“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” So said Mark Twain aboutread more

In his book Being Peace, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat-Hanh describes the right way of perceiving in the classical mediation manual for Buddhists: “The practitioner will have to contemplate body in the body, feelings in the feelings, mind in the mind, objects of mind in objects of mind.”read more

Before and during the holiday shopping rush this year, I must have read a hundred different round-ups of best gifts for personalities A-Z—well intentioned and mostly helpful suggestions for how to please those picky friends and family, or just alleviate decision-making from a fatigued brain. Asread more

In my childhood bedroom, my bed was almost always pushed into a corner in some configuration to maximize floor space—a design strategy my parents employed regimentally throughout the house. It took until my preteens to insist upon a more feng shui arrangement with the bedread more

It’s probably breaking some kind of blogger rule to admit this, but I had a clear winner in terms of most-read posts this year. I wrote it in February as an anti-Valentine’s Day letter because I was breaking up, publicly, with the “bad boyfriend” inread more

The past week has flown by faster than any in 2017, I think. In the ten days since I hobbled home to New Jersey, damp from early morning drizzle and limping on a sprained ankle, I’ve cooked and orchestrated and eaten a meal far moreread more

Do you remember those adorable old Campbell’s soup commercials, where the snowman comes inside the house and a mom serves him soup, only for the warm broth to melt away the snow and reveal a smiling little boy? That’s how I’ve felt (in spirit) the pastread more

Last week there was an eye-opening infographic in The New York Times showing the escalating disappearance of two of Antarctica’s glaciers into the Amundsen Sea. The piece’s graphics were almost more astonishing than the facts themselves, for they showed a truly bird’s eye view of the southernmost parts ofread more

Normally I’m not a frequent visitor of Twitter, but I happened to be on the morning of October 24 when the following popped up in my newsfeed: Compassion brings inner peace and whatever else is going on, that peace of mind allows us to seeread more

 This essay was originally published in a slightly different form in America Magazine Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu…. I sit on my yoga mat, ankles crossed in a Half Lotus pose, eyes closed and struggling to form the shape of these foreign sounds in my mouth. Hornsread more