Meditations

The cognitive revolution, which made all 7.7 billion of us “fully modern humans,” with the capacity for diverse languages, cultures, art, science and technology, occurred about 100,000 years ago in…

The day is cold and gray. For a few minutes however, a silvery light glistens off the rippling creek. The waterway makes a gentle S curve at this spot, and…

“We are going to do the worst thing to you; we are going to deprive you of an enemy.” Mikhail Gorbachev, 1989 Thirty years ago today I was in the…

Bare branches and bushes afford a long view downstream. As usual, it takes a while for the senses to become attuned to sounds, sights and smells of the water, sky,…

“Meditation is the opening of the door to essence, opening the door to a furnace whose fire utterly destroys, without leaving any ashes.” J.Krishnamurti Descartes was wrong. He should have…

In the 4 billion-year history of life on earth, from single-celled bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to humans, there have been five mass extinctions. The Washington Post recently published a…

After sitting for an hour beside the rippling stream, watching the water flow by below my feet and people on bikes and foot flow by on the pedestrian road across…

I’ve long wondered why the question that seized me as a young man didn’t register with the vast majority of philosophers. Given that nature unfolds in seamless wholeness, I asked,…