Reference Vault

Social scientific research indicates that this is the wrong way around. While more space and more attractive surroundings might boost your happiness temporarily, you rapidly get used to them. Strong relationships, however, are closely correlated with lasting satisfaction and well-being. Many of us know this in theory. But being the one in the

You can’t solve a problem with tools provided by the thing causing the problem. You’ll just end up with a nicer version of “bad” that, for a time, will convince you things are improving.

Paternal authority can promise relief from complexity. Tech culture’s desire to eliminate friction maps neatly onto feudal logic, and governance can become similar to a software problem. If the current system is buggy, roll back to an earlier version. Even if it involves going all the way back to the Middle Ages. Inheritance operates quietly

We coined the term “Engaged Buddhism” in the 1960s when the war was very intense in Vietnam. We practiced sitting mediation and walking meditation, but we could hear the bombs falling outside and the cries of the wounded. To meditate is be aware of what is going on, and what was going on at that time was suffering and the destruction of life.

Once

Feelings are mental experiences of body states. They signify physiological need (for example, hunger), tissue injury (for example, pain), optimal function (for example, well-being), threats to the organism (for example, fear or anger) or specific social interactions (for example, compassion, gratitude or love). Feelings constitute a crucial

The mistake was to separate mind from body, reason from feeling. Descartes was wrong. You are not a thinking machine that feels. You are a feeling machine that thinks.

Nervous systems enable both complex movements and, eventually, the beginning of a real novelty: minds. Feelings are among the first examples of mind phenomena, and it is difficult to exaggerate their significance. Feelings allow creatures to represent in their respective minds the state of their own bodies preoccupied with regulating the internal

Feelings perform the equivalent of a musical score that accompanies our thoughts and actions.

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Feelings are commingled with the things and events we feel thanks to the exceptional and intimate cross talk between body structures and nervous system.