Arts & Letters – Spirituality

When John Keats died 200 years ago, on Feb. 23, 1821, he was just 25 years old. Despite his short life, he’s still considered one of the finest poets in the English language. Yet in addition to masterpieces such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “To Autumn,” Keats’ legacy includes a remarkable concept: what he called “negative capability.” The idea – which centers on suspending judgment about something in order...

“In 1981, Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, set out to study the ancient meditation practices of Buddhist monks on the Tibetan Plateau. With the Dalai Lama’s blessing, Benson spent roughly a decade in remote regions of the Himalayas in northern India researching an especially intense technique known as tummo, as well as the physiological effects of other advanced forms of meditation. Rather than debunking the seemingly tall tales...

The Man Who Found the Flow “What is happiness?” asked psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He found it in a state of mind beyond results and rewards and called it “the flow.” Painting by Pawel Czerwinski. “To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”        —Walter Pater In 1963, a young doctoral student in psychology at the University of Chicago noticed a most intriguing...

At the heart of Japanese philosophy and wisdom lies a concept called ‘wabi-sabi’; a term which denotes a commitment to the everyday, the melancholic, the somewhat broken and the imperfect. It’s a term we need a lot more of in our lives.