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Nature And The Soul
Imagine trees standing together in a forest. They don’t talk, but they feel each other’s presence. When you look at them, you might say they aren’t doing anything. But they are growing and providing clean air for living things to breathe. Instead of describing sitting meditation as the practice of concentration, looking deeply, and getting insight, I like to describe sitting as enjoying doing nothing. Primarily, sitting is to enjoy the pleasure of sitting, being fully alive and in touch with the wonders of our working bodies, the cool air, the sounds of people and birds, and the changing colors of the sky.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, in “How to Sit”.
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What is a person? What do I mean when I say “I”? Perhaps what each of us means by the “self” is in fact an aggregate of habits of perception and adaptive action plus, from moment to moment, our “immanent states of action.”
G.Bateson 1960, later published in Steps to an Ecology of Mind 1972
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…the European self, which is derived of rugged individualism, is of a qualitatively different epistemology than the American Indian self, which is derived of community strength. The 500-year history has basically amounted to the individual-based selves finding ways to defeat and destroy the community-based selves. The destruction has been profound in the…
