I do believe there's a place for anger in spiritual life. Just as a mother protects a child, as parents protect offspring under threat, we need a place for the conscious use of that fire. The positive side of anger as fierceness.

I was an angry young man, as you say. I was a punk rocker, blaming the government, corporations, and anything external, like my family, for my anger. I was pretty miserable, festering in my own mind. I began to think, there has to be a different way, there has to be another way out.

We're not as different as we think we are.

A baroque art-rock bubblegum broadcast on a frequency understood only by female teenagers and bred field mice.

The essence of forgiveness is seeing our humanness and seeing that we all have our limitations and follies.

It's important that we see clearly with wisdom and awareness, but also take action.

One of the tools I like a lot is the Just Like Me practice. It's one of the empathy practices where we put ourselves in the other's shoes. Rather than get caught up in the difference in the ideologies, we actually come back to the fundamental idea: just like me, this person on the opposite political spectrum wants to be happy, wants to be safe, wants to thrive, wants to be healthy, wants to find peace of mind.