Evolution's Gold Standard
Diane Ackerman
Feeling low? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when people feel bad, their sense of touch quickens and they instinctively want to hug something or someone. Tykes cling to a...
How Generosity Blossoms Into Meditation
Sharon Salzberg
The cultivation of generosity is the beginning of the path. [...] The path begins there because of the joy that arises from a generous heart. Pure, unhindered delight flows freely when we practice gen...
Unlocking a New Sphere of Reality
Jacques Lusseyran
Being attentive unlocks a sphere of reality that no one suspects. If, for instance, I walked along a path without being attentive, completely immersed in myself, I did not even know whether trees grew...
A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
John O'Donohue
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight, The light in the mi...
Two Ways of Learning Relaxation
Shinzen Young
There are two ways of learning relaxation, because there are two distinct levels at which a person can relax. I speak of top-to-bottom relaxation versus bottom-to-top relaxation. "Top" refer...
Make Death Your Ally
Duane Elgin
Death is an important ally for appreciating life. I am not referring to a morbid preoccupation with death. Rather, I mean the felt awareness of our finitude as physical beings -- an honest recognition...
The Mystery of Love
Kent Nerburn
Remember that you don't choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach o...
Rest and Be Taken
Adyashanti
When there is deep abundance there is nowhere to abide. There is nowhere to rest or grasp onto and yet there is rest The sky abides yet it never rests. Neither can we say that the sky is not...
Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.
Jonathan Franzen
When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn’t love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wro...
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...
Flow of Money
David Korten
In a modern society in which most everything essential to a secure and happy life seems to depend on money, the flow of money takes on great significance. Where money flows there are jobs; where it do...
Live the Questions Now
Rainer Maria Rilke
In the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive n...