by Anna Wolf for Dumbo Feather KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Maria Popova has called Brain Pickings, her invention and labor of love, a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.” What she really delivers to hundreds of thousands of people each day is wisdom of the old-fashioned sort, presented in new-fashioned digital ways. She doesn’t merely curate, she cross-pollinates — between philosophy and design, physics and poetry, the scholarly and the experiential. We meet Maria Popova at 30, and explore her gleanings, thus far, on what it means to lead a good life — intellectually, creatively, and spiritually. MARIA POPOVA: You know,... posted on Jul 15 2015 (11,448 reads)

the outer world. Not that the outer world is bad. Not at all. But it needs to have this other kind of understanding and emphasis which requires people of some more developed understanding to lead it. Why it sometimes gets lost and forgotten is one aspect of the age old question of what's the origin of the fall of humanity. Every tradition speaks of the loss of something, whether in the western tradition’s faith and virtue or sometimes in the eastern traditions of understanding and wisdom. Preeta: I am curious, as we are talking about the money, I'm curious about your views about the gift economy. There’s movement from some groups and people to push away from a tran... posted on Jul 4 2015 (8,491 reads)

emotional life maps our incompleteness,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in her luminousletter of advice to the young. “A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.” Anger, indeed, is one of the emotions we judge most harshly — in others, as well as in ourselves — and yet understanding anger is central to mapping out the landscape of our interior lives. Aristotle, in planting the civilizational seed for practical wisdom, recognized this when he asked not whether anger is “good” or “bad” but how it shall be used: directed at whom, manifested how, for how long and to what end. This und... posted on Feb 8 2016 (42,787 reads)

upon it: In a good image, something previously unformulated (in the most literal sense) comes into the realm of the expressed. Without precisely this image, we feel, the world’s store of truth would be diminished; and conversely, when a writer brings into language a new image that is fully right, what is knowable of existence expands. […] Thinking within the fields of image, the mind crosses also into the knowledge the unconscious holds — into the shape-shifting wisdom of dream. Poetic concentration allows us to bring the dream-mind’s compression, displacement, wit, depth, and surprise into our waking minds. It is within dreamlife we first learn to read... posted on Sep 6 2016 (10,855 reads)

TIPPETT, HOST: “Belonging creates and undoes us both.” This is the wisdom 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 d... posted on May 6 2017 (9,601 reads)

what”, how simple and direct that sounds. Yet I remember as a teen how I used to suffer unnecessarily because I did not know how to be grateful for all I had. I clung to the ego, and craved for more. Not until a loss happened at the end of my high school years, did I realize how impermanent everything is, that all is always changing and can be gone in just a second. Yet, how beautiful it is to know that we have the choice to be grateful, to cultivate compassion, to discover our innate wisdom, and to become a light in this world. As Kozo puts it, “Love always serves. That is the only reaction love has is service. When somebody slaps you across the face, love looks and goes, &l... posted on Aug 13 2017 (11,195 reads)

an awareness of sacred time( kairos). In these pregnant voids we come to understand the limit of our comprehension. We gain a tacit knowledge that our modes of experiencing time and the world are nothing more than the mechanisms, categories, and paradigms created by our limited minds. Like monarch butterflies confined on their migrations to low altitudes, our wings will not carry us into the vast regions of outer space. The proper name for the experience of unknowing is not mysticism but wisdom. When Socrates was told that the Oracle of Delphi said he was the wisest man in Greece, he replied that  it could only  mean he knew what he did not know. Wisdom comes from the certai... posted on Nov 8 2018 (7,643 reads)

The fallacy of that approach is embarrassingly obvious now and viewed from my current perspective it’s easy to see how I sabotaged getting my assignments completed. This unhelpful approach began to shift as I observed the effects of procrastination and preferred approaching tasks without panic. In the process of turning over thoughts along with turning over dirt, I’ve become aware of the impact of doing things a bit at a time, and how much is accomplished this way. This wisdom, lost to me in earlier years, is found in long ago tales like ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ from Aesop’s Fables, which reveals the potential of a slow and steady effort. In F... posted on Dec 2 2017 (10,876 reads)

Simon: This program is brought to you by SoundsTrue.com. At SoundsTrue.com, you can find hundreds of downloadable audio learning programs plus books, music, videos, and online courses and events. At SoundsTrue.com, we think of ourselves as a trusted partner on the spiritual journey, offering diverse, in-depth, and life-changing wisdom. SoundsTrue.com: many voices, one journey. You're listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Dan Millman. Dan Millman is an author and lecturer whose semiautobiographical book Way of the Peaceful Warrior first ignited public imagination almost 40 years ago. Dan Millman has authored 17 books, which together have be... posted on Jul 13 2018 (13,329 reads)

I was in my 40s and at rock bottom emotionally. There was one person in my life who seemed to have her stuff together. She was teaching yoga at the YMCA, and she introduced me to a Swar yogi, with whom I spent several years learning about changing people's personal conditions through the use of sound, meditation, and diet. I ended up in a space where nothing could harm me because I would just say, "Okay, I can deal with that." Now I realize that physical process took me to the wisdom of amor fati: whatever comes at you, love it, embrace it, and move from there. Ameeta: Can you talk to us a little bit more about what amor fati is? I’m not sure all our listeners unde... posted on May 10 2018 (11,478 reads)

modern culture, pointing to the deeper cycles of life and death, growth and decay, that underpin our individual existences and to which we all ultimately belong, whether or not we recognise it. Nowadays, Stephen has left behind his work with the dying. His book and the documentary film Griefwalker made about him have brought him international renown, and since 2010 he has been running the Orphan Wisdom School in his native Canada. The school is dedicated to the “making of wisdom” for anyone with a “longing to live deeply”, and focuses on self-understanding within the context of culture, history and nature. While he spends much of his time touring and ... posted on Oct 19 2018 (12,214 reads)

This book looks at specific strategies that leaders can use to distribute power, to make the center smaller, and to make leadership something that everybody does. Jyoti: Thank you. I like the concept that leadership is something that everybody does. I remember hearing you once discuss this style of leadership as something essential to Pine Ridge. I also remember you saying that they have rituals associated with a young person coming of age; or rituals for the elderly that embody communal wisdom. Can you say some more about these topics? Kevin: Sure. After I traveled to Pine Ridge a number of times, I began looking at how their community was structured before and after the reservati... posted on Nov 6 2018 (5,749 reads)

and a half millennia ago, the Chinese sage Lao Tzu wrote a poetic and profound short text known as the Tao Te Ching. With uncommon elegance, it crystallized the teachings of Taoist philosophy on such perennial matters as power, happiness, and the source of meaning in human life. As its wisdom radiated West over the centuries, it went on to influence minds as varied as John Cage (who wove it into his pioneering musical aesthetic), Franz Kafka (who considered it the clearest view of reality), Bruce Lee (who anchored his famous metaphor for resilience in it), Alan Watts (who placed it at the center of his philosophy), and Leo Tolstoy (who leaned on it in his pr... posted on Mar 10 2019 (6,885 reads)

quite recognized that until now, maybe. People are beginning to see, well, where are these trees, because we do get a lot of landslides now, by the way. Ms. Tippett:So there’s a really pragmatic component to that religious teaching. Ms. Maathai:Yes. And sometimes in religion, whether it is Christian, Buddhism, or Judaism, we have these teachings we read in the Bible. The Bible tells you to do this. It doesn’t tell you why, but sometimes it’s because there is some coded wisdom … Ms. Tippett:Human wisdom, right. Ms. Maathai:Human wisdom that people have accumulated in the course of generations. Sometimes it becomes a ritual; sometimes it becomes a cultura... posted on May 28 2019 (4,785 reads)

which I just sort of powered. As a younger man I just got on with things. And then—you rattled off a list of the awards and things at the beginning—those all just seemed to come in quick succession. It was easy to feel as though I belonged in a life that was blessed—most things came without too much difficulty. And now they weren’t coming in that way. There were many barriers. And I had to teach myself—or be taught by the pain—that actually there’s wisdom and beauty in every aspect of one’s life, including the things that the perfectionist in me would just previously have wanted to call failures and flaws—to be corrected. Sometime... posted on Dec 2 2019 (5,445 reads)

and has, for my work from very early on, has helped me attune with where people are and help them kind of feel what's emergent in terms of a deeper sense of authenticity and truth. This is kind of the main theme of my earlier book, In Touch, which is the body has a sense of what's authentic and what's true. So the heart area, is one of those portals, one of those areas that has unusual sensitivity in terms of feeling and understanding and what we refer to as "heart wisdom." We access the same awareness through different doors. Through the mind, it brings a sense of clarity, spaciousness, freedom. Through the heart, a sense of deep love and gratitude and app... posted on Dec 23 2019 (8,631 reads)

gold is found—and you could say, just to be poetic about it, in a wound that’s weeping, right? So, this idea from alchemy, that there is this golden aspect of our being, that we’re only going to be able to find, by sort of going into those unpleasant … We call them “symptoms” in the psychological world, but this unwanted experience. So this idea of going with the symptom, meaning that there is some kernel, there’s some essence, there’s some wisdom that’s found inside of difficult experience that we’re not going to be able to find in moments of clarity and moments of peace.  Look, this is very—it’s difficul... posted on Dec 12 2020 (5,769 reads)

found very helpful through my study of Focusing and one of the things I most appreciate about Dr. Gendlin in particular is that he and his cronies were real anarchists. They were basically saying, “If you’re not creating on your own model, then you’re not doing this correctly.” Through my own practice of practicing through the lens of yoga and through the lens of Buddhism, I really began to see this connection between these two wings of awareness—one wing being wisdom, the capacity to see clearly, and the second, this wing of compassion, the capacity to be with. Just as when you begin to slow down and pay attention to what it means to be present, what I f... posted on Aug 1 2022 (4,247 reads)

Mayuka Yamazaki, a high-level business executive, ikebana — the ancient Japanese art of floral creations — is not just about arranging flowers. It is about attuning to the wisdom and beauty of nature and enriching our experience of being human. As a master of the art, she explains that ikebana is a word derived from the verb ikeru (to bring alive) and hana (flowers), or combined, “letting flowers live.” For over 20 years, Mayuka has been letting flowers live, and most recently, she has brought this practice to help restore wholeness to schools, international organizations, communities, and most notably, corporations. As a young child in ... posted on Jan 10 2023 (2,056 reads)

of an ever-flowing spring? If you preserve your self-reliance at every hour, and your kindness, simplicity, and morality. LEO TOLSTOY In the middle of his fifty-fifth year, reflecting on his imperfect life and his own moral failings, Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828–November 20, 1910) set out to construct a manual for morality by compiling “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people,” whose wisdom “gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness” — thinkers and spiritual leaders who have shed light on what is most important in living a rewarding and meaningful life... posted on Mar 18 2023 (4,355 reads)