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This was published today at the very cool website The Worst Horse. by Ethan Nichtern INTENTION IS the most important thing, the true invisible hand. It is at the root of any action that creates a habit. It is the vector along which the heart slowly learns to travel. If you care at all about…

Book publishing has all but shut down for the break between Christmas and New Year’s, the fall semester is over, and for the first time in a year I’ve had a full week of vacation to myself. It’s been so, so good. So what have I been doing with my time? Besides eating Ethiopian and…

By Stillman Brown I’m spending Christmas at my mom’s house in Connecticut, taking advantage of good food, laundry machines, and family warmth, all free of charge. Driving through her neighborhood of modest colonial style homes a few nights ago on our way to a movie (The Golden Compass – 3 stars of 5), we noted…

So apparently December 25 started out as a holiday to worship the son of Isis. Then in Roman times it was Saturnalia, then later a Northern European pagan holiday, until in 350AD Pope Julius decreed that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25, in an apparent move to ease the transition of European pagans…

Office holiday party! A phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of mild-mannered workers everywhere. All one has to think of is The Office, or the hundreds of sitcom episodes featuring some drunken, antler-wearing boss, too much spinach dip, unbridled lechery, raging idle chatter, gossip, divisive speech, and breathtakingly unskillful means of telling one’s co-workers…

This is a story about obsessional thought. Papancha. Differentiated from skillful thinking, contemplation, or miscellaneous monkey mind by the presence of suffering. Papancha sucks. How my dharma teachers Josh and Craig have explained it: you get stuck like a scratched record on a series of painful thoughts. The shitty stories your mind tells. So you…

By Stillman Brown When I first started meditating I found myself trying to explain exactly what I was doing to a close friend. I’ve found it’s hard to describe without sounding obscure or over-complicating the whole thing. “I sit and watch the breath, and, ah, that’s about it,” I said to my friend. I paused,…

This past week has been a lesson, a remembrance of mortality. My close friend’s mother is dying from cancer. Hard and fast. So today, I would simply like to offer this poem that I wrote about my mother — a warm memory of her before her own death, 15 years ago. faint aurora She wanted…

I was “tagged” by my friend Courtney to write a blog about my top ten teacher influences in my life. That’s really what happened. She sent me an email saying “tag, you’re it. I wrote this blog, now you have to as well.” I love how playground rules translate to the blogosphere. But I had…
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