My dear friend from college, Dan Harper, just posted the following on his website. I feel fortunate to have a friend who inspires me to me more learned and more concerned. Martin Luther King would have been 80 today. On… (READ MORE)
One of my father’s joke bits of wisdom is “everything in moderation, including moderation.” When I first studied philosophy academically, I was very much taken with Aristotle’s concept of the “golden mean,” which (this is a gross oversimplification) advocates living… (READ MORE)
When we can connect to the essence of the element of akasha, space, within ourselves, we feel less crowded by things pressing in on the outside, whether it be actual confinement or overcrowdedness or the sense of crowding from having… (READ MORE)
My favorite sutra in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s is, II.16, “heyam dukham anagatam.” This translates roughly as “the pain that is yet to come can be avoided.” What does this have to do with a forecast of a hard freeze? My… (READ MORE)
I am returning to a contemplation of teachings about the tattvas (the 36 elements in Kashir Shaivism; in Vedanta only 25). Each time I go back to study, practice, and contemplate the tattvas, a new understanding arises about how I… (READ MORE)
I saw a hawk when I was walking to work this morning. It was in one of those stately oak trees in the park just north of the US Capitol. I have occasionally seen hawks in the neighborhood alleys, but… (READ MORE)
It is always a temptation for me to stay home when it is cold and dark, to miss yoga class (when I am student, not teacher), to do my own practice and read and cook and play with the cat,… (READ MORE)
Yesterday was this year’s perihelion — the day of the year the earth is closest to the sun in the earth’s annual orbit around the sun. I find in interesting that the perihelion is at the coldest and darkest time… (READ MORE)
In the tradition of our culture’s “new year’s resolution” I like to practice yoga nidra at this time of year to help establish a new sankalpa or intention. A sankalpa is different from a new year’s resolution. It is short,… (READ MORE)
It was great to get outside for a walk on this blustery day. Sometimes the sun was out and the wind settled and it felt almost balmy. At other times, the wind howled and the sun hid behind a dense… (READ MORE)