Reading Archives (Author)

The Interplay of Awareness, Presence and Compassion

Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche

 Many Masters have said: "Urge on the horse of awareness with the whip of presence!" And, in fact, if awareness is not quickened by presence it cannot function. Let's examine an exampl...

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21K reads, 5 comments

A 13-Year-Old In A Museum

Nancy Collier

On a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art with a friend and her daughter, meandering through the museum’s exhibits, I was struck by how often my friend’s 13-year-old daughter asked us ...

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14K reads, 19 comments

My Word Of The Year

Nancy Gibbs

My word of the year is listen. It’s one of those words whose meaning is in its music. Listen is a quiet word, that half swallowed L and diffident I and softly hissing S. It defies the clamoro...

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18K reads, 6 comments

Before You Know What Kindness Really Is

Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved,...

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188K reads, 62 comments

My Neighbor's Corn

Naren Kini

There was once a farmer who grew excellent quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best corn. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he gre...

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25K reads, 16 comments

Why Can't We Tolerate Emptiness?

Natasha Dem

Why is it so hard for us to tolerate emptiness in our minds? The prevalent belief that action always equals progress may be a contributing factor. We perceive emptiness as an undesired state, somethin...

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35K reads, 11 comments

Three States Of Water

Natureza Gabriel Kram

Imagine that you’ve never been to Earth. You visit first in winter, where someone introduces you to water. From a glass, they pour it out over your hand. You drink. Remarkable. Imagine that y...

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14K reads, 16 comments

Meeting Our Own Mortality

Navin Amarasuriya

Stories have helped us make meaning of the world, from ancient times when our ancestors whispered around campfires. Inner mental models that explained the outside world shaped our perceptions, and for...

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10K reads, 8 comments

Where's Your Umbrella?

Nazeer Ahmed

The rains failed again that year. It was the third year in succession when there was no rain. The crops had disappeared and the land was a brown swath of dusty rubble. Trees had lost their leaves year...

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22K reads, 12 comments

Purpose of Life

Neal Donald Walsch

Here is the meaning, the purpose of your life: to create yourself, to create who you are. To express, to experience, to declare, to fulfill, to be, who you really are. Every decision you make -- ev...

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9K reads

Irony Of Marriage

Neale Donald Walsch

Largely, marriage has been used by those societies, religions, and families as a mini-prison, as kind of a contractual arrangement that says: "Everything will be, now and forevermore, the wa...

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14K reads, 25 comments

The Oppressor and the Oppressed Must Both be Liberated

Nelson Mandela

I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must...

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100K reads, 31 comments

The Grand Predicament

Nic Askew

A fear of not belonging drives much of what we do and how we are. Unknowingly it can define the experience of a life. Most of us live with an underlying sense that we are not yet enough. And ...

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9K reads, 6 comments

Connecting Craft and Creativity

Nicholas Hlobeczy

NH: When trying to work creatively things can begin to go downhill. All of a sudden you find yourself down in the valley, down in the doldrums. You wonder how you got there. Inattentiveness plays its...

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10K reads

Plan of Life

Nicole Grasset

For most of us, the first thing we must do is to work -- to have a roof over our head, bread in our mouth, fire in our chimney -- for ourselves and for those who are dependent on us.  Work chosen...

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19K reads, 15 comments

Pain Expands Our Capacity For Joy

Nikole Lim

Daily, my work requires me to delve into the hellish reality of unimaginable experiences of gross abuse. Neither words nor images can fully convey the emotional crises, psychological torment, and hear...

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9K reads, 15 comments

Graduation

Nimesh Patel

Have your eye on the goal, but then let it all go For everything changes, as you will come to know Every plan you make, and every seed you sow Is impermanent, nothing is ever yours to own Once y...

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22K reads, 6 comments

Daily Life of Art

Nina Wise

Since the inception of the human species and until only decades ago, daily life was infused with art making. We crafted our own tools, we sewed our own clothing, we built our own shelters, we cultiv...

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51K reads, 16 comments

Nothing and Everything

Nisargadatta

Love says: I am everything. Wisdom says: I am nothing. Between the two my life flows. Q: How can I find peace when the world suffers? A: The world suffers for very valid reasons. If you want to he...

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6K reads

I Am That

Nisargadatta Maharaj

The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless ...

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16K reads, 2 comments

The Challenge of Gift-Giving

Nitin Paranjape

I am afflicted with a trait which I suppose is common, yet I feel peculiar. Even though I like receiving gifts, I find myself feeling awkward giving them. I suppose at the core is an assumption that t...

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39K reads, 15 comments

When My Father Faced An Emergency

Nora Bateson

Someone asked me once if I had ever seen my father in an emergency situation, and if I might describe how he dealt with it. At the time I replied that I had never witnessed him in any danger, or in an...

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8K reads, 10 comments

What Is Holding It Together?

Nora Bateson

For you, a respite of uncontainability. Safe pages for words, to taste them as they find their rightness. Let them rest in their silky beds of lyrical dreams. Let them run like rivers down mountain-si...

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22K reads, 10 comments

How Caterpillar Turns Into A Butterfly

Norie Huddle

If you kneel down on the ground and look at a caterpillar very carefully,  you'd probably think he's a pretty nice furry fellow with a rather boring life. And you would be right. BU...

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17K reads, 9 comments

Emptiness And Compassion Go Hand In Hand

Norman Fischer

The word “emptiness” is a fair translation of shunyata, but it has the drawback of sounding negative, even despairing.  The Chinese, searching for a word that might translate shunyata...

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33K reads, 12 comments