What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Many of us think that compassion drains us, but I promise you it is something that truly enlivens us.
For me, Buddhism is a psychology and a philosophy that provides a means, upayas, for working with the mind.
Compassionate action emerges from the sense of openness, connectedness, and discernment you have created.
We daily witness the beneficial effect produced to the community by the institution of premiums, held out to encourage the inventions of ingenious mechanics.
Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic...
If we find life out there, and it's not us, we will deem it not intelligent. But what may be equally as likely is that we find life that's vastly more intelligent than we are. If that's the case, we are putty in their hands.
The universe is large and old, and the ingredients for life as we know it are everywhere, so there's no reason to think that Earth would be unique in that regard. Whether of not the life became intelligent is a different question, and we'll see if we...
No astrophysicist would deny the possibility of life. I think we're not creative enough to imagine what life would be like on another planet. Show me a dead alien. Better yet, show me a live one!
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.
There's no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.
If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest.
You can believe what you want religiously. Religion is one thing, but science, provable science, is something else.
Hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby. This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print.
When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.
But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them.
First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.
It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.
I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.
Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.
