For his podcast "Chancen der Zuversicht" I talked with Heinz Jiranek about meditation for the second time — after our first episode on whether meditation does anything, how to begin, and how to stay with it. This time we wanted to go deeper: into the brain, and to a place many people give a wide berth — compassion. What follows is the distilled trace of that conversation. I sit for five minutes — and my brain changes? Heinz opened with an image that would not let him go: you sit down for five...

It is early; the coffee steams; already it tugs. A list demands dispatching, a self demands optimising, a day demands to be subdued. We call this productivity. Regarded with a colder eye, it is a fleeing — and the comedy of all fleeing is that it comes along for the ride. Seneca already observed that no one is in such haste as the man who squanders his time. Festina lente, make haste slowly, said the ancients; we read it, and check the phone while doing so. Acceleration promises an arrival...

For his podcast “Chancen der Zuversicht” (episode 105) Heinz Jiranek with me about meditation — Heinz is a very experienced, long-standing psychologist and coach, and we have known each other for fifteen years. What follows is not a lecture but the distilled trace of that conversation. As a coach, Heinz often reaches the point where he thinks: now would be the moment f or meditation. And then he meets the same three questions. “Does it really do anything?” “Am I meditating correctly, or am I...