Come and see

Ehipassiko is one of the classical qualities of the teaching: it asks you to verify through direct experience rather than take anything on authority. That spirit — empirical, humble, open — is the same one that drew me to physics. The lab and the cushion turn out to ask a similar discipline: look closely, honestly, again and again.

My practice is grounded in mindfulness. I trained as a teacher in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and supported mindfulness programs at the Cambridge Health Alliance Center for Mindfulness and Compassion. What I’ve found there isn’t an escape from difficulty but a way of turning toward it — with steadiness, and with kindness.

At the heart of it is metta — goodwill, loving-kindness — extended, as the old phrase goes, to all beings. It’s an aspiration I carry into the therapy room, into research with elders, and into ordinary days: to lead with care, and to trust that a kind of peace follows from it. Science tells me how; this path keeps reminding me why.