The Role of Sadness in Everyday Life.

Sadness isn't badness. It's one of the best things in life.

Growing up in an American Buddhist family, one of the most treasured gifts I remember inheriting was an understanding—so rare and yet so essential when you’re young—that sadness, loneliness, and even depression aren’t to be fought off. They’re to be worked with, and welcomed more or less.

Excerpt from Chogyam Trungpa, via Shambhala Publications (where I used to work):

"According to the Shambhala principles you should feel [sadness and joy, simultaneously] with everything you do.

Whether you have a good time or a bad time, you should feel sad and delighted at once. That is how to be a real decent human being, and it is also connected with the Buddhist principle of longing, or devotion. Longing is the hunger for sacredness. When you begin to feel you’re too much in the secular world, you long for the sacred world. Therefore you feel sad, and you open..."

...to click here to read the rest.

Yours in working (and playing) to create enlightened society,

Waylon Lewis
editor-in-chief, host
elephantjournal.com, Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis

1,200,000 unique readers a month (Google Analytics)

Connect: Facebook (100,000 fans on various pages) or twitter (100,000 followers total, voted #1 in US for Green two years running)

Subscribe to elephant here. Or, keep reading 2 free articles a day, every day, enough for 90% of our readers.

Links in these newsletters are free. Want to support indie media? Share this newsletter with a loved one.

Top Ten Blogs of the Week.

The Quote that Would Not Leave My Head for an Entire Year. ~ Robert Sturman 

And I hope it never does.

Read more

Dear Brad Seng, My Vagina is Nothing Like a Cup of Backwash. ~ Kate Bartolotta

There is no correlation whatsoever between my...

Read more

10 Signs You are a 'Good Girl' & 10 Tips for Discovering Your 'Good Woman.' ~ Candice Holdorf

Everything nice? Eh...I'll pass.

Read more

Determine Your Ayurvedic Constitution. ~ Brian Leaf

Six quick questions that could change your health.

Read more

Christina Hendricks Should Lose a Few Pounds.
~ Kate Bartolotta

Oh, wait...

Read more

The Power of Introverted Yoga Teachers. 
~ Duncan Parviainen

I am not a natural extrovert.

Read more



This is Where We Fall in Love. ~ Waylon Lewis

A secret treehouse, hiding in the woods of Whistler. Video:

Read moreEight Small Ways to Make a Big Difference in Our World.
~ Tamara Kerner 

It may seem obvious...

Read more

What's Really in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
~ Dylan Flather

Seven common components of TCM remedies.

Read more

Stain Your Bush Naturally. ~ Meghan Currie 

Henna?

Read moreMindful Giveaway: Denver Event: Sai Maa. 

We're giving away two tickets for this Friday's event.

Read more