Fishing Lessons

Imagine a man arriving at the gates of a great palace, covered in dust and carrying the urgency of someone whose entire world has gone wrong. He has come to present his complaint to the king. “My horse was taken. I cannot work. My family is starving. I need you to do something!” In the old world, when ordinary people formally brought their problems before a monarch, they were presenting a petition—a request for redress of a grievance. And when the king agreed to listen, he was said to be granting an audience or holding court . The king did not necessarily solve every problem. He listened. Perhaps this is what we ought to do with our thoughts. Perhaps it is time to hold court . Unlock the Palace Most people approach meditation rather strangely. They sit down, close their eyes, and immediately discover that there are people shouting outside the palace gates. I need to call that client. Did I send that email? What if this doesn't work? I need more money. Why did she say that? What am ...

There was once a young man who wanted very badly to be successful. He had spent years watching other people succeed. He watched the merchant who had built a fortune. He watched the scholar who had written books. He watched the politician whose name everyone knew. He watched the monk who seemed to possess a peace that could not be bought. And the young man thought, There it is. That is success. But he could never quite decide which one he wanted. So he went searching. He traveled to the city and asked a wealthy merchant, “What is success?” The merchant smiled and pointed toward his warehouses. “Success,” he said, “is having more tomorrow than you had yesterday.” So the young man worked. He made money. Then more money. Then more. But after a while, he noticed something strange. Every time he reached the place he had imagined would make him happy, the place simply moved farther away. So he went to a scholar. “What is success?” he asked. The scholar showed him his books. “Success is leavin...

There is a peculiar tragedy that unfolds so quietly most people never notice it. You stop dating yourself. Not all at once. There is no ceremony. No dramatic ending. Just a slow drift into familiarity. And familiarity, when left unattended, has a way of becoming neglect. Think back to when you were a child. You could spend an afternoon sitting beneath a tree, watching ants march through the grass as though they carried the secrets of the universe. You wandered into the woods with no destination. You climbed rocks. You skipped stones across rivers. You didn't need entertainment because you were fascinated by simply being alive. You were taking yourself on dates. Then you grew older. Your dates became coffee shops, bookstores, museums, long drives with the windows down. You'd imagine your future. Dream about the person you would become. You'd ask yourself impossible questions. "What if I built something extraordinary?" "What if I traveled the world?" ...

“A shooting star! I wish for strength. I need to be strong to care for those I love.” But you see, this is the game. This is the cosmic joke that the universe is playing on itself… through you. Light cannot be seen without darkness. There is no top without a bottom, no front without a back. There is no strength without weakness. And if you really sit with that,  not just as a clever idea, but as a felt reality… everything changes. When a wish reaches the ears of the divine and is granted, two equal seeds are planted in your reality. Because that is the nature of existence. You cannot order one side of the coin. To wish for strength, the universe,  in its profound and mischievous wisdom, sends you weights. In many forms. It wears you out daily until you feel utterly weak. Because here is the secret: the seed of strength cannot germinate in comfortable soil. It demands challenge. Progressive resistance, each and every day. And so the game becomes not one of avoiding struggl...

It has always seemed strange to me that we spend so much of our lives trying to discover who we are. As if somewhere, hidden behind all the commotion of work and worry and ambition, there is a single, authentic self waiting to be found. But what if that isn't the game at all? What if you are not one person, but a conversation? The ancient world understood this rather well. They did not reduce human nature to a single virtue or a single commandment. They populated the heavens with gods because they recognized that life itself wears many faces. There are days when you need Shiva. There are days when you need Buddha. There are days when you need Jesus. And there are certainly days when only Krishna will do. The mistake is believing that one of them is right and the others are wrong. They are all invitations to participate in the great dance of being alive. Shiva arrives when life begins to crumble. We fear him because he is called the destroyer, but this is rather unfair. A gardener d...

To judge another is to audition for the role of God. It is to stand upon a little hill of opinion and declare, "I can see the whole landscape." But you can't. Neither can I. The curious thing is that life never asked us to become judges. It asked us to become participants. To meet one another. To connect. To recognize that behind every mask is the same mysterious awareness looking out through different eyes. The ego, however, finds this terribly boring. It would rather sort people into saints and fools, heroes and villains, the enlightened and the ignorant. It enjoys the delicious feeling of superiority because superiority is simply insecurity dressed in royal clothing. Then comes the greatest joke of all. You notice people judging others and think, "How awful. Look at them, sitting in judgment." And suddenly you've become the very thing you condemned. Then someone notices you judging the judgers and judges you for judging the judgers. And another person jud...

You drive out of town, away from the neon hum of business and entertainment, and the road begins to twist and climb. Fields roll past, mountains breathe on the horizon—some of the most ancient mountains in the world. A gravel road greets you with horses, donkeys, and late-summer wildflowers: goldenrod and Joe Pye. The climb grows steeper. You can’t see what lies ahead. A small fear stirs—Perhaps I’m lost, perhaps I’ve gone the wrong way. Then a sudden blind turn heightens the anxiety. But soon the ground levels, the trees part, and the horizon unfurls into something vast and alive. If you pause—if you really arrive—you’ll notice nature begins her conversation immediately. The air has a taste, the silence has a sound, the stars themselves seem to gather here at night. The lack of cell service is not a flaw, but a feature. Here, absence becomes presence, and distance dissolves the noise. At first, you may think: This is so far away from everything I need. I thought that too. I couldn’t i...

Here’s a little experiment in enchantment. Pick a number between 1 and 31—any number that gives you a quiet smile. That’s your day. Your lucky day. Your self-care day. Ink it onto the calendar, whisper it to your friends, say it out loud when you wake: “On the ___th , the universe and I have an appointment.” Now, this is not superstition; it is participation. You see, what we call “luck” is often the mind finally agreeing to notice the river it has always been floating in. Marking a day is a way of saying to life, “I am ready to see you.”  Look at the day as a  permission slip : a playful ritual that lets you give yourself consent to believe what is already true—that your state of being tunes your experience. So choose your number, and let that day be your practice of benevolent expectation. On your lucky day, wake as if the world has conspired for your well-being. Let every green light be a wink, every delay a nudge, every coincidence a breadcrumb. Meet the day as a magician ...

We human beings have a peculiar habit. We sit down at the kitchen table, a pen or pencil in hand, and decide to take inventory of our lives—often by drawing up two neat columns: things to feel bad about and things to feel good about. It sounds so reasonable, so tidy almost mathematical.  We Assign different weights and values to the line items of 'our' possessions and experiences.  Once we are done, we look at a dozen or so items and use those line items to decide if it is logical to feel.. rich or poor in the moment.  Yet, to even begin such a list, one must first commit a most remarkable act of amnesia—voluntarily or not. You must forget about the infinity of miracles humming all around you. You must overlook the impossible chain of events that led to the pencil in your hand: the tree that swayed in the wind for decades, drinking sunlight and rain; the human ingenuity and yes, the anxious persistence—that felled that tree, milled it, shaped it into paper; the centuries ...

It is a curious thing that in our rush to be positive, we have invented a new phrase: Toxic positivity. As if to say that by insisting on brightness, we have turned the very sun into a blinding glare.  You see, to be in a positive state of mind is not to declare that bad things are somehow good. That is nonsense. It is not to pretend that shadows are made of light. Rather, it is to stand in the right state of mind so that what is dark, what is difficult, what is painful—can be used in a way that becomes constructive. Not denial, but alchemy.  For what is the alternative? To drown in despair? To be consumed by bitterness?  The quickest way into the present moment when faced with negative, or seemingly negative, information is not to paste a smile over it, but to pause—and notice what you already have. And when I say “what you have,” I don’t mean just your possessions or even the people in your life. I mean the endless stream of miracles that hold you together: your breath,...