Perhaps we might add a few more words on the experience of beauty. I looked up an interview with the late John O’Donohue, an Irish poet and philosopher, on the On Being program. He recalls the words of Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French thinker, that we should always keep […] Read more

On my walk this past week, I listened to a podcast from the CBC Tapestry program, which stressed the importance of words, both in terms of the healing or and wounding effect that they can have, our responsibility for our own words and something of their impact. The interview was […] Read more

This past week, I listened to a series of podcasts from the CBC ideas program, which were a re-broadcast of the British Reith lectures, given this year by Mark Carney, former governor both of the Bank of Canada and of the United Kingdom. He spoke of the need to allow […] Read more

Last week, we used the image of the eyes through which we look at life and suggested that we see most clearly when we look through the eyes, not of fear or hostility, but of compassion. This compassion begins with our own selves and extends outwardly in wider and wider […] Read more

Many years ago, in reflecting upon the educational process, it struck me that the emphasis should not be merely on the acquisition of information but more importantly on the angle of vision, the eyes through which we view any information. More recently, the proliferation on the internet of so many […] Read more

I recently listened to an On Being podcast on depression and found that the author, Anita Burrows, had published translations from the German poet, Rilke, one of my favourites. One book was a collection of daily reflections from Rilke’s writings, called A Year with Rilke. A particular passage seems to […] Read more

I’ve been listening recently to podcasts by Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale who teaches courses on well-being. Some of the things she says are in harmony with what we have been reflecting on in recent weeks. Two essential ingredient in physical, mental, and spiritual health are sufficient sleep […] Read more

Many authors have stressed that our sense of worth includes a recognition of our shadow side, the limitations, weaknesses, and even wrongs that we discover within us. It also involves going deeper than and beyond the cultural stereotype which stresses producing and consuming, winning and losing, and always being in […] Read more