“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” –Excerpt of “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver It can feel rather lonely sometimes when leading mindfulness programs or endeavoring to gather the support needed to…
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” –Percy Bysshe Shelley Tenzin Robert Thurman, speaking at the Artist and Buddhist Contemplatives gathering at the Garrison Institute, offered this idea in a talk titled The Buddha Emanation Body as the Original Buddhist Art Piece. It raises the question, What kind of a world do we want to create? Bob talked about…
During the Garrison Institute’s recent symposium, Pathways Toward Planetary Health, we explored the intersection of four emerging ideas – Half-Earth, an Ecological Civilization, Regenerative Economics, and Pervasive Altruism. In our fourth follow-up conversation, we sit down with Mary Evelyn Tucker and Demo Rinpoche to discuss the role of pervasive altruism and the value of connecting spirituality, ecology, and the moral…
My upcoming talk for the Naropa in New York series will center on a question: At the first moment of any sense or mental experience, is the object of the perception perceived simply “as it is,” or is there, in that moment, already an inherent split between the event and the mind noticing it? Can one’s attention to perception be…
How do we emotionally and socially construct our notions of difference and “the other?” Are there core truths about otherness and racial bias that transcend geographic boundaries? In June, more than 130 scientists, scholars, students, and activists from 19 countries gathered at Mind & Life’s 15th Summer Research Institute (SRI), each held at the Garrison Institute. This year’s theme,“Engaging Cultural Difference…
Adam Frank is an oddsmaker on the grandest scale. Thirty years ago, he says, science did not even know that planets existed outside the Solar System. But a revolution in data and observations has changed that. In a big way. We now know, he says, that not only are there other planets but that a few of them, like Earth,…
A knot sat in my throat for days. As I rode down the winding and rugged road to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the Los Padres Forest, I was aware that a Queen called Aretha Franklin was dying. I felt this deep sense that I was dying with her. The next morning along with the wake up bell at the…
When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34, I was fortunate to be surrounded by many loving friends and family who were ready to support me in whatever ways I needed. Apparently, I didn’t think I needed much. I was already a student of Buddhism and a yogi with a very healthy self-care routine. I was also…