Meditative Story

Considered a prodigy in China, Lang Lang arrives to the U.S. certain of what it takes to be the best pianist in the world – dedication, discipline, hours of solitary practice. But when a legendary teacher poses an unexpected question, Lang Lang comes to understand that becoming a true musician will require more than hard work – that it’s not so much what he puts out that matters most, but what he...

Facing a dreaded 20-hour layover after weeks away from home, Pico Iyer decides to leave the airport and explore the city outside. He walks down the quiet streets, hoping to distract himself with a few new experiences. What happens, though, couldn’t be more unexpected. A feeling of recognition and familiarity washes over him. He feels as if he’s been in this city all along. What begins as a layover...

A glossy picture on the cover of a magazine. That’s all it takes for a teenaged Arianna Huffington to decide she’s going to leave her family and home – and the activity and warmth of her mom’s kitchen table – to start something new. Without speaking the language, or even knowing how to get there, Arianna decides she’s going to start a new life in a new place, propelled forward by her mom’s wise se...

It's early morning. A hotel room. Wajahat Ali, playwright and author, is traveling for work when he gets a call from his wife – she's sobbing, panicked, heartbroken. Their tiny daughter, Nusayba, has been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. And time stops. What can he do? Rage. Despair. Sob. Fight. Then ... let go. Waj shares the story of how his young daughter's fight with cancer taught him to strike...

Shawn Colvin grows up in a dangerous house. There’s a dad with a hair-trigger temper. But there’s also a dad who builds things, and who plays music, who teaches Shawn how to play a guitar. Years later, an out-of-the-blue phone call gives Shawn the opportunity to explain to her dad what her childhood was like – and to forgive him. In this act of compassion, Shawn is able to let go of her own burden...

Twenty-four long miles into a grueling paddleboard competition, photographer Donald Miralle sights the buoy that tells him he's just a few miles from home. But what should offer a sense of relief provokes a feeling of dread. His body shuts down, his muscles refuse to work, his motivation dwindles. With nothing left to summon, he is desperate to quit. That’s when Donald spots a shadow in the water:...

The strawberry field past the maple tree. A hidden nook beneath the stairs. The magical hour before anyone else is awake. Throughout her life, Angela Ahrendts has sought out sanctuaries – sacred spaces to reconnect and to dream, quiet moments to visualize what her next big decision might lead to, to stay open to the signs that help guide her. Now, after a series of bold career choices, Angela refl...

As Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Otis Moss carries the torch for generations of church and civil rights leaders, including his own father, a regional director in the SCLC, and a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King. But it is his late sister Daphne whose influence most impacts his ministry and social advocacy. A brilliant young woman who struggled with schizophrenia, Dap...

Judith Grisel is an internationally recognized behavioral neuroscientist and professor of psychology known for her research on the role of the brain in drug addiction. She is also a former addict. Years into her sobriety, Judy still labors to escape the painful feelings of loneliness and emptiness that have been with her since childhood. But when a friend presents her with a puzzling gift – an emp...

Gretchen Rubin is an expert on happiness, and she's spent her career helping people build the habits to achieve it. But she assumed that if something works for her, it should work for just about anyone. A series of chance encounters, and a healthy helping of curiosity, makes Gretchen realize that maybe there isn't one path to happiness after all. That there's no right or wrong way to build&nb...

For many of us, the days are stretching out, copies, duplicates of one another. But there is change happening around us, time is moving forward. This meditation, led by host Rohan Gunatillake, is about noticing that change – outside and within. Mediation can help you become an expert on your internal seasons and habits. When we begin to notice that we change, that seasons change, we start to disbe...

One icy morning on a Vermont farm, Elizabeth Lesser is witness to a miraculous thing: the birth of a bleary, bleating baby lamb. Years later, as a midwife, she is still filled with this sense of awe and wonder at every birth. It’s through that process of coaching new life into the world, she learns how to sit through the difficult – even the painful – moments in her own: a divorce, a new career, e...

The chaotic nature and noise of life as a musician — touring from city to city — eventually erodes Andrew Bird's ability to hear the music that is really inside of him. In a courageous effort to understand the faint calling of sound playing in his head, Andrew deserts his Chicago apartment for a rural piece of land where he believes an old farmhouse might unlock his personal renewal as an experime...

Lehua Kamalu captains a vast, double-hulled ocean canoe crafted to the exact specifications of the seafaring vessels used by her ancestors. She and her crew are making a 2,500 mile journey between Tahiti and Hawaii, the same one original settlers of the South Pacific traversed, the same journeys historians once struggled to believe possible without today’s technology. The stakes are high and they...

American cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams is deeply in love with his French wife, Valentine. Accustomed to exquisite command over the English language, Thomas loses agency over his life when he and Valentine move to Paris. And when they welcome their first child, Marlow, for the first time in his life he finds he can't disclose himself — not fully — to a person he loves through language....

Jail has a way of warping time. Changes on the outside world are locked away from those inside. Upon his release after serving 17 locked-up years, Jule recounts the moment he first sets eyes on a smartphone. The prison noises he is escaping — the yelling, the constant blaring of the radio, metal-on-metal echoing of cell bars — are replaced by the incessant pings and notifications of his new iPhone...

We all need to love and be loved, we all want to feel not alone in this world. And this is true for all of the living world, says ecologist and author Carl Safina. Carl has spent his whole life interacting with the wild, from raising pigeons on a Brooklyn rooftop to trekking through the frozen landscape of Antarctica and the vast African savanna. And one thing he’s learned is that humans and anima...

Shea Hembrey is 5 years old, walking along the road to his farmhouse on the edge of the Mississippi River Delta, where the floodplains meet the Ozark Mountain foothills. The undulating hills surrounded by dense rows of oak, sassafras, sugarberry, and persimmon trees. He spots a pale, smooth-polished fleck: an egg! “This is a baby bird,” he tells his parents. “And I’m going to hatch it.” From that...

None of us has ever faced a moment like this. It is heartbreaking and exhausting and ever changing and yet ... days seem to blur together. In this Meditative Story, there is no storyteller – but there are stories. Host Rohan Gunatillake is here with a meditation that meets the moment, one that invites you to stop. Breathe. Name the difficult. And maybe, just maybe, find some hope in what is happen...

In this classic episode, while working on an experiment to measure the age of the universe, astronomer Michelle Thaller is reminded once again about both the impersonal immensity around us, and the deeply personal significance of each one of us. If this episode resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Please take a moment to share your reflections by rating and reviewing Meditative Story in...

Jackals and leopards in the fields. The sound of a lion’s roar. Majestic African bush elephants outside the front door. This is childhood for Forrest Galante as a kid growing up on a farm in Zimbabwe. He’s adventurous and instinctive and connected to the living earth. But a sudden move to the U.S. puts him in a completely new territory. In discovering this new urban world in front of him, Forrest...

There he is: pacing around the campfire, contemplating, ruminating. Then, with a crooked, mischievous smile, he begins. “Here’s a story…” This is a memory violinist Lindsey Stirling will always carry of her dad, the tireless storyteller, telling the tallest of tales, dreaming the biggest of dreams. But also a man who couldn't quite see his life-changing impact on others because of the disappointme...

"Why?” asks an insistent high school art teacher. “Why? Why? Why?” Staring blankly back, a young Jay Shetty has nothing to say. It’s an art project, it's just homework. A collage. It’s just … layers. The next day in a subway station, Jay's chance encounter with an ad peeling off the wall unlocks the truest answer. What he discovers that day about himself carries forward into college, when Jay meet...

One summer night Paola Antonelli, now curator and head of R&D at the MoMA, sets sail off the coast of Sardinia — snaking through the wavy sea with friends. She jumps off the boat, slides into the water, and makes her way to the rocks as her friends hang back, making dinner aboard. While keeping her eyes on the horizon and the setting sun, her mind wanders to the rockier questions in her life:...

DeRay Mckesson is one of America’s most recognized and admired activists. But before that, he was a magician. Not the kind who pulls a rabbit out of hat, but the kind who makes communities magically appear out of thin air. Every school DeRay ever attends, his name appears on the ballot for president of the student body. Why? Because through something as simple as student government, DeRay is able...