Today I had the delight of paragliding over Dharamsala, a colorful town situated at 7,000 feet on the edge of the Himalayas. It is home to the Dalai Lama and a large Tibetan exile community, and this week it is the site of the latest Mind & Life Institute meeting, continuing a dialogue...
According to Chinese medicine, the leading cause of death and disease is negative emotions. It’s not that our negative emotions are inherently bad; common day-to-day feelings like disappointment, sorrow, envy, anger and <gulp> rage. But when strong emotions are suppressed and repr...
The truth is, sometimes you don’t know what to think because nothing seems to make sense. Nothing that you thought to be true is. Everything you believed to be, isn’t. It all just feels fluid, unsteady, confusing and scary. For me — for a variety of reasons — that’s how I’m ...
I have met many famous people of deep religious faith, including Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Billy Graham, some of whom have had a direct and beneficial effect on my life. There is another kind of faith, perhaps...
Every day, in every community in the United States, law enforcement agencies, courts, and correctional institutions are witness to the impacts of untreated or under-treated mental illnesses that lead to multiple incarcerations at a high cost to taxpayers. Judge Steven Leifman, a crimin...
In her cobalt-blue wool suit and white kidskin gloves she could have been mistaken for a guest at a White House social reception instead of the architect of the pioneering legislation the president of the United States was about to sign. As John F. Kennedy slid into his leather armchair a...
As I stood in the back of my church on Palm Sunday, I found myself thinking a lot. Actually, I came into church already thinking, as I had just spent an afternoon with a friend who was struggling with cancer. A year ago, my friend was the picture of health—laughing, debating issues of t...
