Reading Archives (Author)
The Spirit of Karma Yoga
Baba Hari Dass
What is Karma Yoga? Karma Yoga is a selfless act. Any work which does not directly fulfill your ego is Karma Yoga. If someone's tire is punctured and you stop to help, that is spiritual work. If you ...
In Eyes Of God, We're All Minorities
Barbara Brown Taylor
Krister Stendahl, former dean of Harvard Divinity school, told a reporter shortly before his death in 2008, "In the eyes of God, we are all minorities. That’s a rude awakening for many, who...
Pronounce a Silent Blessing
Barbara Brown Taylor
"It is forbidden to taste of the pleasures of this world without a blessing." --The Talmud I think that the best way to discover what pronouncing blessings is all about is to pronounce a ...
Love Is Not An Emotion
Barbara Frederickson
Love, defined as micro moments of positivity resonance, may thus be the most generative and consequential of all positive emotions. By virtue of being a single state, distributed across and reverberat...
Micro Moments of Love
Barbara Frederickson
It’s time to upgrade our view of love. First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a d...
The Positivity Ratio
Barbara Fredrickson
Imagine you’re a water lily. It’s early dawn and your petals are closed in around your face. If you can see anything at all, it’s just a little spot of sunlight. But as the sun rises...
Small Wonder
Barbara Kingsolver
Barry Lopez writes that if we hope to succeed in the endeavor of protecting natures other than our own, "it will require that we reimagine our lives.... It will require of many of us a humanity w...
Planetary Birth
Barbara Marx Hubbard
From the vantage point of our birth as a universal humanity, we are not dying; rather we are in a dangerous but natural condition, Just post-birth, not yet awake, yet become aware that if we do not sh...
Doing What You Love
Barbara Sher
You should be doing what you love. What you love is as unique to you as your fingerprints. You need to know that because nothing will make you really happy but doing what you love. Just look at peop...
Incentives Are Not Enough
Barry Schwartz
When you incentivize everything, you de-moralize it, you take the moral dimensions out of it. Arguably, in the olden days, bankers wanted to make money, but they also wanted to serve clients and comm...
Dark Skies Show Us Stars
Bear Guerra
One of my earliest childhood memories finds me waking from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, during a family road trip. Far from any city lights, I look out the window toward the sky above, and...
No Longer Playing It Safe
bell hooks
To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand love’s transformative power. Attending to the damaging impact of...
Love Is Not A Feeling, It's An Ability
bell hooks and Sharon Salzberg
bell hooks: It fascinates me that while we are so obsessed with romance, many of us are turned off by the practice of love. When you tell someone that there’s really a practice—a way th...
Zen TV
Bernard McGrane
"How many of you know how to watch television?" I asked my class one day. After a few bewildered and silent moments, slowly, one by one, everyone haltingly raised their hands. We soon acknowledged tha...
Do What You Can
Bernie Glassman
I'm basically a simple person. The way I look at the issues you're talking about, which are issues of the globe, is to bring it back to our own bodies. My understanding is that we are all interconnec...
We'll See
Bernie Siegel
There is a man who has a farm, and his whole livelihood depends on his horse to plow the field. One day he is out plowing and suddenly the horse drops dead. The people of the town say "That's very u...
In Praise of Idleness
Bertrand Russell
Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a cons...
Individual and Social Ethics
Bertrand Russell
Misers, whose absorption in means is pathological, are generally recognized to be unwise, but minor forms of the same malady are apt to receive undue commendation. Without some consciousness ...
A Deep, Uncritical Love
Bhante Gunaratana
You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that, changes will flow naturally. You don't have to force anything...
Meditation: A Process Of Retraining The Mind
Bhante Gunaratna
Gently, but firmly, without getting upset or judging yourself for straying, simply return to the simple physical sensation of the breath. Then do it again the next time, and again, and again, and agai...
When You Run Into Problems
Bhante Gunaratna
You are going to run into problems in your meditation. Everybody does. Problems come in all shapes and sizes and the only thing you can be absolutely certain about is that you will have some. The mai...
Bridging The Spiritual and Mundane
Bhikkhu Bodhi
As I now look at our situation, I distinguish three major domains in which human life participates. One I call the transcendent domain, which is the sphere of aspiration for classical contemplative sp...
Balancing Vision and Routine
Bhikkhu Bodhi
All human activity can be viewed as an interplay between two contrary but equally essential factors -- vision and repetitive routine. Vision is the creative element in activity, whose presence ensures...
Beginning Right Here and Now
Bill Dougherty
Having been jolted out of the comfortable inertia of our previous religious and scientific dicta by decades of discoveries into the nature of man and the universe, we are being forced to ask ourselves...
Man In The Glass
Bill Parcells
When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day Just go to a mirror and look at yourself And see what that man has to say For it isn't your father, mother...
The Power of Here
Bill Plotkin
Wisdom traditions worldwide say there's no greater blessing than to live the life of your soul, the source of your deepest personal fulfillment and of your greatest service to others. It's what you we...
How to Live If You're Going to Die
Blanche Hartman
I got a call that a dear friend of mine, who received precepts from me years ago when I lived at Green Gulch, was dying. I arranged with her husband to go and see her and give her the precepts again. ...
Simple Living, Simple Joy
Bo Lozoff
A friend of ours here in North Carolina recently lost her beautiful 19-year-old son to suicide. She told us he was the sixth among a small group of friends who have committed suicide in the past two-...
Keep Looking and You'll See
Bo Lozoff
There are three fundamental rules that all the wisdom traditions say will help us accomplish our task, if we follow them. The first is to be cautious about materialism: Don't want too much. Live modes...
Magic of Service
Bo Lozoff
When we live in harmony with the dharma, or the great natural law, everything we do is an act of service. Wherever we are, whatever we do with our time, were lightening the load of the whole planet ju...
Shadow Cannot Drive Out Shame
Bonnie Rose
I was taught to affirm, “I am whole, perfect, and complete.” I didn’t have good definitions of those words at the time. So my ego said, “Really? I am? Well thank you for notici...
Choosing Suffering over Safety
Bonnie Rose
“Can you walk, sweetheart?” I say these words to our dog Stella who is dying. It’s time for breakfast and if she walks from our bed to the kitchen, maybe that will be a sign. Maybe s...
What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade
Brad Aaron Modlin
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in th...
Living With Radical Honesty
Brad Blanton
I learned that the primary cause of most human stress, the primary cause of most conflict between couples and the primary cause of most both psychological and physical illness is being trapped in your...
Exhausting Quest For Perfection
Brene Brown
The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting, but as hard as we try, we can't turn off the tapes that fill our heads with messages like "Never good enough" and "What will ...
Vulnerability is the Path
Brene Brown
Vulnerability isn't good or bad: it's not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be...
A Guide To Life's Turning Points
Brian Browne-Walker
Progress is made in steps, not in leaps. Move only as far as the opening allows. Remain neutral and tolerant of adversity. When in doubt, remain still. By accepting things as they are and not makin...
Half A Pomegranate
Brian Conroy
Early one morning, the Buddha and his disciples set off on an alms round. He announced that on that day all of the offerings they received would be given to the poor. The community sat beneat...
How We Wrestle Is Who We Are
Brian Doyle
I remember pacing hospital and house and hills, and thinking that his operations would either work or not and he would either live or die. There was a certain clarity there; I used to crawl into that ...
It's Okay To Be Perfectly Human
Brian J. Plachta
Why do we do it? Why do we nag and criticize ourselves? Why do we launch scud missiles of negative words and thoughts against our self-images? Perfectionism is one reason. We expect ourselves to be...
Wholeheartedness
Brother David
The end -- in all of the monastic traditions, of both East and West -- consists in cultivating mindfulness, being mindful. And "mindful" may be a little misleading, because it sounds a bit much like ...
Gratefulness Happens Before Thinking
Brother David Steindl-Rast
My vision of the world? My hope for the future? This topic sounds a bit big. Allow me to start small — say, with crows. They are my special friends. Just as I am writing these lines, one of them...
The Great Gesture That Unites Us
Brother David Steindl-Rast
I recognize, I acknowledge, I am grateful; in French these three concepts are expressed by one term: “Je suis reconnaissant.” I recognize the special quality of this joy: It is a joy fr...
Loving Your Enemy
Brother David Steindl-Rast
To love our enemies does not mean that we suddenly become their friends. If it is our enemies we are to love, they must remain enemies. Unless you have enemies, you cannot love them. And if you have n...
Giving Up is Different From Letting Someone Down
Brother David Steindl-Rast
This inner gesture of letting go from moment to moment is what is so terribly difficult for us; and it can be applied to almost any area of experience. We mentioned time, for instance: there is the wh...
Letting Meaning Flow Into Purpose
Brother David Steindl-Rast
The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a Benedictine monk. In the rule of St. Benedict, the momenta mori has alwa...
A Pledge For Grateful Living
Brother David Steindl-Rast
In thanksgiving for life, I pledge to overcome the illusion of entitlement by reminding myself that everything is gift and, thus, to live gratefully. In thanksgiving for life, I pledge to overc...
Three Great Forces
Brother David Steindl-Rast
The three great forces that the Christian Elders in the Egyptian desert identified as the enemies against which we’re battling are anger, lust, and laziness. The third one is called the noonday ...
Contemplation Vs. Social Change
Brother David Steindl-Rast
Brother David: You can’t really be a contemplative, unless you also want to change the world. You want to change yourself, and that’s where the struggle comes in. By ch...
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Bruce Lee
Can you look at a situation without naming it? Naming it a word, causes fear. Jeet Kune Do [a martial arts form by Bruce Lee] favors formlessness so that it can assume all forms, and since Jeet Kun...
The Broken Among Us Teach Us
Bryan Stevenson
What sustains me is this knowledge I have that it’s really the broken among us that can contribute a lot to our quest for full, equal justice. When you’re broken, you actually — you ...
Commit Absolutely
Buckminster Fuller
If you knew what you were doing, it's going to probably open up some very great treasures, but those don't belong to you. When I find myself being introduced to many audiences, because I do really m...
Staying In Your Own Business
Byron Katie
I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. For me, the word God means "reality." Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that&rs...
The Gentlest Thing in the World
Byron Katie
The gentlest thing in the world is an open mind. Since it doesn't believe what it thinks, it is flexible, porous, without opposition, without defense. Nothing has power over it. Nothing can resist...
There Is Just One Thing To Do
Byron Katie
When you become a lover of what is, there are no more decisions to make. In my life, I just wait and watch. I know that the decision will be made in its own time, so I let go of when, where, and how. ...
Investigating Untrue Thoughts
Byron Katie
I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn’t caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there’s a thought that isn’t true for us. "The wind shouldn...
Friends with the Wind
Byron Katie
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want. If you want reality to be different than it is, you might a...