David DeSteno, psychology professor at Northeastern University, recently had an article in The Atlantic about some of his meditation research, and the role mindfulness might play in developing compassion.

In the Buddhist psychology, there are three personality types described. Not everyone fits neatly into one of the three slots of course; in some ways we are all a mixture of each of the three.

As soon as the movie, Milk, came out in 2008, I went to see it. The movie is a biographical depiction of the life of Harvey Milk, who in 1977 became the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States.

It’s the Dalai Lama’s birthday! The Dalai Lama turns 80 today. I’m not totally sure how he’ll celebrate it, other than the fact that he’ll be in the U.S. and plans a panel discussion on compassion.

I went to India at the age of 18, to learn how to meditate. I had grown up in New York City, gone to college in Buffalo, New York, and had once gone on a family vacation to Florida.

I spent this week at a conference titled “Fear and Trust in Self and Society” put on by the Mind and Life Institute. If I were going to try to single out the most predominant historical obstacle to my feeling truly happy, I’d say it is fear.

The word we tend to translate as faith, from Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, is saddha. Its literal meaning is “to place the heart upon,” to offer one’s heart.

In 2010, I attended a discussion at Emory with the Dalai Lama, Alice Walker, and Richard Gere called “The Creative Journey: Artists in Conversation with the Dalai Lama on Spirituality and Creativity.”

The Buddha, 2600 years ago, challenged a commonly held view in India that sexual desire arising in a man’s mind was a woman’s fault, being the result of the female’s temptation of the male.

Last July I had the chance to be on the Katie Couric show in an episode where she was exploring mindfulness. The most powerful moment for me actually came after my part was over, and I was sitting in the front row of the audience.

There’s no doubt that the idea of “letting go” — the advice to “let it go” — has become more popular in recent years.

Several years ago, I was a participant in a Christian-Buddhist interfaith conference at Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky.

In Buddhist teaching, the three root hindrances to insight are traditionally considered to be grasping, aversion (anger and fear), and delusion.

Some years ago, a neuroscientist gently challenged me on the benefits of meditation: “Without further scientific validation,” he began, “how will you know if meditation works?”

When we think about generosity, most of us probably don’t think immediately of a powerful force, an inner resource, a real tool for changing how we relate to ourselves, to others and to our world.

No endeavor comes without stress. No matter what we do, at times we will be met with challenges: disagreements, pressures, mistakes, moments of forgetfulness, fatigue, anger — the list goes on.

There is no doubt that “mindfulness” is having a moment in the spotlight. Back in November 2013, David Hochman wrote a New York Times feature titled “Mindfulness: Getting Its Share of Attention,” indicating the initial surge in the mindfulness “trend.”