There’s an old Jataka tale about a small parrot trying to put out a forest fire. You’ve probably heard some version of it. The fire doesn’t start as an inferno. It begins as a barely visible line of orange, like someone dragging a hot wire across the horizon. The...
They arrive quietly, often unseen by the cameras that prefer the spectacle of the border or the flash of a crime scene. Yet the pulse of immigrant America beats in laboratories, kitchens, hospitals, and disaster zones across the country. It moves through the hands of...
When Vice President J. D. Vance recently announced that the administration would “follow the law” but not a federal court order mandating full funding for SNAP benefits, he may have believed he was drawing a fine distinction between reason and judicial excess....
In Buddhist cosmology, the hungry ghosts—pretas—are beings with vast, empty bellies and narrow throats. They wander desolate landscapes tormented by unending craving. Some try to eat, but what enters their mouths turns to fire or ash. Their condition is not punishment...
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a film that feels less like a story than a meditation—a cinematic sutra on suffering, impermanence, and the mystery of grace that maps our current condition as human beings. Among its most haunting scenes, a dinosaur presses its...
