Andrea Miller: You are an executive producer of the new documentary Wisdom of Happiness. As you define it, what is happiness?  Richard Gere: We all want to be happy, but we have different definitions of what that is. That’s why we have these conflicts in the world: We...

1. Loving-Kindness Susan Kaiser Greenland leads us through metta meditation, showing how simple phrases of goodwill can dissolve fear and open the heart to connection. Buddhist tradition tells of a time, centuries before the common era, when five hundred monks set out...

“The wound is where the light enters you.” ~Rumi “I can’t do anything right. There’s something wrong with me.” My daughter said these words quietly, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear them. But I did. And the moment I did, something in my chest cracked open. I...

I arrived in Minneapolis at 10 p.m. I live in Madison, Wisconsin these days, but I grew up here. My mom lives here. My 20-year-old son is a student at the University of Minnesota, where I was an undergraduate, as were my father and my grandfather. I have deep roots in...

The sky stretched wide and bright above the golden cottonwoods of October. Nestled in the ancient Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I felt myself as much a part of the earth as the ravens, spotted towhees, and pinyon jays, as well as the flora—juniper, piñon, and...

In Vigil, the character Jill lingers in the space after death, watching over a dying man. What were the influences that shaped the novel’s conception? A lifelong obsession with death, mortality, and accountability. I was a zealous Catholic kid when growing up in...

When we bring our mindfulness to bear on what we call “hunger,” we discover it isn’t just one thing. Hunger is made up of many different kinds of signals that arise from our senses, thoughts, and emotions. It’s a mix of experiences stemming from having a human body,...

Whether there’s intelligent life on planet Earth is, in a certain way, still an open question. This is a fraught time. People speak of the polycrises that Earth is facing: climate change with the melting of the polar ice caps and the threat of sea-level rise; the...

I have a milestone birthday approaching, and as often happens at such moments, the mind and heart turn toward reflection. Lately, I’ve been revisiting the intricate web of family and friends who support me, hold me, and—yes—sometimes challenge me. We connect with...

‘In practice, the insight of not-two does not arrive as a philosophy, but as a felt shift in perception.’ Everyday Buddhist