A sense of beauty is a rigorous, perhaps even objective, foundation for environmental ethics. Our human aesthetic judgment integrates many strands of experience: intellect, emotion, bodily senses, and all we know from our interactions with others, both human and non-human others. From this integration, we understand the good. Of course, an aesthetic sense is subject to the whims of desire,…
“In the beginning nothing comes, in the middle nothing stays, in the end nothing goes.” That enigmatic riddle comes from Jetsun Milarepa, Tibet’s eminent twelfth-century poet, yogi, and sage. Matthieu Ricard unpacks Milarepa’s puzzle this way: at the start of contemplative practice, little or nothing seems to change in us. After continued practice, we notice some changes in our way…
In his new book, Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World, journalist Michael Harris argues that solitude has become a limited resource as a result of our constant connection to others through our devices and social media platforms. As a consequence, we miss out on the three elements that make up a rich interior life: fresh ideas, self-knowledge, and,…
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…
Fear is an emotion that can be spoken of in two ways. In common parlance, fear is usually associated with panic, anxiety, worry, and distress; it is considered a negative emotion because it feels so unpleasant and is often based on unrealistic thinking. From a Buddhist viewpoint, this kind of fear is afflictive because it is based on exaggeration and…
Emptiness does not mean nothingness. Saying that we are empty does not mean that we do not exist. No matter if something is full or empty, that thing clearly needs to be there in the first place. When we say a cup is empty, the cup must be there in order to be empty. When we say that we are…
Can contemplation still find a place in the world of technology and conflict which is ours? Does it belong only to the past? The answer to this is that, since the direct and pure experience of reality in its ultimate root is man’s deepest need, contemplation must be possible if man is to remain human. If contemplation is no longer…
When it comes to commerce, poetry is marginal relative to other art forms. And yet, at the big moments in our lives — birth days, graduations, weddings, and funerals — we turn to poetry again and again. We recently asked poets Marie Howe and Ellen Bass to have a conversation about the power of poetry during moments of transition. Marie Howe:…