Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and the Art of Living

I have an interest in trying to find a way that I can honor some of their values without giving up mine. That’s, for me, what has happened.

First of all, we don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another,

We are absolutely amateurs at this matter of building a democratic nation made up of many, many peoples, of many kinds, from many connections and convictions and from many experiences. And to know how, after all the pain that we have caused each other, how to carry on democratic conversation that in a sense invites us to hear each other’s best argu

Rituals tether emotion in flesh and blood and bone and help release it. They embody memory in communal time.

Words make worlds.

risk falling down,

scientists make the best meditators because they are most comfortable with knowing what they don’t know.

the hallmark of a civil debate is when you can acknowledge that which is good in the position of the person you disagree with.

can human beings come to understand their own well-being as linked to that of others, in wider and wider circles, beyond family and tribe?