Reading Archive (Joy)
Pale Blue Dot
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,...
My Work is Loving the World
My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast;...
The Difference Between Natural and Unnatural
For thirty years I lived only in my farming and had little contact with people outside my own community. During those years I was...
The Japanese Word, Mu
Yes and no…this or that…one or zero. In the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built...
You Play The Piano
The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That...
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...
The Dalai Lama: Why I Laugh
I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I...
Sincerely Enthusiastic
I wanted to laugh more, I wanted to show more loving-kindness, and I also wanted to be more enthusiastic. I knew that it wasn't nice...
Psychological Materialism
Even if you are against the materialism of society and you do not want to support it, refusing to work is still grasping at the wrong end...
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...
The Pleasure of Serving
All of nature is a yearning for service: The cloud serves, and the wind, and the furrow. Where there is a tree to plant, you be the...
Freedom Manifests in Action
The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, the nearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be. In that actualisation,...
Creative Living
This, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that...
My Stroke of Insight
One of the greatest lessons I learned was how to feel the physical component of emotion. Joy was a feeling in my body. Peace was a...
Nature and Nonviolence
You don’t discriminate between the seed and the plant. You see that they ‘inter-are’ with each other, that they are...
Law of Least Effort
If you observe nature at work, you will see that least effort is expended. Grass doesn't try to grow, it just grows. Fish don't try to...
Dandelion Has My Smile
If in our daily lives we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. If we really know...
An Awe Walk
What gives you a sense of awe? That word, awe—the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your...
Action Without Desire Of Outcomes
To protect self-interest individuals exploit others, nations go to war, and businesses undercut each other, because people in those...