meditation
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Life on edge, part 1
I am a very, very anxious person. There, I’ve said it. And when I say that, I mean all day, every day, since I was a young child; worrying, ruminating, convinced that something is just on the verge of going wrong. It’s not really environmentally related – I mean, yes, I get uncomfortable on particularly turbulent flights, but what I’m talking about is an underlying baseline state of dis-ease that has always been with me. My anxiety manifests as an inexplicable sense of existential dread that has no practical explanation. And for my ordered and rational brain, the fact that I can’t reason my anxiety out of existence is both…
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Let us be well
I awoke to heartbreaking news this morning of the death of one of my favorite singers; Scott Hutchison, the lead singer of the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit was found dead at Port Edgar, Scotland. Although the cause of death was not determined, from the response of his family and bandmates (and indeed anyone who listened to his music, and knew his struggles), it was clearly suicide. Mental health among performers and artists has been in the news lately, and Scott’s death feels like a devastating but timely reminder of both the toll it can take and its prevalence in modern society. Yet it still feels like a taboo topic…
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It doesn’t look like anything to me
Those of you who are fans of the HBO series Westworld will recognized this quote as a running theme through the show. It’s the reflexive response of the “hosts” (robots) whenever they encounter something that their programming can’t possible comprehend. In a larger sense it’s a reaction borne of a limited, strictly prescribed perspective of a larger reality. This got me thinking about the Buddhist concept of dharma, or reality-as-it-is; Buddhist philosophy is based on the concept that human suffering arises from the disparity between a person’s view of reality and the actual state of things. I’m often made aware of how my own perspective colors and creates my own…