He claimed gleefully that he had no opinions at all, because he had no self. A poet, he believed, was ‘the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity’.75 True poetry had no...
Everything that goes up must come down: that is a law of life, so to strengthen your enemy by yielding to him would actually hasten his decline. The
Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a h...
De wetenschappelijke consensus is dat het verhaal van de uittocht niet historisch is. [...] Omstreeks 1200 v.C. is er in dit gebied voor het eerst sprake van een volk dat 'Israel' heet. Sommige wetens...
De rabbijnen wezen er graag op dat koning Salomo ter verklaring van elk vers van de Tora 3000 gelijkenissen gebruikte en dat hij van elke gelijkenis 1005 interpretaties kon geven. Dit betekende dat er...
But it was more than that. Paris represented life, sensuality, freedom, and fun. And that somehow made it impossible.
At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I
As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to forget old ways of thought in order to meet the current challenges.
As the Daoists pointed out, we often identify with our ideas so strongly that we feel personally assaulted if these are criticized or corrected.
Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something t...
A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair.
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego thatrelates to a thou...
We sometimes fail to recognize the signs of poverty, loneliness, grief, fear, and desolation in our own city, our own village, or our own family.
We have come to depend on the instant rush of energy and delight we feel when we display our cleverness by making an unkind remark and the spurt of triumph when we vanquish an annoying colleague. Thus...
The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars were the crucible in which some of the competing forces from an earlier age were consumed in the fire and others blended and transmuted into new compounds …...
The attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project.
The anonymous Chinese author we know as Laozi pointed out that no matter how good his intentions, violence always recoils upon the perpetrator.
The Taliban travesty, a noxious combination of Deobandi rigidity, tribal chauvinism, and the aggression of the traumatized war orphan.
Pre-Islamic period jahiliyyah, which is usually translated as the time of ignorance. But the primary meaning of the root JHL is irascibility—an acute sensitivity to honor and prestige, excessive arrog...
Philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.