Living the Moment of Love, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Photograph by Debora Tingley “With an open heart we can see and sense the sacred nature of all of life.” A simple and essential spiritual truth teaches that only being awake in the moment is real. Only then can the…
The Simple Joy of Being, by Adyashanti
Landscape. Kanō Isen’in. Edo period, c. 1802-1816, ink and color on paper. Honolulu Museum of Art It is useful to reflect on what happiness is. The Sierra Nevada mountain range near Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful spots…
A Moment with Mister Rogers, by Jeff Zaleski
I interviewed Fred Rogers, creator and host of television’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, by telephone a few years before he died. The occasion was the publication of his new book. Mister Rogers arrived on television after I grew up but I’d…
The Calling, by Lucinda Herring
Photograph by Sapan Patel Meeting death with dignity With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started…
The Esoteric Shakespeare, by Michael White
The Plays of William Shakespeare. John Gilbert, oil on canvas, 1849. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York City “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players….” When I had reached the end of the first…
Plant Healing and Shamanism in the Deep Amazon, by Jorges Hachumak with David L. Carroll
Photograph by Johannes Hofmann The following passages from an unpublished manuscript by a respected Peruvian shaman describe how he works with the controversial Ayahuasca and other…
Who Decides History’s Future?, by Alexandra Zaleski
Knights and martyrs. Painting (detail) on canvas from church of Abbas Antonios, Ethiopia. Late seventeenth century. Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris In the Era of Princes, Abyssinia had no…
Whence Cometh Our Help?
Little Water. Dalarö. August Strindberg, 1892. Oil on cardboard. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm Is there such a thing as deciduous ideas? Ideas that have had their season. Some flare into color as…
Painting Enlightenment, Paula Arai / Artwork by Iwasaki Tsuneo
Healing visions of the Heart Sutra Mandala of Evolution. Iwasaki Tsuneo The extraordinary paintings on the next several pages were begun at age seventy by Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917-2002), a retired…
Golden Temple, by Neil Patel
Julian Nyca, Golden Temple, Amritsar, India, Wikimedia Commons The night Nimo, Jay, and I arrived in Amritsar, India, we made a cursory survey of the Sikh…
The Art of Budo
In my lifelong spiritual quest, I have read hundreds of sutras; plowed through pages and pages of philosophical texts; grappled with koan collections; analyzed thousands of poems; searched through biographies;…
The Rusalki, by Jane L. Mickelson
Edvard Munch, The Lady of the Sea, 1896 They meet by moonlight, rising out of lakes and ponds or drifting down from the branches of birch…
Afterthoughts, by James George
James George When the prime minister met the saint, and other memories and reflections Looking back, I see my five years in India as the high-point…
Learning to Die, by Brother David Steindl-Rast
David Steindl-Rast (2004) Wikipedia The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this…
A Parabola Bestiary: Lion, by Vincent Rossi
Photo by Gene Taylor Bestiaries were traditionally works of observation and natural history. Ancient and widespread, their way of observing allowed room for elements of theology,…
The Anonymous Ones, by Margaret Dulaney
Kogi Indian. Photograph by Darin McClure Come join the circle of we who pray There is a tribe of South American Indians, indigenous to the mountains…
Into The West, by Tracy Cochran
Photograph by Peter Cunningham The rain was coming down in sheets as I drove down a wooded road in rural Montague, Massachusetts, towards the opening ceremony…