Form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. These are called the things that should be completely understood. And what is complete understanding? The ending of greed, hate, and delusion.

Even the Stream Enterer and Anāgāmīn understanding of the Aggregates is provisional. Only the Arahant completely understands the Five Aggregates.

Some philosophers have pushed against such reductive approaches and argued for a framework that recognises the complexity and multidimensionality of persons.

Is there a story that could be told that isn’t ultimately about the experience of being in a body?

This is the yogic process: a churning ocean, a rumbling mountain, a game of cosmic tug-of-war, transmuted poison, and a pot of nectar … all within one body—yours, mine. Imagine that.

Horse myths are almost always related to the breath. Xanthus (Ξάνθος) and Balius (Βάλιος), the two horses of Achilles (Ἀχιλλεύς), are born from the generative wind. Two horses, born of the wind, that the hero must control. The journey of the hero, in the esoteric, yogic sense, is to be a “breath-controller” or a “horse-tamer” (ἱπποδάμοιο) which is what Homer called all his heroes.

Native American horse trainers tamed their steeds sometimes by getting nose-to-nose with the horse and trading breath. Imagine standing nose-to-nose with a wild horse—the fear in its eye, the fear in yours—and breathing together. It’s a precarious place, that place between tamed and untamed, between breath-power being harnessed and being unharnessed.

Not grasping what’s impermanent, suffering, and perishable, would people think ‘I’m better’ or ‘I’m equal’ or ‘I’m worse’?

Conceit stems from clinging to the senses and their impressions.

We used to ditch them after school…

How poised it is!
Petal and leaf
curving like a fan

Bhikkhus, I do not see even one other thing that, when developed and cultivated, leads to the abandoning of the things that fetter so effectively as this

What fetters one? And what leads to release?

the embedding can be leveraged to quantify changes in stereotypes and attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States. We integrate word embeddings trained on 100 years of text data with the U.S. Census to show that changes in the embedding track closely with demographic and occupation shifts over time.

Many modern Japanese women are bored with their lives and they use ‘organ language’ to express this frustration…

Medication and the small life-style modifications suggested by professionals for some women no doubt often help to ease the sense of oppression that patients experience. At the same time, medicalization can act as an ‘opiate,’ and can deflect attention away from the social origins of distress.

Once a person understands the rise and fall of all phenomena, then experiencing the worst that human life can give does not make one tremble.

Ajahn Brahm explains the meaning of emptiness, or nothingness, as he puts it, as the self-less and impermenant nature of all phenomena. After this detailed explanation, the Ajahn points out that not realizing this emptiness causes most people’s suffering; therefore, one should strive “to still the mind and see the most beautiful jewel there could ever be—nothingness.”

Among the general public and behavioral scientists alike, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the best known and most widely used tool for demonstrating implicit bias: the unintentional impact of social group information on behavior.

The idea that racial bias exists in places more so than in people can be a disorienting idea for many of us born and raised within cultures that predominantly treat places as neutral and passive while prioritizing the importance of individual actors and their internal states and motivations. In general, when most of us think about a concept like sexism, we think about people (like misogynists). We are unlikely to think about spaces causing people to be sexist.

Preregistered analyses reveal a notable increase in biological stress levels among both LGBTIQ+ individuals as well as those close to them during the campaign.

These effects were, however, moderated by exposure to the campaign for marriage equality (i.e., yes-campaign), indicating the powerful buffering effects of the yes-campaign on the impact of discrimination on individuals’ health.

Nonverbal signals of racial biases are abundant in children’s everyday social environments. Studies show that preschool children acquire social group biases when they observe other people’s social interactions and nonverbal behaviors.

individuals’ facial appearance develops over time to resemble the social stereotypes associated with given names.

In order to reach a proper understanding of the Buddha’ s Teaching, it is necessary to discover exactly what is meant by the five aggregates of clinging. For these are, as we see, dukkha…

No one asks how the tape worm benefits the host. What if consciousness is like that? What if it’s the cognitive equivalent of ‘junk’ DNA?

A sci-fi author and biologist ponders the significance of brain interface technologies.

Mendicants, there are three failures.

The brain is not a computer. It never was. Its failures are particular to its own nature, and it has to be understood on its own terms.

With the fading away of ignorance and the arising of true knowledge, ‘I am’ does not occur to him; ‘I am this’ does not occur to him; ‘I will be’ and ‘I will not be’…

When you identify anything as self, you always identify one or another of the five aggregates.

What is the gratification, what is the danger, what is the escape in the case of feeling … perception … volitional formations … consciousness?

How the Buddha investigated the aggregates.

Research indicates that core dimensions of psychological well-being can be cultivated through intentional mental training.

And why, bhikkhus, do you call it form? ‘It is deformed,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called form.

The Buddha explains how to view rebirth.

How can one make sense of ethical action when one is always already partly the other?

A medical anthropologist analyzes the Thai concept of the เจ้ากรรมนายเวร (čhao kam nāi wēn) and explores how a more porous sense of self helps Chiang Mai Buddhists to manage pain and assemble good lives.

It was with the ambrosia of such a Dhamma talk, venerable sir, that the Blessed One anointed me.

The householder Nakulapitā asks the Buddha for help in coping with old age. The Buddha says to reflect: “Even though I am afflicted in body, my mind will be unafflicted.” Later Sāriputta explains this unattachment to the five aggregates.

But those who have abandoned craving…

The three cravings and what it’s like to be beyond their grasp.

So that also became its own self perpetuating narrative about me, because now I had to continue to fulfill it because everyone says I’m not scared and I’m down. And so I have to continue to prove that narrative right to everybody around me…

A personal monologue about the power of the stories we choose to tell ourselves.

That was a bargain I thought I had made with life: when all is said and done, I will somehow have done a little bit more good than harm. That was completely busted.

… by eating their son’s flesh they would cross the rest of the desert.

It is in such a way, bhikkhus, that I say nutriment should be seen.

The Buddha defines the four kinds of “food” or “nutriment”, which include edible food, contact, intention, and consciousness. He illustrates them with a series of powerful and horrifying similes.

I think I will do nothing now
but listen. Listen and rest

We make ourselves in our own scientific image of the kinds of people it is possible to be.

A series of case studies on the interaction between mental illness and modern society.

I am one of those in the world who sleep well.

The Buddha sleeps well, even on cold, hard ground.

… as a reed is destroyed by its own fruit.

Pasenadi asks of the things that cause suffering when they arise from within.

Linked together by bones and sinews,
plastered over with flesh and hide,
and covered by the skin …

Gain victory over the defilements with this one weird trick (contemplation of the unattractiveness of the body).

Then there is the hollow head
all filled with brains.
Governed by ignorance,
the fool thinks it’s lovely.

The desires of the audience’s heart are as crooked as corkscrews. We continue to love what we ought to hate.

This is the human condition, this sneaking suspicion of our own badness. It lies at the heart of our fascination with people who do awful things. Something in us—in me—chimes to that awfulness, recognizes it in myself, is horrified by that recognition, and then thrills to the drama of loudly denouncing the monster.

What do we do with the art of monsters from the past? Look for ourselves there—in the monstrousness.

… mindfulness of postures served as a way of facing fear

my blood moves like tectonic plates

It’s holding a little, obsidian shard of the experience of being human. And because it’s gone into print, other people can read it and they can laugh with me at all our hope and uselessness

The poem is the evidence of the survival. And that comes as a great comfort when we’re not sure if we’ll survive what has been asked of us. I have come to really value this quality of humility as something that helps me get through the day.

… hurt and harm are not the same. You can have damage to your body without accompanying pain. You can have pain without accompanying tissue damage. […] what we know about chronic pain is that the brain does become more sensitive over time, and it misinterprets these danger messages as amplified when they don’t need to be.

Against my cheek, my tree was comfort

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy

An Englishman recounts his experience of satori

By what is the world afflicted?
By what is it enveloped?

The world is burning with desire.

See this fancy puppet,
a body built of sores…

Some of the most clever turns of image in Pāli poetry.

… explanations do things to us and change the way we think about the future and change our expectations for who we can be

On the interaction between story-telling and medicine in psychological disorders.

How US prison inmates turned to Buddhism to face execution, and the truth of a space “strike”. Plus, decoding the Ebola virus and we hear the world’s oldest song.

The brain scan image—a silhouette of the skull, highlighted with bright splotches of primary color—has also become a staple of popular culture, a symbol of how scientific advances are changing the way we think about ourselves.

… ways of understanding their [group’s] distinctiveness which challenge dominant characterizations with the goal of greater self-determination

A definitive introduction to the subject.

… what is the good life? What does that mean? Can it be experienced? And how do we go about building that?

A wide ranging conversation on embodied philosophy.

Cynthia wasn’t just any old mannequin from New York. This wasn’t even her first social event. By the time Jeanne’s mother-in-law met her, she had already attended balls, graced the front pages of magazines and appeared in Hollywood movies. Cynthia was a celebrity.

We tell a story about ourselves to create our self. And oftentimes we’ll behave in a way that reveals that our story is at least partly inaccurate […] The self is a much more slippery idea than we often give it credit for and that has enormous potential.

… how hereditary (nature) and experiential (nurture) variables interact to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals

… the person represents the whole dynamic confluence of characters and actions in the world. Distinctions such as self and other, outside and inside, operate only as conventions within a story.

A powerful lecture and part of the movement to destigmatize mental illness.

you think
You’re a kind of monster
 
And maybe you are,
Just not an ugly one.
 
That whole business
Will come later.

She hides in the room she painted for herself,
tuning, listening…

All those times I was bored…

… digital technology often seems to make it harder for us to respond in the right way when someone is suffering and needs our help

Though I was frequently seen it was rarely a
positive experience.

Blessed be the bitterness
at your core, that quiet light…

I’m on the horizon of a seven hour trip and it’s quiet…

I sit at the ocean’s edge,
At the grey ocean’s edge,
With you in my lap.

There I walked, and there I raged;
The spiritual savage

Imagine my first moon
wasn’t a moon at all
but a crescent incision
in my mother…

i google: can dogs eat watermelon?
       google says: yes, but not the
       seeds…

… all the things Cal doesn’t get to do. I want to curse

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

A classic of the “commencement speech” genre and a powerful defense of the importance of inner freedom.

Phil kept all this to himself, though there was another person who noticed there was something different about the new guy…

An hour of stories of people failing to see what is right in front of their faces.

… true crime can never be my guilty pleasure because it’s a part of my history.

I am writing to you
from deep in the bad days,
hoping you will hear me
wherever you are

… a view of our sense of self as an emergent process of “I-making” that is constructed in relation to our environment and the body on which it depends

I was just beginning
to wonder about my own life
and now I have to return to it…

What is it like when the mind is at rest? Did that happen today? How does it come about?

A short talk on MN 140 and the power of being resolved on relinquishment.

We have brains in order to get along with each other […] Trauma destroys the capacity to imagine

How PTSD operates as a personal, cognitive response to a social breakdown and what that says about society and recovery.

Deep down inside, you’re really worth getting to know.

This is a film about the simple polka dot. A dot that has obsessed Kusama for nine decades.

Does this twin-category process pluralism avoid the problems of substance-dualism?

We don’t begin with fundamental things. We start with fundamental relations. Our mind and our body are constantly interrelated and interconnected.

Triumphing over the dragon was a genuine heroic quest. That’s not the problem. The problem is that at a later stage in life, we’re not able to let go of that. We’re not able to see, “What is the dragon that’s in front of me right now?”

A talk about psychological development and its relationship to the monk’s journey.

If the fragmenting forces of late modernity have shattered the illusion of a fixed self, anātman provides a way of rethinking subjectivity in its absence.

Season 2, special episode i of The History of India Podcast.

The original book can be read in its entirety online here

せせらぎが止まるよ 重なる髪かざり
せせらぎが止まるよ 風向きが変わるよ

An exuberant celebration of youthful disaster.

See also the heart-warming Tonofon Remote Festival Version recorded during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in June 2020.

There is some sinister hysteria in the air out here tonight, some hint of the monstrous perversion to which any human idea can come.

Doctor, if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world

That tree doesn’t need to be more than the tree. A tree just needs to be a tree. But our society always asks us to be more, right? Can’t we just be a human? Can we just be who we are?

Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.

A collection of short stories about weird people.

We found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do […] and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life

A Holocaust survivor describes the mental hoops he (and many) prisoners jumped through during their trying time so close to death. He concludes that people needed a reason to live, a “will to meaning,” as a necessary core of their psychological health, without which survival was impossible.

In America, the book became wildly popular for its descriptions of life in the German concentration camps and for its feel-good defense of positive thinking and a generic, rationalized, Judeo-Christian spirituality. Personally, I read Frankl’s anecdotes more as a defense of ethical behavior in the face of death less than as a defense of the imagination and its attachments as he imagined. As he himself points out: those survivors most strongly attached to hope were those most strongly disillusioned by their return.

Frankl’s Judeo-Christian lens also prohibited him from engaging in more sober self-analysis in ways that are worth unpacking for what they say about Western culture more broadly. For example, it’s more than a little problematic that Frankl approvingly (!) quotes Nietzsche.

In the final analysis, Man’s Search for Meaning remains a complex classic, as much in need of psychoanalysis as it purports to contain it.

… the most truthful way of regarding illness — and the healthiest way of being ill — is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking

A classic and much-cited essay on the (mis)use of metaphors to describe disease.

Available online from the original publisher: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Years later, Sontag also wrote in the NYRB, this time on the metaphors of AIDS in a compelling post-script later published alongside the original essay.

After reading, consider these discussion questions about the essay.

How much evidence do we need of the harmfulness of something before we act?

Born into a Jewish family in Nazi Austria, Hundertwasser came to despise straight lines and the authoritarianism they represented. His story reminds me that we are products of our environment, even—or perhaps especially—when we reject it.

… madness itself is not a role that can be played any old how. In every generation are quite firm rules about how you should behave when you are crazy.

A meditation on the impact of biotechnology on society.

The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction–to locate what is true. …beauty is a starting place for education.

A thorough defense of beauty and of its power to push the boundaries of our concern outward.

Not written from the Buddhist perspective, these essays dismiss (too?) casually the ugly failure modes of beauty: the acquisitiveness, possessiveness, and jealousy which consume many the beholder. However, I find it a useful corollary or even corrective to the standard Buddhist “rejection” of aesthetics, explaining how beauty can condition becoming’s wholesome forms.

In this way, we start to view the spiritual education as a kind of aesthetic education: acquainting the student with “truer” sources of beauty and affording them the more sublime responses outlined in these notes.

I give you back 1948.

A poem about what time can do to a person.

Now suppose that in the autumn—when it’s raining in fat, heavy drops—a water bubble were to appear & disappear on the water, and a man with sight were to see it. To him it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance could there be in a bubble? In the same way, a man with wisdom sees a feeling. To him it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance could there be in a feeling?

Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.

A classic of modern psychology, Stumbling on Happiness explains in detail the cognitive biases that prevent us from accurately predicting what will make us happy.

If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust essentialism. Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect. Focus on the larger, shared goals. Practice perspective taking. Individuate, individuate, individuate. […] You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

A magisterial and heart-felt survey of neuroscience, psychology, and biology which paints a broad but rigorous picture of how and why humans act the way they do–for better or for worse–and what we (individual meatbags) can do to be our best selves.

The book is based on Sapolsky’s Stanford course, “Human Behavioral Biology”, available for free on YouTube.

Like power, gender is everywhere, running through our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the earth, and the relations between nations, classes, and cultures. And like power, it is not a problem in itself but instead a question of how we do it.

… someone is a sequence of choices, and the question is: Will my next choice be conscious, and will my ability to make it be unfettered?

Let’s consider how a person, me, arises in your experience. First certain colors and shapes arise, largely maroon. A sense of foreboding ensues. The features arise: “monk,” “shaveling,” then the discernment “worthy of offerings.” The features arise: “wire-rimmed glasses,” “wry grin” and finally “Bhikkhu Cintita,” then the discernment “maybe not so worthy of offerings.” At some point in this process you are convinced that I exist