Edward Tylor noted in 1874 that the religions of “savage” societies were “almost devoid of that ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the very mainstream of practical religion.” Tylor wasn’t saying that savages lack morality. He stressed that the moral standards of savages are generally “well-defined and praiseworthy.” It’s just that “these ethical laws stand on their own ground of tradition and public opinion,” rather than on a religious foundation.

There’s no doubt that meditation training has allowed some people to become essentially indifferent to what otherwise would have been unbearable pain.

Is there something? Is there anything? Is there any evidence of something? Any signs that there’s more to life that the sum of its subatomic particles – some larger purpose, some deeper meaning, maybe even something that would qualify as “divine” in some sense of the word?

In which case, he was basically saying: ‘Look, if there is part of you that isn’t under your control and therefore makes you suffer, then do yourself a favor and quit identifying with it.

This is something that can happen again and again via meditation: accepting, even embracing, an unpleasant feeling can give you a critical distance.

Natural selection is an inanimate process, devoid of consciousness, yet is a tireless refiner, an ingenious craftsman.

Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.

This question goes way beyond my own little episodes of transcending overcaffeination and melancholy. It applies, in principle, to all negative feelings: fears, anxieties, loathing, self-loathing, and more. Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.

If you put these two fundamental Buddhist ideas together – the idea of not-self and the idea of emptiness – you have a radical proposition: neither the world inside you nor the world outside you is anything like it seems.

Buddha believed that the less you judge things – including the contents of your mind – the more clearly you’ll see them, and the less deluded you’ll be.