No one has criticized me or said that I’m a bad person for avoiding the news. They’re intense in their agreement about some horror in the world, some evil doer. Do they care that I’m not joining the conversation? Sometimes, they try to engage me, and I’m forced to admit that I don’t know what they’re talking about. I was never a news junkie, but now I’m weird. For many years I was a partisan, firmly committed to the “good guys,” to the righteous team. You have to take sides.

We associate effort with strain. The strain is extra, almost always unnecessary, and generally a source of suffering. Lose the strain. Ease up on the gas. Driving home from Queens – the traffic is always terrible – sitting in bumper-to-bumper, I realize how less stressful it is to drive 10 miles per hour than 60. We are so often in a hurry. We humans are the only animals that worry about arriving late. Instead of being present, we’re chafing to get to the next step, the nex

I’ve added a Bodhisattva Vow to the traditional four chanted by Mahayana Buddhists everywhere. You may think that’s brassy. Four vows have been enough since the 6th or 7th century. Why another? Maybe my vow is already encompassed by the other four. Why do we even need four? Embody any one of them fully and the other three are included. There’s nothing magical or sacred about the number of vows. So, these days, I’m chanting five vows each morning, and I’m finding hungry ghosts