Dr. Shane Snipes

The second post in my Making a Lovely Life series is about something my mother taught me: the balance between being and doing.

Patsy was always doing—cooking, organizing, caring for family, tending flowers, and making room for people. But she also knew how to be. She could disappear into a mystery novel, sit with her day lilies, look over water, or enjoy the flowers blooming from her porch.

In her final years, I learned that I could not fix Alzheimer’s. I had to stop demanding that each visit become something different and learn to be with her as she was.

Sometimes a lovely life is made by doing what needs to be done. Sometimes it is made by putting the task down, noticing what is blooming, and staying long enough to receive it.

Making a Lovely Life, Part Two: Being and Doing

Making a Lovely Life, Part Two Being and Doing Today I watched Friends and Neighbors, and the death of the main character’s father brought me to tears. The funeral scenes felt real and unpolished.

The birth of religious freedom

🔊 Listen Now: 'Soaked into the wood': A visit to the birthplace of religious liberty All Things Considered on NPR One | 7:56

🔊 Listen Now: Once a federal boarding school, local tribes now set the curriculum at the Santa Fe Indian School Weekend Edition Sunday on NPR One | 6:02

AI feels powerful because it works through language — the same tool humans use to turn ideas into reality. In this post, I explore why AI can feel like “thinking,” why expertise still matters, and why students should use AI to deepen knowledge, not avoid it. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/language-mirror-why-ai-feels-like-thinkingand-human-snipes-ph-d--1c2ie

The Language Mirror: Why AI Feels Like Thinking—and Why Human Expertise Still Matters One of the reasons artificial intelligence feels so strange, so powerful, and sometimes so unsettling is that it works through one of the oldest human superpowers: language. Before we had software, spreadsheets, search engines, databases, slide decks, or AI assistants, we had language.

What a celebration with Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY with Mayor Mamdani

What if happiness is not something we chase, but something we stop covering up?

In this new reflection, I write about the falsehood of “unconditional,” the discomfort of 10 days of silence, the hungry monkey mind, and how Dhamma helps us stop turning every reaction into a residence.

Life has conditions: homes, cars, pets, jobs, hopes, dreams, neighbors, leaders, disappointments, and all the little daily “character-building opportunities” nobody ordered. Practice does not remove the world. It helps us stop adding extra suffering to it.

The article also connects inner practice to public life, drawing on values carried by Native people, women, Black writers, abolitionists, and civic voices too often left out of the usual origin story.

Peace is not passivity. It is training.

Read the full reflection: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/falsehood-unconditional-silence-dhamma-practice-shane-snipes-ph-d--d8yoe

The Falsehood of Unconditional: Silence, Dhamma, and the Practice of Freedom “Unconditional” sounds beautiful until life walks in with muddy shoes. A house has conditions.

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

May the 4th
Be With You
😆

AI in education is moving fast. Really fast. Like “the syllabus just blinked and now it needs a committee” fast.

My new post explores how educators can move students beyond shallow AI use — the old “ask, copy, submit” loop — and toward deeper learning through .

The framework is simple:

Ask
Reflect
Challenge
Refine
Decide

AI should not replace student thinking. It should help students test, question, and improve their thinking.

Your ideas come first. AI refines them.

From Tool to Teammate: Teaching and Learning with AI as a Co-Creation Partner *Look out for the recording of the talk in the coming days. Dr.