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Your Own Damn Life

Michael Meade On The Story We’re Born With

The big story isn’t history. That’s just another substitute for the life of the human soul, which is the real story. In the long run it’s the poets, not the newspapers, who have the news. The news is a superficial exchange of information that can never tell the whole story. The poets tell us we’re in this great, ongoing dance that includes opportunities to fight and love and fall down and get back up. Hopefully we have the occasional chance to do our particular dance in the middle of all that.

Conversations With A Tree

Every morning I’d have an audience with my tree. I always began by saying, “Namaskar,” which is Sanskrit for “I salute the divine within you with my entire mind and heart.” Standing before the tree, I’d hear words in my head that weren’t my own. I suspected the tree was actually speaking to me, and I began a journal of our conversations.

My Mother’s Burning Body

“The thing I remember most about watching my mother’s body burn,” my mother tells me in English, a language that has never quite served her, “is when I can smell her skin and hair as they are catching fire and crackling in the flame.”

Sunbeams

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Joseph Baretti

Reading Isaiah In Chiapas

The Virgin crested the hill, and a man emerged from his doorway and gave a shout. Others rushed from their huts. Perched on a dais borne on the shoulders of four men dressed in leather sandals and white tunics, she descended the narrow dirt trail toward the Mexican village. Behind her a long procession unfurled over and down the hill.

A Joyful Noise

Krishna Das On Chanting The Names Of God

Real gurus don’t intend to teach; they teach just by being. The word guru means “one who dispels the darkness,” which is different from giving light. Giving light means giving someone something that they don’t already have. Gurus remove the layers of darkness and show you what’s already there. They peel away the self-hatred, the guilt, the shame, the fear. A guru is someone who has truly conquered all of that and lives only to help people. There’s no edge, no harshness, only complete love and acceptance — and a kind of cosmic chuckle because you don’t fully understand; not laughing at you, but saying, “Come on! Get with it!”