from biology to spirituality
Biology was central to my maturation as a human being. It helped me survive a harrowing childhood, diverted me from delinquency, gave me focus in young adulthood, and led me away from addiction. Ultimately, it provided a surgical career, which increased my sense of usefulness and self-worth plus—for a half-dozen years—gave me a good livelihood. After health problems ended that career, it also provided disability benefits that sustained me for two decades, granting me the quiet space needed for meditative growth. I have many reasons to love and feel gratitude for biology.
But biology did not just save my life; it deeply informs my understanding, practice, and experience of meditation. And while the practical benefits were intensely personal, these foundational insights are entirely universal.
My writings, recordings, and events focus on those universal truths: how a contemplative approach to life science can offer the very gifts traditional wisdom paths have long delivered—feelings of profound connectedness, meaning, and love. From those feelings flow the ethical behaviors needed to sustain both our human communities and our global exosphere.
This isn't about a new belief system. It's about showing that a system already widely accepted—the empirical facts of life science—can be framed in a way that offers the deep emotional and spiritual benefits of ancient traditions.
Loss of Aboriginal Wonder
Biology is, at its heart, simply the study of life. Humans have always been keen observers of the living world. Hunter-gatherers intimately understood the game and plant species upon which their survival depended. This deep understanding naturally led to love—and in many cases, worship—of their living companions on Earth.
Today, we know vastly more than our ancestors did about how life works. We can describe it through molecular, genetic, metabolic, cellular, physiologic, and ecologic lenses, which amounts to a breathtaking corpus of accumulated knowledge. Yet, somewhere along the line, the deep connection people once felt with life was lost.
This alienation stems from many modern factors:
Massive urbanization that separates us from both wild and cultivated lands
Industrial food production that makes food look like products rather than life forms
Quasi-hermetic dwellings that wall us off from the elements
Most of us now interact with nature only in passing—a brief walk through a park or a drive through a forest. We have adopted the attitude that insects, spiders, and small rodents are pests to be eradicated. So when other animals are naturally attracted to our warm houses and full pantries, our reflex is to kill rather than find ways to coexist.
Consequently, we live with a chronic sense of isolation from the ecology that sustains us. At best, we form loving bonds with domesticated pets and try to limit our waste. At worst, we harbor the delusion that technology can fully substitute for a balanced relationship with nature.
Cultivating a Contemplative Biology
A contemplative attitude toward biology is an antidote to this isolation. It reminds us that nature does not just surround us—it lives within us.
We rely on plants to harvest sunlight into food. We depend on trillions of gut bacteria to digest our meals and tune our immune systems. We rely on birds to control pest populations, and on insects, other invertebrates, and microbes to perform vital ecological functions such as pollinating crops, decomposing waste, and building healthy soil.
It makes NO sense to degrade the very systems that make our lives possible, yet all-too-often, we do.
And beyond pragmatic self-interest, we suffer when we delude ourselves into believing technology is all we need. We need more. To be truly healthy, we need a conscious, respectful relationship with a living world. Wise and loving people tend their relationships with supportive compassion, not mindless neglect. By analogy, we owe the Earth and its diverse lifeforms that same basic respect and concern.
The Fruits of Mindful Biology
Modern ecology tells us that our lives depend critically on environmental health. The mindfulness advocated here reconnects us with humanity’s original worship of nature, while fully utilizing our current scientific understanding. This will enhance our motivation and ability to support the biosphere. But equally it will help us recover what our hunter-gatherer ancestors built, but which we've let go to ruin: a spiritual connection with all of life. Biology can let us reconnect with life in the intimacy of our own bodies as well as in the vastness of the living world, even if all we usually see of it is urban landscape. It will help us connect with the awe, love, and wholeness that was once every person's birthright. It will restore meaning to our lives. And more! At least, that has been my experience, and there's no reason to assume it can't be yours.
At heart, MindfulBiology is about two basic steps:
Reconnecting human consciousness with the human body.
Reconnecting it with the Earth.
Through these connections, we find a renewed sense of awe for the biology supporting us. Whether that biology is localized within our own physical skin or distributed across the biosphere is immaterial; it is all part of the exact same living process.
As we truly feel how much Life gives us—not just food and shelter, but the human experience itself—we naturally begin to embody love and gratitude for our bodies and, by extension, the entire living world.
Awe, respect, love, wholeness, and gratitude: these are the fruits of science viewed through a contemplative lens, mirroring the wise benefits of traditional spiritual practices.