Many of the texts you encounter seem to do nothing other than make an argument for a particular conclusion. The conclusion is supposed to follow from the premises according to the usual rules of logic...

When I feel an unmet need, my first impulse is to look for a material solution. I’m lacking something, so I reason there must be some object or experience that could fill the void. And indeed, many pr...

She knew this was going to happen. She knew that sharing her art would come with an emotional cost. She knew that her feelings would be mostly negative, regardless of the reception her work received. ...

To live with joy, a person’s attention needs to be open and free. When it is open and free, it becomes possible to see need and how it must be addressed, and it is by meeting need that joy is created....

If you suddenly started telling everyone that your goal was to save the world, they might look at you strangely. Saving the world is not something one ordinarily does. It is reserved in our history fo...

It is the audacity to act for the good of all despite your own limitations that demonstrates your compassion.

A problem can seem bigger than it actually is. Engulfed in uncertainty, I can’t see where it begins or ends, so my imagination transforms it into a monster. I know that everything uncertain is also un...

Nothing less than a world-destroyer will do. You’ve set this incredible standard for yourself because you know you’ll never succeed without it. You’ll be distracted into thinking about things that are...

There is something that I know I must do. I have no doubt about its necessity. Not doing it almost guarantees harm for me and possibly for others, which means it must be done. This is perfectly clear....

You’re paying attention to the world around you. You know what’s going on and you can see all of the problems, near and far, present and approaching. You know there is suffering everywhere. You can se...

Human beings need meaning. We not only perceive the world around us, we also perceive value: we reflect on our perceptions and judge certain things to be better for us than others. Everything that car...

We try to meet our need for meaning by creating it wherever we can, but sometimes we also see through our own creations.

Reading a text that describes the beauty of a summer day, we automatically begin to imagine it. The warm breeze, the sound of a fountain running, the air rich with the scent of growth, the blinding su...

An experience occurred. It happened. I also acknowledge that it happened to me, but I refuse to think about it in that way. Doing so would make it too intimate, and I don’t want that because the exper...

When he hears that name it always takes a moment for its meaning to register. That it refers to him is not immediately apparent. The name is one he no longer uses for himself. Still, there are many ot...

The range of our awareness is always unknown. We might feel we are fully aware of a particular experience only to later realize that there is more to it than we thought. We might feel that our actions...

You just want to be free. Free to create the life you want for yourself. Free to build the world you want to have with others. Free to have new experiences that go beyond what you’ve already done. But...

The challenge is to find freedom within the life you've already built for yourself.

What does it mean to say that an artwork contains a mistake? Putting aside the obvious case where the artist declares some part to be a mistake, is it even possible for an artwork to be wrong? When we...

Firmly attached to a specific desire, my ability to see reality is occluded. My attention cannot reach what is happening in and around me, because I’m seeing everything through the lens of my desire a...

It’s just a phase she’s going through. That’s what they say about her. They need an explanation for her behaviour. They want to know why she has abandoned her former pursuits. They can’t seem to accep...

When we act from compassion, we do what is needed to make our own lives and the lives of the people around us better. By meeting the needs of ourselves and others, we eliminate suffering and we create...

We notice a pattern in some area of our experience, so we give that pattern a name. Then we discover similar patterns that relate to the first pattern and we name those too. Soon we have a whole theor...

When we elevate our theoretical understanding above other kinds of understanding, we tend to make life far more complicated than it really is.

As my awareness of self and world expands and deepens, I begin to better understand the sources and scope of my suffering. I gradually become more aware of the simple fact that much of my ordinary exp...