Living Mindfully in the Digital Age

In a digital world, we suffer from a wealth of information and a poverty of attention. Distracted by the constant feed of brain stimuli, we forget what it means to inhabit our lives. We look without seeing as we multitask through the day, depriving ourselves of the gift of being present.

Listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn, Daniel Goldman, Richard Davison and Sharon Salzberg, thought leaders in the field of mindfulness, I shut down my phone to shut off the world and listen deeply to wisdom shared by Arianna Huffington, Jewel and others at Wisdom 2.0's Mindfulness in America Summit.

Be Here Now is my favorite mantra yet it it the lesson I am prone to forgetting. Even harder to master is the Buddhist core of compassion practice, to begin by being compassionate with myself. We are here also to care for our selves.

The Refugee Crisis: A Leap in Empathy

The shift in the tide of empathy toward the global refugee crisis was undoubtedly the photo of a tiny Syrian boy's body on the beach, his shoes so small and his innocent face resting on the sand.

Two-year-old Alan Kurdi's image provoked people around the world to cry out at the injustice of humanity and the brutality of war. It awakened even the most apathetic soul to bring blankets and toys, open their homes, organize relief efforts and bypass traditional humanitarian agencies to respond in a deeply personal way.

At a time when we feel so much pain and don't know what to do for a global crisis that we have been helpless to act upon, we are awakened by the challenge to our soul of seeing our own humanity in the other. Knowing we cannot solve all the problems in the world has kept so many of us inside our own comfort zone, hesitant to take on the world.