Equanimity: The Calm That Survives Bad News
Learn how equanimity — the underrated fourth brahmavihara — gives mindfulness and Stoic practice something stable to stand on when life goes wrong.
Mindfulness
17 articles - Present-moment awareness and meditation
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Self-Compassion Is Not Self-Indulgence
Discover how Buddhist metta and Kristin Neff's research dismantle the biggest objection to self-compassion: that treating yourself kindly makes you weak.
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Wabi-Sabi: The Philosophy Perfectionism Forgot
Discover how wabi-sabi, an 800-year-old Japanese philosophy of imperfection, counters perfectionism with ancient wisdom backed by modern psychology research.
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Solitude Is Not Loneliness: A Philosophy of Being Alone
Solitude is not loneliness. Discover how Pascal, Thoreau, and 2025 research agree: chosen aloneness predicts flourishing—if you know how to practice it.
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Iris Murdoch's Cure for Being Stuck in Your Head
Iris Murdoch's concept of unselfing: how turning attention outward to beauty, nature, or art quiets the ego and stops the cycle of overthinking.
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Why Nothing Lasts: Mono No Aware and Buddhist Impermanence
Discover how mono no aware and Buddhist impermanence turn anxiety about endings into something quieter and more freeing than you'd expect. Learn why it matters.
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Wu Wei: The Art of Not Trying (Taoism's Effortless Action)
Discover wu wei, the Taoist philosophy of effortless action — and why the hardest-working people might have the most to learn from not trying so hard.
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What Is Anxiety, Really? What Philosophers Say That Therapists Often Don't
Kierkegaard called anxiety the dizziness of freedom. Heidegger saw groundlessness. The Stoics saw false judgment. What if it's a signal, not a malfunction?
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Not All Meditation Is the Same: Brain Scans of Monks Reveal Why Your Practice Style Matters
A 2026 MEG study of monks with 15,000+ hours found Vipassana and Samatha produce fundamentally different brain dynamics. Here's what that means for your practice.
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Your Brain Takes Out the Trash When You Meditate (New Research Explains How)
A 2025 PNAS study found meditation drives cerebrospinal fluid flow that mirrors sleep's waste-clearing glymphatic system. Here's what it means for brain health.
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When Meditation Makes Things Worse: What the Research Actually Shows
About 10% of regular meditators experience lasting negative effects like dissociation and panic. New clinical research explains why, and what we should do about it.
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New Study Says Meditation Makes You Reckless -- Here's What the Stoics Would Say
A Scientific Reports study found mindfulness meditation increases risk-taking behavior. Ancient Stoic philosophy saw this coming and offers a corrective.