Author name: David Chang

The life of the Buddha is composed of many apocryphal stories.  One story in particular strikes at our present situation.  Here is the story of the Buddha’s encounter with Angulimala, as described in The Life of the Buddha, compiled by Bhikkhu Nanamoli[1]: Once when the Blessed One was living at Savatthi a bandit had appeared in the real […]

News outlets are reporting a significant decrease in air pollution as a result of stay-at-home orders.  These reports began to emerge at the end of March, with indications that Nitrogen (NO2)Dioxide levels have dropped precipitously after a sudden halt in economic activity.  In Canada, data from four Canadian cities indicate a similar drop in NO2.  More recently, the Guardian reports

Health authorities have been issuing stark injunctions to citizen across the world.  Stay home.  Bend the curve.  Contain the spread.  Here in British Columbia, Health Minister Adrian Dix has been emphatic in his daily press conferences: “We all have to do 100 percent and we have to do it now.”  Rarely has isolation been so crucial to the welfare of togetherness.

My wife Pam is an Occupation Therapist who works at an Arthritis Clinic.  In anticipation of a staff shortage at Vancouver General Hospital due to COVID-19, the administrators have closed the Arthritis Clinic, and all Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists have been deployed to VGH.  The weeks leading up to the deployment have been stressful.  The growing pandemic and

Nine years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Steven Soderbergh’s film, Contagion, presaged the current outbreak.  The compelling narrative aside, it was the film’s closing sequence that haunted me when I saw the film.  In the first vignette in the sequence, a heavy dozer emblazoned with the “Aimm Alderson” logo plows down a tree in a tropical forest.  The felled tree

It is now reported that approximate half the world in living in some form of mandatory isolation or lockdown. The dispatches from the U.S. are frightening: New York is overwhelmed, and California braces for a tidal wave. The global death toll has surpassed 40,000. British Columbia is not on lockdown (yet), although physical distancing and

The COVID-19 pandemic has relegated most people to their homes.  In many countries, people are burrowed deep in their nests.  The streets are desolate, the parks empty.  There are countless others who have no roof over their heads and must seek precarious shelter.  For them, the risk of contagion is heightened, if not imminent. Solitude: an invitation to spaciousness

I’ve always been intriqued by the mysterious workings of viruses and bacteria, those invisible microbes that number in the trillions which live on and inside our bodies.  The microbiome in the digestive tract consists of billions of bacteria — in some cases, the number of bacteria outnumber the human cells that compose my organs.  Their astronomical numbers