There’s a story that’s nearly foundational in Western meditation circles about self-hatred: His Holiness the Dalai Lama was talking with a room full of Westerners (meditators on retreat, scientists and meditation teachers, depending upon the telling), and one person hazards asking His Holiness about self-hatred. I’ve heard many versions of the Dalai Lama self-hatred question and answer, and recent experiences have caused me to completely rethink my perception of it. 

This is my love letter to silent meditation retreat, and a glimpse of why I devote so much time to quietly exploring internal frontiers.  

Feeling a sense of danger during an election season is nothing new to me, or probably anyone else. I wrote one of my first essays about how the Democratic fervor was so zealous in my family that it was not until high school that I realized there were ideological differences between Republicans and Nazis. And it would be ridiculous to suggest that politics today is any uglier than it ever was—just look to Jefferson and Adams to dispel that notion. Yet I am worried about the near absence of space for civil dialogue between political parties.