rethinking labels and value
I am still recovering from my last migraine, so today I had to walk instead run. While walking I found myself thinking that knowing when to do the right thing for my…
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the off switch
Sometimes I think it is somewhat of an evolutionary miracle that most humans can go on with life even with the world burning around us. Most of us just grow numb and…
on living in a world like this
The other week I read that Peter Thiel is leaving Facebook woops I mean Meta’s board, so he can reportedly “focus on supporting candidates running for office who align with the Trump…
how we assign value (and the complexity of nutrition)
At the end of a day last week I caught myself feeling bad because I felt like I did nothing productive. It is interesting how after so many years on this journey…
2022: 自乐 (self-amusement)
I write one of these every year to pair with my year-end review. Part of me ponders again what is the point of setting intentions for the year when the marking of…
the paradox of the self
When I was younger (actually, not too long ago) I was often trapped in my own pain and suffering. I would wonder very often why did terrible things constantly seem to happen…
To experience the everyday sublime
To experience the everyday sublime requires that we dismantle the perceptual conditioning that insists on seeing ourselves and the world as essentially comfortable, permanent, solid, and “mine.” It means to embrace suffering and conflict rather than to shy away from them, to cultivate the embodied attention that contemplates the tragic, changing, empty, and impersonal dimensions of life, rather than succumbing to fantasies of self-glorification or self-loathing. This takes time. It is a lifelong practice.
We have spent a lifetime developing responses to pain and difficulty
We have spent a lifetime developing responses to pain and difficulty. Changing these old habits is like trying to reverse the momentum of a boulder tumbling down a mountainside. It requires great effort, skill, patience, perseverance, and no small amount of courage. —Lama Shenpen
on the process of learning to be less unhappy
Having been raised in a materialistic society it is difficult to uncondition ourselves from believing that success equates to happiness. Some of us turned our backs on conventional success and chose to…
To acquaint myself with nothing
I have just finished two books on the concept of nothing: a book on John Cage, titled “Where the heart beats“, and Jenny Odell’s “How to do nothing“. I picked up the…