I avoided mirrors. I avoided pictures. I wasn’t going to let anyone take a picture of me from the side until I got my nose fixed.

I raise a finger to a point in the night…

How much our minds live (and live on) in the people around us.

what counts here does anything count
on the short walk while looking down and then over then up…

Effects of Mindfulness Based Interventions on primary symptom severity were found for people with a current depressive disorder and it is recommended that MBIs might be considered as an intervention for this population.

None of us should be defined by the mental health conditions or psychosocial difficulties that we experience, or by any single aspect of who we are. We should be respected as individuals first and foremost.

While the simple “say this instead of that” format erases a huge amount of nuance and complexity, the guide is still a valuable and practical primer on how to talk to and about people who are going through difficult times.

That was a bargain I thought I had made with life: when all is said and done, I will somehow have done a little bit more good than harm. That was completely busted.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in Dharamsala, India, this article considers how sems pa chen po (vast or spacious mind) can be understood as emblematic of the Tibetan Buddhist view of resilience.

The “big mind” view acts as a kind of north star principle, guiding the way, even and especially among those who are struggling. A spacious mind is not merely an outcome, but a pathway, a method, and a horizon, orienting those who are suffering toward recovery. This article explores resilience from a perspective that suffering is inherently workable, and in fact, can be a great teacher. This argument is framed theoretically within an “anthropology of the good,” which seeks to understand resilience as moral experience; more aptly explaining what Tibetan Buddhists do in the face of adversity than the dichotomy of trauma/resilience, which is rooted narrowly in a Euro-American view of mental health.

not by weeping & grief
do you gain peace

A poem about facing death squarely and realistically.

She hides in the room she painted for herself,
tuning, listening…

せせらぎが止まるよ 重なる髪かざり
せせらぎが止まるよ 風向きが変わるよ

An exuberant celebration of youthful disaster.

See also the heart-warming Tonofon Remote Festival Version recorded during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in June 2020.

… the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at.

Half a history of, and accessible meditation on the philosophy of, science and half memoir of the author’s grappling with depression, this pleasantly easy read captures something of “emptiness.” It shows how Buddhism still has much to add in the West’s ongoing struggle to reconcile its extremes of naive, Christian eternalism and cynical, “scientific” nihilism.

… slender citrine lip onto which I place, gently, this first handful of hair

… the most truthful way of regarding illness — and the healthiest way of being ill — is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking

A classic and much-cited essay on the (mis)use of metaphors to describe disease.

Available online from the original publisher: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Years later, Sontag also wrote in the NYRB, this time on the metaphors of AIDS in a compelling post-script later published alongside the original essay.

After reading, consider these discussion questions about the essay.

… how a wise lay follower should advise another wise lay follower who is sick

Ending with a rather unusual description of the path as turning the mind progressively higher.