World-renowned meditation teacher and author, Sharon Salzberg has published a new book entitled: Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves & the World, copyright (c) 2020. The below excerpt is printed with permission from Flatiron Books. In the tradition I’ve been trained in, it’s a long-standing custom to dedicate the positive energy arising from meditation practice to others. So, in the…
Design is often an invisible force in our lives, shaping and etching our world; sidewalks determine walkability, paint color can soothe or repel, and classrooms and houses of worship can foster either connection or discord. Design is in the mundane–the length between the car pedal and the driver’s waist–and the not-so-mundane, like astronaut suits. The latter is at the heart…
Overwhelm is a modern plague, taking up news headlines, physician trainings, corporate employee workshops, new modes of therapy and more. With the rise of social media and a decrease in off-screen connecting, many of us are left confused, anxious, questioning our decisions, lonely, searching for meaning, and looking for a way to escape stress and find the way back to…
Excerpted From Our Pristine Mind: A Practical Guide to Unconditional Happiness by Orgyen Chowang © 2016 by Orgyen Chowang. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. Cruising Altitude When we transcend mental events by practicing Pristine Mind meditation, it is like reaching cruising altitude in an airplane. There is no turbulence whatsoever in our mind. We are free…
Excerpted from HOW CHILDREN THRIVE: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids, by Mark Bertin, MD. Sounds True, May 2018. Reprinted with permission. The day ends and you pull into your driveway. You open the mailbox and, groaning, take out a two-inch pile of mail, 90 percent junk, but needing to be sorted. Riffling through it as…
“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” -Amit Ray It sounds so simple, childlike even, to say “just breathe.” You would think in the territory of suffering that our first best move might be something extraordinary, a momentous act, like “dial this number to directly reach the appropriate divine being,” or…
I still remember the event that made me into an environmentalist. I was seven or eight years old, standing outside with my father watching a large flock of starlings fly past. “That’s a big flock of birds,” I said. My father told me then about the passenger pigeon, whose flocks once filled the skies, so vast that they stretched from…
The racial ignorance and distress we see in the world today is a reflection of the mind playing itself out in grand scale on the big screen, projecting our collective conscious and unconscious conditioning. Every one of our lives represents a mosaic, with many shades, shadows, and shapes of experiences. In our relational world of vast diversity, kinship, and division,…