There are so many things to be grateful for! Birds singing, sunshine, trees and the shade they provide, the love of our friends, the comforts of modern living, etc. etc. Yet, surrounded by this beauty and love, we often rush through our busy-busy day...

I woke up this morning to grey skies. My first thought was "Uh, a grey day!" It came to me that perhaps I would be best served when I wake up in the morning to find just one good thing about the day... that the rain had stopped, that I had the leisure of taking a morning walk... So many things to be grateful for!

Appreciation is most powerful when it ceases to be something that you do only occasionally, and instead becomes your basic approach to life. You must first be willing to overcome certain resistances to appreciating...

In a world immersed in urgency, with alarm bells ringing left and right and dire predictions for our future, how dare I come up with a banner marked, “Yes, so many good things are happening”? Simply because how we

Several days ago we attended the Cultural Awareness Program at Mt. Madonna School where our grandson is in first grade. His grade of ten adorable students reenacted a Buddhist story from Cambodia. In this story a single mother has three grown sons. She is very concerned that her sons do not help her or anyone else, and care only about money...

As you set your New Year’s resolutions for 2021, consider a resolution to help others, says an expert on motivation.

The most difficult act of bravery is often kindness. There are a hundred reasons not to help a stranger passed out in a parking lot. It’s potentially dangerous. The person might be “crazy,” have a communicable disease, or smell. The situation isn’t our problem, we’re busy and don’t have time, and so on.

The less we know about what is expected of us in a given situation, the more likely we are to act selfishly, researchers report.

For me, being of service means working on behalf of and thus taking a stand for a cause or causes that we believe in and which are dear to our hearts, and where we feel we can make some kind of positive contribution towards a healthier world.

I know you're carrying a lot right now. In your life, in your mind, inside your emotional body, too. The load is heavy. I just want you to know, I feel you. Today, I want to send you some tender love. It won't solve everything, but it might lighten the load for just a moment or two. 

There are many virtues appropriate to our present circumstances that are extolled in the wisdom of Sanskrit: Abhayam (?????) fearlessness; Balam (????) strength; Buddhi (??????) reason, Ksham? (?????) patience and forbearance, and so on.

Every day, everyone we meet can be assisted by simply our changing our attitude and our focus. We can all change the world today. On passing people in the street, on the bus, in places of work and play, bless them...

Our five senses, our fantastic curiosity, our exhilarating emotional capacity are just a few of our avenues to gladness. Even when headlines clamor, or life deals tough challenges, we can find numberless reasons to feel grateful and hopeful.

During this pandemic, so much has been taken from us. Everyone is missing something important for them. For us, the fact that we cannot do our workshops, work that we have done for the past 45 years and we dearly love, causes hurt to our hearts.

A few years ago, I discovered with wonder a new form of magic: expressing appreciation to others for something they had done. And modern life offers us a thousand different opportunities to manifest that magic.

We have all suffered, and will suffer, our own falls. The fall from youthful ideals, the waning of physical strength, the failure of a cherished hope, the loss of our near and dear, the fall into injury or sickness, and late or soon, the fall to our certain ends. We have no choice but to fall, and little say as to the time or the means.

And in this period of sheltering at home, 33 years ago, this is the most important lesson I learned. The practice of gratitude is powerful and can bring us through even the hardest times.

A lot of books have been written about gratitude. I think it is a well-received idea that gratitude is a nice thing to do. But I want to address the use of gratitude in our most vulnerable times, when it is not about being polite, nice or wanting to be liked.

To recognize and appreciate blessings we must develop an "awareness" of them. We must develop the habit of seeing that which is the norm, rather than that which is the exception.

Christmas can be a stressful time of year. You will blow your budget, your relatives will annoy you, and you’ll receive gifts that go straight to Vinnies...

This year we expect that sales will break all records! However, we cannot help but think that this anniversary celebrates the coming to earth of one of humanity’s greatest avatars – who, additionally, lived in total poverty according to his own words.

As a physician, I have helped to care for many patients and families whose lives have been turned upside down by serious illnesses and injuries.

We can’t wait until everything is OK—with us or with the rest of the world—to feel thankful, or we will never experience it at all. “The world is too bent for unshadowed joy,” Lewis Smedes points out, and so we must catch and kiss our joy as it flies by, even in the midst of sorrow or suffering.