Three Levels Of Happiness
Anushka Fernandopulle
The Buddha talked about three different levels of happiness. The first is happiness that can come from pleasant sense experiences: delicious food, nice weather, pleasant music, or any kind of positive...
Opening To Greater Life
Thomas Berry
Tell the [future generations] that something new is happening, a new vision, a new energy, a new sacred story is coming into being in the transition from one era to another. Tell them in the darkne...
The Exquisite Risk
Mark Nepo
At any moment, if quiet enough and open enough, we can drop into the fabric of existence in which everything, even pain, has its vivid signature of energy that we call, at different times, truth or be...
Agent Of Illumination
Elizabeth Gilbert
Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated with one another, with...
The Salt Doll
Ramakrishna Paramhansa
A salt doll journeyed for thousands of miles over land, until it finally came to the sea. It was fascinated by this strange moving mass, quite unlike anything it had ever seen before. “Who...
Groundlessness
Meg Wheatley
Hope is what propels us into action. We’ve been taught to dream of a better world as the necessary first step in creating one. We create a clear vision for the future we want, then we set a stra...
Two Types Of Heartbreaks
Parker Palmer
A disciple asks the rebbe: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answer...
When Science Is The Arbiter Of Metaphysics
Paul Kalanithi
Although I had been raised in a devout Christian family, where prayer and Scripture readings were a nightly ritual, I, like most scientific types, came to believe in the possibility of a material conc...
You Can't Get There From Here
Pema Chodron
When you sit down to meditate, you can bring to your practice the notion of the threefold purity: not being caught up with ideas about yourself, not being caught up with ideas about the practice, and ...
Say Wow
Chelan Harkin
Each day before our surroundings become flat with familiarity and the shapes of our lives click into place, dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes, before hunger knocks from our bellies like...
Do What You Please, But I'm Watching
Hubert Benoit
Alone, in a quiet place, muscularly relaxed (lying down or comfortably seated), I watch the emergence within myself of mental images, permitting my imagination to produce whatever it likes. It is...
Memnoon: Blessing The One Who Is Asked
Heather Schlessman
One of the keys to a happier life is doing only what you want to do. We have been taught that is being selfish. That teaching comes from thousands of years of developing a domination over society. We ...