Al-Ghazali’s book ‘Alchemy of Happiness,’ held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Al-Ghazali - Bibliothèque nationale de France via Wikimedia Commons
In religious traditions, patience is more than waiting, or even more than enduring a hardship. But what does patience look like? And when should we not exercise patience?
Stories from Greek mythology often show the close relationship between humans and plants.
Kristoffer Trolle/flickr
Stories in Greek mythology on the cycle of nature showing youth, death and rejuvenation can have lessons for us today on how grief changes over time and transforms who we are as people.
Buffett’s first hit, ‘Come Monday,’ was written when the artist was deeply depressed and suicidal.
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Bill C-7 has created ethical tensions between MAID providers and palliative care, between transparency and patient privacy, and between offering a dignified death rather than a dignified life.
Given how quickly MAID eligibility has changed in Canada in the past six years, it is time we take a step back to ask whether current MAID practice is still something we want to support.
(Pexels/Karolina Grabowska)
Since 2016, Canada’s practice of offering MAID has followed a trajectory of ever-expanding eligibility. The ultimate expansion would make MAID available to anyone who wanted it, for any reason.
A look at whether modern Buddhists adhere to the faith’s original religious principles or simply guilty of a cherrypicking cultural appropriation that turns religion into a fad.
Philosophical pessimism isn’t all doom and gloom: it’s about explaining and confronting the origins, prevalence and the ubiquity of suffering.
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Pessimism, as explored by the philosopher Schopenhauer, offers tools to come to terms with the idea that refusing to relentlessly pursue happiness is perhaps the most reasonable attitude.
A 12th-century commentary on the Book of Job shows Satan transmitting a disease to him.
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Christians have engaged in passionate debates over the meaning of the resurrection. Baptists may be distinct in that they believe an external religious authority cannot enforce views on such matters.
A statue of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in Moscow.
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Families who lost their loved ones during the pandemic could not even properly grieve. Greek epics show why lamentation and memorial are so important and what we can learn in these times.
In the movie based on William Paul Young’s ‘The Shack,’ Mack (Sam Worthington), second from the left, meets the Trinity. From left to right: Jesus, the Son (Avraham Aviv Alush), Papa, God the Father (Octavia Spencer) and Sarayu, the Holy Spirit (Sumire Matsubara).
(Summit Entertainment, Lionsgate)
The problems of suffering and evil emerging in the coronavirus pandemic occupy popular evangelical fiction. In ‘The Shack,’ proliferating divine beings harken to a long-standing solution.
How can photographers be more sensitive towards their subjects?
Feed My Starving Children (FMSC)
Images of famine or poverty are often used by human rights groups to galvanize support. And they often do. The ethics of these images is a more complex story.
Medical assistance in dying has been legal in Canada since July 2016, but there are no ‘specialists’ responsible for doctor-assisted suicide and many doctors are overwhelmed with requests.
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More than 2,000 Canadians have chosen medical assistance in dying (MAID) since legalization in 2016. But palliative care doctors aren’t embracing assisted suicide as part of their job.