Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying”,”We...

I live in nature where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is the planet around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular coming...

But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.

What is it about the American obsession with productivity and responsibility that makes it so difficult for us to allow ourselves a little time to solve the puzzle of our own lives, before it’s too...

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the “monkey mind”–the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the...

Don’t we have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for...

Yeah, baby! And you are the magnet and I’m the steel! Bring to me your leather, take from me my lace!

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so...

True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.

Of course God already knows what I need. The question is – do I know?

To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver.

Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason – for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons – sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture...

But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could...

Liz: What’s it like in hell?Ketut: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down — all same, at end.Liz: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?Ketut: Because...

Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.

Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness my gregarious nature means I will never have to worry about being alone…

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I’m going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have...

Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time – when pursued like a bandit – will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you,...

The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only...

[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said...

every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends;...

I remember asking myself one night, while I was curled up in the same old corner of my same old couch in tears yet again over the same old repetition of sorrowful thoughts, ‘Is there...

When you are walking down the road in Bali and your pass a stranger, the very first question he or she will ask you is, “Where are you going?” The second question is, “Where are...

A family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only...

The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,…The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being’s difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.

Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family’s history.

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.

I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker,” he continued, as though he had not heard her. “We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe,...

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business—not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything...

One by one, the thoughts and memories of sadness raised their hands, stood up to identify themselves. I looked at each thought, at each unit of sorrow, and I acknowledged its existence and felt (without...

I filled the song with everything I wished I could teach him about life. I tried to reassure him with every line about how the world is hard and unfair sometimes, but that it’s all...

Well… “why” is a hard question to answer in any language.

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

Religious ceremonies are of paramount importance in Bali ( an island, don’t forget, with seven unpredictable volcanoes on it-you would pray, too).

Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one….This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation,...

He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of...

We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That’s our privilege. That’s the joy of a mortal body. And that’s why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through...

I asked, “You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell – the destinations – are the same thing anyway?””Same – same,” he said. “Same...

Step forward out of your own lingering residual sense of smallness, take up every inch of life that is your blessed inheritance, and DO YOUR THING.

My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her...

We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.

We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, ‘I’ve been there.’ This was unclear...

He said, “Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you...

The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned,...

… most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment.

Religion is for those who don’t want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there.

Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistuinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody—so utterly well known...