James: I’ve started a Stanford course on compassion for doctors and psychologists—funded by the Dalai Lama’s Mind and Life Institute—where practice meets neuroscience. In the first class we were asked to name an intention, and I realized mine wasn’t to be there for my patients; I feel practiced there. It was to find compassion for the … Continued
Dr James: We are nodes of energy in a growing web of life that stretches into the past and future, though this is little comfort when the person at the grocery store just rammed their cart into our achilles tendon and didn’t even get off the phone to apologize. (“I’m a node..I’m a node of … Continued
James: After almost twenty years of doing it, I still struggle with meditation. I argue with myself about whether it’s the right time of day, should I stretch first, after or instead. More often than not, like a petulant child, I feel sorry for myself that I need do it at all, because my mind just … Continued
James: One of my favourite answers to Fermi’s paradox is the reason we don’t hear from life elsewhere is because they have figured it out, that they have the universe inside of them already, and stop looking for proof elsewhere. Since this realization is inexorable, natural and borne from self-inquiry, they needn’t bother explaining it. For … Continued
James: A party with everyone we know? Everyone? Not sure that is the good time we are looking for from this holiday season. If we could choose, we might pick some of the people we know. We might leave out, say, that guy from junior high shop class who nailed our pantleg to the workbench, … Continued