Name: Debbie Millman: Fail Safe by brainpicker in Brain Pickings
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: An inspiring commencement address delivered to the graduating class at San Jose State University. Transcript and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/15/debbie-millman-look-both-ways-fail-safe/

Brain Pickings

Jennifer Kinon & Bobby Martin are designers and educators who co-founded OCD (Original Champions of Design). Together they develop brand identity systems for a broad range of clients that include, among others, the National Basketball Association, Girl Scouts of the USA and Friends of the High Line. Their work has won awards from the Art Directors Club, D&AD, AIGA365, Type Directors Club and Print as well as Best of Show and Judge's Pick in the 2011 Brand New Awards.

Jennifer Kinon recently served as the president of AIGA/NY. Prior to founding OCD, she worked in the New York office of Pentagram with Michael Bierut, served as design director of New York City’s 2012 Olympic Bid and worked as art director for Graphis Inc. She graduated from the University of Michigan and earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Kinon is the first program graduate to join the faculty.

Prior to founding OCD, Bobby Martin developed brand experiences from the inside out while leading internal design teams at Nokia, in London, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has also served on the board of directors of AIGA/NY. He teaches identity design at The Cooper Union and recently joined the faculty of his alma mater, the School of Visual Arts, MFA Design Program where he holds a graduate degree. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Jennifer Kinon & Bobby Martin

Sample tracks from Sharon Salzberg's, "Real Happiness at Work"

Drinking Tea Meditation

It is painful to exclude a person from your heart. In this meditation you are invited to soften that pain and see a difficult person in a different way. It might change the way you relate to that person as well. 

Loving - Kindness With A Difficult Person

This is a brief variation on the Compassionate Self Imagery practice recorded during a training by Dr.  Dennis Tirch. Any mild background noise is just a part of the nature of this "field recording." With metta, DT

Compassionate Self - 12 Minute Variation

"When words bring you closer to the prisoner in his cell, to the patient who is dying on his bed alone, to the starving child, then it's a prayer."

Elie Wiesel, the beloved writer known for his memoir of the Holocaust, "Night," speaks of the power of prayer and forgiveness in the wake of profound suffering. Find more at onbeing.org/becoming-wise.

Evil, Forgiveness, and Prayer | Elie Wiesel [Becoming Wise]

Exploring difficult emotions and experiences may be the key to loosening their hold over us. Try this 10-minute mindfulness practice from Patricia Rockman, MD.

Tame Feelings of Shame with this 10-Minute Practice

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/23/ursula-k-le-guin-hymn-to-time-janna-levin/

POEM TEXT / CONTEXT

Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads "Hymn to Time" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Anxiety engenders feelings of isolation—when we don't feel at ease, how do we find peace? This meditation explores making amends for the times we've hurt ourselves, others, or those who have hurt us.

A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety

Reconciliation Meditation (20 min)

Lets suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream,
and you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes.

You would have every kind of pleasure, you see,
and after several nights you would say, "well that was pretty great."
But now lets have a surprise, lets have a dream which isn’t under control.
Well something is going to happen to me that i don’t know what it’s gonna be.
Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now.

If you awaken from this illusion,
and you understand that black implies white,
self implies other,
life implies death.
You can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world,
not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental.

What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.

- Alan Watts

dreams

Sharon Survival Guide

Pursuit of Pleasure 7

Pursuit 8

A Practice to Remember You Are Enough

An inspiring commencement address delivered to the graduating class at San Jose State University. Transcript and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/15/debbie-millman-look-both-ways-fail-safe/

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Debbie Millman: Fail Safe

This is the fourth and final talk in a series titled “The Mind, Mindfulness, & Me”.
Here we examine the spiritual paradigm which should be foundational to how we live in and interact with the world.  

You are an eternal spiritual being, the seer, the inhabitant of the body.  Your presence makes it so that your body exhibits symptoms of life.  When you leave the body, the true nature of the body manifests as dead matter. But you also have another covering, a subtle body, comprised of the mind, the intelligence, and the false ego or false concept of the ‘self’.

We all possess a wonderful higher faculty, the intelligence or Buddhi.  This faculty empowers us to be able to step back from the mind, even at times when the mind is overwhelmed by heightened emotions, and effectively control the mind.  Mindfulness means to use this faculty to control the mind rather than having the mind control me. When this happens (being controlled by the mind) the soul is considered lost. The Bhagavat Purana says:

“This uncontrolled mind is the greatest enemy of the living entity. If one neglects it or gives it a chance, it will grow more and more powerful and will become victorious. Although it is not factual, it is very strong. It covers the constitutional position of the self/atma.”  BP 5.11.17

A wonderful verse from the Katha Upanisad paints the big picture:

"The individual is the passenger in the chariot of the material body, and intelligence is the driver. Mind is the driving instrument, and the senses are the horses. The self is thus the enjoyer or sufferer in the association of the mind and senses. So it is understood by great thinkers."   Katha Upanisad 1.3.3-4

Debbie Millman: Fail Safe

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