Waking Up

Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now (Location 60)

Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences. (Location 139)

Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain? Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having one’s favorite foods available, or friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or good books to read, or something to look forward to on the weekend? Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death? (Location 187)

Buddhism offers a truly sophisticated, empirical approach to understanding the human mind, whereas Christianity presents an almost perfect impediment to such understanding. (Location 293)

We can easily forget how suddenly the world had shrunk and the cosmos expanded as the nineteenth century came to a close. (Location 359)

and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self. Compare this with the Christian view of Jesus, who is imagined to be the son of the creator of the universe. This is a very different proposition, and it renders Christianity, no matter how fully divested of metaphysical baggage, all but irrelevant to a scientific discussion about the human condition. (Location 430)

Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. (Location 441)

The four foundations of mindfulness are the body (breathing, changes in posture, activities), feelings (the senses of pleasantness, unpleasantness, and neutrality), the mind (in particular, its moods and attitudes), and the objects of mind (which include the five senses but also other mental states, such as volition, tranquility, rapture, equanimity, and even mindfulness itself). (Location 513)

Note: Very similar to the four energies from power of full engagement

Most people seem to believe that we have only two ways to think about death: We can fear it and do our best to ignore it, or we can deny that it is real. The first strategy leads to a life of conventional worldliness and distraction—we merely strive for pleasure and success and do our best to keep the reality of death out of view. The second strategy is the province of religion, which assures us that death is but a doorway to another world and that the most important opportunities in life occur after the lifetime of the body. But there is another path, and it seems the only one compatible with intellectual honesty. (Location 597)

The most astonishing quality of dreams is surely our lack of astonishment when they arise. The sleeping brain seems to have no expectation of continuity from one moment to the next. (This is probably owing to the diminished activity in the frontal lobes that occurs during REM sleep.) (Location 993)

Amnesiacs, who can no longer form conscious memories, can still improve their performance on a wide variety of tasks through practice.54 For instance, a person can learn to play golf with increasing proficiency, all the while believing that whenever she picks up a club it is for the first time. (Location 1064)

Consciousness does not feel like a self. Once one realizes this, the status of thoughts themselves, as transient expressions of consciousness, can be understood. (Location 1410)

“It may not be coincidental that [you] use phrases like ‘self conscious’ when you really mean that you are conscious of others being conscious of you. (Location 1546)

Whatever else might be said about the experience of watching a film, it fully dissociates fundamental TOM from standard TOM, for there is no doubt that we attribute mental states to the actors on the screen. (Location 1555)