Over the past few decades, the sport of surfing has ramified into different variants (body surfing, wind surfing, kite surfing, board surfing, etc.) and evolved from an activity seen by some as an emblem of a slacker lifestyle into a vibrant, competitive, global sport that expresses eco-friendly values, a high...

If religion is the opiate of the people, as Karl Marx has written, it's one they smoke because they don't have the money to buy the ease, comfort and goods they believe would make them happy. Embracing this point of view, spiritually minded people have -- for centuries, if not...

What you hold in your hands when you pick up Daughters Of Fire is a time trip back to the days when any place on earth could possibly seem new and fresh, with unexpected layers and energies at play--you know, the kind of trip you could take before TV, Google...

Many years ago in Santa Barbara, I studied with a spare, elegant, bird-like tai chi master named Fu Yuan Ni. Thinking of him recently, I discovered that he is still alive and living in Taiwan and will soon be 100 years old. I also discovered some brief interviews with him,...

I was out riding my bike today when it occurred to me that I have been singularly lucky not to experience any flat tires lately. In fact, I've had this bicycle for a year, and haven't done a thing to it, not even adjust seat, brakes, or cables. This is...

At this particular time, when our country is obsessed by the presidential election, it's useful to remember that it is always easier to keep busy with intellectual titillation about the world outside -- including strong political opinions and divisive emotions -- than it is to look critically and honestly inward...

A friend of mine announced to me today that he was giving up judging people. The life coach he has been working with explained to him that judgment creates separation, and since life's greatest joy is to be found in connecting with others, he is hurting himself every time he...

Recently I received the sad news that a college classmate had taken his own life. The occasion put me back in touch with my freshman-year roommate, and we had a nice exchange of e-mail notes. In one of them, he related something I said to him the day we graduated,...

When I was a teenage boy growing up in Manhattan, I was one of those crazy cyclists who held on to the edge of the Madison and Lexington Avenue bus, going to and from school by hitching a ride for easy acceleration, then letting go for an exhilarating rush of...

Earlier this month, I was the first Westerner to be given monk's robes at the Chun Yang (Pure Yang) Taoist monastery in Guangzhou, China. Somehow, perhaps alchemically, my Taoist persuasion connected me to a unique subset of Chinese culture, opened secrets of the city and beguiled me with the charms...

"You're such a complicated person."

"This is a complex deal."

"It's complicated. You wouldn't understand."

In our speed-and-greed anti-culture, the words complex and complicated, and the nuances and layers the words evoke, have reached a kind of cult status. Being complicated means you have depth, smarts, education, your fingers in...

The link between the warrior and the scholar is an old one, and in the cultures as diverse as ancient Greece and China, one as august as any. These days soldiers who become statesmen, or scholars who teach at military colleges exemplify the tradition best. While those folks are often...

Not quite as popular as vampires, but not far behind, zombies seems to be all the rage recently, from I Am Legend and Zombieland on the silver screen to the plethora of print offerings, including a "survival guide" on Amazon. What's missing, however, is talk of the fact that without...

Graeme Maxton is an economist, and a host of CNBC's Squawk Box. As evidenced by his new book, The End of Progress, How Modern Economics Has Failed Us, he's also a thinker of the sort of astonishing depth and breadth, and one to speak the sort of tough truths that...

One worrisome development among many in the consumptive frenzy of our so-called culture is that our innate desire to improve ourselves has been transformed into to a desire to improve our material position. Are there those among us who lack the basics of food and shelter? Sadly, yes. Those who...

John Donohue, a devotee of the Japanese martial arts, has a knack for rendering those arts -- and the culture that underpins them -- in a gritty way that makes the arts palpable to a Western audience while meshing with the demands of a modern American crime novel. In his...

A strong and clear way out of the problems that surround us these days is to be found in Deep Ecology, a scientific/spiritual/holistic term coined by Norwegian activist and philosopher, Arne Naess to express the global interconnectedness of all living things. Building on thousands of years of spiritual traditions and...

Spiders sling webs between stalks and catch flies, termites create voluminous clay mounds, anemones grow on reefs, tortoises dig burrows in which to sleep away the winter, bacteria explode in a drop of dew, and humans make villages, cities and towns. Obeying the dictates of evolution, all animals probe opportunities...

The ludicrous circus called the debt crisis reveals very interesting things not only about our political tendencies, our economic system, and the way our mainstream media enjoys holding a rat in its jaws and shaking it until it becomes a rhino, but also the precepts upon which we have been...

The prehistoric way of life is much in the news these days, what with new studies showing that pre-agricultural people lived long, healthy lives, and with the resultant spate of diet books urging us to return to tribal options. Thinking about how far we've come and the strange direction human...