Reference Vault

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.

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.

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Rank is still the evolutionarily Neanderthal mode by which our social and religious cultures are organised, and it systematically undermines every enlightened impulse we have.

- Rev. angle Kyodo williams

“You can tell how controlling someone is by how forceful they are in conversation, how often they cut someone else off or steer the conversation towards what they want. Sometimes it is hard to see someone as controlling when what they desire is making you feel special and chosen.”

– Shani Zhang

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do.

– Henry Moore (sculptor)

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 make great progress only at those times when we become melancholy – at those times when, discontented with the real world, we are forced to make for ourselves one more bearable.

– ‘The Theory of Ambition’, an essay by Jean-Marie Hérault de Séchelles

Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling