Meditation turns special moments on their head. It turns out we don’t need special moments to savor the openness to experience. Are you familiar with the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons? One of my favorites is when Calvin trips and falls down a flight of stairs, landing on his rear and looking confused. Then he stands…
Despite all that is wrong, I can still take delight in a moment of well-being. News stories are not the conversation starters they used to be. In the day, I could fill an awkward gap by saying “Guess what I heard on NPR this morning?” I don’t use that line anymore. These are intense…
Good poems, for me, are often potent teachings on how to live this precious life we are given. Over the years I have been moved to tears reading poems. There is one poet in particular I keep coming back to, the Japanese poet Ryōkan Taigu, who lived from 1758–1831. Ryokan, as a Google search tells me,…