Orion Philosophy

Most of us know, in an abstract way, that we should feel more grateful. We have heard the advice. We may have tried a gratitude journal for a week before it quietly gathered dust. The problem is rarely motivation. It is that gratitude, treated as a performance or a checklist, tends to stay shallow. Real gratitude is a skill, and like any skill, it needs the right kind of prac...

There is a concept at the heart of one of the world’s oldest philosophical traditions that resists every attempt to pin it down. The Tao (pronounced roughly dao) is the foundational idea of Taoism, and it has been described as the source of all things, the natural order of the universe, and the way reality moves when nothing is forcing it. It is also, famously, somet...

Few words have travelled further from their original home than “karma.” In everyday speech it has come to mean something like cosmic justice: do good things, good things happen to you; act badly and the universe will eventually settle the score. It is a tidy, satisfying idea. It is also a significant simplification of what Buddhism actually teache...

Most of us know the experience well. A decision sits in front of us, or a conversation from three days ago resurfaces uninvited, and the mind begins its familiar circling. We think we are solving something, but we are usually just spinning. If you have been searching for ways to stop overthinking, philosophy has something more durable to offer than breathing exercises or prod...

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of the most read works of practical philosophy ever written. It was composed in Greek sometime in the second century CE, never intended for publication, and has survived largely intact for nearly two thousand years. At this point, it exists in dozens of English translations, which is wonderful in principle and mildly bewilder...