most of the research done on happiness suggests that people actually become less happy when they have children and do not begin to approach their pri… - Sam Harris

There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion — a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one’s mind or body — thoughts, sensations, moods — without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant.

Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: “Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.

To say that someone freely chose to squander his life's savings at the poker tabile is to say that he had every opportunity to do otherwise and that nothing about what he did was inadvertent