of our attention have changed.  People are enormously alert, say, to movie techniques or computer systems. It’s not that it’s flabby or out of shape, it is that most contemporary uses of seeing, I fear—especially in our culture, American culture, western culture— mainly involve a quick naming of what we see. I fear that we are losing those slower ways of seeing the thing as it is, in reality, out there.  Other ways of seeing—for example, through meditation in Eastern cultures—are not part of ordinary American life. I believe this is one reason why, after our students have learned to draw, they often tell me, “Life seems so m... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,581 reads)

Lincoln wrote in his immensely insightful letter of consolation to a bereaved friend, the agony of loss is slowly transmuted into “a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before”; a transmutation in which skillful loving support can make a world of difference — support very different from what we instinctively imagine helps. Art by Valerio Vidali from The Shadow Elephant by Nadine Robert — a subtle meditation on what it actually takes to unblue our sorrows. In studying how people navigate intense grief — the loss of loved ones to violent crime, suicide, disaster, infant death, and oth... posted on Aug 13 2023 (6,479 reads)

error, and reflection represented in this volume is given short shrift by academic scholars, medical researchers, educators, and funders.  Schools of embodiment practices are relegated to new age self-help techniques, in a dismal sometimes abetted by practitioners within the field who are unaware of the full riches of their own heritage. Search widespread failures to grasp the full meaning of these practices are similar to misunderstandings encountered by teachers of ancient systems of meditation and the martial arts.  Tai chi chuan, acupuncture, hatha yoga, and vipassana, for example, are ancient complex systems of educating many aspects of the person.  they include menta... posted on Sep 17 2023 (2,312 reads)

Sue Cochrane's website is a button that says "Click Here for Unconditional Love"- it leads to a selection of writings that offer exactly that. It isn't just the words of Sue's stories that touch the reader, but the wordless energy behind them. Sue Cochrane survived a traumatic childhood to become a pioneering family court judge. Throughout her career she strived to put the heart back into the body of the law. Her first stark cancer diagnosis came when her three adopted sons were little more than babies. In the eighteen years that followed, Sue lived and loved through a series of profoundly serious diagnoses, including Stage IV breast cancer, and a brain tumor that wa... posted on Oct 31 2023 (53,247 reads)

most sacred thing, is that whichever the outcome, we end up having transformed one another in this vulnerable-making process of speaking and listening. Why and how we do that is what Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) explores in a magnificent piece titled “Telling Is Listening” found in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (public library), which also gave us her spectacular meditations on being a man and what beauty really means. Ursula K. Le Guin by Benjamin Reed In the spirit of Kurt Vonnegut’s diagrams of the shapes of stories, Le... posted on Nov 13 2023 (2,951 reads)

shall I walk, or should I ride?” “Ride,” Pleasure said. “Walk,” Joy replied. In his 1914 poem The Best Friend, the Welsh poet and occasional vagabond W.H. Davies pondered a timeless question: “Now shall I walk, or should I ride?” This seemingly simple dilemma encapsulates the modern industrial choice between slow-paced ageless wandering on foot or embracing the thrill of motorized transport, along with the attendant speed and freedom it offers, which has become such an integral part of our contemporary lifestyle. It likewise speaks volumes about us and about the nature of the choices we make daily. Gone perha... posted on Nov 22 2023 (2,353 reads)

study for The Spirit of Light, Edwin Austin Abbey, 1989. To step across the threshold with courage and openheartedness is to honor the truth and sanctity of our experience, of our light — it is to bless ourselves: The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God. Complement with a blind hero of the French resistance on how to live in light, a Baldwin-lensed meditation on the light between us, and David Whyte’s “Blessing for the Light,” inspired by John O’Donohue, then revisit O’Donohue on why we fall in love&n... posted on Dec 11 2023 (5,691 reads)

Songs of Trees reminds us that we're not alone and never have been. Below are highlights of Haskell's insights shared during our conversation. About His First Book The Forest Unseen: That project was a place where I tried to integrate different strands of my life, so part of my life was as a teacher and as a scientist sharing ecological stories with my students, and then trying to understand those a little more deeply through my own research. I also had a practice of meditation of just being being quiet for several times a day, and also I just took great deal of enjoyment in walking in the forest and opening my senses without any particular goal in mind, and so fo... posted on Jan 7 2024 (4,864 reads)

to yourself. Notice the feelings you’re focusing on and the perceptions you’re holding in mind. Try to bring these things together in a good way: Breathe in a way that’s nourishing. Talk to yourself in a way that’s nourishing. If the chatter in the mind weighs you down, pulls you down, blames everything on things outside, you’ve got to counteract it. Find new ways of talking to yourself.This is one of the reasons why we have the chants at the beginning of the meditation: goodwill for all beings, goodwill for ourselves, reflections on aging, illness, and death, and the fact that they are normal and that the survival of the body is not the be-all and end-all... posted on Apr 8 2024 (2,941 reads)

movements, to the prophetic ministry, the gay rights movements started there. They recently have been doing a lot of work with the sanctuary movement for immigrants. There we even had a minister who used to go around Times Square and offer cookies to the prostitutes so that he could talk to them about their human rights. There is this whole history in this one church of being socially active for justice. But they didn't have much about spirituality. They didn't talk about it. They didn't have meditation classes. They didn't have, we had prayer of course, but they didn't really have any kind of emphasis upon the contemplative life or the spiritual life.And after we wrote about spiritual lit... posted on May 5 2024 (2,188 reads)