You Play The Piano
Alan Watts
The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought ...
Praise Song for Wide Open Space
Omid Safi
Wide open spaces fill my heart with a sense of awe. It can be a plain, a desert, a view from a mountaintop, a vista. Somehow wide open spaces remind me of God’s presence in ways that few mosques...
Why Meditate
Suzanne Toro
Meditation is the act of getting quiet and settling the mind. It’s the process of slowing and eventually stopping your thoughts, at which point you can bask in and feel the silence, trusting all...
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...
My Misgivings About Advice
Parker Palmer
My misgivings about advice began with my first experience of clinical depression thirty-five years ago. The people who tried to support me had good intentions. But, for the most part, what they d...
Theory and Practice
Vincent Horn
If we look at what theory is, it’s essentially an abstraction, or representation, of direct experience. It’s a way for us to take our understanding and transmit, through the medium of idea...
Shaped by a Silky Attention
Jane Hirshfield
A request for concentration isn't always answered, but people engaged in many disciplines have found ways to invite it in. Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements ove...
Medicine for the Earth
Sandra Ingerman
In all spiritual traditions it is taught that everything that manifests in the physical world starts in the invisible realms of spirit. We must remember that a baby grows in the womb. Trees and pla...
Five Prayers
Thich Nhat Hanh
In gratitude, I bow to all generations of ancestors in my blood family. I see my mother and father, whose blood, flesh, and vitality are circulating in my own veins and nourishing every cell in me. T...
Inner World of Moods
Patty de Llosa
“Give me a place to stand on," said the Greek mathematician Archimedes, “and I can move the world.” He was talking about his invention of using pulleys and levers to raise ...
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. ...
For the Traveler
John O'Donohue
Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in. New strangers on other paths await. New places that have never seen you Will startle a little at your ent...