Buddhism, Anxiety and the Modern Family

If you think you’re so enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

— Ram Dass

With the holidays coming up I have to point out that there is one particularly lovely and stressful community each of us participates in from the moment we are born: our family. Unlike your religious community, your book club, or your friend group, you don’t (at least initially) get to pick which family you participate in. You’re born into it and that one is yours until the moment you die. Some of us couldn’t imagine not speaking with our family every week…