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Be Sincere

People say, “Live each day as though it were your last,” but people do horrible, senseless things with their last days. I prefer what...

Let Yourself Be Moved

Wherever I go, people seem to think Buddhism is about “inner peace.” But the Buddha didn’t teach inner peace. He taught skillful action,...

We Need Each Other

There’s a story of a soldier who says to the Buddha, “I was taught that if I die in battle, I’ll go to heaven.” The Buddha says: You’ve...

War Is Insane

One of the bombs fell right by my father-in-law’s old house in north Tehran, killing several people in a residential building. Meanwhile,...

Start With Good Morning

A friend of mine says that when she wakes up anxious or depressed, she takes a walk and says “good morning” to everyone she meets along...

Double Down On Being Human

I recently read a story about a woman who used to bully her Alexa device. It started with the woman teasing Alexa when it made a mistake;...

We Suffer From Our Unlived Lives

One commonly-used phrase in healing circles is “holding space for pain.” On the one hand, it’s pretty literal: we all need safe people to...

Be The Medicine, Not The Drug

The other day I posted a video of my song, “If You’re Lucky Your Heart Will Break.” It’s about the way that pain can be an important...

Boredom Is A Great Teacher

In the early 2010s, a series of scientific studies proved that people would rather feel pain than be bored. In one experiment,...

Resist

I recently saw a video of ICE agents throwing a woman against a wall, zip-tying her, and then releasing her when they realized they had...

Validation Won't Heal Us

One of my insecurities is feeling sometimes like I don’t have enough style. As a musician, for example, I can be confident in the content...

No One Gets Away With Anything

In Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, a young man murders an old lady. He initially feels justified in his action. She’s going to...

Take Back Your Apartment

The biggest party I ever threw was twenty years ago in Cairo. It wasn’t supposed to be big: I only invited about six people, some of whom...

You Are Waiting For Too Much

Chögyam Trungpa used to warn about waiting for “the dream come true.” All of us, in our own ways, are waiting for life to conform to some...

Don't Run Down the Clock

The Buddha said that every evening, when you see the sun set, you should remind yourself that this might be the last sunset you ever see....

There Are No Others

There’s a Hasidic story about a rabbi who asks his students, “How can you tell the exact line between night and day?” “Is it the moment...

There's A Lot Going On

The other day, I was walking down the street when I saw an old man lying on the pavement, blood streaming down his face. People were...

Tune, Tune, Tune

In 2015, I kept having dreams in which my grandmother told me to go to the Greek island of Patmos. I decided to make a pilgrimage there...

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