The 4th of July will be celebrated around the United States to mark our independence from the British. And while that event happened on 4 July 1776, 231 years ago, have we achieved all the independence we can? Like most holidays, I have an issue with this one. Why only celebrate one day per year?…

One of the most frequent complaints I get from my meditation students is the concern that they can’t meditate because they can’t concentrate; can’t clear the thoughts, clutter, and commotion from their minds. Relax. The goal of meditation is not clearing the mind of thoughts or making it a “blank slate” (at least not the…

Do we really need yet another book on mindfulness? In this case, yes. Jan Chozen Bays, M.D., author of Mindful Eating, has written How To Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures in Mindfulness (Shambhala 2011) a collection of mindfulness practice gems in this accessible, helpful, and thoughtful book. Starting with the Buddha’s metaphor of…

The point of life is that there is no point. We are biological beings equipped with impulses, intelligences, and insights that interplay with recent human creations such as language, culture, religions, and the arts. With memory, relics, and writing, we have history. Culture attempts to tell us what the point of life is, but in…

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