Even in the confusion and complexity of our times, there is still wisdom that underlies our experience from generation to generation. One of these aphorisms state: “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Without integrity, mindfulness is morally meaningless. Without integrity, metta is either wishful thinking or a spiritual bypass. Both mindfulness and metta require…
Moral disgust is currently the default emotion in our politically-divided country and it has profound toxic social and emotional effects on all of us. Moral disgust can be thought of as the universal repugnance people feel toward extremely bad conduct, like abuse of the vulnerable, cruelty, corruption, and so on. Moral disgust in a relationship is toxic because, like physical…
A favorite image in many Buddhist traditions is of the bodhisattva who ferries people from the world of delusion, across the sea of suffering, to a home of wisdom and compassion. The word “bodhisattva” means awakened being, or in today’s language, a “woke” person. To be awake is to be aware of the multiple layers of narrative that run through…
Where would you find yourself if your need to be right and your addiction to certainty dissolved into a willingness to listen? Who would you be, then? And who would we be together—as a country, as a planet—if each one of us actually knew what listening was and how to do it because we had, over the course of our lives, been deeply listened to?
Seventy-two million people were watching game six of the 1998 NBA Championship Finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz. With only eighteen seconds left in the game and the Jazz ahead by one point, an invisible shift seemed to occur: Michael Jordan stripped the ball from Karl Malone, slipped away from Bryon Russell so deftly that Russell careened…
Some of my favorite teachers are philosophical masters. Deft, witty, and inconceivably ambidextrous with their material, they are the Dread Pirate Roberts of their given subject. Regardless of the field of study, it’s always awesome when the teacher knows history, context, and technique backward and forward. As a student, you always feel safer in the hands of a teacher who…
Around the world, citizens are arising with new energy for transformation. The Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements were two recent manifestations of this. People are demanding that they participate and lead in their own governance and development. It is time to move beyond the control of corporatocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, patriarchy, and militarism. Citizens are capable of governing…
On August 21, 2017, parts of America will experience darkness at midday as the moon occults (or “hides”) the sun. For all the media build-up to the event, the eclipse itself won’t last for very long. Nor will the full eclipse be witnessed by most of America. Clear weather permitting, its full glory will be visible only to a 70…