Reading Archives (Author)
The Spirit of Karma Yoga
What is Karma Yoga? Karma Yoga is a selfless act. Any work which does not directly fulfill your ego is Karma Yoga. If someone's tire is...
In Eyes Of God, We're All Minorities
Krister Stendahl, former dean of Harvard Divinity school, told a reporter shortly before his death in 2008, "In the eyes of God, we...
Pronounce a Silent Blessing
"It is forbidden to taste of the pleasures of this world without a blessing." --The Talmud I think that the best way to...
Micro Moments of Love
It’s time to upgrade our view of love. First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your...
Love Is Not An Emotion
Love, defined as micro moments of positivity resonance, may thus be the most generative and consequential of all positive emotions. By...
The Positivity Ratio
Imagine you’re a water lily. It’s early dawn and your petals are closed in around your face. If you can see anything at all,...
Small Wonder
Barry Lopez writes that if we hope to succeed in the endeavor of protecting natures other than our own, "it will require that we...
Planetary Birth
From the vantage point of our birth as a universal humanity, we are not dying; rather we are in a dangerous but natural condition, Just...
Doing What You Love
You should be doing what you love. What you love is as unique to you as your fingerprints. You need to know that because nothing will...
Incentives Are Not Enough
When you incentivize everything, you de-moralize it, you take the moral dimensions out of it. Arguably, in the olden days, bankers...
When Solutions Are Technologies Of Avoidance
When things don't go according to plan, when the laboratory explodes into splinters of glass, smoke, and worthy intentions, it is...
Dark Skies Show Us Stars
One of my earliest childhood memories finds me waking from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, during a family road trip. Far from...
No Longer Playing It Safe
To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand...
Love Is Not A Feeling, It's An Ability
bell hooks: It fascinates me that while we are so obsessed with romance, many of us are turned off by the practice of love. When you...
Zen TV
"How many of you know how to watch television?" I asked my class one day. After a few bewildered and silent moments, slowly, one by one,...
Do What You Can
I'm basically a simple person. The way I look at the issues you're talking about, which are issues of the globe, is to bring it back to...
We'll See
There is a man who has a farm, and his whole livelihood depends on his horse to plow the field. One day he is out plowing and suddenly...
In Praise of Idleness
Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly...
Individual and Social Ethics
Misers, whose absorption in means is pathological, are generally recognized to be unwise, but minor forms of the same malady are apt to...
A Deep, Uncritical Love
You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do...
When You Run Into Problems
You are going to run into problems in your meditation. Everybody does. Problems come in all shapes and sizes and the only thing you can...
Meditation: A Process Of Retraining The Mind
Gently, but firmly, without getting upset or judging yourself for straying, simply return to the simple physical sensation of the breath....
Bridging The Spiritual and Mundane
As I now look at our situation, I distinguish three major domains in which human life participates. One I call the transcendent domain,...
Balancing Vision and Routine
All human activity can be viewed as an interplay between two contrary but equally essential factors -- vision and repetitive routine....
Beginning Right Here and Now
Having been jolted out of the comfortable inertia of our previous religious and scientific dicta by decades of discoveries into the...
Man In The Glass
When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day Just go to a mirror and look at yourself And...
The Power of Here
Wisdom traditions worldwide say there's no greater blessing than to live the life of your soul, the source of your deepest personal...
How to Live If You're Going to Die
I got a call that a dear friend of mine, who received precepts from me years ago when I lived at Green Gulch, was dying. I arranged with...
Keep Looking and You'll See
There are three fundamental rules that all the wisdom traditions say will help us accomplish our task, if we follow them. The first is to...
Simple Living, Simple Joy
A friend of ours here in North Carolina recently lost her beautiful 19-year-old son to suicide. She told us he was the sixth among a...
Magic of Service
When we live in harmony with the dharma, or the great natural law, everything we do is an act of service. Wherever we are, whatever we do...
Shadow Cannot Drive Out Shame
I was taught to affirm, “I am whole, perfect, and complete.” I didn’t have good definitions of those words at the time....
The Sound Of Wings
A friend and I often greet each other with the Arabic words, “Ishq Allah.” Ishq is passionate love for God. Crazy love for...
Choosing Suffering over Safety
“Can you walk, sweetheart?” I say these words to our dog Stella who is dying. It’s time for breakfast and if she walks...
What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a...
Living With Radical Honesty
I learned that the primary cause of most human stress, the primary cause of most conflict between couples and the primary cause of most...
Vulnerability is the Path
Vulnerability isn't good or bad: it's not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience....
Exhausting Quest For Perfection
The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting, but as hard as we try, we can't turn off the tapes that fill our heads with...
A Guide To Life's Turning Points
Progress is made in steps, not in leaps. Move only as far as the opening allows. Remain neutral and tolerant of adversity. When in doubt,...
Half A Pomegranate
Early one morning, the Buddha and his disciples set off on an alms round. He announced that on that day all of the offerings they...
How We Wrestle Is Who We Are
I remember pacing hospital and house and hills, and thinking that his operations would either work or not and he would either live or...
It's Okay To Be Perfectly Human
Why do we do it? Why do we nag and criticize ourselves? Why do we launch scud missiles of negative words and thoughts against our...
Why Does This Matter?
I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple...
Wholeheartedness
The end -- in all of the monastic traditions, of both East and West -- consists in cultivating mindfulness, being mindful. And "mindful"...
The Great Gesture That Unites Us
I recognize, I acknowledge, I am grateful; in French these three concepts are expressed by one term: “Je suis reconnaissant.”...
Giving Up is Different From Letting Someone Down
This inner gesture of letting go from moment to moment is what is so terribly difficult for us; and it can be applied to almost any area...
Gratefulness Happens Before Thinking
My vision of the world? My hope for the future? This topic sounds a bit big. Allow me to start small — say, with crows. They are my...
Loving Your Enemy
To love our enemies does not mean that we suddenly become their friends. If it is our enemies we are to love, they must remain enemies....
Letting Meaning Flow Into Purpose
The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a...
A Pledge For Grateful Living
In thanksgiving for life, I pledge to overcome the illusion of entitlement by reminding myself that everything is gift and, thus, to...
Contemplation Vs. Social Change
Brother David: You can’t really be a contemplative, unless you also want to change the world. You want to...
Three Great Forces
The three great forces that the Christian Elders in the Egyptian desert identified as the enemies against which we’re battling are...
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Can you look at a situation without naming it? Naming it a word, causes fear. Jeet Kune Do [a martial arts form by Bruce Lee] favors...
The Broken Among Us Teach Us
What sustains me is this knowledge I have that it’s really the broken among us that can contribute a lot to our quest for full,...
Commit Absolutely
If you knew what you were doing, it's going to probably open up some very great treasures, but those don't belong to you. When I find...
Staying In Your Own Business
I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. For me, the word God means...
The Gentlest Thing in the World
The gentlest thing in the world is an open mind. Since it doesn't believe what it thinks, it is flexible, porous, without opposition,...
There Is Just One Thing To Do
When you become a lover of what is, there are no more decisions to make. In my life, I just wait and watch. I know that the decision will...
Investigating Untrue Thoughts
I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn’t caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling,...
Friends with the Wind
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we...