"The answers I got to “Why Make Art?” from the New York Art World seemed to be money, fame, admiration and an entrance into the coveted canon of “Western Art History.”
Ironically, what fuels all of our misery-inducing behaviors is an underlying desire for happiness. All of us wish to be safe, to be happy, to be healthy, and to have an easeful life experience. Even those people that seem bent on making...
Recently, my life has had many changes, which have created difficulties and upset. My instinctive method of dealing with such struggles is to ignore and resist them.
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Amongst the ongoing fears of plague, peak oil, and drastic climate change which adorn our era (and at the timely tail end of a lingering cough and cold), I saw Steven Soderbergh's new movie Contagion...
Taken together, these studies show that the value of a meditation practice is almost quantifiable, on a societal level if not an individual one. Meditation practice = reduced stress = lower health care costs.
"Some Westerners have misinterpreted the second-turning teachings on shunyata as nihilistic. If all things are empty, it is mistakenly thought, then nothing has any value and everything is finally meaningless. Why bother to be a decent...
Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious.
"Curing is remedial and involves fixing whatever outer problem arises..It does not help you avoid the nails on the road, the snakes in the woods, or the disease that caused the tumor."
Just had a thought I put on twitter – “Human history is a record of man overcoming – or being overcome by – anxiety brought on by feeling separate.” That’s really all that human history is. We’...
“What was it like to be on one of those planes or in one of those towers? What was it like to be steering a jet towards our own death and the deaths of thousands of others?”
We often find ourselves thoroughly confused as to what’s going on.
You think you know someone but they say something that seems grossly out of character or they do something that doesn’t match our expectations...
The week before my mother's death, I knew what to do. Make travel plans, talk to doctors and nurses, comfort my mom, reassure her friends, make arrangements for my cats alone in my NYC apartment, notify family and loved ones. ...
I'll keep this short, because fewer words seem better today.
I practiced metta meditation with friends.
It didn't seem like a day to try to be funny.
It didn't seem like a day to be too serious, either.
This week a ton of galleries opened the fall season. Wednesday = Lower East Side galleries. Thursday = Chelsea Galleries. Friday = the Chelsea galleries that didn't open Thursday. Some galleries are holding out and opening a full week after...
"The sorrow of great and small losses is a river that runs in the underground of all of our lives," Roshi Joan Halifax writes. "When it breaks to the surface, we might feel as though only 'I' know this pain. Yet grief is a...
Over the last few months, I’ve been repeating a mantra of sorts to myself. Almost daily some moment arises where I think to myself: “I am not my thoughts; I am not my feelings.”
I use a meditation timer on my phone to record my sits. At first I thought it was going to be just another unnecessary piece of gadgetry to occupy my time, but recently it showed it worth. Besides recording the hours logged on the cushion, it...
Most of my learning lately has been in the form of acceptance, especially around my friendships. It has been radical to see some of my expectations drop and to see how easily they arm themselves, causing me to dismiss the humanity of the other...
