Civic Studies » Buddhism

people as clusters of attention

Peter — Mon, 18 May 2026 12:26:44 +0000

Attention is endangered. It is what Silicon Valley has learned to capture and commoditize. It is what LLMs pretend to offer by speaking in the first-person singular, often in a sycophantic voice. It is what my iPhone takes from me. It is what Donald Trump constantly demands. To understand why our attention should be valuable […] Continue reading →

The Tangle

Peter — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:09:08 +0000

“Snarled, knotted—these neurons got as tangledAs the hair on top. The living are snaggedIn their own matted mess, they are this thatch.Who, I ask you, can fix such a tangle?”“A person. Ethical. Concentrating. Insightful. Methodical yet ardent.Someone who has fully accepted this task.This person can unravel the tangle.“Desire, hatred, and ignorance fadeWhile you pay attention […] Continue reading →

why be introspective?

Peter — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:08:56 +0000

According to Thomas Chatterton Williams, some leading tech oligarchs are explicitly against introspection. The “venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that he engages in ‘zero’ introspection—or at least ‘as little as possible.’” Similarly, the billionaire investor Peter Thiel “contends that looking inward can impede action.” Both men think that introspection is a recent phenomenon, or at least a […] Continue reading →

How do we know whether fish are happy? How do we know whether we are? (Zen, Aristotelian, and Taoist discussions)

Peter — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:41:09 +0000

When you watch fish swimming around in very cold water, they look fine. Human beings have a protein, TRPM8, that reacts to cold and affects our nervous system, causing discomfort or even pain when the temperature goes down. But fish do not have any TRPM8 (Yong p. 138). Thus we can infer that fish do […] Continue reading →

how Hannah Arendt moved away from pure thinking

Peter — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:54:35 +0000

Mystics have often advised that by turning our minds inward, we may find freedom. For instance, Marcus Aurelius restates a Greco-Roman commonplace when he writes, “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. …. Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own […] Continue reading →

The Way of Skepticism

Peter — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 14:32:46 +0000

Here is a pitch for a book that I have finished drafting, with the title The Way of Skepticism: In 2025, I was invited to give philosophy lectures in Kyiv, Ukraine (on the day of the third-worst bombardment in the war so far) and then at two Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank. In […] Continue reading →

gratitude and the sublime

Peter — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:58:23 +0000

Let’s define a sublime experience as one that is dramatically better than life as usual, since life involves suffering—at least in part and over the long run. I doubt that sublime experiences reveal a truth: that everything is redeemed. Nor are they false, mere fantasies of people who cannot face reality. Rather, they are part […] Continue reading →

The Art of Solitude

Peter — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:06:59 +0000

I first explored similarities between Montaigne’s Essays (1580-88) and the ancient Buddhist texts called the Pali Canon (particularly the “Chapter of Eights”) on this blog in August 2024. I have been developing these ideas into a longer article or perhaps a portion of a book. One shared theme (among several) is that we should be […] Continue reading →

Cuttings: Ninety-Nine Essays About Happiness

Peter — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:33:23 +0000

Cuttings is a book in progress that consists of 99 essays about the inner life: about suffering, happiness, compassion, and related themes. I first posted each of the essays on this blog, which is 22 years old today and has accumulated more than 2,400 posts. I’ve selected the contents of Cuttings carefully from this archive, […] Continue reading →

happiness, for skeptics

Peter — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 17:23:30 +0000

Perhaps human beings are designed for a purpose or end, the pursuit of which brings us happiness. Aristotle is a major proponent of this view (“teleology”), and his theory has influenced each of the Abrahamic faiths. But what if one is skeptical that we have any end, or that pursuing any “telos” promises a good […]

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