One of the lines I keep coming across is, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” To keep that in mind is to practice the yogic or Buddhist idea of detachment. It’s practicing and expanding our capacities to dispassionately witness Read more
Overview: Based on a listener’s timely and meaningful email, this episode (Ep 143) revisits a focus of building a path of purpose one step at a time by applying the Zen philosophy of chopping wood and carrying water. Originally from Ep 101: Humanitou creator Adam Williams digs into some thoughts, Read more
I engage in yoga daily. But I do not “do” yoga. Millions of others do “do.” Same-same? Semantics? What’s it matter? It doesn’t matter. Maybe. But as a word guy, I use writing to process the world, to help it make sense. To me, words matter. Clarity and precision of Read more
The images we see of yoga largely are a limited view of a Western trend. It emphasizes the physical practice of asanas. Bodies bending and stretching into shapes on a rectangular mat. Defined minutes of a class conducted within the defined walls of a studio. But the ancient spiritual practice Read more
When things derail and we get agitated, we often say we’re not feeling centered, we’re not feeling grounded. We’re just … off. If we don’t have a specific go-to practice, an awareness of when we need to return to center — and why and how — it’s tough to get Read more
It doesn’t take much to set a poem in motion. Driving down a stretch of highway named for a U.S.S. Arizona survivor, a man who experienced the bombing of Pearl Harbor and came through it. What did he see? What can he say of what he felt? I sat in Read more
It’s easy to get swept up with the mountains. I love ’em lots. They are dynamic, imposing, inspiring and, seemingly, something more than the lands of their non-mountainous cousins. That contrast is stark and can have us feeling disinterested, even ungrateful, for the non-mountainous territories we experience. Hiking on the Read more
A tall teenage boy looked at me from the street corner as I neared the intersection in my old VW bus. He had no crosswalk. I had no stop sign. He looked hard at me and then plunged into the street, his body language dripping defiance. White earbuds filled his Read more
There is a line in sanskrit, the language of yoga, that acknowledges the one true teacher of yoga in each of us as ourselves. Om bolo shri satguru bhagavan ki — Jai! The teacher within is the one true teacher — Right on! Turning within and tuning in leads us Read more
As I huffed my way up a muddy mountain trail, out for what I will generously call a run, I tried a new approach to motivation. Rather than let my mind dig in with the “It’s OK to walk” talk … Rather than try to drive myself with ideas of Read more