s provided. Writing has shown me what happens with patience.” And some place else, you wro... posted on May 12 2017 (6,164 reads)

and family can play with him, because I simply cherish these moments. There can be a lot of judgment about moms, about their decision to stay at home or go back to work, or about the lack of a decision to be made and how they just have to make it work. Moms often have to wear two hats, they often have impossible and endless jobs to do, and they can often feel like they’re doing a bad job at both. This video honors all of those decisions and non-decisions, honors the strength and love and joy that mothers have in the face of impossible and endless tasks, and inspires us all to be a bit more like the amazing mothers that we all know. Q: Can you share a story about how you've been... posted on May 14 2017 (13,489 reads)

a 25-hour day, and our circadian cycles are 24 hours long, so if we do make it there and live there, it’s like crossing three time zones every two days. They figured out a way to zap you with certain wavelengths of light at certain times of day that will actually give you a 25th hour of the day. “Time can go faster, or slower, depending on what drug [a person takes] or what they’re doing—meditation, ecstatic experience, entertainment experiences—there’s a joy in it. The disconnection from the clock itself is exhilarating, whichever way it happened.” Of course you’re spending that hour of the day being exposed to peculiar wavelengths of l... posted on May 23 2017 (17,629 reads)

is clear that different musical rhythms evoke radically different moods. There are rhythms of control, as with marching music; rhythms of exploration as with jazz; rhythms of sadness as with the blues; and rhythms of devotion as with gospel. Each style of music evokes a different set of emotions, memories, and spiritual or energetic responses. Can we then use rhythms of speech to elicit sadness, anger, or fear? Can we counter these dusky tempos with lighter, upbeat rhythms in order to elicit joy, affection, or courage? What are the qualities of vibration that impart these special, substantive meanings? What, for example, is the vibratory quality of a sincere apology as opposed to an insin... posted on May 24 2017 (8,496 reads)

rewards weren’t satisfying me. It wasn’t enough. So I explored other avenues, and one of them was service. Helping other people and the community, without any personal agenda. Right in the heart of Silicon Valley, we started an organization called ServiceSpace that initially built websites for nonprofits and eventually manifested a wide array of other projects. As far as motivations go, this kind of service for me was partly about extrinsic impact and partly about intrinsic joy. I enjoyed it more, but it got me curious about what lay further on the intrinsic end of the spectrum. That’s what got me to pursue stillness. I noticed that the quieter my mind became, t... posted on Aug 17 2017 (21,379 reads)

those things.      Now, maybe 17 years later, it's an established foundation and it's making a contribution. From this perspective now I can say, I still am a personality born with all kinds of issues around money. I was born into a situation that grew into this abundance of money. Then I took the step and some part of me is happy that that money is behind me in some bank. I feel it’s just so important and, even though it still brings me issues, there's joy that it’s doing what it's doing, and that it's contributing to such an evening where we're talking about this question. I’m glad, if not comfortable, to be part of the beau... posted on Oct 2 2017 (10,643 reads)

others. And that has nothing to do with age, but when you do get to be of a certain age where you are not involved in earning a daily bread, you can begin thinking about how you can help others. And having the constructive aging program in nursing homes, and community centers, and VA hospitals means that there is an unlimited amount of good that people can do if they want to get involved. It doesn’t require very much time -we’re talking about an hour and a half, and it brings such joy into people’s lives to know that they are being considered and cared about. Our first lesson, now understand we have 1200 topics, is on happiness and the power of a smile. That also happens ... posted on Nov 1 2017 (8,028 reads)

and wonder to all manner of things. Inspired by this experience, we, at A Network for Grateful Living (gratefulness.org), extended an invitation to our community to submit odes to “ordinary things.” The response was happy and immediate. Our inbox steadily filled with poems celebrating weeds, streetlights, shoes and crickets. There were love letters to a blender bottle, an acorn, slippers, an iPad – even to the veins on the top of someone’s feet! This glimpse into joy elicited by simple things has been a true gift and we are grateful to each one of the authors who expressed their adoration in a buoyantly broad range of styles and focus. In order to refine th... posted on Sep 24 2018 (9,605 reads)

because it is all-powerful. But why see death as a hangman when it is truer to see it as a harvester leveling the earth with its scythe? Oddly, we take hope from the seasons — the rebirth of spring after the death of winter — or from the rising and setting of the sun. But no spring, no dawn beyond death, has ever been proven. Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art. G by David Hockney Seamus Heaney contributes a poem for G — an ode to language itself, the riverine fluidity and richness of it: Guh. Guh. Like breath being sh... posted on Dec 16 2017 (6,914 reads)