This Still CAN and DOES Happen!

    This powerful true story was told by Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab American poet, editor, songwriter, & novelist, born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. Her story was posted (more than once) by Joel & Michelle Levey (WisdomAtWork.com), a well-known American Buddhist couple of Jewish heritage. 
    Enjoy:

Gate A-4
by Naomi Shihab Nye

    "Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement: 'If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.'

    Well -- one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

    An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. 'Help,' said the flight service person. 'Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.'

    I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. 'Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?' The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, 'No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let's call him.'

    We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her -- Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

    She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag -- and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

    To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

    And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend--by now we were holding hands--had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

    And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped -- seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

    This can still happen anywhere.  Not everything is lost."

 

     A decade or so ago, a young woman in one of my (then in-person) mindfulness classes shared a true story about her young daughter. 
    Once when the little girl was very upset, she had told her to be a big girl, behave etc. The little girl admonished her that that didn't help at all. "When I'm upset, I need you to hug me, tell me you love me, and bring me my teddy bear." 
    So, the next time her daughter became upset, Mom did exactly as requested, and both of them were quickly soothed & happy.

 

    “In love it often feels as if we’re glimpsing the hidden architecture of the world …” 
    Pico Iyer. “Aflame. Learning from Silence.” Riverhead Books, 2025.

    In the above quote, the author might be comfortable exchanging ‘architecture’ with ‘force,' 'energy' or 'lifeblood’. 
    And 'love' is not only romantic, but perhaps even more applicable in the love one feels for everyone & everything, like heat radiating out of one's chest. Loving Kindness Meditation is a superb practice to help gradually melt the protective shield around one's heart. http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/12/deeper-dimensions-of-acceptance.html .
    Gradually, our heart & mind become less-and-less dominated by fear, and more-and-more guided by unconditional love. 
    We MUST take unconditional love seriously and actually practice it. OTHERWISE its opposite - fear, anger, hatred & violence dominate, and the meltdown of civilization begins.

 

"The Divine is not high above us. 
It is in heaven, it is in earth,
it is inside of each of us.”
Morihei Ueshiba Sensei, 
"The Art of Peace"

 

"Active Hope" - Joanna Macy

Love and Presence

    In this follow-up to last week's introduction to Presence, Eckhart Tolle discusses the critical role of Presence in our relationships:

    “What is the connection between love and Presence? That’s an interesting question. Of course, first of all, we need to look at love and what that is. Love is usually interpreted as being an emotion. And in a conventional sense, love is when you feel a strong attachment to a person, for example another human being that you fall in love with. And that is a very strong emotion, a clinging emotion. There’s nothing wrong with it.
    But when you look at it more closely, you will find, and you may already have discovered that in your own life how quickly that emotion, that love, can actually turn into its opposite, and suddenly turn into hate. In relationships, how quickly the honeymoon, one, two, four years later, there’s the most intense hatred between the same human beings, who had not long before professed eternal love and thought this person is definitely the person who is going to make me happy. So there’s an emotional thing that’s called love that usually does not last that long and can easily turn into its opposite. 

    There’s also something deeper in human beings. There’s something deeper than an emotion, a certain state of being. And that deeper thing, where you recognize something in the other that is not separate from who you are, something that deeply connects you to the other, that is something different.
    How can you love another human being in a way that is deeper than the transient emotion of love? The only way that the deeper state of love can arise, is by being in that state of consciousness that we call Presence. When you are Present with another human being, then you’re not trapped in the judgments of your mind. You’re not imposing labels on that person. You’re able to look at a person in that space of clear Presence when look at a person, and at the same time feel or sense the Presence that you are, which ultimately is the Presence of Consciousness. And at that moment, you look deeply into that person, and you can sense the same Consciousness that gives you life, in the other person. Regardless of the personality of that person which is the conditioning, regardless of the conditioning of their minds, you can sense something in them, that is One with who you are. So you’re only able to do that when you are Present.

    When you are not Present, you’re identified with your mind, and then all you have are concepts about the other person, or emotions, emotional needs and so on, projected onto the other person. 

     Ultimately, true love, beyond emotion, is the recognition of yourself in the other. So ultimately, you recognize the other, essentially as yourself. Not the personality, but the essence of the other as your Self.
    Somebody already talked about that 2,000 years ago, but it was misunderstood. When you are Present, you love the other as yourself. It does not mean you love the other person as much as yourself. It means you love the other person because you recognize the essence of who you are, in the other. Then you love your neighbor as yourself, to quote from what Jesus said. So that does not require you, necessarily, to be in a so-called relationship with that person. You can encounter a person casually in a restaurant, in an elevator, or buying something. And there can be a moment where you connect with another human being and you sense that essential space of Presence between you. You can sense that this Consciousness that is you, is ultimately also the Consciousness that is the essence of the other person, no matter what their personality manifests at that moment. And that’s a deeply satisfying thing actually to feel the Oneness with the other. So whether or not you are in a relationship with that person, doesn’t really matter. Actually it means that you could have that love emanating from you whenever there is an encounter with another human being. And that is true love. 

    Now when you have a relationship with another person, then it is likely that the emotional love is also present. So in addition to that deeper love, which is the recognition of the other as yourself, you will also have the emotional attachment. But as you start living with the person, you notice that the emotional attachment continues to be there, but is not as important as before. The deeper recognition of the other as yourself, really becomes the foundation for your relationship. And that is spiritual.
    So in any relationship, if the relationship is to last & be satisfying, then you need to actually become Present in that relationship. This means get out of the judgments of your mind and the conditioning of your mind, become Present in the relationship. Becoming Present with the other person for example, is being able to interact and look at the other human being, without any kind of mental labeling, just in this clear space of Presence of Awareness. Then this true love arises. And that means the spiritual dimension becomes the foundation for that relationship where you transcend. Something arises that transcends both your personalities.
    The personalities still operate. There may occasionally still be disagreements and so on, on the purely human level, but something else is present in the relationship that transcends all that. And that can only arise through being Present. So Presence is actually a prerequisite for a deep relationship and a deeply satisfying relationship with another human being.
    And until that happens, relationships are very frustrating. And as you might have noticed, for many people, one of their main sources of suffering are their relationships. The very thing that they look to for fulfillment and happiness, so often turns into their main source of suffering. And that is sad. It doesn’t have to be like that. But for it not to be like that, you need to learn to be Present.”
    Eckhart Tolle Video #2 – Love and Presence https://teachings.eckharttolle.com/love-and-presence-power-of-presence-2021/

"To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen 

Love + Presence = Intimacy, Oneness, Co-creation

As we learn to fully inhabit the just now, the just this, over & over again,
until it becomes effortless, we begin to sense that
all of this is somehow just emanating out of us.
Millisecond by millisecond, thrillingly, lovingly,
we are dreaming everything into being.
Our universe appearing & disappearing -
'refreshing' - every fraction of a second,
is the subtle tingly sensation, Ezra Bayda's 'anxious quiver of being,'
we feel throughout our body
whenever we simply relax & stop to notice.
Recognizing this central creative role is
vibrantly energizing & empowering.

We recognize how fleeting life is (anicca), how up & down it is (dukkha), and
how radically our body of flesh (anatta) differs from our authentic Self.

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
And between the two my life flows.”
Nisargadatta Maharaj

   The ancient traditional greeting, "Namaste" encapsulates much of the above : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Namaste

 Namaste

Seriously?

    When I intentionally (or unintentionally) say or do something silly in front of my 7-year-old granddaughter, she gives me that look and exclaims, "Seriously?!?!"
    But without the benefit of such instant, honest reminders, our most common error is taking ourselves too seriously. We do this individually (self-centered, egocentric, self-serving, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, narcissistic) and also as members of a group (partisanship, sectarianism, religious exclusivism).
    This narrow focus on our 'self' & 'tribe' shows up as: jealousy, gossip, theft, pessimism, cynicism, nihilism, impatience, anger, arguments, shouting, bullying, sabotaging, fighting, racism, sexism, misogyny, ageism, religious intolerance, war, genocide, etc ... in brief, as 'greed, hatred & delusion.'
    'Delusion' because these are misguided, dysfunctional expressions of our innocent, universal need for love.
    See Chris Germer's 8-minute video: https://www.theawakenetwork.com/chris-germer-shame/

    “... most of us seem to experience three stages in the way we relate to others.
    Stage 1: … emotional slavery, we believe ourselves responsible for the feelings of others. We think we must constantly strive to keep everyone happy. If they don’t appear happy, we feel responsible & compelled to do something about it. This can easily lead us to see the very people who are closest to us as burdens.
    Stage 2: … obnoxious stage, we become aware of the high costs of assuming responsibility for others’ feelings and trying to accommodate them at our own expense. When we notice how much of our lives we’ve missed and how little we have responded to the call of our own soul, we may get angry … we tend toward obnoxious comments like, ‘That’s your problem! I’m not responsible for your feelings!’ when presented with another person’s pain. We are clear what we are not responsible for, but have yet to learn how to be responsible to others in a way that is not emotionally enslaving.
    Stage 3: … emotional liberation, we respond to the needs of others out of compassion, never our of fear, guilt, or shame. Our actions are therefore fulfilling to us, as well as to those who receive our efforts. We accept full responsibility for our own intentions & actions, but not for the feelings of others. At this stage, we are aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others. Emotional liberation involves stating clearly what we need in a way that communicates we are equally concerned that the needs of others be fulfilled. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is designed to support us in relating at this level.

    … an important form of self-compassion is to make choices motivated purely by our desire to contribute to life rather than our of fear, guilt, shame, duty, or obligation. When we are conscious of the life-enriching purpose behind an action we take, when the sole energy that motivates us is simply to make life wonderful for others and ourselves, then even hard work has an element of play in it. Correspondingly, an otherwise joyful activity performed out of obligation, duty, fear, guilt or shame will lose its joy and eventually engender resistance.”
    Marshall B. Rosenberg. “Nonviolent communication. A language of life.” ed 2. Puddle Dancer Press. 2003.

    AND what if all that we experience were just a dream, like ones we experience during sleep? Wouldn't this markedly reduce how seriously we took ourselves & our life? This is exactly what some very wise folks say about reality! Yet to us, this sounds ridiculous because we've been conditioned from early childhood to be anxious, frightened, hyper-vigilant perfectionists. Here we have two diametrically opposed ways of seeing ourselves & life. How we can resolve this quandary is expertly presented in these 2 books:
    Robert Wolfe. “Living Nonduality. Enlightenment Teachings of Self-Realization.” Karina Library, 2014.
    Robert Wolfe. “Emptiness.” Karina Library, 2020.

    “The trouble with the rat race, is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” Lily Tomlin

    “Dear ones, you who are trying to learn the miracle of love through the use of reason, I am terribly afraid you will never see the point.” Hafiz

    “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Joe Klaas

    “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Winston S. Churchill

Choosing Light or Dark?

     At birth, and until we're around one & a half or two years of age, we feel at one with everyone & everything around us, perfectly loved, perfectly at home, perfect: http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/01/bouncing-into-graceland.html I suspect that most of us, at least vaguely remember this wondrously perfect direct experience, have no words to express it, but try desperately to recapture it for the rest of our life. The result is an almost universal sense of 'lack': http://www.johnlovas.com/2019/05/our-sense-of-lack.html .
     Artists, those with addiction disorders, perfectionists, and perhaps most successfully, mystics are drawn towards the tantalizing perfect love that's almost within reach. Brief as well as more prolonged re-connection, re-membering of this perfect love (a "heart opening") occurs in mystical experiences: awakenings, near-death experiences (NDEs), "trips" on entheogens, post-traumatic growth experiences, etc. Even listening to people recount their NDE can help us to remember our own direct experience of having been loved unconditionally, and thus can be a profoundly meaningful, healing experience. I invite you to immerse yourself in these profound, transformative experiences:

Daniel Giroux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60BBp1Tl8Gw

Tricia Barker: https://batgap.com/tricia-barker/

Jose Hernandez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiOHQh-orH4

David Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiGqrkCMft0

Robin Landsong: https://batgap.com/robin-landsong/

NDE overview, by NDE-researcher Jeffrey Long MD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNRZzmNANIk

     Of course, we all know people who respond to this powerful calling by turning away from perfect love, denying its existence, and fully committing to fear, meaninglessness, materialism, cynicism, bitterness, anger & hatred. Here's the powerful NDE of a man who pushed this approach to the max, and how that worked out:

Howard Storm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxq6aoo5udA

     We can choose to be the source of love, nurturing everyone & everything - OR - to take all we can away from everyone & everything. This choice between being an evolved human being or a narcissist is always ours, moment-by-moment, with very different effects on everyone.
     EVERYTHING depends on this choice, and clearly, we can all be choosing MORE WISELY!

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love              Leonard Cohen

Ground of Being

     From a strictly intellectual perspective ("head" only), it's probably not possible to understand any of the below quotes. Nevertheless, many much wiser people than myself, from very different traditions & times, continue to come up with a strikingly similar message: 
     The ground of being (True Nature, Essence, Being, the Universe, Nature, Brahma, Godhead, Holy Spirit, etc) delights in manifesting & thus knowing itself, in innumerable distinct ways. In manifesting physical form, apparent opposites & other apparent paradoxes (eg countless separate individual people, countries, races, religions, political parties, etc all with apparently different "self-centered" agendas) appear. At this time, a frightening number of people rigidly identify with partisan politics and live (& will probably die) exclusively in echo chambers. When, by somehow sensing our one common origin, we're able to see past ("transcend") apparent opposites & paradoxes, we will find ourselves right back in, & living from, our ground of being.

     “the task is to stabilize attention on the fluid, unpredictable, and contingent nature of experience as the ground that enables one to take ethical choices that are not conditioned by habitual reactive patterns of greed, hatred, and self-centeredness.
     … this (is a) shift in perspective from a life governed by attachments, to one founded on a vision of contingency & nonreactivity.”

        Stephen Batchelor. “Secular Buddhism. Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World.” Yale University Press, 2017.

     “The enlightenment instinct is the instinct for the ground of being to become fully conscious of itself.” Adyashanti

     “Nothing is finite which doesn't include the infinite. The finite is the byproduct of the infinite as such becomes the outer form, the mirror of the infinite, its external revealing image. Essence and form are inseparable. Essence is the eternal Being. But living form is its constantly ever new manifestation - everlasting revelation... I try to learn from the finite sciences the lessons of the infinite.” Arthur M. Young 

     “True Nature needs no object to know itself. When the mind disidentifies from all movement, we stand at the threshold of True Nature, as radiant Being that transcends, yet exists in all movements.” 
        Richard Miller. “Yoga Nidra. A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and Healing.” Sounds True, 2005.

Frederic Benaglia

On the Path towards Wisdom

     Tejaniya encourages us to “keep practicing continuously ... Eventually wisdom will outweigh the defilements***, and you will begin to gather momentum. The practice will then become interesting; new avenues will open to you. Then you will begin to see and be part of a simpler and less complicated reality …”

      *** Defilements: “ ‘unwholesome qualities that can defile or taint the mind’ – negative qualities of mind that have the potential to make us suffer and cause trouble in our lives. Defilements in meditation practice (refer to) greed, hatred or aversion, and delusion. There are many subcategories of these three defilements …”

     We're "hard-wired" for our minds to slip into defilements: we have a fully functional brain stem that reacts automatically to even the mildest dislikes; the mildest preferences; and the many, many in-between "neutrals"; with immediate visceral feelings of, respectively: hatred, aversion, anger; or  greed, clinging, attachment; or boredom, delusion or confusion. In cave-dwelling times, this crude survival-mating focused level of consciousness helped us survive. But now, in our closely-interconnected, interdependent, collaborative world, this primitive level of consciousness causes a great deal of harm, and little if any benefit. See: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/why-buddhism-is-true/
     

     It's also very helpful to understand how trauma ramps up the power & persistence of this fear-based level of consciousness. “If you feel safe and loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.” Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. Fortunately, we have neuroplasticity & the ability to learn healthier ways of thinking and behaving.

     Secular philosophical & psychological wisdom studies, and all of the world's wisdom traditions advise us to intentionally mature from primitive egocentricity, towards the much more appropriate & evolved allo- & ecocentricity. 

     "Four central features of wisdom (are recognized) in both European & Asian philosophy: self-knowledge, detachment, integration, and self-transcendence. …
     (These) four features can be conceptualized as developmental stages:
     Self-knowledge is awareness of what constitutes one’s sense of self in the context of roles, relationships, and beliefs.
     Detachment refers to awareness of the transience of external aspects of one’s sense of self.
     Integration means overcoming the separation among different ‘inner selves,’ that is, accepting and integrating all facets of one’s self.
     Finally, self-transcendence refers to independence of the self of external definitions and dissolution of mental boundaries between self and others. … ‘self-transcendence is equivalent to wisdom and implies the dissolution of (self-based) obstacles to empathy, understanding, and integrity’.”
       Staudinger UM, Gluck J. "Psychological wisdom research: commonalities and differences in a growing field." Annu Rev Psychol 2011; 62: 215-41. 

Courtesy of Buddha Doodles  www.buddhadoodles.com

 

Buddhism - a Closer Look

     Xenophobia is usually a form of aversion, even hatred: "fear & distrust of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange." Less commonly, xenophobia is expressed in the form of clinging or greed: "an uncritical exaltation of another culture in which a culture is ascribed an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia 
     We laugh at Homer Simpson when he says exactly how he feels: "I don't like him - he's different." But there's a little Homer in every one of us. We're far less evolved than we'd like to believe.
     From the start (~500BCE), Buddhism has sought the "middle-path" between extremes, and has seen aversion, greed, & delusion, as the basic causes of human suffering. Nevertheless, xenophobia remains a powerful primitive reaction, easily over-ruling higher forms of reason. "The world we experience comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the outside in." Anil Seth http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/09/22/Clarity-of-Vision

     "Buddhism ... is not primarily a philosophy or description of reality. It is a pragmatic path whose goal is to lessen suffering and increase happiness." Melvin McLeod, Lion's Roar, November 2017

     The Buddha 
• denied being divine; 
• only claimed to have "awakened" by dropping greed, hatred & delusion; 
• for 40 years taught many to achieve the same awakening he had; 
• taught people not to rely on him or anyone other than themselves to awaken; and 
• taught that even his own teachings (later called "Buddhism") were like a raft to cross a river, a vehicle to be discarded after one has awakened.

     Like the Hippocratic Oath, the Buddha's primary interest was lessening suffering and increasing long-term happiness. So Buddhism has a lot in common with, and has often been compared to, a form of medicine or psychology.

     "Pragmatism considers thought an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. The philosophy of pragmatism 'emphasizes the practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences'. Pragmatism focuses on a 'changing universe rather than an unchanging one as the Idealists, Realists and Thomists had claimed'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism

 

Lambert's of Taos, NM  http://lambertsoftaos.com/new-manager/main

Can We Get Beyond Partisanship?

     Partisanship - my political party, my religion, my personal short-term interests, my possessions, ... feral egocentricity to hell with everyone else, the environment be damned - is what got us into the global mess we're in now. More on partisanship: http://www.johnlovas.com/2017/05/ideology-identity-science.html

     But if we're brave and invest the time to look a bit more deeply at ourself & our life, we may see things differently enough to perhaps work towards improving the quality of life for all. More on bravery: http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/04/25/Normal-Resistance-to-Maturation

     "Studies of self-affirmation typically ask the experimental group to write about their most important value and the control group to write about a low-ranked value. The consistent superiority of experimental over control groups in beneficial outcomes suggests that thinking about one’s own highly ranked values is important. This finding is consistent with theories of optimal human functioning that emphasize the role of autonomy. Self-determination theory identifies autonomy as one of three basic needs (along with competence and relatedness) that are essential for psychological health and life satisfaction. Ryff’s comprehensive theory of psychological well-being also includes autonomy as a critical element of healthy functioning. Studies of the self-concordance model show that pursuit of goals that reflect authentic personal interests and values is associated with increased goal attainment and higher overall well-being.
     Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) experts note that when clients are encouraged to think autonomously about their deepest aspirations, they almost invariably choose prosocial values, such as meaningful work, loving relationships, and contributions to a community. When this does not happen, e.g., a client says that he values making a lot of money, further discussion about why money is important is likely to reveal prosocial underlying values, such as providing security or opportunities for one’s family. If values appear to conflict (e.g., providing financial security for the family versus spending time with them), discussion focuses on finding patterns of committed action that serve both values and provide greater overall satisfaction with life.  
     The prevailing tendency to identify prosocial values is believed to reflect universal human requirements for biological survival, social interaction, and the welfare of groups. That is, individuals and societies are more likely to thrive if people take care of them- selves, help each other, and work for the benefit of the group. Of course, these universal needs do not invariably prevent harmful behaviors. However, current psychological theories, research, and treatment methods consistently suggest that encouraging people to identify their own most deeply held values may promote adaptive and prosocial behaviors more effectively than adopting a list of values prescribed or suggested by others. 
     A central concern of positive psychology is the understanding and cultivation of human virtues that define good character or the domain of moral excellence."

 

       Ruth Baer. "Ethics, Values, Virtues, and Character Strengths in Mindfulness-Based Interventions: a Psychological Science Perspective." Mindfulness 2015; 6: 956–969.

 

This morning, at the Canada Games Center, Halifax, NS