As Buddhism moved to the West, one of the big characteristics was the strong place of women. That didn't exist in the countries of origin. It's just a sign of our culture.
Posttraumatic stress is something that's always existed. I think that the earliest recording was during the Trojan War, but it's only recently that we're beginning to be aware of it.
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is youn...
Some would define a servant like this: 'A servant is one who finds out what his master wants him to do, and then he does it.' The human concept of a servant is that a servant goes to the master and says, 'Master, what do you want me to do?' The maste...
Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of the Age of Intellect is the unconscious growth of the idea that the human brain can solve the problems of the world. Even on the low level of practical affairs this is patently untrue. Any small human activity...
Maybe the real issue here is that we were not created to do life by ourselves. We were not given a sentence of solitary confinement and placed in a world of isolation, but from the moment we entered this human experience, it was clear there was a wor...
It seems to me that there are three principal scales of time, the present moment, a human lifetime, and the eternal. The problem with modern man is not so much that he situates himself in the future of a human lifetime, since he fears death far too m...
A biologist with a history of tooth decay invents a symbiotic microbe which lives in the human mouth and feeds by cleaning our teeth. It secreted calcium, which is poisonous to it, controlling its growth and preventing it from eating the teeth themse...
Man has risen, not fallen. He can choose to develop his capacities as the highest animal and to try to rise still farther, or he can choose otherwise. The choice is his responsibility, and his alone. There is no automatism that will carry him upward ...
We poetically construct our identity as human beings, together with our values, largely through reciprocal relationships with animals. They provide us with essential points of reference, as well as illustrations of the qualities that we may choose to...
People said things to me like "They're just animals. They're here for our use." I had a visceral reaction to that phrase, maybe because I was told countless times during my growing-up years that I was "just like an animal." I had suffered much of my ...
What's with all the cheering over the apocalypse, anyway? Oh, yay, we get to kill poor helpless humans." "The excitement over the apocalypse had nothing to do with humans." "Could have fooled me." "Humans are incidental." "Killing and destroying an e...
And here lies the crux of the matter: to say that nature is personal may mean not so much seeing the world differently as acting differently -- or, to state it another way, it may mean interacting with more-than-human others in nature as if those oth...
Young Spock: I presume you've prepared new insults for today. Vulcan Bully #1: Affirmative. Young Spock: This is your thirty-fifth attempt to elicit an emotional response from me. Vulcan Bully #2: You're neither human nor Vulcan, and therefore have n...
I am as proud to be called a feminist as I am to be called a Jew, or an American. Feminism is an indivisible part of who I am, and I remain mystified by the stigma that has been attached to the idea that women are human beings. It sounds so obvious a...
A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was ...
I fix the cramped, lined pages with my curious stare. How do you come to exist?
It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.
If no one cares for you at all, do you even really exist?
Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated importance
Just remember, a dark shadow need light to exist but light doesn't need darkness to be luminous.
