Being Means Being in Time

A sense of being involves a degree of separateness from the rest of the world. After all, the verb "to exist" literally means to stand out. When you are present, your awareness of your own existence happens against the backdrop of time. Recall that time...

People talk. We listen. We think about what they are saying. As we consider the thoughts that other people verbalize, their thoughts stream through us and become our thoughts, at least, for the time being, while these thoughts remain under our consideration.

Basic stuff, right? Nothing to it. It's...

As a perfectionist, you think of perfection as a state. As you clean your kitchen or your car or your desk, you fantasize about preserving the state of perfection that you have accomplished. If you can only get it right, then it'll remain perfect from then on. You believe that...

We all like smooth sailing, for things to go just right, without any friction. And, yet, friction can be a nice wake-up call. Gurdjieff encouraged his students to give up "something valuable" but "not forever," in order to create a constant "friction between a 'yes' and a 'no'" (1). So,...

Herrigel's thought that "the archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him" ("Zen in the Art of Archery," 1948) can be understood to mean that it is not you that is involved in the outcome but the arrow....

Syadvada is a practice of tentativeness in expression that is associated with the ancient Jain tradition of India (Radhakrishnan & Moore, 1957). In Sanskrit, the word syad means "perhaps" or "maybe" or "in some ways." Syadvada system consists of a total of seven propositions that were designed specifically to counteract...

Everything that can exist - at any given moment - exists. Reality is entirely complete. It has no holes. Nothing, absolutely nothing is amiss. The discrepancies that we see are the differences between the ideal reality that we have dreamed up and the actual reality that has manifested at a...

140 Character-long Formula of Happiness:
Ever seen a wagging tail? If you have then you've seen happiness.
Get a dog. Get happiness. Let a dog's tail wag your mind. Simple, huh?

140 Character-long Commentary on the 140 Character-long Formula of Happiness:
The advice above constitutes the so-called...

What is inoculation? Inoculation introduces an organism to a nominal threat with the purpose of hardening the organism. Motivational inoculation is a series of challenges (in the form of questions) that help crystallize intrinsic, fail-proof motivation. Here's some motivational inoculation for weight management.

Inoculation 1: What is my stated motivation...

You've heard of the "clean plate club." Some of us grow up with moralizing parents who instill an eating ethic of wasting no food. But there's more to this than just cultural programming. The "clean plate" syndrome, at least in part, has to do with how our minds work, with...

Two birds with fair wings, inseparable companions,
have found a refuge in the same sheltering tree.
One incessantly eats from the peepal tree;
the other, not eating, just looks on.

This verse is from Rg Veda (or Rigveda), an ancient Indian text of sacred hymns....

Perfectionism is akin to insatiable hunger, to a relentless striving on a feedback loop. In striving for perfection, what have you been actually craving? As I see it there are 3 types of perfectionistic hunger:

- Approval/validation hunger

- Reflection/attention hunger

- Control/certainty hunger.

Approval/Validation Hunger Perfectionism:

You have two options in regard to emotional eating: you can try to eliminate it altogether or you can try to make better use of it by making emotional eating more conscious. The latter would be consistent with the goals of harm reduction, a humanistic form of psychotherapy that offers...

When you compare yourself to somebody else, you are comparing you to not-you. But uniqueness is beyond comparison. Sure, you and so-and-so might be very similar, but similarity isn't sameness. For you to score like they do (whoever they might be), look like they do, earn like they do, talk...

By trying to avoid mistakes and trying to do the "right" thing, we are using a set of personal commandments of what should and should not be. The problem is that by accepting one part of reality and rejecting the other part of reality, we are creating two realities out...

Mindfulness is being in the moment. As such, mindfulness is intimacy with what is. Intimacy - by definition -- connects. After all, whatever our differences may be, we all share the same "now" -- that is, if we are fully in it. If you and I sit down at a...

A choice is an act of conscious selection of one of the two or more options. The option that is selected is the preferred option of the ones that are available. Thus, a choice is an expression of preference. Any choice is. Even if you are choosing between two very...

The sun is love. The lover, a speck circling the sun.

These lines are from Rumi, in translation by Coleman Barks.

Whose lines are these lines? Rumi's or Barks'?

When reading Rumi in translation by Barks, historically, I am reading Barks' translation of Rumi's translation of Rumi's thoughts.

Whose thoughts...

Clifford J. Levy in his July 5th, 2009 New York Times article "Heading to Russia, Obama is Mindful of Its Power Equation: One Plus One" (about the forthcoming summit) writes: "Speculation about where the power lies in the Putin-Medvedev tandem began as soon as Mr. Medvedev took office last year...

A (hopefully) intriguing tale about status quo (inspired by a passage from Stuart Brown's book "Play"):

"The sea squirt is an ugly creature. In its adult form it has a tubular shape that resembles a sponge or worm, and in its larval form it looks like a tadpole. Still, the...