samsara

“I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup we call a life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.”

— Mary Oliver, from New And Selected Poems, Volume Two

There is wonder and beauty in emptiness. What happens when we come to know that everything we experience is timelessly ephemeral – as fleeting as a “tiny drop of dew or a bubble floating in a stream”? As writer Octavia Butler invokes, what if God is change? I become present with each moment as a divine gift. I become wholly intimate with each exper... See more

Depression is horrible, but it added a richness and depth to the person I am today, and I appreciate the value of those changes. But if that happy child had gotten a chance to grow up without depression, I think he would have been changed in different ways, and under the tutelage of gentler teachers, would have become no less worthwhile and interes... See more

in a more general sense, happiness isn’t truly shallow — it just has a different kind of depth. The passions of people raised in a kinder, gentler world may be alien and incomprehensible to the older generation, but they are no less intense, and the culture around them is no less complex. Adversity forces us to rise to its challenge, but abundance ... See more