Phil Nguyen

As Fritjof Capra says: a machine can be controlled, a living system can only be disturbed. At best, we will find ways of carefully nudging a living system. According to Donella Meadows, we must find its leverage points, those pivots that allow us to influence system behavior. Most importantly: after each cautious inter- vention, we must patiently o... See more

I felt like a scientist, traipsing off to my cabin each morning to lie on my spare bed for 45-60-minute “sits,” walk around the grounds, then record my observations in a notebook, until it was time for dinner. In the evenings, we logged our experiences using presupplied Chromebooks. I had a daily “interview,” a one-on-one conversation with a Jhourn... See more

According to tantra, the world is fantastic. According to tantra, tantrikas should enjoy sensual pleasures as thoroughly and often as possible. There is no problem with that—if it has no negative practical consequences.

According to tantra, it is possible to enjoy everything .

Nothing in the world can be objectively bad, because there is no external ... See more

Literature allows us to name the world by giving us new phrases, new characters, new words. Poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare coined hundreds of new words. So many of their phrases are still used in common speech. They named all sorts of things for us. And by using those names, we expand what we can understand about the world.

[b]eing trapped in protocols dictated by a functional-yet-suboptimal system feels eerily calm, yet unsatisfying. Everything works, sort of, but participants feel a curious lack of fulfillment. (Remember that protocols are designed to accomplish a function, but not a purpose.

A sangha should be irritating. It should include many people whose experience and understanding of life is quite different from yours. They will rub you the wrong way, because the things they take for granted without thinking about them are different from the things you take for granted without thinking about them.

Buddhism is pragmatic. It is a religion of methods , not of Truth. The methods are ways of approaching enlightenment.

Since the ideal strategy for many singles is to date around enough to find someone worthy of marrying, the “game” is of a finite length. At some point, singles will necessarily have to double down on a date, i.e. , switch to exploitation. If you don’t date around (explore) at all, you may very well get stuck dating (or even marrying or having child... See more