Walking the Eightfold Path through mindfulness, modern life, and the spaces between.
I'm Dan Arel — an award-winning communicator, writer, and author. This is where I write about what Buddhist practice actually looks like off the cushion: in parenting, in leadership, in technology, and in politics.
What I write about
four threads, one practiceWhat inspires the practice
The teachings, teachers, and moments that keep pulling me back — without the metaphysics I don't need to make them work.
Practice in everyday life
Parenting, coaching, leadership, and deadlines — where mindfulness has to hold up outside of silence and incense.
Buddhism & technology
Attention as the scarcest resource we have, and what it means to practice in a world built to fracture it.
Buddhism & politics
Compassion that doesn't collapse into passivity — what engaged practice asks of us in public life.
Recent reflections
latest writingSam Harris and the mindfulness of hate
Sam Harris is a grifter. There is no other way to put it, even if that is a tough way to start a blog. For the last decade or so, Harris has moved away from his firebrand atheism …
A sound bath for skeptics
Today, at a conference I took part in a sound bath meditation, and found it incredibly relaxing and reduced my stress, anxiety, and even some pain in my back. However, I don’t …
My journey towards mindfulness
I am reading some books right now well out of my normal genre. I think if people who knew me saw my bookshelf right now, they’d think I’d lost my mind. In the past week, I have …
Books
written by meI'm the author of Parenting without God and The Secular Activist, and I've written for TIME, HuffPost, Salon, Gizmodo, and more.