of resolution in reverse. This is where the wisdom of lives that have already been lived can be of immense aid — a source of forward-facing resolutions, borrowed from people who have long died, having lived, by any reasonable standard, honorable and generous lives, lives of beauty and substance, irradiated by ideas that have endured across the epochs to make other lives more livable. Here are ten such ideas (after many more highlighted in years past) that make for life-expanding resolutions, and an extra eleventh as an overarching ethos. HANNAH ARENDT: LOVE WITHOUT FEAR OF LOSS We will lose everything we love, including our lives — so we might a... posted on Jan 2 2022 (7,314 reads)

Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Mark Nepo. Mark is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 35 years. As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has recorded eight audio projects and published thirteen books, including The Book of Awakening, which made the list of Opera’s “Ultimate Favorite Things.” With Sounds True, Mark has created an eight-session audio program called Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art, where he... posted on Dec 10 2016 (25,840 reads)

a quality in her singing that cuts to the heart of what it's like to be human," the American guitarist said of the Buddhist nun's chants. "That quality, that tonality, just goes right to the center of your chest." Eventually he got a second chance and passed on the tape to a music producer. Today, that nun's dozen albums have turned her into a household name in Nepal and an international celebrity.      As inspiring as Ani's music is, her life journey is perhaps even more so. From the age of five, Ani had to struggle to survive. Not a day went by without a bloody beating from her father, without Ani fearing for her mother's life or... posted on Nov 20 2017 (10,174 reads)

Oliver was one of the most beloved poets of our times. A writer who was dazzled by her daily experience of life, and dazzled the rest of us by telling about it in her poems and essays. She deliberately stayed out of the public eye and what follows is one of her rare interviews. Read on for a glimpse of the remarkable woman who  once wrote: "When it's over, I want to say: all my life/I was a bride married to amazement./I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." What follows is the transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett and Mary Oliver. October 15, 2015 KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Mary Oliver is one of our greatest living poets, ... posted on Jan 18 2019 (45,462 reads)

a Happy Life Different from a Meaningful One? A scientific controversy about the relationship between meaning and happiness raises fundamental questions about how to live a good life. Philosophers, researchers, spiritual leaders—they’ve all debated what makes life worth living. Is it a life filled with happiness or a life filled with purpose and meaning? Is there even a difference between the two? Think of the human rights activist who fights oppression but ends up in prison—is she happy? Or the social animal who spends his nights (and some days) jumping from party to party—is that the good life? These aren’t just academic questions. The... posted on Mar 28 2014 (34,580 reads)

for Leonard Mlodinow — Randomness and Choice Leonard Mlodinow: When you look at your life, if you had to sit down and think about, and I'm talking about in detail, not just the headlines, if you think about all the details of what happened to you, you will find that there was a time where you had the extra cup of coffee, where if you hadn't, you wouldn't have met Person A. When I look back in my life, I could find so many instances like that. And I had fun tracing some of them. And the course of your life depends on how you react to those opportunities and challenges that the randomness presents to you. If you're awake and paying attent... posted on Jul 15 2014 (25,862 reads)

talk in sound bites. In this instance, we had an uninterrupted 90 minutes, and it really felt like an exploration. And at the end of the 90 minutes, I had to tell this person I had never seen that this had been the most soulful, searching, intimate conversation I could remember having. And I think it’s the same experience that Yo-Yo Ma, and Mary Oliver, and Desmond Tutu, and hundreds of others, have all known. I think to be on Krista’s show, On Being, really changes your life by clarifying it. And I think Krista and her guests have really become some of my closest companions, because they discuss the most essential issues with such honesty and vulnerability. But I ... posted on Jul 10 2016 (14,003 reads)

is much more than a medical event. It is a time for important psychological, emotional and spiritual work – a time for transition. To a large extent, the way we meet death is shaped by our habitual response to suffering, and our relationship to ourselves, to those we love, and to whatever image of ultimate kindness we hold.” - Frank Ostaseski Frank Ostaseski is a Buddhist teacher, international lecturer and a leading voice in contemplative end-of-life care.  He is the Guiding Teacher and visionary Founding Director of Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America, in San Francisco, and also author of  The Five In... posted on Jan 26 2018 (30,962 reads)

is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org.  In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Lynne Twist. Lynne Twist is a hugely accomplished global activist, author and teacher. She’s an award-winning speaker who has devoted her life to sustainability and economic integrity. She is president and founder of the Soul of Money Institute and she’s the cofounder, along with her husband, Bill, of the Pachamama Alliance, which... posted on Mar 12 2022 (2,948 reads)

your life were a movie, where would the plot be headed right now? You may not be immortalized in film anytime soon, but your life is still a story. According to psychologists, we all have an internalized narrative that explains how we became the person we are today and where we are headed tomorrow. Like any Hollywood blockbuster, this narrative has settings, scenes, a plot, characters, and themes. As we ponder resolutions for the coming year, New Year’s can also be a time to reflect on our life story—and to figure out how everything fits together. Incorporating our goals into the larger narrative of our life can give us more energy to pursue them, and to become the ... posted on Jan 1 2017 (20,445 reads)

1987, while teaching a class at MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] on nonviolence, philosophy lecturer Lee Perlman had a novel idea: Why not take the students to a prison, to talk with men who had committed extreme forms of violence?  Needless to say,” an MIT publication reported, “the experience was an eye-opener for students — a powerful way to help them understand, at a visceral level, the nature of violence. And it also sparked Perlman’s lifelong professional and personal interest in the prison system.” What follows is the edited transcript of an in-depth Awakin Calls interview with Dr. Perlman. You can listen to the recording ... posted on Dec 28 2019 (6,763 reads)

of the humanities. Positive psychology was founded by the University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman, who, after decades of working as a research psychologist, had come to believe that his field was in crisis. He and his colleagues had made great progress with depression, helplessness, and anxiety, but, he realized, helping people overcome their demons is not the same thing as helping them live well. And so, in 1998, Seligman called on his colleagues to investigate what makes life fulfilling and worth living. Social scientists heeded his call, but most zeroed in on a topic that was both obvious and seemed easy to measure: happiness. Some researchers studied the benefits of... posted on Jan 25 2018 (35,613 reads)

Rohr Living in Deep Time Men of all ages say Richard Rohr has given them a new way into spiritual depth and religious thought — through his writing and retreats. This conversation with the Franciscan spiritual teacher delves into the expansive scope of his ideas: male formation and what he calls “father hunger”; why contemplation is as magnetic to people now, including millennials, as it’s ever been; and how to set about taking the first half of life — the drive to “successful survival” — all the way to meaning. Transcript Krista Tippett, host: I’m not sure any living spiritual teacher has been recommended ... posted on Sep 11 2017 (14,413 reads)

perception, thinking, effortless achievement and healing are inherent to life—they happen by themselves. When we observe children learning to walk or speak, ecosystems regenerating themselves, or animals self-organizing, we notice there’s a masterful way of functioning that’s fundamentally different from our dominant culture. Encaged in a reality bubble of fear and separation, as Westerners in particular, we’ve culturally barred ourselves from life. True unlearning is the process of bidding farewell to such detrimental cultural programming, fostering imagination and awe in relation to life, discernment and empathy in relation to our world, and community and ... posted on Dec 30 2018 (7,994 reads)

and coupledom with her TED talks, her books, and her singular podcast, Where Should We Begin? There, listeners are invited into emotionally raw therapy sessions she conducts with couples she’s never met before. Episode after episode lays bare the theater of relationship, which is also the drama of being human. And that’s what I take up with her this hour. What does “erotic intelligence,” one of her terms, have to do with the human condition writ large and to life at every stage — coupled or not? And how might it inform our emotionally raw societal dramas? [music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoë Keating] Esther Perel: My book ... posted on Dec 18 2019 (10,435 reads)

our labor and creativity would be better applied elsewhere. We might ask, having done without it for a while, whether we really need so much air travel, Disneyworld vacations, or trade shows. What parts of the economy will we want to restore, and what parts might we choose to let go of? And on a darker note, what among the things that are being taken away right now – civil liberties, freedom of assembly, sovereignty over our bodies, in-person gatherings, hugs, handshakes, and public life – might we need to exert intentional political and personal will to restore? For most of my life, I have had the feeling that humanity was nearing a crossroads. Always, the crisis, the c... posted on Apr 16 2020 (13,838 reads)

for On Exoplanets and Love: Natalie Batalha on Science That Connects Us to One Another February 14, 2013 Krista Tippett, Host: Natalie Batalha hunts for "exoplanets" — Earth-sized planets beyond our own solar system — that might have liquid water and harbor life. She works with the Kepler Mission at NASA, searching among millions of stars that emit "compelling signals" in the range of Kepler's space telescope. For her, it's only a matter of time — a when, not an if — that we discover planets where we know life exists. And, I've never met anyone who speaks more intriguingly than Natalie Batalha about the connection be... posted on Jan 29 2014 (26,314 reads)

my guest is Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth is an author, essayist, short-story writer, and novelist.In 2006, she wrote her landmark memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which spent 199 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Her latest novel, The Signature of All Things, is a sprawling tale of 19th-century botanical exploration. O, The Oprah Magazine named it “the novel of a lifetime.” Elizabeth Gilbertis a featured presenter at Sounds True’s 2014 Wake Up Festival. She’ll be speaking on the topic of “Big Magic: Thoughts on Creative Living.” The Wake Up Festival takes place August 20th–24th in Estes Park, Col... posted on Sep 16 2014 (23,743 reads)

we'd like to invite people to share something personal and perhaps even be vulnerable about their relationship with money. We'll start with a few friends who have been looking at these questions for a long time to help seed the conversation, and then we’ll go around and share our reflections.      To add some context, first, we'll have Jacob Needleman who is an author, a philosopher, a professor. He's written a couple dozen books on the inner life, including one called Money and the Meaning of Life. We'll also have Min Xuan Lee who has been asking these questions from the perspective of being a social entrepreneur. She will be fol... posted on Oct 2 2017 (10,639 reads)

fear can provoke more fear. In part, this may be why the Hebrew deity is conceived as eternally present,2 which is undoubtedly too tall an order for any human being to attain.  Whenever we become distant from ourselves and from the world, a direct, open, and unmediated experience of being alive can be a welcome gift.  image by W.carter, Wikimedia Commons One way to reconnect with ourselves and become more present is to listen. We can listen to ourselves, and to life. A good place to listen is in the natural world.  In our original experience of the natural world, life abounds everywhere: in Death Valley and Antarctica, as well as a cabin in the woods.&n... posted on Oct 26 2020 (5,886 reads)