Author Archives: John Swinburn

I read that “meditation is a conscious effort to change the way the mind works.” At this very moment, I am sure that is what is required.

If you cry when others don’t, over things that don’t matter to the world around you, look in the mirror and thank the sun and the stars you are not of the world around you.

I stumbled across a Facebook post recently by a woman from Tibet, a woman who grew up in the Buddhist tradition. In the post, she recalled that her grandmother prayed for all sentient beings. I wish I could ask her, or her … Continue reading →

Dignity is more about helping others cope with tragedy than it is about coping with tragedy oneself. I learned that from President Jimmy Carter.

Above me, the skies turned grey and turbulent, roiling clouds drinking in moisture from the surrounding air, behaving like an inveterate alcoholic, sucking in atmospheric humidity as if it were liquor. Suddenly, the visible turbulence of the clouds turned to a solid mass … Continue reading →

For reasons I do not understand, but probably could if I engaged in sufficient self-reflection, I often think of some of the lyrics to a 1968 Jefferson Airplane tune written by Grace Slick: Lather was thirty years old today, And Lather came … Continue reading →

The man’s words came from my brain. “The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to … Continue reading →

At some point, your rage will simply boomerang and you will have wasted all your energy on a brutal attack on yourself.

I recently skimmed an article that described a room (or was it simply a device?) in which all external noise was filtered out. The only sounds a person inside could hear were the sounds of his own body; heart beating, … Continue reading →

Damn near everything I write is allegorical. I wonder whether that’s an indication I don’t have the fortitude to be forthright?

Dreams unmask fears and hopes and desires. They unleash the heartless monster and the loving humanitarian buried under countless layers of time and tears.