Category: meditation
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On playing things by ear
I’m not very good at playing things by ear. I like to have my ducks in a row, my affairs in order, my kingdom neat and tidy, my shoulders squared. I don’t know how to say “wait and see,” “let’s check back later on this week,” “perhaps next month.” Pin things down, and I am…
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On the art of letting go
A Sunday Meditation I do not let go of things easily. I hold on to them for far too long. I need to learn how to let go. 1. Letting go is also a letting in. 2. Death does not always beget life, but life can come as a surprise. 3. When certain pursuits dry up,…
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On gratitude
Some mornings, I sit before my computer and, as the sun rises, feel gratitude emanate through me. I give thanks to a world to which I belong, for having projects that matter to me, for seeing my ideas and plans get realized, for being friends with people who are capable of kindness, and, not the…
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Ataraxia, allostasis, or resilience?
Ian McEwan’s fiction circles around the question: After an event has transformed my being in the world, what do I do now? How do I reorient myself to the world, to this new world from which I am estranged? His novels are novels of “adjustment” or “collapse.” Suppose we’re aware of the tragic nature of…
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Clifford Saron on the positive effects associated with intensive meditative practice
Last night I attended a talk given by Clifford Saron, Ph.D., an Associate Research Scientist at UC-Davis’s Center for Mind and Brain. The title of the talk was “Training the mind: A longitudinal investigation of intensive meditation, attention, emotion, and physiology.” Saron and his team of researchers have been studying the effects of deep contemplative practice…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 